End of an era ...

... just before we moved into the long, thin house (11 years ago), I suggested to Mr Brown that we purchase an old ute. This was to replace his very sporty V8 thingy that was very low to the ground and would be dreadful to drive on the steep and wibbly streets round where we were to live.
It was also so he could rip up all the concrete in the long, thin backyard, bring home turf and lay it. Do a little light middle-class removating and such like.
He came home with the Beaut, the beautiful ute. Not old and battered at all. Apparently the old battered utes were so terrible he couldn't bring himself to buy one. So, the pretty, almost new, teal-green ute became ours.
Beaut has served us well all these years. Has been the biggest boot in the Inner West and driven us all over in relative comfort. Beaut's not been the best for when we have guests. You can fit in three people, but not comfortably. But we don't have a lot of guests who need to be driven around. And if we did, we'd use their car.
But Beaut was starting to rattle a bit, the comfort factor was declining and, apparently something to do with Beaut being a Ford, rust was developing.So, last weekend, while I was blogging merrily about chocolate-covered rat brains, Mr Brown went looking at cars.
We've been talking about getting a new car for years now. An impasse had been reached. He wanted to keep the ute and get something sporty. I said two cars for a couple who don't have off-street parking, one of whom uses public transport to get to work (smug me), was excessive, silly and wasteful. What we needed was a compromise car, I said. Something that I may consider driving but which could tow a boat, have room for storage of various spare boat parts AND was nice and a bit sporty.
He found one. He picked it up on Friday, his birthday. Beaut is gone, traded in for this minx.We still have all that bloody concrete in the backyard.

Last weekend ...

... we went out and ordered a new bed.
This weekend it was delivered.
We ordered a new bed because I ached for pain-free sleep, or the ability to actually get to sleep, which was proving difficult due to ... pain. The trip home, very turbulent, basically set the poor old spine back to day 1.
So, Mr Brown took me bed shopping in the hope a proper, grown-up, mattress would make things more comfortable. Basically we went to David Jones and threw money at the problem.
And now we are the proud possessors of a fucking HUGE, very very firm mattress with springs and layers and technical sounding construction. It's so tall, it's grandmother's-bed tall (grandmothers always had the biggest beds didn't they? Even bigger than your parent's bed). When I sit on the edge my feet don't touch the ground!
It's bouncy too.
It's our first proper adult bed, after 20 years of sharing one, as it were.
I know other couples invest carefully in the marital bed, getting a grown up bed for their grown up lives. We just never really got around to it.
Our first bed was my bachelor bed. A futon. A real futon. I liked it but after 10 years or so it was really just a cotton case stuffed with lumps.
Our next bed was another futon, only much fatter, padded, a bloated hippo of a futon really. It never quite worked, too soft I think, and eventually it started giving me dead arms in the night. It had to go.
Next came one of those memory-foam jobbies. Comfortable enough but in the summer it baked us, that foam doesn't only remember your shape, it remembers, stores and blasts back at you, your body heat. Fine for winter but Summer, not so good.
And now we have this monster.
I love it.

Cats ...

... they wrestle at night.
They also get up and down all night and have been know to groom their humans' heads while they attempt to sleep.
This is why we do not share our bed with our furry housemates.

Frog watch day 6 ...

... I was preparing myself, at 1:30am, to post some sad news of the nature-is-a-bitch variety.
You see, I woke at 1am because of pounding rain, it was in sheets, literally a deluge. A mad, half-asleep, rush was made to close all the windows. Too late, it had poured in, wetness abounded. And, as happens every-so once-in-a-while, water made its way into the dining room, down the wall.
Once the mop-up was done, damage control under control, I worried about the tadpoles that hatched only yesterday. So much water was pounding down on the pond, they were sure to be washed out, into the garden.
It was too wet and too dark to go see and there'd be nothing I could do to save them anyway.
But this morning I found that NO, they had survived! They, or a great many of them, managed to stay put and are wriggling most delightfully.
Nibbling at algae and, I suspect, the remains of their spawn and possibly their unfertilized brothers and sisters.Mr Brown has agreed to set up some sort of bird barrier, as we now suspect the other tadpole crop may have ended up as avian snack food.Not this lot though, not if we can help it. I want to hear that gentle "bok, bok, bok" for years to come.
In other news, our next door neighbours, those of the painting and path sagas, told us yesterday that they'd sold their house and were moving.
They were made an offer they could not refuse, an offer of $1.2 million dollars.
I am gobsmacked. Truly, if we moved here today we simply couldn't.

