Well, this sucks.

I’ve been doing okay with the med changes.  Some physical stuff, the nausea, the visual stuff, but okay.  However both last night and today, some of the emotional/mood stuff is rearing its head.  I’m getting vaguer, not remembering words for common things, and I have the horrible knotted stomach thing happening again.  And no matter what I do, I can’t relax it.  It really is a physical symptom, but I know it’s a manifestation of anxiety, which is a mood thing.  Ugh.  It sucks.

So I’m not at work today.  Great, my boss must be delighted.  I hate letting her down, she’s so fantastic to work for, and just a great person.  So yes, the self-esteem isn’t the best either.

On another note, we were sitting at the dining table this morning when I noticed a baby magpie in our backyard.  I could tell he was a baby as his black feathers are still grey.  He was wandering around, and not doing much flying (another indicator he’s only young).  Anyhow, when SO and I went outside, he ran over to us.  SO groaned – ‘God, he’s tame.  That doesn’t bode well for his long term survival!’  The dopey bugger was looking for some food, or some attention I guess.  Anyhow, I watered the front garden, and when I came back he was still waiting.  I had a chat with him while he looked at me hopefully, but I didn’t feed him.

He’s still out there, sitting on the washing line.  I think I’ll call him Dopey.

Another day where I didn’t accomplish much.  Did some more laundry (washing and ironing) and some dishes, and I made SO lunch, but that was about it.  Felt very crook this afternoon at around 4pm, so I crashed for a couple of hours.  Woke up and felt considerably better.

My little brother called me in the morning and asked if I could have a look at a property with him, to which I said yes (of course).  We went along and looked at a nice little three bedroom, two toilet stand alone unit in an inner-city suburb.  We both agreed that it looked good, and A’s decided he’ll put in an offer on it tomorrow.  Poor love, he’s a bit nervous about it, but I told him that I’d help him out and it’ll all be fine.  Hopefully, it will be.

2 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

This is 2 out of 100, not 2 out of 10.  Maybe my score was lowered because I indicated I’m okay with cooking dinner in my pyjamas.  Whoops.

Things are feeling more and more settled.  All of our units are tenanted (yay!) so we don’t even have to think about them.  Our house is slowly (very slowly) getting back to a habitable state.  For example, I have an oven!!  It’s not installed; it’s currently sitting on the floor in the family room.  But at least it’s in the house.  If I’m lucky, and play my cards right, SO may even install it sometime today.

The laundry situation is under control, the bathrooms have been cleaned, and the sheets on the bed are fresh.  The kitchen is also reasonably neat and tidy.  All in all, it’s starting to feel more like a home, and less like a dump we have to live in for protection from the elements.

There are other signs life is becoming more calm and regular, such as my increased interest in cooking.  I find that when I’m tired, stressed, and the place is a mess, the very last thing I want to do is cook.  Lots of time and effort for temporary gain, plus the production of more dishes to wash, are the major cons against cooking.  However, I was at the local shops yesterday and noticed vine-ripened tomatoes for $10 a box.  I immediately starting thinking of buying a box to make some napolitana sauce. 

I’ve been looking around for a good recipe, and this one seems to tick all the boxes.  As I read through it, though, I noticed a reference to pomarola sauce, which seems like a richer version of the same thing.  So I’ve decided I’ll give the pomarola recipe a go.  Of course, I’ll write up a review of it if/when I do make it.

I also did the right thing and tried to give my mother a call.  She has left two incredibly nasty messages on our home answering machine, stating that she ‘knew’ I was home and that I was deliberately ignoring her.  After getting the first message a few days back, I wasn’t inclined to call her back, so I didn’t.  Yesterday we received a similar message, in the same vein.  I tried to call her this morning but she was (fortunately) out.  I think she needs to be told that honey attracts more flies than vinegar – not that I’m a fly, but you know what I mean. 

