Thank you for the comments on my last post on decluttering people from my life. I think this is something that I need to think a bit further about, and in the meantime, I think I’ve decided to be happy with the status quo...
The home clean up continues... gawd! Worse than moving house!!! My wonderful friend Michelle came to visit me on Saturday, she has recently had shoulder surgery following a work accident, so is “bored, bored, bored” as she puts it! She very kindly put all the booze into the cabinet in the media room for me while I made a wonderful Leek & Potato soup...
Leek & Potato soup
- 2 bunches baby leeks, cleaned & chopped finely (white parts)
- 4 medium potatoes, peeled & chopped into small pieces
- 500 ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 onion, chopped finely
- 1 TBS olive oil
- 300ml cream, sour cream or plain greek yoghurt
- Salt & Pepper to taste
- Chives to decorate
Lightly fry the onion in the oil. Add the leeks, potatoes and garlic and stir for about 3 minutes. Add the stock, simmer for approximately 30 minutes. Either using a stick blender or a food processor, blend the soup until it is smooth. Add cream, season to taste. Pop some chives on top, serve with crusty bread.
I googled several recipes and then promptly made up my own, but boy it tastes good!!! I had it for dinner with another friend who came over on Saturday night as Ken had gone to work.
Once Michelle had done the booze, and I’d done the soup, I decided that we could chat in the lounge room while I sorted my past years’ worth of paperwork. I only do my filing once a year, although I think I will change how I do it slightly from this year on. I'll put the tax stuff into a box folder as I get it - that'll save me sorting a lot of that at the end of the year.
I sat on the floor and started sorting the paperwork. Anything that I might conceivably need for tax went into the tax pile, and that included all the statements from the Real Estate etc. All the bills that have been paid – phone, electricity, credit card etc., go into the “bills paid” pile. Super into another pile, Leaseplan stuff into another etc. Don’t have toooooo many piles!
Then, very technically, take out the “bills paid” that I filed last year and dump into a bag to be shredded. File all the latest years’ worth of “bills paid” in that file... I don’t chuck old papers like superannuation etc., I just file that into the file in cabinet. I don’t sort into date order – I figure that IF I ever need to go back and look for something, it’s not going to be too much of a drama to look through a couple of inches of papers... Sometime this week I’ll organise the shredding of my now rather full Bunnings green bag... I like the Bunnings bag because they’re really large...
Ken has been sorting and chucking too – it’s not often that the bin in the study is overflowing, but it is this week! Such a wonderful feeling – even though technically I’m not supposed to feel good sending stuff to landfill... But I do at the moment, because that means that lots of stuff exiting the house... Exciting!
On Sunday morning, Ken and I went out to Muster to check on the tent. THE ROAD IS OPEN!!!
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| The re-built road, just beyond where the road closed sign was that I showed you a couple of weeks ago. Massive work's been done here... |
There were a few more people out there than last time, but not a huge number yet. We checked on the tent, paid the ghost camping fee at the self registration booth. Believe it or not we tried to pay it online, couldn’t do it because the road was closed (we’d gotten in through Kandanga...) and then we tried to ring up – the woman on the phone would only accept registration for 30 nights and wouldn’t believe us that we CAN pay for more than 30 nights each year just for Muster... Bureaucracy!!! Grrr!!! So – we drove out and filled in the form, and will duly pay for 46 nights camping... **sigh**
Anyway it was a good opportunity for Ken to see the site, so we had a walk around the site, and found a snake (very dead, and VERY smelly) on the back of the roped off area. We think it was a Red Bellied Black – but all I know is that it was very smelly! Ken thought that it should be slightly bigger, to take in the trees at the back, so he’ll head out to the site again this morning and make it bigger (and get rid of said smelly snake...)
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| Ewww... smelly. Goodness only knows how it got there! |
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| Ken deciding exactly how much extra space we're going to need... he's good at stuff like this! Note in the background there's not many tents yet. |
The guy across the road builds a compound like nothing you’ve ever seen. I’ll take pictures as we go along and you can see – this is what he’s starting with...
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| Doesn't look like much yet, but just wait and see what develops!!! |
EEEEEWW!!!! @ the smelly snake!
ReplyDeleteYUUUUUMMMMMM! to the leek and potato soup. :)