The house hunting is over

Believe it or not, it looks like they accepted our offer on the house that I mentioned in the last blog and we now (soon) will have a house again. We've paid the downpayment and signed. The owners have also signed and now we just have to wait out the legal 42 days before we hand over the rest of the money and get the keys, which should be the sixth of December. It is in a small place north of Wollongong called Woonona. It has a lovely beach and the house also comes with a pool. It is bigger than we need but it seems very difficult to find small houses. If you want smallish you have to go for apartments or retirement villas. The present owners are actually downsizing for retirement but we (hubby) is not ready for that.

This is after over two years of looking every Saturday. What a difference to when we bought the house in Sweden! I looked at two houses and picked one of them because I didn't like the smell of the other. Hubby wasn't even there but I knew what we wanted.

Our first house

The same went for the cottage in Sweden. I flew up from France and a friend took me around to see three houses and we picked one of them, easy, again without hubby. However, here in Sydney it has been more difficult mainly due to the rising market, and also the fact that we wanted a single-level house and they are not so easy to come by.

My painting classes have started up again which is nice even though it is hard to concentrate with other things on your mind. It shouldn't be such a big deal. After all, I have moved 25 times in my life if I haven't forgotten any of the moves, so I should be used to it. But as with everything, it is getting harder with age. Hopefully we won't have to move again for a while.

I will publish this little episode now and get back with more details later on.

Cheerio  

Happiness is a new lawnmower

When we first came to Australia our son talked my husband in to buying an old fashioned push lawn mower since he is heavily into environment and didn't think we should pollute unnecessarily and also because he thought hubby needed the exercise and also at first we didn't have a lot of lawn to mow. But that was the first house and now we are in our third rental property and it is getting more and more arduous to mow the lawn. You see, it is not just your own lawn you have to worry about but it is your responsibility to look after the outside which is called the nature strip. In our case it is on a steep slope at the back and quite difficult to cut. This brings us to the title of this little blog instalment. Aldi had an offer last Saturday on lawnmowers and hubby managed to snag himself one. He arrived before opening hours and there was a long queue already but fortunately he was able to get one of the mowers on offer for the same price that we had paid for the push mower 9 years ago.

Since I haven't written here for ages there is a lot to catch up on I guess but I can hardly remember . My mind is taken up by our silly house hunting. Last weekend we finally (again) found something suitable and we have now made an offer but haven't heard anything yet. I'll let you know.

In September we had Father's Day and the "kids" took us  out for a pub lunch in Redfern, near where our daughter lives. It was nice and hearty and English, roast and Yorkshire pudding and potatoes and veggies. You don't need to eat for a week after a meal like that.

In August hubby organised a wonderful surprise for me in connection with me turning 70. We had a lovely lunch by the river in the Lugano Seafood Restaurant across the river from where we lived previously in Illawong. The food was great and the setting sublime and the company wonderful. I am very grateful.

Hopefully, next time I write here I will have news about the house. They said that we will know tomorrow if our offer has been accepted.

So bye for now and see you soon!

Quiet life

Dear Readers,

We are presently enjoying a couple of quiet days in our cottage, catching up on rest and laundry and other things. We came back two days ago from a little roadtrip up to the middle Sweden. It is so completely different to where we are on the west coast of the country. We saw two World Heritage sights (Farmhouses of Hälsingland and the Falu Copper Mine) and many other interesting things, plus, most importantly, we caught up with our old friends from Grenoble. They moved back to Sweden about 12 years ago after a long stint in France and our two sons were very good friends.

Lunch in Stugsund at a place called Månses Cafe.
The food was delicious as was the setting.

Before this trip we had a visit from our old friends from the UK which was good fun. Having visitors makes you go places and see things. Sometimes it is a re-visit but just as often it is a first time visit. Like, for example, Smögen, a gorgeous fishing village about an hour from here. For some reason we had never bothered going there but now we did and it was very beautiful.

We also went for a day's visit to the big craft market in Hjo. That involved an overnight stay at Knistad Herrgård in Skövde where we also had slightly unusual meal. Our waiter had probably not worked in his profession very long and had a very hard time. It wasn't helped by the fact that most of the other guests had booked a package which included golfing, overnight stay and meals with a recommended wine. What we wanted was just a main course and the wine list so that we could pick something ourselves. That really confused the poor lad. There was a clear Faulty Towers feel to the whole experience.

We picked up my nephew in Skövde at the train station and had a day in Hjo at the market and also visiting the town which is very quaint in the old part. My mother and sister lived in Hjo for a few years when my sisters' boys grew up. I used to come and visit with our children in the summer and it is always nice to come back.

