How nice to get successfully into chat today. I had PMed Bonnie as we were supposed to have strong winds last night but thank goodness that did not happen and all was well. We have had eight days when we have hardly seen the sun and my! that can bring me down. I call it "rain depression" although officially it is called S.A.D or Seasonal Affective Disorder and what we all feel at some time in the short dreary days in winter. Strangely people in the tropics also feel the same thing when they have the humid, thundery build up to the wet season.

While we were in chat we were discussing temperatures in the various places we live in. It is fun sometimes to do the "I'm in winter but you are in summer" comparison. The temps ranged from 90 degrees for Phyllis to me at about 55 degrees. Heck! you will say, that is not cold, but to me in my low set open plan cottage, with only a fan heater in the living room and me stuck out here in the back, yes, that is cold! At night when I come onto the computer I have a rug over my knees to keep me warm.

Something funny happened when I asked Phyllis to send me some sunshine and next minute the clouds drifted apart and the sun came out. It was fine then till mid-afternoon when the clouds came back and it started to drizzle. But it was fine and sunny long enough for Ray to go out and sun himself on our front verandah and you all know how much he LOVES to do that! Thank you Phyllis!

I am tidying house as I have my northern family here Tuesday to Friday next week. I am so looking forward to them coming. One of the evenings we will have Pam, Steve, Tori and Alex over and have birthday celebrations for Alex who has his 1st birthday on 21st. He will not know that it is a week out, he will just lap up the attention! He is such a bright little spark, there is a picture of him in the Gallery. He has Ray's blue eyes, so the girls will just love him!

I have had to buy a couple of new doonas as the northern family are coming from the tropics and will probably feel the cold again when they get here! They are going down to their holiday cottage near the Snowy Mountains where it is snowing so will find that very cold! The strong winds etc have brought a little bit of snow to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney also so you can go there for the "Christmas in July" banquets that are so popular in all the touristy places like big hotels and guest houses and sing songs like "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" and really feel that it is Yuletide right now!

We have had a lot of our activities cancelled due to the weather. The parking lot of the place where we usually have our Lions dinner was covered with sand drifts from the roaring onshore winds so that dinner was postponed a week. Other activities were cancelled as some of the participants are still helping with the clean-up after the wild winds. After all those tree branches are off roofs there is still all the leaf litter to rake and bag and the potplants to stand up ( I did some of that today). I am not even going up the back as a glimpse of that garden showed a lot of cutting back, re-staking etc needs to be done, there is a lot of wind damage up there. I'm not afraid of the work I just need the right weather to get it done.

After the 22nd June the days will slowly get longer and if the sun shines again I can get active. Ray pedalled his exercise bike today, the first time for a while as it lives on our front verandah and was inaccessible. He spent quite long time pedalling and stopping, pedalling and stopping,daydreaming a bit in between I suspect. He will be having another minder for Friday from this week and the care provider has suggested that he/she help Ray with his exercises as part of their activities so I will have to get the list out and look at it and see how they can work it into a routine.

So as the song says: "wish me health, wish me sunshine, wish me love" (author unknown).