Week 26 Getting there
Week 26
Creating a rich interior life may vary from person to person. Some folks turn to prayer or meditation. Others enjoy the quiet gift of nature, where gardening or long walks in the outdoors dissolve our petty troubles and allow us to retreat and reflect. (Weekly newsletter from John P. Weiss) (I've already taken Boeke out twice today - it gets light at around 0400hrs - he knows that I am up at around 0600hrs and so a little whimper gets him outside...)
“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
(By Albert Pike - a Southern Civil War General, amongst other things - perhaps not such a good chap after all - but I liked the quote in relation to what we do here - not so much for the world but in some small way for our clients)
A quietish week made up of lots of little things...
Ratkiller is also banned...
...as are explosives for the moles :)
Maintenance
The muffler fell off my 25 year old bosmaaier (literally forest or woods mower - brushcutter). So I had to go looking for the (special) screws - it cost €12,00 for 4 screws, but at least I found them - again, the photos were to help at the shop, so they knew what to look for. I've started looking for a battery alternative - Makita have one for under €400,00 - without batteries, but I have 3 of those already.
As we get to the pointy end of the house renovations...
The couch arrives this week - still not ready for it, so we'll have to store it somewhere...
We got instructions from Michel the painter - for masking up prior to the (spray) painting...Tjeerd and I will have 3 days this week to get it done. One of the kids living in apartment 3 has just started an apprenticeship as a painter - so he's going to help out!
The bathroom floor tiles are in. The tile layer is now working on betoncire walls
Another translation had "micro cement"
We had temperatures of 28°C during the week and hot again this weekend - the kids spend the whole afternoon at the swimming pool
saturday helper - one of our "kids" has become an adult, so technically he can't come any more - but he wants to keep coming - as my "helper" :) . He's not allowed to sleep here anymore because of the Youth Protection rules for the other kids. That seems a bit OTT to me but I'm glad to have him "helping" - but even more glad that he still wants to come.
apartments - Tjeerd and I "freshened up" one of the apartments with a bit of paint and some ideas for future improvements - when we get a few weeks with it not being used. We seem to have one out, one in at the moment, with a new
flooring 1 extra plank - we bought one pack of laminaat flooring for the stairway landing - at +/- 2m2 it should have been enough - but with the odd cutting I was half a plank to short - so I went back to the shop to see if I could just buy one plank...they just gave it to me no questions asked. I'm pretty sure they didn't recognise me...but maybe they did - we've been buying quite a bit of stuff there - with 25% discount as well!
down the rabbit hole. Paul asked me if I had seen a particular MFB video ? Now, I don't do Facebook - although I'm sure I still get algorithmed somehow. Whilst looking, I found this on a totally different subject - about Garden City - near where I used to live at the Port Melbourne Fire Station...
I just spent 2 hours doing my bookkeeping...
One of my entries was €25.50 for a haircut ($AUD40.89) Paul tells me this is "normal"
bookkeeping (I have to allocate each expenditure - private, apartments, maintenance, kids, day activity clients)
On the one hand, it could be argued that everything we do here is a business expense - but the tax people wouldn't see it that way, of course. So, I try to allocate everything on the basis of being able to justify it all if we ever have an audit. This week I had to make a new entry for "Water Safety Testing" - this is compulsory because we have other people using it - it turns out that we had been lucky that we had fallen through the cracks for many years - at €1000 p.a.! (Actually, we do get the water tested twice a year for Legionella, but this one is different - and much more expensive).
Our accounting system is online so the accountant can also log in to do what they have to do - so I sometimes leave them notes as to why I have allocated such and such - it will also serve as a reminder to me if I ever do get questioned about it. I save quite a bit of money by doing this side of the bookkeeping myself - one of those things that I'm happy that I am still able to do!
I also have to be careful at the moment to keep the house renovation expenditure as private.
It's so easy to moan about the costs and taxes, of course. But it is just part of doing business - I reflected recently that we have had it so good here over the years - working within the rules - it doesn't make any sense to complain about the system that got you here in the first place - that would be like moving to live near the airport and then complaining about the planes.
Just to keep us on our toes
We're 8 months in to the renovations now - still probably 2 to go. Even then, the Main Event (the heat pump) won't be installed until after the Builders' Holiday - the old hot water unit will be back in operation before the holiday - so we can at least start moving in (and hopefully TOSSING OUT all the stuff we don't need. Apartment 3 residents are moving in to our apartment - so hopefully they can use the furniture - otherwise we have to find somewhere else in the Tardis... Apartment 1 will then move in to the larger Apartment 3 and the Waiting List has no choice but Apartment 1...
One of the unexpected delights over that time has been our reliance on Hello Fresh - simply not having to think about that part of a busy and tiring day has been such a blessing - we're enjoying the food itself, not to mention the appropriate portion size and absence of waste. I do get a bit worried about all the plastic - but that is in everything these days.
But, we had a week off this week - so I did a Sunday Roast last weekend and A Chicken Alfredo this week... ( I sent the photos to a sister in law)
Ben sent photos of where he is sharing with 2 others...
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