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Upcoming holiday
I think I may well bypass the full cold that has been passing through the family. I had all the signs of getting one, right down to the scratchy throat, tiredness and the achiness that sometimes accompanies a cold. But it doesn’t seem to be going any further than that. I hope it’s not saving itself for the week after next when we are leaving for a three-day holiday down south (between Albany and Denmark).
I think we are just about set for our departure. I have gotten the cat vaccinated and organised boarding with the vet service. Our weekly paper delivery will be delayed until we return because there is nobody to take it over. The supervisor was going to just cancel the order for our area as he does for others on holiday but we decided that we’d deliver them after our return rather than have some of the residents miss out.
I’m going to have the boys plan out our travel route next week and see how they do. I suspect the Scientist and I will have to help out a bit but I think they should be able to plan most of it.
It’s kind of funny to think that our planned trip to Sri Lanka for two weeks in February was cancelled and this is the replacement. It’s not quite the same but it will be nice to just be away from home for a short time.
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Topsy turvy brain today
All our routines have been messed up this week so my brain feels a bit tired right now. Newspaper deliveries were delayed by rain while Game Fanatic’s D&D group changed its day this week along with the venue. Game Fanatic didn’t adapt well to the changes which resulted in an exhausting morning yesterday. It seems to have left me in another mind space.
I went on what apparently was a wild goose chase to return some books to a local library today. I arrived about five minutes before the normal closing time and discovered they were closed all week for stock take. Attempts to return them elsewhere were futile since all the branches apparently close at the same time. Had I known this ahead of time, I wouldn’t have wasted my time and just paid the fine. Sigh…When I go back tomorrow I plan to protest the fines since I wasn’t to know the library would be closed or would have made alternate arrangements. The library thing created other problems for me which eventually did get sorted out but left me feeling very out of sorts.
So instead of going to bed early, I am awake late and writing a blog entry. I think it must be madness to attempt to write when one is tired.
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Sick house
A cold virus has been making the rounds of our house the past week or so. It seems to have started with Game Fanatic, passed to Lego Lover, the Scientist and I have been trying to ward it off for a couple days now. I’ve been slightly successful since I have yet to reach the sneezy, blocked nose stage that the others went through already. So far it’s been mostly tiredness, achiness and a sore throat for me.
I had to go out this morning to get the cat in to the vet for a check up and vaccinations. She was well overdue and we need to leave her in a cattery when we go off on our holiday a couple weeks. So this was a good motivator. That outing went pretty well and the cat doesn’t seem to be nearly as traumatised as I expected.
I returned home with the cat and soon was back out to pick up a few groceries that I had promised to buy earlier. That outing left me really tired. Once I had returned home and eaten lunch, I settled in to bed for the afternoon and finished a book.
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Changes
The current school term is winding down and there are two weeks of school holidays, not that it will mean much of a change to our daily life. That’s another topic altogether so I will save that for another post, especially as it is so late and I am tired and liable to make no sense at all.
I’ve decided that the Game Fanatic will no longer attend the homeschool science class. He hasn’t really made much progress and so I don’t think it is valuable enough to warrant dragging ourselves out on cold, wet Friday mornings next term. So our Fridays will be a lot freer. Actually that may not necessarily be so.
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It's just like a real bank!
We got a home loan through a building society thirteen years ago. We had no other accounts with them. In 2002, we changed our regular banking to a credit union. Fast forward to a couple years ago and the credit union and building society merged which made our financial needs very convenient. Last year the Bank of Queensland and our building society decided to merge. The merger went through a couple weeks ago although their systems are still separate. The first bad news was that they were rebranding our building society as Bank of Queensland. We live in Western Australia. Not really all that appealing to me.
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Mini rant
Last night I went out just after dark and nearly ran down a man in a wheelchair and his kids. They were on the road and had nothing to distinguish them from the darkness! I will point out that this street (like most others he travels) has a perfectly good sidewalk alongside it. Of course this happened as I was approaching the end of the street where another car happened to be speeding around the corner just as I had swerved to the right lane to try to get around these people. I was literally stuck until somebody moved.
This guy often takes the street when he is out and about. But this is the first time I’ve seen him on the road at night, with kids. I should note that today the Scientist and I saw him taking the sidewalk for a change. -
Happiness is…
Both boys have had a major fix to their obsessions over the past couple of days. Yesterday, the long awaited Lego Club magazine arrived and obviously, Lego Lover was thrilled. Earlier in the day while the Games Fanatic and I were at his Dungeons and Dragons group, I espied a copy of this same magazine and was wondering where LL’s copy was. In fact, it arrived in the mail the same day. The next few hours were spent poring over the new Lego catalogue and describing the next sets on his list to buy.
Today was a momentous day for our Games Fanatic because the very long-awaited Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out. Guess who was at the store quite early this morning to get a copy? I was tucked into a warm bed at the time while the Scientist made the early morning trip with him. Lego Lover was also enthusiastic about the game. so much that I had a battle when I enforced a long break from play today. Normally, we don’t allow video game play very much during the week but made an exception today. Tomorrow, the rules return to normal.
