Compared to yesterday, I have been quite unproductive today. Last night after work, I did 3 loads of laundry. And cleaned out and reorganized the laundry room. And I cleaned out the linen closet (OMFG it was scary!!!). And I reorganized 4 cabinets in the kitchen. And I unpacked and organized the wine glasses and dessert bowls I got at Crate & Barrel on Sunday. Today on my lunch I went grocery shopping and also went and bought more of the dishes we have - I broke a couple. Oops! But I got everything BUT the actual dinner plates (out of stock). I DID get all new serving pieces though - and they are part of the set, so that makes me happy. It is sometimes very hard when you move into a situation where there is another woman's things, or things she picked out. When I got divorced I took nothing but my clothes and whatever half of the CDs and DVDs I picked; otherwise all I owned was new, a fresh start, I guess. For the most part if does not bother me that there are things in this house that clearly remind me of the woman here before me (though it is so hard for me to ever imagine her here, which is what I think saves me); but for instance we gave her some old serving bowls/plates and I was ever so happy to oblige - it meant I had good reason to buy new. There is something to be said for OUR life and getting OUR things and OUR tastes and OUR memories and etc etc. We will always be around each other (at least while the kids are kids), but it doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't!) have our new relationships separate and OURS. Anyway! I haven't done shit with any of the stuff I bought today - I spent 2 hours on the phone with my mom, and a good while moping, too. I have been REALLY stressed out lately about my financial situation (and trying to clear up some OLD shit from when I was married that I thought was long gone in the divorce agreement, and a few things I apparently forgot about when I had 3 weeks to move here, but man doing the "right thing" is fucking expensive and not something I can just DO...), and while I have been stressed about it for a few weeks, being home alone makes me think about it more and I am somewhat of an internal wreck right now :S Add to that I miss Dave and well, I mean I am not going to turn off all the lights and listen to The Smiths and cry into my pillow, but I had to STOP sleeping on Dave's pillow last night because it smelled like him and at first it was comforting then it was lonely. I am surprised at the amount of people who are giving me shit about missing him. People are like, you should ENJOY it. Uh...what? Yeah I am getting shit done that I put off when there are more fun things to do but WHY on earth would I be GLAD the person I love the most is gone? That's ridiculous. I can do things by myself whenever I want...I would never wish to have my loved ones away just to "get them away". I feel bad for people who "wish they were in my situation". I mean okay if we both worked from home all the time we might try harder to have separate space, but in a way we have the perfect setup - we have time together as a family, time together as a couple, and time alone if we need it. I have all 3, so why would I wish anyone away? It is kinda almost a bit irritating, but I just think to myself, I am glad I am NOT in a situation where I wish my loved ones away. I will be glad when Thursday is here. Even the dogs are moping. Neo slept in Dave's spot all night and Syd even crawled up there too, and he rarely even TRIES to sleep on the bed.

Liz’s blog 16/6/10 The distance from freezing cold to lovely and warm is exactly 186km, the distance from Alice Springs to the Ti Tree roadhouse where we started stripping off our clothes. It was literally from Winter to summer. We had put all our winter woollies on – I had a poly prop, a merino, a polar fleece, my jacket with liner, 2 pair of long johns, riding trousers and liner plus the warmest pair of rugby socks I could find. By Ti Tree I was taking off my polar fleece. At Wycliff’s well I was taking the liner out of my jacket and my merino off, at the Devils marbles I would have removed everything else but that would have been indecent so I just sweated a lot. Today was a great ride. It was now warm, the speed limit was back to 130km, not much traffic except a few Finke riders and their crews going home and the usual flocks of grey nomads at the rest stops. We took a quick side trip to Aileron, a roadhouse with these amazing giant iron sculptures of people. Very cool, see the photo. One of our fuel stops on the way back was Wycliffs Well, which claimed to be the home of UFO’s in Aussy. They had painted up the walls of the roadhouse with various aliens, space ships and anything spacey, it looked amazing, so check out the photos. Apparently there had been a meteorite landing around the area at some time and funnily enough as we pulled into the side ride our intercom systems began to play up and didn’t sort themselves out until we were almost at Threeways. Another stop on our way to Threeways is the Devils Marbles – natural rock formations in the form of big round rocks. This place was huge, there were hundreds of them all balanced on each other. The Aussies had turned it into a camping ground, and there were at least 20 campervans and various other camping groups all parked up there. It was also stinking hot so we didn’t stay long, but took a few photos. From there it was straight back to Threeways where we tested ourselves and bought a budget cabin for the night. This consisted of a bed, linen for $47.50. Our Best bargain since we arrived. While at Threeways we met the same guy that we met at Curtain Springs a few days before. He was going to Kings Canyon on his Harley. The bad news is he had reunited with his friends and they were now off to Darwin for the Super V8 car racing, and guess what, we are going to struggle to get accommodation. Damn!!!!!