The horrible yellow fridge

Everyone has made decisions they later regret.  Haven't they?  I'm sure they have.  I've made a few but only one that I've had to live with on a daily basis every day since that dreary winter when my world seemed just too bleak and grey and I decided to paint my refrigerator a bright yellow.   Saying I've regretted it every day isn't quite true, because as often as not I've been amused at the memory of my foolishness.  It seemed the perfect solution at the time.

It's an old fridge, I can't work out exactly how old but I've had it for well over 10 years, maybe 15, and it was old when I got it, old and discoloured which was one of the reasons it needed brightening up,

It's big and heavy, solid.  Reliable.  I've replaced the door seals but other than that it has done it's duty without a blimp.  

Until now that is.  In the past few months it has taken to producing ice and there's been nothing I could do to stop it.  So, finally, I've given in and bought a new fridge.

It will arrive tomorrow.  Oh joy!  Today I've removed the things that have sat on the top of the fridge for many years.   A photo of Michael taken at the time he started school.  I remember how his upcoming first day at school had been the topic of all our chats for weeks.  Around that time he asked me could I die soon - so I could sit on a cloud all day and look over him at school.

The week before he started school we  were exploring in the creek at the back of the house where I was living and he found this blue wine bottle.  He liked the picture of the sun on it because it reminded him of me (ahhhh!) and gave me the bottle to put a candle in.   He was always giving me things to hold a candle.  When I took down the bottle to give it a good clean in preparation for it taking its place on top of my new fridge, the sun lifted off the bottle.  And I was surprised at how that alarmed me.   I will find a way of sticking it back on ... somehow.

While I was losing my head in the electrical good store, I gave in and bought a new TV as well.   Not quite true.  I intended to buy one.  I asked my daughter-in-law to come shopping with me, told her what I wanted and trusted her to make sure I didn't get talked into something I didn't want.   I do serious shopping so rarely, I don't trust myself to do it properly anymore.  I'm glad she was with me.  Had she not been, I may have got fed up with the non stop drivel the salesman was laying on us and walked away empty handed.  Two days later and I'm still marvelling about that guy, and wondering if he actually believes the shit he was talking. 

That TV was long, long overdue.   And look, it came complete with Tom Cruise - wish I thought that was a bonus.  I'm now ready for when we roll over to digital TV transmission later this year.

Yesterday I went for a walk earlier than usual as I knew Bernie was arriving.  I knew I wouldn't go once he arrived.  I've been trying to be a bit more serious about exercise lately.  Been leaving the camera at home so I don't have to resist the temptation to stop and take photos.  No camera, no temptation.  At the last minute I picked up the little old Canon PowerShot.

I'd completed three quarters of the loop around the farm when I came face to face with the cow herd walking back to their paddock after the afternoon milking.  They don't take a lot of notice of me and most of them walk quietly on past me and, although I was walking a lot slower, I was still walking.  It really doesn't take much of a distraction to stop me when I have a camera handy.  I recognised the cow approaching me as the same pretty lady I'd photographed the previous evening as she was eating the grass on the other side of my back fence.  Here she is the previous evening.  Such a pretty cow.

And here she is yesterday afternoon, as lovely as ever:

There's always one or two that take exception to anything out of the ordinary.  I knew the minute I spotted her, that this old girl was going to turn around and go back the way she had come. I did my best to outwit her and get past without success.  As soon as I could, I crawled under an electric fence into an adjoining paddock, hoping she might turn back once she noticed I was nowhere near where she was meant to be going. 

And that's how I came to be sitting under an old half dead pine tree looking for things to take photos of until Jersey Madam decided I wasn't going near her again. 

 I will do better today.  I will leave the camera behind and stop for nothing.  True.