AWOL

Teaming.  Second day indoors.  Take the opportunity to catch up on some blogging.  180 (or so) mm of rain by this morning and the rain gauge is steadily filling again.  The road is closed by a combination of rain and high tide.

Things seemed to be moving along very slowly this time last year but by comparison with this year it was positively sprinting.

We wait.

While builders and surveyors were out here last month we decided to move the house site about 2 metres towards the sea.  It makes a difference to the height of foundations on the seaward end and gives us more space to built a sauna and bath-house between the house and the cabin.  The move needs, however, further approval from the building inspectors.

They are taking their time.

I'm ready for a change.

While we wait Mr B has been collecting toys....

...we have been clearing tall gorse....(and making a firewood pile)...

...taken a trip to Rarangi (a beach settlement east of Blenheim) where we bought peastraw to mulch the veg garden and took a walk on a windswept gravel beach piled generously with wave-sculpted driftwood.  I can't resist a curly bit of drift wood ... how's this for a Thai Dancer (with a big ornate headdress)?

My course in teaching (mat) Pilates continues; tomorrow a full day seminar in Nelson to learn the most advanced exercises and their 'full expression'.  (I think that means their most difficult form.)  I hope we are able to get out.  The teaching component of our practice is up to 4 hours per week for me now and I have one student who was intermediate level straight out of the box - very strong, very stable, very aware of what muscles she is engaging, good spacial awareness.  I need to challenge her a bit more.

Autumnal mornings have been densely foggy but the days have been golden and calm once the fog evaporates.  I have put in a few miles in my kayak, and joined Mr B in some very tame dinghy sailing a couple of times.

Scully has been around most days, but as her humum had a hand operation about 6 weeks ago and has been off work since then Scully turns up late, waits as long as might represent going for a walk (whether we walk or not) then spends her days trotting back and forth to test where she might get the most attention: levying cheese tax here then going home to see what might drop out of lunch time sandwiches there; coming here for doink ball, heading home when we start clearing gorse again.  Rugby season has resumed.  As her older human sister is a representative player and her humum a coach of younger teams, their late night returns home have resumed a couple of times a week.  Scully barks as their car passes our place but is remarkably resistant to being coaxed out into the dark and accompanied home.  I really do have to WALK her all the way to their door and hand her over.

Knitting season has started again.  I should knit in the summer to have winter pullovers but I am not a dedicated follower of any fashion so a jumper finished this winter will last me the rest of my life (as will garments made last year or earlier).  I still have a pullover I made over 40 years ago.

A mouse moved into the caravan.  I have no idea how it made entry.  Mr B said "go around the outside looking for grappling hooks....". All foodstuffs have been repackaged in mouse-proof containers.  All evidence of mouse have been vacuumed up and disinfected.  A mousetrap is on the shopping list and will be set in the area via which we suspect the mouse gained entry (where a pipe to the water tank goes through an ill-fitted hole in the floor - under a bunk.)  

Sorry mouse, but this is war.