Lady of Leisure

Shortly before I finished my BA in German, a friend asked me what I wanted to do when I was finished. "Be a housewife," was my reply.

Twenty years later, I've finally achieved that ambition :)

I decided last October, after 17 years, that secretarial work/order handling/office management is *not* what I want to spend the rest of my life doing - trouble is, I'm not really sure what I *do* want to do. So after a lot of thinking, and talking with my dearly beloved, I decided simply to give up work entirely for six months to a year, at least, and decide what it is I do want to do. And while I'm thinking, I am going to indulge a lifelong wish, and get a dog! The dog bit is mostly O's fault ;-) We were out for dinner, and the restaurant owner had the most beautiful dog - an Australian Shepherd, as we found out later. For the first time since I've known him, O said "it would be nice to have a dog like that" - I always thought before that he wasn't particularly interested in dogs. So, combined with my unhappiness at work, and the desire to get a dog, I decided to chuck my job.

Work had been very frustrating - the company I used to work for was bought by their biggest rival in August, a concern three times the size and much more rigidly organised, with a very centralised administration. We knew from previous mergers of that company that local organisations were whittled down to a minimum, and everything else moved to headquarters in Gent. So I was hopeful that the same would happen again, and that I'd be made redundant with a reasonable redundancy package :-) - that's when the "sabbatical" idea was first born, really. I can't tell you how incredibly disappointed I was the day my boss told me that he'd managed to rescue the German organisation, and that the Freiburg office would stay as a training centre, with administration. "Bugger" was probably the politest word that crossed my lips... ;-) So that's when I made my decision - I just couldn't bear the thought of staying on.

So now I'm a housewife! The dog is on its way - we found a breeder (who turned out, by sheer coincidence, to be the breeder of the very Australian Shepherd we first fell in love with), and are hoping that we will get a puppy from the litter born two weeks ago. If we do, then we should be able to collect him/her at the end of March.

And when I'm not hanging on the internet in Aussie forums, or reading books about dog training, I've been spring cleaning, bit by bit, and sewing and reading and watching TV and generally just getting used to the weird sensation of not going to work :-) I've been back to visit my ex-colleagues a couple of times, and from what they've said about the merger chaos, I'm very glad not to be there any more.

A walk in the Kaiserstuhl

Both last Sunday and today we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went out for a walk in the Kaiserstuhl, a range of volcanic hills that runs north-south between the Black Forest and the Rhine, traditionally known as the sunniest region in Germany, and home to some of the best wines in the region. It's a very attractive area with a mix of hills and vineyards.

Last Sunday I wanted to try flying the kite that I was given as a give-away at some small local trade exhibition for marketing gifts, and that has been sitting in the cupboard since then. Unfortunately there wasn't enough wind so we just went for a stomp in the woods instead.

Jennyanydots and The Fairy Godmother

Three Gingers

Hobbes-in-the-bin 

Entente cordiale

I semi-skived off work today - I do have a cold, and a cough, and I did have a headache this morning, but if I'd have had anything interesting to do at the office, I'd have stayed and coughed there instead of coming home.

Anyway, being home, I decided to let the rabbits run about, and see how they got on together - to my great delight, entente cordiale seems to have been achieved much quicker than expected!



In fact, we even got to ear-washing stage this afternoon:



Bunny lurrrrrve >:-)

I'm just hoping that the castration worked... they said at the animal shelter that I ought to keep Pip quarantined for another two weeks, just to be on the safe side - it's been ten days...

And Pippin's enjoyed investigating the garden as well:

Progress in the Bunniverse

We've started letting The Pipsqueak out to run around the closed off end of the terrace. First meetings with Lily were not successful - I had to take him to the vet on Friday to get an inch-long tear in the skin of his knee looked at. So mostly she's been on the garden side of the fence, while he's been inside.



However, we appear to be making progress - today they managed to sniff at each other without starting to fight.

He's certainly enjoying running around and sniffing everything - including Cous, who is Not Impressed.