Home sweet home ... for now

Before I left for T.I. I had to decide what I was doing with the house. I didn't want to rent it out because the time frame between making the decision to go and actually leaving was very short. And I didn't have the energy or willpower to pack up the place and do the whole rental thing.

So I decided to get a housesitter. This way I could leave everything as is. Then, when and if I decided to come home I could let them know and not have to worry about leases, contracts and fair notice and any other stress that having a tenant entails.

What a great decision :) On Thursday Rob and I walked into our home after an absence of several months. And nothing had changed. It was as I had left it - clean, neat and tidy. In our absence it has been lovingly and beautifully looked after by my lovely housesitter (I won't embarrass you Scott by mentioning names)(wink).

I'm sitting in my lounge room this morning, on my couch in my home. And it feels as if I have never been away. I'm finding it hard to realise that for the past three and a half months I have been living in another place.

On Thursday, after our flight, Rob and I shared a wine on the front deck. It all felt surreal. A few hours earlier we had been at the top most end of Australia and now here we were back in Brisbane ..... drinking wine as if nothing had happened. But it has happened. And this is a pitstop along the way.

Over the next few days we'll be catching up with family and friends. On Friday we go to Sydney to attend the memorial service for Chris - he's the reef pilot who died in the PNG air crash a few weeks ago - and then we're off to Adelaide to visit one of Rob's daughters. Busy busy.

But in all this whirlwind of activity I am reminded of a couple of things. Although things here all look the same and feel the same, I am not the same. I am different for having made the decision three and a half months ago to leave home and try out life on a remote island in the far far north of Queensland.

I've been to places I never imagined going to, I've done a few things that have scared me and challenged me and met people that would never have come into my circle in the normal course of things. I'm still in the middle of my adventure - don't know when it will end or change for that matter. But as I sit here on my couch, in my lounge room, in my house - it feels so very good to be home.

Life is good.