“I never finish anthi”

That was the status this morning of my good friend Tina from Mummified times five blog

It brought to mind a time Reg and I sometimes chuckle together about.

I have made a deadline of Wednesday afternoon to leave for our 6-month caravan tour of Eastern Australia and we will leave then regardless of the state of the house.

I do what I can do, pat myself on the back for what I achieve and I don’t beat myself up about what I could not get done in the time, nor give up on what I have planned ~ the holiday start deadline, in  this case.

Once when we had a young family and had scrambled to put together a working holiday of painting commission and art exhibiting plus family beachside cottage holiday in Fairhaven on the Great Ocean Road of Victoria, we achieved all those priorities, but left the house a mess.
 
In my passion, to always, cram, as much as I can into an opportunity, I even packed the sewing machine and all the accumulated, family clothing requiring mending. Yes, I completed my oil painting commissions, some free lance watercolours, the exhibition and all the mending and we had the most wonderful, relaxing family holiday in a cottage, opposite the beach. The holiday cottage was an exchange for the commissioned artwork I painted of the cottage, something I frequently did to provide some wonderful holiday’s for the family and myself.

We returned. to find we had been burgled while away. That actually created several  funny reaction in us, that both Reg and I still chuckle about.

With a shock, I discovered my priority in life was a $5. value item.

The first was my reaction to seeing we had been, burgled. I immediately checked to see if we still owned three things.

I laugh about this, as it has to show what my priorities were at that stage of my life.

The first thing I wanted to make sure was safe, was the chook. We had bought ‘Henny Penny’, for $5. There was a frantic urgent cry from me, for everyone to; “‘look for Henny Penny”.   We found Henny Penny, she was safe, she had let herself inside the house, the same way the burglars had entered, through the jemmied back door and she was happily roosting in the opened top, piano.  There was a great sigh of relief from the entire family that the family chook, with retail value of lol, $5. Was safe and no one seemed to mind the piano worth a few thousand dollars had chook poo and hens claw, scratches on it.

Priority no 2. I then looked straight for the wall, the spot where my favourite oil painting that I had painted myself, (huge. Intense sigh of relief), it was there.  I felt like, ‘nothing else mattered’. Then I remembered my last spendaholic, explosion and purchase that I could hardly have afforded to make, the two crystal sherry decanters I bought Reg for Christmas. They were still there. Lol, finally materialism had surfaced. Lol, I am human.   The items, stolen, were electrical entertainment appliances, nothing that I was sentimental about, none of that upset us. We did lose the coin collection I had inherited from my mother and discovered it was not, covered by our home contents insurance so there was a little regret there.

'OH they ransacked the house'.

 

When the police arrived to investigate the crime scene, lol, they looked at the mess the home was in.   
I had packed up a family, an exhibition, the art studio and the mending chores to go on holidays. I had not then done a superwoman and run around, picked up, tidying, cleaning and making the beds, before leaving. I did not feel like saying to the police, “No that is what life in a creative happy family home, looks like.”

Reg and I struggled to keep a straight face.  Neither of us wanted to confess, we often left for holidays with the house looking like that and we were not going to reproach ourselves for having the priorities we choose to have.

We found we were ‘different’, to many other people in many ways, because of this burglary. The police talked about how we must be feeling traumatised. No, we were not even upset, the hen and painting were OK, what was there to feel upset about?   
Other people spoke of how we must feel violated.  No, just a fact of life, happens to most people at some stage, we just bought a good burgular alarm and organized a few ideas to make doors and windows harder to jemmy and we don’t keep uninsured valuables in the house and spend all our money on travel, not valuables anyhow.

Burglars can steal your things but they cannot steal your memories’

Reg has always said, “Burglars can steal your things but they cannot steal your memories". With this in mind, we have simply travelled more, until travel and the sometimes ransacked looking, home with few valuables in it, that we leave behind, has become our happy lifestyle.

Aim for excellence, not perfection.

Yes, of course I would love to walk out the door, on this six month Australian caravan tour, knowing I leave behind a spotless tidy home.  I will however, be aiming for excellence, not perfection'. There is a huge difference. 

 

Reg and I have always had 'itchy feet', and loved to travel, sometimes into places where our car could not reach.  This is a story of a time, in our young mid life, when we connected up with others for the safety reasons of travelling through the outback in a group with a well equipped vehicle, and radio contact, while we followed the Burke and Wills explorers trail, up into Cameron Corner, the intersection of three states of Australia, Back of Burke, Innaminka, Birdsville, Boulia and , through the Gemtree country of the Harts Range.  We travelled with a group of 32 other mid life, inland travel enthusiasts in a Rolls Royce engine bus, with an experienced (we thought), tour guide/driver and a camp cook.   It was a 16 day appallingly run excursion which left Reg and I with our love of each other and the landscape intact but very wary of hitching ourselves into any organized by others, tour.  I am aware, that most tours are brilliantly run, no reflection on the generally high standard of the tour industry.

In telling this story of the desert pee, I should start by saying that yes to bus did have a toilet.  

The bus driver did have a temper.

It was the driver’s job to maintain the bus, that included emptying the toilet.   I wish that in my thirties I had the courage of my 60's and could have told the bus driver then that if the brochure said the bus had a toilet, then we, the passengers, were allowed to use the toilet.  

Back then, intimidation was used by the driver to minimize his work.  

The driver would pull up in the bush and say. 'ladies on the left, men on the right'.  

Now that system worked fine for a few days, but by ten days into the trip, couples got rather tired of being segregated in their brief wanderings when granted a leg stretch and so they went in whatever direction they wanted to, and the bus driver sat in the bus, guarding the toilet door, making sure no one used it, so he would not have to dig a hole in a sand dune and empty it.

Parts of the trip were, despite some conditions I'll not go into here, sheer magic.  The Coopers Creek near Innaminka and the Birdsville track was pure heaven and I loved and painted the old royal Hotel at Birdsville.

One particulate day we were travelling through Sturts Stony desert and there was nothing to squat behind, and never a moment when there were not men around and in my 30's I was too shy to tell the men to get around to the other side of the bus and give us ladies a fair go, we had to 'go', and too modest to 'just go' LOL, :-), and too scared of the intimidating driver to barge my way past him into the toilet in the bus.   My plan was that I would, 'hold on', till it was dark, then 'go'.   

LOL  Now that (holding on), is something at 62, LOL, I can hardly imagine, :-).

So after dinner, after dark, I took a torch and walked out into the desert alone.  Turned the torch off and relieved myself. Sigh :-)~~ ~~~~ more comfortable and with my clothes readjusted I reached out, picked up the torch and turned it on, and there, on the ground, between me and where the torch had been, was a desert taipan, the deadliest snake in the world.

Common sense is not always all that common and I've been guilty of a lot of very foolish blunders in my learning to live close to this beautiful country. 

One thing I have learned is the night time is when this country abounds in wild life with most of our wild creatures being nocturnal .

This true story is Copyright to Kathy Shell.