New napery

Apart from antique china my next favorite collectable is napery. I have a small collection of tablecloths and place-mats. Some of these are family heirlooms that have been passed down from my grandma and others I have purchased on trips overseas.

Many years ago when I went to Scotland with my Mum and Grandma, my Grandma was kind enough to buy me half a dozen lavender place-mats with thistles on them and matching coasters. In my more recent vist to Scotland I found them again and bought another 4 of each so I now have a set of ten.

A couple of years ago I went crazy in Hong Kong and bought a massive red linen Christmas tablecloth with matching napkins, as well as a dozen red linen Christmas place mats with matching napkins. I have used both sets but in retrospect it was sort of silly to buy things that I can really only use once a year ( or twice if I have Christmas in July). Having said that though, Christmas is one time I consistently want to set the table up nicely so at least they do get used.

I also bought a couple of white patterned hexagonal place-mats in Biot (a small hill top town in the South of France). These are beautiful and I adore looking at them but because they are white I am too afraid they will get damaged to use them. I think I have used them twice, which is a pity because they are just so beautiful.

On my most recent trip to Europe I bought at the Provencal markets in Bedoin (near Avignon) a large creamy-beige linen tablecloth with pictures of roosters on it. I know that sounds hideous, but it looks really classy. I am hoping that the color and the pattern will mean that I am not so reluctant to use it as the white place-mats described above.

I also bought a quilted bedspread in the traditional Boutis style (though probably made in China) in Provence at a small town near Avignon called Vaison-La-Romaine. It is white and beige and beautiful. It looks similar to this one but without the floral pattern.

Sleep update

Well I am very pleased to report that I managed to stay awake until 6 pm last night. And I slept until 7 am this morning which is a quite respectable hour to wake.

I hope this portends that I have successfully readjusted to the Aussie time zone and will have no issues from here on in (note positive thinking).

Today I have the joyous task of washing all the clothes we took overseas and everything I left in the washing hamper before we left. Oh joy.

To sleep or not to sleep

Currently my cognitive function is at an all time low, so I thought I should blog something. Maybe that will get it working a bit better; or at the very least it will keep me awake.

My synapses can't fire well just right now because I am tired. So so tired. I haven't slept properly since Saturday night when I has in Copenhagen. Since then I have flown to Tokyo, had 12 hours in the airport there and then flown home. Long haul flights are really the pits. They sap all the joy out of traveling overseas, luckily they don't last forever and the travel memories soon overload the negative flight ones.

Anyway back to the sleeping, I really want to sleep right now, right this instant. I want to walk into my bedroom pull down the covers on my clean freshly made bed and collapse into it. But I know that if I let myself sleep now I won't sleep tonight and it will just take me longer to get over the jet lag. I have only moderate jet lag right now, it feels like I am on a boat, the world is rocking just a bit. It isn't unpleasant but it probably isn't really good either.

Hopefully I can hold out til at least later this afternoon....

Shopping while tired

There are a lot of reasons not to shop when you are tired. The primary one being that you will buy significantly more groceries than you actually need. And in my case those extra groceries usually have little nutritional value.

Yesterday I went shopping my husband and brother for dinner. We wanted some salads, bread and meat. I also had the bright idea of buying some trail mix to take on a walk we were going to do today. We found the dried fruit without any problems but I could not find the nuts. Because we were in an unfamiliar supermarket I suggested we spread out and each take a different isle.  Husband and brother both dutifully walked down their isles looking at the shelves but with no success. After checking the rest of the supermarket I went back to those isles and what do you think I found? - nuts.

It was then that I realised that neither husband nor brother actually knew what they were looking for.  Both were tired and hungry which apparently made them blindly obedient. And once we all worked out what had happened the tired shopping trip also made us all hysterical with laughter.