Hooley dooley, sometimes days are busy!

Interjection. hooly dooly. (Australia) Expressing surprise or amazement. Synonyms: blimey, crikey, wow.

I have to laugh - people have been saying to me: 'How's retirement?'. Firstly, let me make something clear - I can't afford to retire completely. Secondly, retire from what? I am far from 'retired' - I have so much to do, mainly projects and chores of my own making, and I'm not complaining, but lying on the couch reading a book has not happened all year.

So, I give to you my Saturday.

Before dawn I wake up and go down the beach for a surf. There's been NO surf for months. Months, I tell ye. I'm not even exagerrating when I tell you that it's been the most flat anyone remembers in decades. DECADES. In my living memory, I don't remember a flat spell this long ever. But the last few days it's been pumping, so it was an utter joy to get down the beach for a wave, watching the moon set the sun rise at the same time. Flipping JOY bubbles!

Then it was a quick cuppa with my sister whilst watching the surf at another beach, which was nice. A quick trip to Aldi to get enough food in for the the week - I still don't need to buy veggies. That's the next job, picking tomatoes - I do have to fight the rats for them it seems.

Annnnddd fight the parrots for the plums, which I pick and dutifully preserve for my son and daughter in law, because they're up in MElbourne dealing with her aunty who's sadly in palliative care. AS I do that, I'm stripping beds, hanging out three loads of washing, cleaning the kitchen, making sure the chooks have food, picking cucumbers, making lunch and pheewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww........

....lunch. Jamie's been in the shed all morning with the Defender, so it's nice to make him lunch and sit together and eat. The garden is producing a lot, so a vegetarian fry up was in order, with three sorts of tomatoes, some baby squash and some halloumi too.

After lunch, I realise I have to do the second lot of mushroom buckets and substrate pasteurisation because the spawn HAS to be used up, and I need to get the grow going before we go away at Easter and hopefully all the mushrooms proper fruiting. I"m still sorting out the humidity etc in the new fruiting chamber, but I get the last lot of buckets in the chamber and turn the humidifier on and hope for the best.

THEN the bloody heating element breaks, so I have to boil water in pots for the esky to do the pastuerisation (after spending an hour thinking it was working, and cutting straw and mixing it with sawdust etc ready to pastuerise). Sigh. I then had to drill the holes in the buckets, sterilise everything, wait for the substrate to cool, add the spawn, pack into buckets, tidy up everything... ahhhhhhhh...

And to think Saturday is meant to be relaxing. Sigh. Time for wine and watch the sun go down. Because I deserve it.