Latest Update (trying to be positive : =)

Latest Update (trying to be positive : =)

It didn't rain much at all yesterday afternoon and evening, and I kept commenting to Billy how good it was that there was not much rain.  We discussed whether I would go back there again.  It worked out really well the night before that I stayed there as it was Palm Sunday and Billy stayed at his parents to go to Midnight Mass or whatever it is called in the Orthodox Church.  He proudly told me next day about going up to receive the Bread and Wine.  I asked him a lot of questions as I know a bit about how the Anglicans do it from going to the Local Primary Grammar School.  He didn't seem to know about the theological symbolism, ie the body and blood, and just said he didn't like the wine, red wine, but neither of us like that.  Now he has done it at the start of Easter Week, he won't need to do it next week when he goes on Good Friday with his parents to Church.  He lit a candle.  He seems to derive great solace from these rituals.  He blesses the house every Saturday Night, similar to the Jewish Havdallah service at the same time each week.  He seemed so pleased and expressed such enjoyment from the Sacrament that I asked if he was looking forward to doing it again.  He was greatly put out, and seemed strangely distressed.  Then he told me he would not need to because he was Fasting this week.  Greek 'Fasting' means vegetarian.  I always liked it because it meant lots of Vegetarian Food brought home that I got to eat.  My favourite is called 'fuck-ee' that Billy likes saying, like Greek for 'envelope'.  This is the first year that he has made such a big deal of it and declared he is fasting.  In the past he was addicted to meat, but now that I have gradually weaned him down to occasional meat meals, he is able to fast.  I thought it was a month, not a week, but perhaps he has the choice and next year it will be a month.  They do it before Xmas, too, though I only recall the Anglicans having Lent before Easter.  There is Advent before Xmas but I don't think that involves fasting, more like feasting, as I recall, to use up all the perishables that won't keep over the winter, in old, cold climates.

RAIN and STUDIO resume here.  Sorry about the diversion.  I wish you were prepared to follow my private Blog 'Minicipality'.  I would love to keep these message I send to you.  I know your are spiritually and bound by your Class to avoid Social Media, but you reject my presence within it also, as if you will only look at me while I am wearing a suit and tie, like some of my cousins and lots of people that I sometimes need to deal with.

I was in this morning at SEVEN AM, and Rick phoned soon after while I was looking in the back to say he would not be in, but Ian would be by 7.30.  Of course I then went upstairs and started checking my eMails and didn't hear him calling from the back, which was open so I don't know why he didn't come in, and he went to the front and knocked, but the door had the please enter sign.  Eventually Nigel came too.  Was that his name?  He had a bushy beard like Ned Kelly.

But before Nigel was another Mat, who came with the truck.  He backed in from Mayman St instead of coming in from Mercer Road, so he was stuck at the bend behind the restaurant.  Anyhow, they were unloading.  I did not look in detail at the truck but it all seemed to be there.  I went back inside.

When I came out later my truck was replaced by a garbage truck that was emptying skips of restaurant garbage.  I asked the garbage guy, whose name I didn't catch, about our truck and he said they were round the corner, but I walked round and they were gone.  Eventually Ian and Nigel brought in the small amount of iron they had previously unloaded into the lane.  The rest is yet to come, perhaps with Rick later today, or tomorrow.  They will not be back today.  That is it.

While I was waiting around I did a lot of sweeping and got rid of most of the puddles of water.  The floor is essentially horizontal, but it is divided into rectangles by the lines, the name of which briefly excapes me, but for some reason, perhaps due to surface tension as the original concrete set, the centres of the rectangles tend to be lower than the edges, so it is like a lot of rectangular, shallow saucers.

I wish I could say it was all washed clean, but the dust that hadn't been fully swept away previously as well as a lot of stuff washed down from the rafters made a lot of mud on the floor.  I couldn't really sweep it all clean, so it might need a good scrub out before you really move in.  Do you have a little person who does for you?  Or, I could find someone, as there should be months after the final completion of all the fittings, after all the fixtures are fixed.

If things were a bit further advanced, I would say that while you are in Aus, you could pop down for a few yours before you return, but it is hardly worth the effort, unless you want to dance in the rain while it is still roofless?

While the floor is a muddy mess, the rafters have had quite a good rinsing and that could be what they used to call a 'God-send'.  Sometimes, I am almost inclined to think that these things happen for the best even though at the time they seem as if the timing could not be worse.  Of course the only week-end within weeks each side with a huge storm, and it is the one where our roof is off.  If we had said, "When is the big store?  Let us have the roof off then to wash the rafters," we could not have been more accurate, and probably wrong.

In retrospect, I am astonished at myself being here by seven and sweeping out water without for one second remembering that my legs are so sore I can hardly walk, I run out of puff after a few steps and I am deplete of energy as a combined result of sleeping badly and taking medication to make me sleep.  I think the benefits of the 'blessing' were wide ranging.  Clearly we are on the right track and 'going with the flow' as some poeple call it.  I suspect your whole life is like this, and I am just astonished to be experiencing it.  If you are doing it, then please keep doing it.  I don't know why I was so woried.

I guess it will all happen as it happens.  I am just now much good at making things happen.  In the past, I have only exercised my 'free will' within my own self.  Any ability to make things happen outside myself is something I never really experienced.  I guess that was what my Father observed when he said I had no initiative.  Usually, I either did what other people wanted me to do or I did nothing.  I always regretted so few people so rarely wanted me to do anything, because I was quite good at doing things.  My Father observed this and it annoyed him, because he could see how I could 'do anything' and yet didn't do anything much at all.

They are returning tomorrow morning after eight, so I shall be back.  Now I am going shopping to buy Matzot.

[I am looking forward to Mr Trump bombing North Korea.  Some of the ships on there way there have the missile defense shield, so anything North Korea send towards other Koreans, their cousins, the Americans can intercept.  China will pretend to be humiliated and angry, but it will be for the best.  The alternative is for the Chinese Army to march into Korea and totally take over the country, and that might have been the secret agreement that Trump couldn't talk about when he said, 'Nothing, I got nothing' because he would not have said he had nothing if he really wanted something but got nothing.]

This is a season of Liberation and New Beginnings, so let us hope that the international situation comes to a head soon and is resolved for the rest of the century.  The world cannot continue on a knife edge of international animosity for ever without eventually losing balance and then all will be lost.  We need more people like me, Broad Centrists, who are poised on that knife edge with a foot on either side, because only then will we find balance instead of swoshing from side to side with ever greater extremes.

[Posted to minicipality.blogspot.com.au]