It's Time for a Holiday

We've been in Melbourne for six months for a total of four house sits, five small dogs, one cat (twice), and one swimming pool. I know it may be somewhat hard to believe, but all this lollygagging around living in other people's houses and bearing the weighty responsibility of their beloved dogs and cats can get quite wearing after a while.  This morning we walked out of our last sit after witnessing a rapturous reunion between Cobwebs and her owner, and declared ourselves on holidays.  We're due back in South Australia mid February and until then are responsible for no-one other than ourselves and I promise we will remember to take ourselves for a daily walk and make sure we brush our hair regularly to prevent matting.  Or I will, anyway, Roger being free from coiffure concerns for the rest of his natural life.

For your enjoyment, and as a memory aid for myself, here's a brief synopsis of some of the things that didn't make it into the blog from our time in Melbourne.

We rode our bikes less than we would have liked, but still a lot.  Melbourne has lots of places to ride a bike.

Roger shrank.  Thankfully we managed to get him back to his regular size.

I took a lot of photos of beautiful old buildings.

 

And more photos of flowers.

Our favourite middle child came for a quick visit.  We took him in to the city and watched sunset over the Yarra after learning the hard way that many of the alleyways were closed at night.

I really wanted to write a smart caption for this photo, but was bereft of inspiration at the time of writing.  Suggestions are welcome.

He cooked pancakes for us.  He's a good pancake-cooker.

No sooner had we waved him goodbye than we were out for a fancy lunch as a belated celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary, courtesy of our children's generosity and a Gourmet Restaurant voucher.  Given that we're not usually fancy lunch-ers, this was quite the exciting occasion what with the linen napkins and the magic side plates that produced new warmed herb bread rolls as fast as we could eat them!

You can't see the magic side plate, but I assure you it's there.

Back at home, Cobwebs sank to the depths of misery as she watched us pack up and load the car, convinced as she was that she would now be abandoned forever with no one to throw a ball for her or take her for walks to sniff out the neighbourhood.

Sad, sad puppy.

And then her owners came home and she was in paroxyms of delight and didn't want to know us any more so we said goodbye and off we went on our holiday.  Except it wasn't quite a holiday yet because Roger, bless him, finally had to actually do some work so we only got as far as an Air BnB where, with much pleasure, I set up a grindstone against which he could press his nose.  Then I sat on the lounge with a cup of coffee, looked out the window into the tree tops, and congratulated myself on having taken two days of leave so I didn't have to work as well.

It's a tough life but someone has to sit and smell the gum leaves.