Just thought I would give an update on my life because last time I wrote was 3 months ago and I guess stuff has been happening.. well kind of.

When I last wrote I had moved out of my old house into my nephew’s place – which for the record I went from being about 7km away from work to being 41km away! Despite the distance from work (which I probably complained about every day!), living with my nephew was really good.. I hadn’t actually spent a heck of a lot of time with him one on one previously so it was good to get to know him in a different way. To be honest though, we actually barely saw each other, especially during the week when we were both working.

Living with him meant that I actually got to see my wee niece a heap more because they live in between work and my nephew’s place so it was easy to just pop in after work. Seeing her more was definitely a bonus, she has just turned 2 & half and is the sassiest wee thing! She is currently obsessed (in no particular order) with: Anna, Elsa, Olaf, skeletons, giants, ghosts, Tangled and Elmo… oh and ghost poo (best not to ask haha). She loves to draw and has this habit of making me draw jack o’lanterns and dinosaurs … the former is pretty easy but that latter I am not so good at but at least she doesn’t judge my talents too much – she didn’t seemed too impressed with my giant drawing!

Back to my living arrangements – I finally got the keys to my new place on 5th January and had a sofa & bed delivered in the first couple days. I was planning on having my larger items moved from storage the weekend after I picked up my keys but then covid happened again! We hadn’t had any community cases for ages but of course the one weekend I wanted to move, we went into a strict 3 day lockdown.

I mean it wasn’t as if I was homeless but after two months of driving 41 km to/from work in rush hour traffic was really starting to do my head in! I know people do longer commutes but going from a 15 minute commute to 50-60 minutes where you are literally just crawling along, really did start to effect me mentally. So when it was sooooo close for me to move to a please where I would be walking to work instead and having the lockdown which meant the move was delayed another week, really did not help the situation.

Anyway, that is all behind me.. I have been in my new place for a month now and I am settling in pretty well. It actually feels like longer. The weirdest thing is being able to see my work building from pretty much everywhere in the place (including the loo!!). I am slowly getting use to the building being in my line of sight but the first week was very strange! I only really see it if I am looking out certain windows but because there is nothing but low-set building between me & work, it is really the only thing I see.

On the plus side, I have had a few amazing sunsets from those same windows.

My life lately basically been trying to get the apartment sorted with furniture etc. I don’t have a lot of storage there so I have to be pretty ruthless with what I take out of my storage unit to bring into the apartment. I don’t want to have “stuff” lying around the place so I am going to be keeping the storage unit for the time being. Even though there is a monthly fee, I am still winning by not having to pay for parking at work anymore.

Now that I am starting to get settled in I am starting to think about my after work and weekend adventures again. When I was living with my nephew I really didn’t enjoy driving because of the amount of time I would spend in the car each day. But now that I am hardly driving at all, I am finding myself getting itchy feet to get into the car and go somewhere.

It is a bit hard though because Brisbane is so spread out and I don’t really want to have to go more than 30 minutes. What really limits my options is that I have been a lot of places within 30 minutes from work, so I am going to have to get my thinking cap on or just go a bit further afield.

So what about travelling outside of Brisbane? Well honestly I haven’t really felt the push to go anywhere – every time everything starts looking ok something will happen and the borders will close again. Queensland spent pretty much all of last year with the borders closed – meaning that if you were coming from another state you had better have a pretty good reason for coming into QLD and you would have to go into management quarantine if you came from certain areas of the country and overseas. At a cost to yourself, no less.

At the end of last year I was like “I haven’t missed travelling this year”. I think I had that attitude because not travelling afforded me to move out of my old place, which quite frankly was a rather depressing space. But now I am wanting to go places but 2 (maybe 3) places are really calling me for very different reasons.

I want to go home to Christchurch! I miss my mum. I missed her 90th birthday last year and that filled me with so much sadness. I know she had a great time with the family that were there but ya know.. you want to be there for those special moments and these times are those you will never get back. I know it sounds dramatic but I honestly don’t know if I will actually ever see her again. I know the vaccines are starting to come out but then again who knows when 1) I would be able to get the vaccine and 2) if New Zealand will have the borders without quarantine open again.

Technically I could go home but I would have to pay for 14 days of managed quarantine both in New Zealand and when I came back to Brisbane. At around $3000 AUD for both lots, I really can’t afford either the time or the money. The last time I was home was September 2019 so this has been the longest I have gone without a trip home and I am getting to the point where I am starting to struggle with not being able to see my mum!

I also want to go to London.. I haven’t been since 2017 and I am really aching to go back. Even though right now is not the prime time to be there, those empty London streets are really calling me. I don’t miss the 24 hour travel to get there but I really miss that city. Also it would be pretty amazing to visit a major city where no one is around haha..

The 3rd place is a recent addition, Portland, OR. I visited there in November 2019 and it really left an imprint on me. To be fair, it was more Oregon that left an imprint but Portland is a cool wee city and I would love to go back and explore. But one thing I really want to do again is actually take the train from Vancouver to Portland. When I visited in 2019 I flew into Vancouver from Brisbane for a few days then took the Amtrak for the 8 hour journey down Portland but I think I would like to actually pick a couple places along the way for some stopovers. The scenery was amazing and it would be a great way to see some American small towns as something different.

Anyway I have prattled on enough about nothing much at all so I might just leave it there for this latest instalment on my life .. I mean it is so exciting that I will need to give you all time to take a breath until the next exciting update!