Today's task

This is the card table at the foot of my bed, put there some months back to accommodate ancestry files, but which seems to have grown into a dumping place for everything. Today's task (which may well grow into weeks), is to tidy this mess up.

For my own edification, as I remove each piece of this stuff I'm going to categorise it here:

On the floor:

• Paper bag for recylable rubbish (too lazy to get my shredder out, so just rip it into small pieces)
• Old address books to be updated into a new one (as people have a habit of moving, marrying, divorcing and dying)
• Booklets of sticky notes; crossword book (which I've never opened, as every morning I do the Herald online crossword); birthday book (in spite of this, I reliably forget all my friends' birthdays, anyway)
• Bag containing things for weekly preschool French lessons
• Yellow Esky containing the treasured purse my mother had when she died in 1998, with coins and her house key in it; a purse containing foreign notes and coins from travel and superseded Australian notes and coins; a beautiful fabric-covered folder (a gift from my Japanese piano teacher); printed class times for Aquatic and Leisure Centre (where I no longer go, but might one day); list of tax paid between 1985 and 1993!!!; magnifying sheet (didn't know where it was, so haven't been using it); WWF information (I donate monthly to orang-utangs in Borneo - easily talked into this by a handsome young Frenchman in the shopping centre one day); green cleaning recipes; operating manual for my Dyson stick; details of MyPost account (for cheaper stamps for pensioners); copy of letters to and from local member re cutting the grass on footpath near Emma's school; brochure explaining online government services; brochure explaining Opal transport card; Seniors' Directory 2015 (which I never use); 2012 and 2014 personal planners (the others and a lifetime of diaries are elsewhere!); and papers related to the development of the Oz Phonics apps.

I'll have to stop here and do what's on top of the table another day. I do have several filing cabinets, so will put what I can into drawers, but that still leaves where to put the miscellaneous stuff like my mother's purse, etc.

Tell me, please, where do you put all your stuff????

Facebook is a mystery to me

Lina, you have been putting pics of your hydrangeas on Facebook, and, since I have no idea of how to do that, I'll put mine here! Interesting, isn't it, how the flowers are different colours according to the soil.

Winifred, your problem with putting a comment on this blog is a mystery to me, too. I have no idea how these things work.

I'm off to see  The Dressmaker right now.

No place like home...

The other night I was listening as usual to BBC radio 4, to a program coming from New York. The presenter asked all three speakers where they would rather be if they were not there doing the program. Two out of three said, 'At home in bed'.  You see, it's catching on! It's certainly my favourite place, and has been for many years.

Doing something about my memory..

Robbie Burns 1759-1796 (d 37)

I've heard some people say they read a poem aloud every morning, so I decided to do the same and actually commit some of it to memory! I started with O my luve's like a red, red rose by Robbie Burns.

I'll spend the rest of the day on ancestry. One thing that has surprised me is how many of my ancestors lived to their 70s and 80s. (Poor Robbie Burns died very young.)

Me and my memory...

It's the same old story - I don't do this blog for a while, then I completely forget how to get into it and where to file the photos, etc. It has probably taken 20 minutes for me to get this far today.

Time is flying and I seem to be always bogged down by day-to-day chores and depressed by world happenings. I do a lot of sleeping, hundreds of online jigsaws and - spasmodically - a bit of ancestry. Recently I've dug up a couple of second cousins and spoken to a first cousin on the phone. Not surprisingly, nobody knew about my grandmother and the Jewish dentist. It was a real skeleton in the closet! Today's plan is to get some order into the hundreds of pages I've printed, the dozens of pages of notes I've made, and stuff I've come across in research. To be honest, I have been putting this off for months because I'm in such a muddle.

This term I'm teaching French at Hugo's preschool, which is really enjoyable. Little kids are so cute.

I took the above photo on Saturday at the Japanese School. Emma - the tallest girl, in front of the teacher - is in a Cheer Leaders Group. They gave a really lovely performance.

As you know, I don't generally put photos of people on my blog, but as this was a public performance I thought it would be OK.