It’s a funny thing.  I’ve always wished that mum and I got along well, but we never have.  While it’s gotten better than when I was a teenager (when I left home, to escape her), it’s kind of got to a point where she’ll be fine, and I get excited thinking she’ll always be relatively easy to deal with; then I get these really unpleasant voicemail messages from her.  If I’m really unlucky, I will actually be home and receive her call, in which case I have to emotionally defend myself for up to an hour from her vitriol.  It makes SO furious that she is so unpleasant to me.  We’ve had heated discussions about it.  Ultimately, though, she is my mother, and when you’ve lost one parent, it makes you realise that you do love them, despite their faults.  I just wish her faults weren’t so detrimental to my mental health.

Life has certainly settled down a bit. Not having renovations to do leaves both of us with a lot of ’spare’ time.  I say ’spare’ because in reality it’s taken up with lots of things – like going through our house, deciding what to keep and what to move on.  We have a kerbside collection for household goods in a couple of weeks, so we can get rid of lots of stuff that way, like the oven we’ve had to replace. 

It’s been on the blink for a couple of months – everything lights up but it doesn’t heat.  According to my mother, it was the heating element that had packed it in.  So SO had a look at it over the weekend.  Not only had the element gone, but the fan wasn’t working.  As a result, and given the age of the oven (around 14 years old), I made an executive decision that it wasn’t worth fixing.  So I started pricing replacements.  Amazingly, they ranged from $950 to the one we decided on – $569.  I couldn’t believe the variation in prices.  We went for the $569 version.  I’m not interested in cooking, SO isn’t either, and paying an extra $400 for an oven that’s still very basic seems like a waste.  Hopefully we’ll be picking it up either tomorrow or Thursday.  I’m excited, primarily because I’m looking forward to having the gaping hole in the kitchen filled up.

We’ve also been going through a process of rationalisation of our clothing.  We have an absolute heap of stuff we don’t wear any more, and most of it is in fantastic condition.  In the past, I’ve sold this stuff on eBay.  However I’m moving away from doing that now, for a few different reasons.  Firstly, money isn’t as tight as it used to be.  While any additional cash is nice, we don’t need it.The second reason is that the economy isn’t the best, and I’m sure that there are people who would appreciate the chance to buy gently used clothes that are suitable for interviews, etc.  So we’ve been doing some culling.  As a result, today I dropped off seven (yes, seven) bags of work clothes, and assorted other stuff – things like material for sewing I’ll never use, curtains still in the packet (I’d lost the receipt to return them), that kind of thing – to our local Goodwill bins.  (SO and I refer to this as ’stuff for Will’, ie. Goodwill.)

In investment-related news, we are signing up a new tenant tomorrow night for the latest (now finished) reno.  I’m looking forward to getting rent in for it, I have to admit.  Nothing like being able to pay the mortgage to sleep well. 

Speaking of which, apparently I’ve started humming in my sleep.  SO actually woke me up last night because I was making so much noise.  <blush>  I asked what it sounded like, and it’s definitely a very deep, loud humming sound.  How completely bizarre.  I know I occasionally talk in my sleep when I’m stressed, but humming?!  SO was really grumpy about it too, he doesn’t like being woken up by someone else making noise when they’re sleeping   It seems I’ve been doing it for a little while, about once a week or so.  Weird.

This has been a completely scattered entry, please excuse it.  I think I’ve just gotten out of the habit of regularly blogging as stuff happens, so I end up with lots of little things that are unrelated to ‘get out’.  I’ll have to try to write here more regularly, especially now we have more available time.

This has been the first real weekend we’ve had to ourselves since we finished the latest reno.  It was a highly productive one – we cleaned out our two spare rooms.  To give you an idea, neither of us really knew what was in there any more.  We found tools, old clothes we’d forgotten we had, bugs (dead, luckily) and enough Christmas wrapping paper to last us for approximately a decade.  Two days on, we’ve sorted it all out, everything has its place, and both rooms have been vacuumed.  It’s a huge relief, too.  Both rooms have been worrying me for ages, just knowing they were so revolting.  So yes, that’s a weight off my mind, and I’m a happy girl now.