This blog entry is completely non-chronological but I would also like to mention that another thing that we did was to visit the locks in Brekke in Norway. It is quite impressive with a 27 meter drop and just as we were there some German children with teachers came through the five gates in canoes.

After having watched that whole procedure we decided to drive to Strömstad back in Sweden for a very late lunch / early dinner since eating in Norway is known for being very expensive.

There are many more things to tell you but I really can't remember them right now. However, one thing that stands out is that on our friends' last day in Sweden they got to be part of putting up an outdoor shower that we had brought with us from Australia!!!

How many scientists does it take to
change a shower head?

Wedding anniversary

G'day everybody,

We are in our cottage in Sweden now and so far so good, aside for the massive lawn mowing that will have to be done.

The trip went well and other than the fact that the rental car company has given us a ridiculously low car that is virtually impossible to get in and out of, all is good.

Before we left Australia we had a great meal with our kids in Cronulla at a restaurant called 1908. It was to celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary, which is ruby, so I got a pretty necklace and earrings in ruby.

That fateful day!

Here is a little tip to the ladies. You go out and buy the jewellery you want and give it to your hubby to give you. It seems to work out the best for everyone. Takes the pressure off hubby and you can pick what you want. It is a win-win situation really. Hubby had actually previously promised me rubies but it turned out that they were artificial rubies used for aligning diffractometers at work. They are also used for the balls of ballpoint pens, and are very cheap.

Unfortunately the other photos with all four of us were very dark.

Our first visitors arrived the second day we were in the cottage and it was our old friends from Grenoble. They had an appointment at the Chinese embassy in Gothenburg for their visas so they came out for a quick overnight stay which was great. Hubby is green with envy because they are actually going on the Trans Siberian Railway in September but unfortunately we can't go. Hubby is still not retired  and has to work then unfortunately.

The quieter end of Smögen.

First breakfast of the summer in the sun

I am going to publish this entry now and get back again shortly with an account of our UK friends' visit. They left last night after a great week's visit with lots of sightseeing, cooking and eating delicious meals and card playing.  So I'll be back shortly.

Long week-end

G'day everybody,

It is the Queen's birthday so we are having Monday off. I mean that is for those who work, for me 'everyday is the Queen's birthday' to paraphrase a sentence by Ross from the series Friends.

I am in the process of writing my memoirs. That sounds a bit hoiti-toiti; I really just meant that I am collecting my thoughts on paper and trying to remember where my life went. I think I have to be hypnotised because there are so many gaps in my memory. For example where was the kitchen situated in the house in Panama City, Florida, where I lived when I was 15, and what and when did we have dinner and what did we have for dinner? I have no memory of that, but I clearly remember the kitchen on Södra Vägen in Gothenburg where I grew up and what we usually had for dinner there. Maybe it was because my grandmother always cooked since my mother worked and my grandmother was very traditional. For example, Thursday was always pea-soup and pancakes, even if we had already had that in the school cafeteria for lunch. This is just one example of things that I don't remember.

Swedish (Thursday) comfort food

Yesterday hubby went to a model-railway exhibition in Rosehill and we had to grab something to eat before. There was a Hooter's there so we decided to try it. We had avoided it on principle for years but it was the only place conveniently near by. They only have waitresses working there, no waiters, and when you are employed it is only by looks and shape. You have to wear a tiny sleeveless t-shirt and very small shorts showing half of your bum. It was very strange and you wonder why any normal person would accept the conditions but I guess a job is a job. 

Our waitress was beautiful, she looked like a 40's filmstar with long pitch-black hair and a very beautiful complexion with blue eyes. As we were leaving we got talking and it turned out she was from Bodø in Norway and had only worked there for two months.  She seemed happy with her job. On the wall at the bar was a sign that said "our waitresses are flattery driven". It was a little difficult for a Swede to take all this in and I wouldn't want my daughter to have to work in such a demeaning place.

When we got home we googled Hooters and other similar American chains that all go under the title "breastaurant" and they all have some sort of sexist dress code. Definitely to be avoided in the future, even though the chicken wings were pretty tasty.

House hunting

Dear friends,

The reason I have not been writing very much here lately is that not very much has been happening, duh!

Every weekend is taken up by going looking for houses and we still haven't found one. Are we too critical and demanding? I am so sick of it, wish that somebody could just go out and buy something for us and make us take it. I wouldn't complain, promise!

