When the Cowboy is away, mice will... clean.

Cowboy is away for the weekend with the caballos, and I am staying at home with the cat and the dog and my cold medication. I'm attempting to use these three days of relative quiet to reorganise our haphazard little home and try to establish some kind of order to the place.

When Cowboy moved in, without me, he pretty much just camped wherever his stuff landed. When I came to visit, I stashed most things in the cupboard nearest to wherever they had landed. This means I have a whole cupboard dedicated to plastic bags, bookshelves covered in tools, and a closet full of junk.

The first thing I've done is to go through the box of small change from our bedroom. I've made $80 this weekend! Hooray!

I've learned how to fold a fitted sheet courtesy of Youtube, and folded all of my fitted sheets. It's the little victories that make my day worthwhile.

I ate more of my weird soup that I made the other day, and it has only improved with age. The spice has really ramped up. Mmmm...











I emptied out our walk-in closet in the bedroom and found all of Cowboy's guitar picks (he is always complaining he can't find any). I also found more money. Hooray again!

Then I gave Blue Dog a bath, because he smelled horrific and I couldn't stand it any longer.

He took it well. His old trick of lying on the ground like a dead weight beside the bathtub didn't work for him. Since I became Amazonian and strong, I can now lift him. He decided to get in the tub of his own accord after I manhandled him a couple of times, and that made the whole experience more pleasant for both of us.

Once he was sweet-smelling and no longer a menace to society, he was very keen to go outside. He promptly ran to the back field and rolled...

... and rolled...

... and rolled...

I didn't think he was going to stop...

Eventually he was satisfied and we came back inside, where I managed to make more mess than I had tidied up in the closet. I abandoned the project midway through.

I finally put away my suitcases in the shed, and rearranged a few things in there so that it is actually accessible and no longer a minefield. While I was outside, I pulled up a weed or two that I could see, thinking I'd head back inside and finish the closet.

Two hours later, I was still ripping out weeds. I would still be ripping out weeds if my 90 gallon garden waste bin wasn't completely full, and it wasn't dark. I have a lot of weeds. I grew them myself.

Tomorrow: I finish the closet project, and the living room project. We might be getting somewhere.

Pre-Visit Psychosis (PVP)

Just a few short days now stand between me and Cowboy. I've entered the phase which I like to call "the pre-visit psychosis" which means I can't remember anything, I do a great deal of faffing about, and I generally cease to function well.

I spent yesterday in the kitchen, using up all of my vegetables in soup. One of my creations was the fabulous Beetroot Haters' Soup which smelled and tasted quite divine. If I hadn't been suffering from pre-visit psychosis (PVP) I'd have taken a picture or two.

Today I need to finish a project that I started a few weeks ago, which seemed like such a good idea at the time.



Cowboy and I will have been together for a whole year when I go out there on Monday, which certainly defies my expectations. To mark our anniversary, I'm putting together a scrapbook of pictures from my trip when we met, and what we've been up to over the year. This is partly for my benefit too, as I don't want to forget how we came to be together when it's such a ridiculous story.

I have a few pages left to do, but with PVP they've become quite difficult. I only have a couple of days left to fill the remaining space in the book. It's been a lovely experience to sit and take time to look back at my photos, think back to our earliest conversations and interactions, and remember all over again why I fell so hard for him.

We had a curious coincidence of thoughts last night. I dreamt that he had turned up in England and surprised me. When I told him about it this morning, he paused and then said "That's weird. I actually thought a little while ago about what it would be like if I just showed up in England and surprised you. I imagined doing it."

More likely, we've both got seeing each other on the brain and it's inevitable that we think the same things at around the same time.

I'm pretty excited. One of the strangest things I'm excited about is seeing Cowboy's dog, Blue Dog.



I'm firmly a cat person. Or I used to be firmly a cat person. These days I'm not so sure. I made friends with a stranger's pitbull on the tube the other day, and played with my brother's dog while nobody was looking last weekend. I have an overwhelming urge to shove my face in Blue Dog's stinky, grubby fur and give him a big hug. He hasn't had a bath in goodness only knows how long. I can only blame the PVP. No rational person would want to go within three feet of him.

Apart from how he is blindly adoring and obedient (mostly), and just loves attention. He gets a whole double page spread in the scrapbook.