SO is happier too.  While he hates cleaning of any description, he does like his home to be neat.  He even offered to hang a picture tonight, out of the blue – we’d dug it up from one of the bedrooms, and picked a spot to put it.  When he volunteered to hang it, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather.  He loathes hanging pictures, in case it ends up in the wrong spot, so it just indicated how happy he was.

It’s amazing how something so simple can give such a sense of satisfaction.

It’s been a busy weekend.  SO went for another all-day bike ride yesterday, so I cleaned the bathrooms and toilets, did the food shopping, and also did about five loads of laundry and hung it out.  I also had good intentions of cooking, but all I managed was to half-do some rissoles.  After that I collapsed in a heap and slept for four hours.  Whoops.

Today being Mother’s Day, we saw SO’s stepmum for breakfast.  We went over to their place, but took our coffee machine, and made french toast.  It was nice, but we got there at 9 am and didn’t actually eat until 11:30am, by which time SO was frothing at the mouth he was so hungry.  I was okay as I’d had two coffees by that point, so I was high on life and caffeine.  SO still isn’t in touch with his mum, and mine is currently away in New Zealand with her boyfriend, so it was an easy day for us.  (In the past we’ve had to see all three on the same day, which was a killer for both of us.)

We got home after 1pm and I had every intention of having an afternoon nap.  However, SO was going to a couple of the units to do some work (one needed new tap washers, the other needed a replacement TV as theirs blew up) and I wandered outside to say goodbye.  In doing so, I was confronted by SO’s latest acquisition – a fridge/freezer he’d picked up from the side of the road.  It does work; but it was so revoltingly filthy, I had previously vowed I wasn’t going near it, much less clean it.  The black, fluffy mould which covered the interior was retch-making, and would probably lead to a nasty dose of ebola if it was inhaled.

Anyhow, I looked at it.  And yes, two and a half hours later, the bloody thing was clean, inside and out.  I’m sure there are antibiotics you can take for ebola, so I’m not too concerned.  When SO came home and saw it, he was overjoyed….. new beer fridge!!!  As a result, he actually offered to cook dinner – grilled fish and vegies – so I took him up on his very kind offer.  Quid pro quo (otherwise known as, ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.)   ;)

I have to say, I feel absolutely fantastic today.  I was sitting here trying to work out why, and I think I can pin it down to the 15 hours’ sleep I’ve had in the last 24 hours.  Oh well, it was obviously much needed!  SO and I had our flu injections on Thursday night, and since then I’ve been feeling a bit ordinary – heavy eyed, runny nose, sore throat.  The doc did say that we may feel a bit crap for a few days, even though the injection is inactive, and I guess he’s right.

I forgot to mention that last Sunday, when we had our friends’ wedding, was also our fifth anniversary of our first date.  It just doesn’t seem like five years.  Where on earth has the time gone?!  As with most anniversaries of significant occasions, it got me thinking.  We are so very happy, I can’t think of anything that I’d change.  (Apart from SO cooking, that would be great, but that’s relatively minor in the scheme of things.)  I can’t imagine life without him, and I know he feels the same about me.  We are so very lucky to have found each other.

Anyhow, as it’s not our wedding anniversary, I didn’t do anything, but when SO did the food shopping on Saturday, he bought me flowers:

Awwwww. 

Yes, so things are going well for me at the moment.  Life is good. 

I have the house to myself at the moment.  SO has gone out with a couple of his mates to go bike riding.  He’s getting a bit concerned about his weight lately, so when he found out a couple of guys from work do this every Saturday, he was keen to join in.  As a result, I’ve had some ‘me time’ today.  ‘Me time’ has resulted in both toilets and bathrooms being cleaned, the bedsheets changed and washed, dishes done, and most of the laundry washed and hung out.  On reflection, it sounds more like ‘house time’ than me time, but hey, it’s stuff I like to have done so I can then forget about it.  But yes, it’s half past ten in the morning, and most of my weekend stuff is sorted.  This means I’ll be able to fit in a nap this afternoon – my favourite pastime.  Woohoo!

