Mini – GAP, T – Cotton On, necklace – Red Phoenix Emporium.

It’s been lovely to set out for the day in my favourite warm weather off duty uniform of a short sleeved T, a denim mini, my trusty Birkis and  a string of beads.

And what better place to retreat to in order to escape the heat than the walk in refrigerators of your local Costco?   Actually, the beer fridge at Dan Murphy’s works just as well but it’s perhaps more difficult to justify lounging around in if you don’t actually drink beer.

It wasn’t just all about supersized chocolate soft serves and trays of sushi at Costco, you’ll be happy to know.

I’m pretty impressed with Costco’s $14 sushi tray.  It easily feeds two and comes with plenty of all the essential condiments for sushi – soya sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger.  Toddler SSG was a big fan of the teriyaki chicken roll.

And neither was is just about my getting a new pair of black Wayfarers with polarized lenses.

I made it my mission today to sort out a couple of home safety issues I’ve been a bit slack about since the house move.

The first was a supply box in case of a future power outage.  We had an hour long black out on Sunday evening and my kind neighbour dropped by to check that we were okay.  It turns out that the last one that hit our street saw alternate houses without power for about a week after a line got sliced in half by a tree and it took that long for things to be repaired.

As an aside, if you ever want up to the minute news about blackouts in your area, the Ausgrid site is excellent.  It provides updates on locations of blackouts, when they started and when it is anticipated they will end.

Not wanting to be left in the dark (it’s the heat, it’s far more cooling to be literal rather than aiming for witty right now) next time, I found myself an LED lantern type torch as well as a set of magnetic work lights that are powered by AAA batteries and are meant to be weather and shock proof.  I also stocked up on batteries and now everything’s ready to go on an easy to locate shelf.  But touch wood they won’t be needed anytime soon.

It would be more romantic and exciting to have based my emergency kit on candles and matches but four words – toddler in the house.

Which brings me to home fire safety.  Beyond making sure all my appliances and power points are safe, I’ve never really thought about how to prepare myself in the event of a fire at home.  Thank goodness for work fire safety training then becuase our instructor got me thinking about what I needed to do at home.  The first thing was to purchase a couple of fire blankets and to make sure that one was in the bedroom since fires often occur at night and the one in the kitchen could be too far away.  The next was to have a plan for how to evacuate the house.  Fortunately, this is only a single storey house so all we have to do is climb out a window and run for the street but for those with double storeys, knotted bed sheets ready to go make effective ‘ropes’ to climb down.

How are you coping with the heat?

What was the most miraculous survival of a parcel delivery that’s ever happened to you?