We got home on Monday after nearly six weeks away. It is so good to be home. Monday night all of the kids were home for family dinner. The girls bought Riley back. We ate lots of veggies. I slept in my own comfy bed, for 9 hours. That is a night that is the best welcome home.
We only had E home for one night. He left to drive up past Broken Hill to work in tech at Mundi Mundi, a massive festival in the outback. He’s been looking forward to this for months so there was lots of excitement. He stayed with a mate in Mildura on Wednesday night and rang me yesterday to say he had sorted out his bank account access and was headed to Broken Hill. Bonus: the company he’s contracting for on this job has offered him a full time position—he’s really living his best life.
After having such a disjointed year with all our travel, I was keen to get into a routine as soon as possible so I’m using my spreadsheet habit tracker and have been kicking goals with that this week. For things like habits I usually count an 80% hit rate as success. Hopefully the tracking will help me be a bit more consistent than I have been with all things that are important to me.
My garden needs a serious amount of work but the weather is going to be awful this weekend, hopefully I can get into it during next week. Since we are not on council waste we don’t have a green waste bin and not everyone in our block wants to pay for one so I’ve just been putting it in the general waste which is ick for me. I contacted the waste company that looks after our apartment block to see if we could get our own green bin, and they bill us directly but they won’t do it which is really disappointing. I think, since we are going to have so much green waste when I tidy up the garden I will collect it and make a trip out to the waste center. We will have to pay to dump it, but I think it must be done. Every time I throw a bag of green waste in our general waste bin I feel guilty and if I take it to green waste they recycle it into compost. On a happy note the seeds I planted before we left for the UK in April are growing well. The peas are flowering and the broad beans are growing strong. I used some coriander from the garden on our dinner last night. The growing season for coriander is not very long here, it goes to seed so quickly in summer, that I want to make the most of it while I have it. My rainbow chard is also looking good.
I went to my small group Personal training on Wednesday and I have worst DOMS. Yesterday I went for a run and then later in the day, after sitting for a while I got up and could hardly walk my calf was so sore. This happened even time I got up, I would struggle to walk on my left leg. In the end I hardly wanted to sit down because the getting up was so hard—and no one is allowed to touch my quads. Everything is a bit better today, but I’ll be a bit more careful next week.
What do you enjoy most about coming home? When was the last time you regretted a workout?
Comments
12 responses to “Five on a Friday”
Oh what a disappointment about the green waste! That feels like such a shame. I will say this about Calgary – they had a really great green/ blue bin program. Moving here, it felt…less good. My biggest complaint is that we can’t recycle glass containers in our blue bin. What the what. They do have “drop sites” for glass, which we use, but think of all the people who can’t do that. All that glass, going into the landfill. It’s so dumb and I will DIE ON THIS HILL. Why can’t they recycle glass? Of all things, glass is actually more recyclable than plastic, which breaks down.
We have co-mingled recycling, so paper, glass, plastic bottles and metal can all go in the one bin, and it’s sorted at the recycling plant, which makes things easier. We had one resident who either did not care or who had no idea how to use the bins (we have signs up) and just threw their general waste in the recycling, so G and I had a few times where we went through and moved them to the proper bins. Luckily, they only stayed about a month, otherwise I probably would have resorted to some passive-aggressive signs.
There’s a big discussion at the moment because the government wants to bring in a separate glass bin, so there would be four bins if you have FOGO. We will see whether it ever comes in.
Bummer about your recycling issue. I did not realize you were gone for so long. I’ve never left home for that long. When we drove to Yellowstone in 2010, I refused to get in the van until the house was clean. I loved coming home to a clean house. That was probably the last time I insisted on that, which makes coming home less relaxing. I would say sleeping in my own bed and having laundry services available is my fav part of coming home.
I’ve started a new workout routine. I find that if I do too many shoulder or upper back work, I end up with an awful headache. I never realize when I’m doing it that I am pushing too far or straining too much. When we stayed downtown for our anniversary last weekend, I slept poorly due to a terrible headache – until Coach massaged my neck. I overdid it the day before apparently.
Our son was home while we were away, so unfortunately, there was no chance of coming home to a clean house, although I did make sure our bathroom was clean before I left.
I have the same thing when I do upper-body work. I use a spiky ball to get into my back and traps and that helps.
Welcome home! I love travel, but there is something comforting about your own bed and your own routine.
That’s a shame about your recycling. We live in a townhouse with green bins, and I feel very good about disposing of food waste that way.
We have a worm farm, so at least most of my green food waste goes there. I think there are a few people in our apartment block who think it’s too much effort, so don’t won’t to pay for something they can’t be bothered using GRRR! The person I;’m thinking of is young too (in their twenties) so can’t even play the too old to learn new things card.
Riley looks so comfortable!!
We have a green bin that gets collected every 2 weeks and I definitely appreciate being able to have all our food and yard waste go to composting. But it’s not your fault that you don’t have access to that and you’ve tried your best to find a way and it’s not working, so feel ZERO guilt about this. Having a garden there for pollinators to use is a huge step to begin with so you’re offsetting things well.
I love getting home to my own bed, especially if we’ve been sleeping in a small bed. We have a king at home and I just adore all the space!
I love our king so much!
That is frustrating about green waste. My city has been great about offering compost bins. I think they have been in use for over 8 years? Our city is progressive so that really helps. We throw out so much green waste each week since you can put things like egg cartons and such.
I would usually be running this morning but it’s storming right now and will all morning so I need to do a different workout but will avoid anything leg heavy so my long run isn’t impacted tomorrow. I just hope the weather clears off for my run tomorrow! It’s going to such a stormy weekend here.
Our council has food and green waste bins, but our apartment block is not included in the council’s waste pickup service. I think the body corporate chooses that so we don’t have 27 bins to store somewhere and put out each week.
It must be nice being home after such a long time.
The best feeling is just being in your own space. walking around seeing and touching your own stuff. Of course my bed. But also just admiring my home.
Your garden looks so lush. I can not see much wrong with it.
I made a salad yesterday with homegrown cucumbers and lots of herbs. The salad itself was bought on the farmers market and only the tomatoes from the store. It felt so good.
The garden looks fine from a distance, but getting closer, you can see a lot of the lushness is weeds, plus a huge amount of continental parsley that self-seeded all through this bed when I let my parsley bush go to seed two summers ago. The salad sounds wonderful. I suppose you want to take advantage of summer while it is around.