Post 105: suspense, packing, departures, mango, catfights, low petrol, bushfires, sitcoms, God saves the day.

Well it's Monday, and thank God. I've never been so glad for a weekend to be over and the week to begin. Work is still a bit crazy (see previous post, I'm still working as hard as that little guy there) but the 'not being at work' parts of my life are even crazier!

We're moving. Moving! I'm nearly all packed. I've given my notice, stopped paying rent, I have all this furniture set to move down from my mums place... and as yet have nowhere to move to! We've put in an application for the most beautiful house ever. Ever. No really, it's even more beautiful than you're thinking. It's down in Botany, so it will be a bit of a trek to get to work, but the glory is so worth it. (And plus, as Sarah and I discovered, we'll get to sing that 'toorali oorali addity' song all the time too!)

Anyway, we put an application in on Wednesday morning, and were expecting to hear by Thursday. On Friday the agent told us that we might hear on Saturday. Okay, time check, it's now MONDAY and my nerves are frayed beyond belief! We know they've checked our references, I wonder if they're just waiting on an okay from the owner. Just tell us! TELL US! I've been having some very bad thoughts about real estate agents lately. I need to renew my mind.


So on Saturday morning I hotfooted it up to mums place to help with the last few bits of packing - only to find actually that the garage was still FULL of stuff, and actually there was a LOT of stuff still to do. And they were due to DEPART earl-eye on Sunday morning. Panic stations! Well, I was panicking, mum was panicking, Gary seemed pretty cool though. Mum and I ended up staying cool by taking the car through a car wash - it seemed to be the most constructive thing to do. All the furniture was moved out, so there were very few places to sit and nowhere to sleep - so I camped out at Jessie McGessie's house and ate Cherry Ripes.

No furniture, no food, no tv. Luke occupies himself as best he can!

After a total of about 4 hours sleep (anything more than 4 hours sleep is laziness anyway, according to Gary, aka Mr Busy) they did manage to get off to the airport in time. The other big departure of the day was of our cat, Button, who was packed up into a travel case and driven round to Katy's house. She did not like this ONE BIT, the poor little thing, and cried pitifully the whole way over. She's never moved before, and probably never even knew there was other places to go. It's funny how much a pet becomes part of your family isn't it? I got Button 10 years ago this year, and she's always been my baby, so to see her to upset really broke my heart. (I know, I'm a big wuss) I had a brief moment of extreme panic at Katy's place when we thought she'd jumped out of the window and run away... Extreme panic! But it turned out she was hiding in a drawer, so everything was okay.


After we'd seen off Mum and Gazza, and transported the little one, we had breakfast with the very wonderful Meg and Dad! Fresh fruit, bacon and eggs, sunshine, good company - great antidote to extreme panic. I think fresh mango should be prescribed by more doctors more often.


Katy and Luke have a funny little cat called Ash, and Ash is one of the smartest cats I've ever seen. her and Katy even play hide and seek together! Well Ash was quite prepared to be friends with Button, but Button was having none of it. She kept puffing up and growling, even though I advised her several times that this is not how a good house guest acts (what is the use of explaining ettiquette to a cat?). Anyway, I hung around Katy's house all day just making sure that nobody was killing each other, encouraging people out from under the bed etc. (and that was just Katy and Luke!) (hee! kidding!)


I had just over a quarter of a tank of petrol left when I left Katy's place. It's usually takes me just under an hour to drive back home to Sydney, and generally takes me less than a quarter of a tank so I knew I'd be fine. So, I was cruising along the freeway with my iPod pumping, air con blasting, having a great old time, when all of a sudden I had to screech to a halt - all of the traffic was stopped! We commenced moving, but only really slowly, like a couple of meters every few minutes. Painfully slow. Well all of a sudden I realise that my petrol will never last at this rate! Now I am in panic mode again! All non-essential systems SHUT DOWN! Goodbye aircon! (Ah, and did I mention that Sunday was our hottest day on record for this summer? Yes, yes, it was.)

Then - omg, after about an hour of this (yes an HOUR) the petrol light starts flashing. Cue heart sinking, lower lip trembling, tears threatening... there was no end in sight to the traffic jam, no more exits from the freeway, it was like a carpark behind me so if I ran out there was no way the NRMA would be able to get through and HELP me... it was all a bit overwhelming really.

Traffic jam extraordinaire!

I called Shelley, and she told me that the road was actually closed off due to bushfires jumping the freeway, and sooner or later I would be diverted to the old highway. I texted a few of my friends and asked them to please, please 'pray for my petrol tank!' There were cars lining the sides of the road, people whose cars had overheated, people who were stopping to cool down or have a roadside picnic, people having a bushie (Shell taught me that word!), even people walking alongside their cars and taking pictures of the massive traffic jam! I read on the net today that the jam went for 5 kilometres. That's pretty extreme hey? And don't laugh, but I swear that petrol gauge periodically kept moving higher, every time I was sure the light would start flashing again it jumped up a millimetre or two - enough to keep me out of trouble.

Petrol light flashing! No petrol left! Text friends and ask them to pray for my petrol tank!

Prayer result! How does this happen?!

You know how sometimes you're not in the mood for anything serious and you actually want to watch a silly American sitcom just for a few laughs? Well, I think God uses my life like that - He gets a bit bored, tunes into my life, has a bit of a laugh... ;-) It's all drama isn't it!

So I kept going, sweating bucketloads, eyes glued to the petrol gauge, trying to roll the car instead of accelerating, for a further 2 hours... I'm telling you that car was running entirely on the favour of the Lord! Finally I reached the police roadblock, and the exit, and they ushered us off onto the Pacific Hwy at Berowra. I'd been cruising (calmly) along the exit road for about 10 minutes when the car started to cough. The petrol was seriously about to totally disappear. I shot one last desperate prayer off to God before I noticed some flashing lights up ahead. Could it be...? Was it possible...?? Yes! It was a random NRMA man stopped on the side of the road!

He had about 4 cars all pulled over, all wanting help from him. The poor guy looked so overwhelmed! Someone must have called him out hours before, for him to be there ahead of me. I quickly told him that I needed petrol, but was happy to wait for him to look at the other cars first.
Him: "I can give it to you now! Do you have $15?"
Me: "I've got $20! Keep the change!"
He gave me a massive jerry can full of petrol, I poured it all in, gave him $20, blessed him repeatedly then hopped back on the road with half a tank of gas! Yahooo!! The day was saved! The further I drove the closer to the fires we got, the smoke was really thick and black - but do you think I was worried? I had my aircon back on! AIRCON is a blessing from God and is not to be undervalued ever. It took me another hour to get back home (this should have been a 50 minute trip, and ended up taking me about 3 and a half hours) but I was singing the whole way!

It's taken me a long time to realise that Gods idea of 'last minute' is quite different to mine!

So that was my weekend anyway. How was yours?