A little while back ....

... I saw a tweet from The Morgan Library & Museum.
Street banners from former exhibitions were being offered for sale.
Not only that, they'd ship to Australia!
Visiting the Morgan and failing to get a T-shirt to commemorate the visit was one of the great disappointments of our New York jaunt.
And so, I ordered one, one that celebrates the Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves exhibition.
I chose it because the demon reminds me a little of our Library Dragon.On arrival it was, of course, thoroughly checked out by the Brown-Mouse-House safety inspectors. Which led to a little high jinx. And some messing about.Now all I've got to do is get it up on the wall, safe from naughty paws. MINE!

The Brown Mouse House has no bath ...

... this is a source of great discontent for me.One day, one day.

So, on Sunday ...

... afternoon, before I wrote the last post and before we went to bed ... Mr Brown and I went for a little drive to one of those 'homemaker' centres to visit a bedding shop.
We went to buy one of these. I blush a little because it turns out the product was designed for persons undergoing the ... menopause. But fuck it, I was HOT and could bear it no more.
Then we went to the movies, because there was air conditioning and ice cream (rather good, gelatissimo ice cream as it happens) and then we lingered over our weekly grocery shop at the 'old persons' cooling centre' aka a Mall! (thanks for the term Cookie). When we stepped outside after the hunt&gather the cool change had hit.
Which rendered the purchase of the cooling sleeping mat a little redundant. Still, as a Twitter peep said, "Summer's not over yet".
Anyhoo, I popped the thing on the bed anyway, just to see. Most cooling it was, lovely, almost as if heat was being drawn from our hot little (he hem) bodies. We slept the sleep of the just, with a sheet over us and everything. Bliss.
Until 3am when I am wakened by a frantic Mr Brown.
"Quick, we've got to get this bloody thing OFF. I'm BOILING."
"What? What? What d' y' want to do?"
"Get it OFF, I'm dying!"
He was right, the mat had sucked out all the heat and, ultimately, ran out of cooling mojo and started just storing the warm.
We stripped the bed, pulled it off, remade the bed and went back to sleep. Well, he did, I lay there, cursing, fretting and being cross about the $300-odd lump of pointless gel mat lying on the floor.
I could have bought a nice pen with that $$. Bastard thing.

At certain times of the day ...

... times of the day I'm usually not at home.
If I'm lying in bed and I turn my head from say ... ... reading a nice, gentle novel under the cooling fan ... ... and look to the wall opposite the windows ... ... this is what I see.

New pots ...

... I didn't do the xmas sales again this year.
The crowds, the pressing humanity, the desperation, I hate it so.
So, I popped online to one of my favourite kitchen accoutrement emporia and bought myself a couple of pots.
Now, the danger of on-line shopping is you can't actually see or feel the thing before you buy it. You may have seen the item in real life and thought to yourself, "yes, that's exactly what I need". Ah, memory, you are a notoriously unreliable bitch.So, while my 2 new pots are beautiful, they are ... fucking HUGE ... and I've nowhere to put them.We need a new kitchen is what we need, stat!Seriously, if you smashed them a bit you could fit 2 whole chookies in that green one!

So, I'm free at last ...

... but feeling rather flat about it.
I've been sent home, dismissed, superfluous to requirements.
Yep, turns out only 12 jurors get to make that final, fateful decision, so they had a ballot to see which 12 that would be. My number was not pulled out of the box and home I was sent.
Mr Judge was very sweet, thanked me and all that, said I shouldn't feel my time has been wasted just because I don't get to make the decision.
But fuck, seriously, 70 days, over 3 months of my life has been spent on this jury. Interminable days of nitpicking evidence. Immeasurable days of summing up and then even more spent summing up the summaries! AND I DON'T GET TO MAKE A DECISION. Hell, I don't even get to know the decision, unless it's published in the newspaper or some obscure legal site.