The kids have even started to realise that we are struggling and the week before last they both came with us house hunting. It almost didn't happen for our son though because as he was walking out of his house and through a little park he saw a naked man sitting on a bench. I mean stark naked. He was pretty much out of it and had nothing with him, like a wallet or a phone. Our son tried to find out where he lived. He thought he could send him home in a taxi but he wasn't responding so our son went home again and got a blanket for him so he could cover up and left, only slightly delayed at that point.

He then walked into a bar, not what you think though, but one that was sitting on top of a car and sticking out quite a bit without having a red warning flag on it. He cricked his neck and I think he still has a bit of pain but he had to carry on since he was afraid to miss us at the train station.

He got the bus to his nearest station and when he got there the trains were replaced by buses and there was a bit of delay. He finally got on one of those buses and after a short drive he realised that they were not at all driving in the right direction. The young female bus driver had taken a wrong turn and sometimes that is all it takes to go somewhere completely different with all the one-way streets. It is not easy to turn a big bus around either so all this took some time.

He finally got to the pick-up point three hours later. This is normally a 40 minute trip.

Autumn is slowly easing in, the nights are colder and one can go for a walk without breaking out in a sweat. It's usually a pleasant +24° or around that in the day and nice and sunny. The surfers still surf though, they seem to do it all year but some of them wear wet-suits.

This was Mother's day in a nice tapas bar down
by the Georges River.

It's also time to buy tickets for our Europe trip and I am on it. I think we have to have a stop over somewhere so we'll see what the travel agent comes up with. However we won't be staying as long as we normally do since we need to get back to the house hunt. This weekend will be the last house-hunting outing before we go. There is a 42 days delay before you get to take over a new house for administration and a cool off period so after this week end it is too late.

I was going to add some more photos but realised when I was looking at them that they are always of us sitting at tables eating. I seem to have forgotten to take photos of beautiful landscapes. So here are a few bugs that hubby saw when he was gardening instead.

PS Yesterday we saw Australia go through to the finals in the Eurovision song contest.  

Back from Melbourne

Greetings dear readers!

We have just been down to hubby's hometown Melbourne for a very quick visit in connection with his uncle's 90 birthday.

It was held in a hotel with an all-you-can-eat buffet. It is a convenient way of getting a lot of people together with not a lot of expense to the birthday boy or girl. Everyone pays for their own meal and drinks at the bar. You can bring decorations, i.e. balloons and cake and flowers etc, and make it personal.

Hubby's grand-paternal clan on his father's side (phew!),
and yes, hubby has (re)grown a beard, maybe inspired by
all the hipsters we saw in Sweden or just laziness.

Now with hubby's grand-maternal clan on his
father's side, and that of his uncle's dear departed
wife.

My brother-in-law, sister-in-law, hubby,
and me.

Here is the birthday boy in all his
splendour. Pink satin shirt with
matching cravat and grey shiny suit
with black shiny shoes. Very stylish!

It was just an overnight trip, since hubby is still working and doesn't have many holidays to take. He will go back to Sweden in February to help our elder daughter hang paintings for an exhibition at a gallery near our cottage.

I wrote on Facebook that my mother had passed away. It was very sad. She had had a fall and broken her hip. We really thought that she would recover, especially when they sent her back to her nursing home from the hospital after the operation. She passed away after a week in hospital and a week back in her room at the nursing home. I was very happy to have been there for those two weeks.  They were very kind to her and me, letting me stay in her room in the hospital.

We didn't have a big funeral, only family - one grandson, hubby and me. My mother was 94, and most of her relatives and friends are gone too. Then we had to empty her room and sort out her belongings which was also very sad and brought back many memories.

It feels a little strange now that I am the older generation in our family. I wish I had written down more information while there was still time.

Sydney's fireworks are pretty good, live on TV!

We are also well into 2019 and I would like to wish you all the best. I haven't made any resolutions this year either, since it always seem to jinx it. 

Hubby made a small one though ... wait for it ... buying stickers and remembering to write on different packages that he puts in the freezer. This came about after he, on several occasions, has grabbed something to take to work for lunch, and it has turned out to be unsuitable for a work lunch room, e.g. raw prawns, uncooked osso bucco. He would love to have labels on everything not only the things in the freezer. It is not a real life-changing resolution like jogging every morning or stopping drinking, but it is a good one, and I am wholeheartedly behind him on this one.

I have also had time since being back from Sweden to catch up with my friend A before Christmas. We had a lovely lunch at one of her fave restaurants, the Boathouse.

Christmas Day was fun. It was "the kids" and friends of theirs, and the weather was gorgeous. We did miss the pool that we had in the other house though, so that is definitely on the checklist when we go looking for a house to buy now.

Have to go now and simulate housework, although hubby has caught onto this by the sink still being warm when he steps in the door.

Take care and be kind!