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Energy crisis
Oh my! I think I was about to slack off on writing in the blog again. I fell asleep on the sofa a while ago and was about to drag myself to bed but needed to turn off the computer first. You see, we are in a major energy crisis here in Western Australia. Sometimes while listening to the news, you hear a big story but it doesn’t quite hit home because it happened somewhere else. A couple weeks ago, there was an explosion at a gas and oil processing plant on Varanus Island off the coast of our state. I don’t think I even knew the place existed before the explosion. Anyway, the gas supply of Western Australia has been effectively slashed by a third, which affects not only our gas use but our electricity use as well. Householders and businesses alike have been called upon to greatly reduce our power usage. It’s a good thing we don’t have bitterly cold winters. In fact, I suppose it’s a good thing this has occurred now because we can live without heating most winter days and nights. It’s a lot more difficult in the heat of the summer.
This reminds me of the short-term crisis of two or three summers ago where the government threatened rolling blackouts when it was unable to provide for the needs of the state’s consumers. It was probably the hottest day of that summer and we were told to turn off air conditioners and extra lights. That threat was relatively short-lived but this crisis will likely be affecting us directly for months and indirectly for who knows how long. It’s a shame that more alternate sources of energy are not widely available here to back up the available supply. Prices are going to go up on everything yet again. The reality is starting to hit home.
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Tidying things up
It was one of those cold and wet days of winter today. The rain has stopped but there’s a chill in the air which reaches my bones. I noticed my knees are feeling better today but other body parts are still aching quite a bit.
I managed to start some school “work” with Lego Lover today but that didn’t quite succeed and we ended up in another battle. Last week we stopped the medication he started back in March. We couldn’t see any positive effects and he ended up with stomach aches most nights so it wasn’t worth it. He has now started a different medication which has me feeling somewhat edgy. From reading the experiences of others, it’s a bit hard to judge how well the meds will work for any particular individual. The same medication can be wonderful for one and really terrible for another. So far, I think Lego Lover falls sort of in the middle since we’ve not had particularly great or bad experiences. I do think the shift from one medication to another could be affecting the current mood and hopefully he will settle down in the next few days.
During a heated discussion about “work”, I threatened to remove access to Lego for a time. This didn’t exactly eventuate because LL finally decided he would cooperate. I also started digging into his messy bedroom and the end result is it’s looking quite tidy at the moment. It is no longer the hazardous zone it’s been for weeks and months. Lego Lover did attempt to assist most of the time. It often happened that he would rediscover a forgotten toy and want to “test” it out, delaying the end of the task at hand. Finally, I was able to bring in the vacuum cleaner and remove the layers of dust.
Tomorrow I must get into Game Fanatic’s room and clear out all the dust that’s accumulated there. In the past, I would have had to do a similar cleanout of his room but I’ve found the he is doing quite well at keeping it in good order in the last year or so. It’s quite remarkable, really, that he’s always been particularly untidy and now he’s not. But he doesn’t take it any further so dusting and vacuuming is required at the moment.
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Blogging absence
Seems I’ve not been able to blog for one reason or another lately. Mostly, I’ve not felt terribly inspired but hopefully that will change soon. I think maybe it’s a matter of just sitting down and writing a bit.
Life’s going pretty well at the moment. We still have the issue that turned our lives upside down a while back to be resolved. It’s out of our hands right now and it’s really just a matter of time. It’s not affecting us so much on a daily basis but the resolution will be a good thing.
We are at the start of our winter here and it’s been pretty wet so far. I’ve been working on a crocheted afghan I started a couple years ago for Lego Lover. He’s no longer interested in this particular project but I’d like to finish it before starting something new. I had a bit of a spurt today and got through about three small balls of yarn. It’s going to be a very imperfect project because I seem to have lost stitches on one side over several rows but it will be unique and will just be for home anyway. With the cold, wet weather, I should be more motivated to keep going but mostly I’ve been working on it while the Game Fanatic is at Dungeons and Dragon’s on alternating Sundays. Today, I broke out of the rut and worked on it in the evening while we were playing the Zelda game for the Wii that we got a year and a half ago. I quit mainly due to tiredness and soreness from the repetitive motion.
I’m not sure if it’s weather-related but I seem to have acquired lots of aches and pains lately. I’ve had some instability with both my kneecaps and now my shoulder is hurting again. The other sort of arthritic pains have also reappeared.
This past week, we saw my mother-in-law off on a holiday. She will be leaving on a cruise this evening from England for over week, I think. It’s her first cruise so I hope she has a great time. Afterwards she will be visiting her sister for a few months. We also welcomed back my father-in-law, who has been in Sri Lanka for some time. I had a chance to chat with him at length when we went to visit and he was very chatty compared to usual.
I was going to write more but I’m not feeling particularly well at the moment so will try to save my thoughts for more regular posts.