However, bright side and all that, we do have a lovely new front path!Laid this very morning. I'm so very glad we stood our ground and went with the full pattern, well worth the cost I say.
Apparently, the furry girls kept a couple of supervisory eyes on things while I was out.That is all.

The furry girls are heat pigs ...

... Zoomie commented in the last post that perhaps Tigger preferred Mr Brown's lap to mine because he's warmer.
It's true, he runs very, very hot indeed, and I don't doubt the heat-seeking theory one bit.
Today, like yesterday, temps hit over 30 degrees (86 or so to my American friends) and where could you find them? Piled in a heap in their carpeted crow's nest, legs akimbo!
I repel all attempts at contact, human or animal, in this heat, and they want to snuggle.And this, this is the Tinker Tig, in the dining room window, stock still for ages and ages.
She'd spotted a bird on the chimney next door,

So today we ordered the tiles for the path ...

... we've gone with what we wanted (I feel quite brave), a match for the porch.
This is, of course, a non-standard pattern and will cost extra to make up. I don't care.We went here and had much fun playing with all the samples. I now want to tile everything!
The Neighbours didn't, their path went in today, it looks great. But ours, ours is going to look FUCKING AWESOME!
O, we also bought a tree, more about that tomorrow!

Jasmine ...

... that is all.

After ...

... it's all turned out rather nicely, the 'ironstone grey' looks a rather fetching dark blue in some lights. I'm quite taken with how nicely the front gate came up. All in all, rather fetching. The windows were a little difficult, it turned out the security screen is welded on. Mr Brown will have to practice some fine motor skills with a tiny brush to finish that off.And the front door turned out so well we've decided to keep it. With new glass of course.It's going to be lovely, sitting out here this summer, sipping wine and watching the dragon flies flit about. I'm happy, Mr Brown is happy and Mrs Neighbour is thrilled.
And now, negotiations over tiles for the front path. Apparently an exact copy of the porch tiles is "too expensive".
"Expensive?" Yes indeedy. "Too?" Well, for me not so much. Mr Brown winces, but will let me have my way since he doesn't care enough. Mr and Mrs Neighbour are looking for acceptable alternatives. We shall see.

Got home and it was sunshiney ...

... the house looks very nice indeed.
Pics tomorrow, perhaps, after I've had my posture fiddled with!

Have just been outside ...

... looking at the new paint job (first coat) in the dark. By torchlight. With Mr & Mrs Neighbour. We all agree it looks lovely!

The "BEFORE" shots ...

... because you knew I'd have to do 'before' and 'after' posts, didn't you?
First, a small view, at the top you will see the second blue Mrs Neighbour chose. She didn't like the first blue we* chose, it was "too bright" verging on vulgar. Mr Neighbour called it "Kellyville Blue". Well, after that we couldn't come out and say we thought it was fine. So we agreed to a change, to this blue.
Unfortunately this blue is "hideous" and could not be lived with, not comfortably anyway. Again, Mr Brown and I didn't feel quite so strongly about it, but hell, she did, so we agreed to another change. Much more grey, Ironstone I think it's called. I don't remember. It's really, really, hard to listen and look like you give a damn all at the same time. That's next door, basically what it's all going to look like by the end of next week.I won't miss the redish brown, it's had it's time, I welcome the change. I certainly won't miss the front door. It's going blue, or grey, or whatever ... and Mr Brown has agreed to contact some glass chap to replace the green, red & yellow pane. I won't miss that either.I just didn't think it would be this fraught, this intense, this all-embracingly important (a colour consultant, an actual COLOUR CONSULTANT, was called out, twice!).
Still, I'm sure it will all work out in the end ... except, except, except she's now expressing quite strong opinions on the dragon. Nothing "too ornate" she thinks that would look "twee".
I'm not one for a dull dragon, if she veto's my choices I'll just order it anyway and keep it on the porch!


* When I say we chose, we didn't really, she did, it looked fine to me and Mr Brown so we said sure, we'll paint the whole lot. We'd been meaning to for years, it's just such a hassle getting quotes and the like. So NOT the colour scheme or exact style we'd have chosen but it's fine, it's livable and it will be a nice fresh look for the Brown Mouse House.