It was a decent drive up to Toowoomba - and I made it a point to check out some stretches of the highway to make sure what their speed limits are - watching for roadside signs and also checking with Gomez the GPS.
We stopped at The Coffee Club at Plainlands (about 40 minutes out of Toowoomba) and had a very enjoyable toast and coffee (tea for S). From there we phoned my mother to give her our estimated time of arrival and she decided that she would ask her sister to take her down to the vets to collect her recently (yesterday) desexed puppy - Pippa. She seems to have come through with little distress and it's all Mum can do to make her be calm.
There has been decluttering happening here and we took Mum and several bags-full of donations to the LifeLine "opportunity shop". While we were there, we also had a look to see what they had - and we remembered the time when I had been visiting Toowoomba before having a holiday on the Gold Coast and, as the unit where we were planning to stay had tennis courts - we bought some cheap racquets so we could practice our tennis. Many an afternoon Dad and I went out the front of their house in Winifred Street and played "street tennis". I can't know remember why we chose to do that rather than just going to a tennis court - especially given how hard it was to convince my niece and nephew to be ball catchers - so they could fetch stray balls - and there were a few.
I finally got one of my other wishes today - which was to have a game of 10-pin bowling. Strangely enough, it was a virtual game on a whiz-bang television set that my aunt had won in a golf-related competition where you had to ring in and leave your name and if your name was pulled from the barrel first - you won! I had two goes at the bowling - the first turn saw 5 pins dropped and then I completely missed the balls on the second throw; on the second turn I hit 9 pins down with the first bowl, and managed to take the spare with my next shot. I was stoked and decided to call it quits then, especially as no-one else seemed keen to have a go.
Tonight was a barbecue with Mum, my sister and her family including Baby M. You haven't seen a kid as happy as when she's clutching a sausage in her hand and chewing on it - on the side of her mouth that doesn't have her single tooth. It was a good night and we all went home tired but happy - and were tucked up and in bed by 9.30 - ready to do it again tomorrow (and almost hoping that sister W doesn't show up at 5.30am in the morning as suggested).