Here it is, Sunday afternoon already.   Where on earth did the weekend go?!  We did sleep in today, admittedly; but then we made up for it.  The kitchen and both bathrooms are clean, the bedsheets changed and washed, and about six loads of laundry have been done.  Oh, and dinner is already slowly simmering away in the oven.  Meat and veg casserole – cheap, tastes good, easy to make, reheats beautifully.  It’s just about the perfect dish, especially for somebody with my limited interest in food.

Yesterday was a busy day.  We had different stuff to do, all in the morning, which resulted in a huge rush from 9am until midday.  We needed to lodge some mortgage documents for the latest purchase, then SO and I needed to go to different units – SO to hang some mirrors and check a sticky door, me to give some new tenants their keys, show them the meterbox, etc.  After that I came home via the shops, where I bought some much needed necessities like milk and bread.  (Yes, that’s how bad things had got.  So shoot me.)  After that, I did some paperwork, and washed my hair, then fell into bed for an afternoon nap.

I needed the nap because I had a hen’s night on last night.  My friend E is getting married next weekend, so we were celebrating in the traditional way, by eating indian food and then going out to sing karaoke.  The dinner was great fun, and I enjoyed myself.  My other close friends were all there too, so we essentially used dinner as a way of catching up on what has been happening with each of us.  Some great news – my friend L, who lost her baby last year in very sad circumstances, is 11 weeks’ pregnant.  I’m so happy for her and her husband.  I hope this time has a happy ending for them both. 

And there was also some sad news – my friend S’s dad was made redundant.  I’ve always been extremely fond of S’s dad, as he and my father were in the same line of work, and both had very similar temperaments.  So when S told me, I was really saddened.  Apparently he’s coming to terms with it though, and as I said to S, at least this way he and S’s mum will be almost forced to enjoy some time together, which is something my parents missed out on – Dad left work only because he was sick, then he got worse very quickly and died.  S agreed with me, especially as her dad (like my dad) is a workaholic, so they really almost need something like a redundancy to concentrate on other parts of their lives.

Yeah, so the dinner was good.  Then we went to the karaoke bar…. and I felt old.  I mean, not old; but too old to be at a karaoke bar, or indeed any bar, probably.  It was incredibly disconcerting.  Up until about five years ago, my friends and I were still going out clubbing/pubbing fairly regularly, but there’s no way we’d do something like that now.  We’re not prepared to be mutton dressed up as lamb, essentially.  So yes, we all got a drink (except L) and stood awkwardly around in a circle, wincing at the overly loud music and trying to hold conversations with each other.  S and I found we could amuse ourselves by laughing at how bad people were, or alternatively, how serious they were.  (I had no idea that karaoke is such an important thing to some people.)  We stuck it out for about an hour and a half, then we made our apologies and left.  As we walked out, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief that we could hear ourselves think again.  Yep, I’m waaaaay past it.

I love Indian.  Love it.  (Food, not the culture – although that said, the culture is also pretty cool.  Just not as cool as the food.)  I love the mild and spicy dishes, the predominate use of potatoes as the main vegetable, and mango lassis.  Yum.

We have a fantastic Indian restaurant a couple of suburbs over, which we visit about once every six to eight weeks.  Considering we almost never eat out, this is a pretty high strike rate.  However, while the food is to die for, it can be pretty expensive to get our Indian hit.  Every so often I give home made Indian a go.  This usually consists of perusing the local supermarket and trying to work out the best canned variety of stir through sauce.

I did this today.  We had rogan josh and and potato tandoori.  (One of the delights of Indian food is that you can add any combination of meat and or vegies to a sauce and it tastes unbelievable.  At least it does to us.)  It was so good.  The only disappointment was the naan, also from the grocery store.  It just didn’t taste right.  Otherwise it was delicious.  However, I think the potato tandoori was a fraction hot for SO – he turned purple and started gasping.  Maybe I’ll go the mild mix next time.