assorted

It’s been a good week. I haven’t needed anti-anxiety drugs since Wednesday, even though I delivered training yesterday to a group of employees.  And of course, Wednesday was our anniversary   I got SO a leather wallet by Hugo Boss, and he got me a rose bush.  Not just any rose bush – it’s called Petrona.  How’s that for smooth?!  Plus I got a beautiful card and a gorgeous flower arrangement at work, which everyone admired.  I’m a very lucky girl.

It’ll be a relatively busy weekend.  I’m looking after Mum’s dog, as she and J are away at the moment.  I’ll be dropping the dog off to Mum’s friend tomorrow, so it’s a temporary arrangement only.  Other than that, I need to get some descaling stuff to our tenants with the washing machine problem, and I’m meeting up with my friend S on Sunday for croissants and coffee.  Yum.

three years ago tomorrow…

…we got married. Happy anniversary to us!

I’m so lucky.  I have the best husband in the whole world.  Even though my mental health has been an issue for longer than our marriage, he has always been there for me, supporting me and doing everything he can to help things be better.  He is wonderful. 

::love::

the latest drivel

Wow, it feels like longer than a week since I last wrote here.  I must admit, nothing spectacularly interesting has been going on.  We spent every evening except Friday at the reno after work, sanding and patching, sanding and patching.  I think we may FINALLY be coming to the end of it.  I’d forgotten how slow and monotonous this part of doing a reno is.  Still, in a few days’ time we’ll hopefully be painting, which will speed things right up.

We had tenants move out today, and this is a first for us – we don’t have new ones lined up to take their place.

feeling amazingly good

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!

busy week

One of our tenants moved out of one of our units last weekend.  The final inspection (to assess how much of the bond was returned) was at 11am.  For the rest of the day, I scrubbed toilets, handbasins, sinks, the oven, benchtops, walls (to get rid of marks), and windows.  I also did about a thousand loads of laundry – four sets of sheets, eight towels, together with bathmats, handtowels, quilt covers, and teatowels.

And where was SO during all this activity, I hear you ask?  Well, he was out doing some necessary shopping.  The tenant had burned every last one of the saucepans and pots beyond repair, so they needed to be replaced.  Also, the vacuum cleaner had given up the ghost, so we needed to get a new one.  Plus, there were various other things that we either needed to get or needed to replace, so he was running around for the majority of the day.  When he got back, he changed washers on taps, cleaned the shower, and vacuumed throughout.  After all our hard work however, the unit was spotless and ready to hand over on Sunday, which went smoothly.

back to work tomorrow

We’ve had such a good week off.  We did attack the garden, and it looks about a thousand times better.  Before, it was a dirty spot where lawn clippings lived; now, it’s a reticulated (irrigated) garden bed.  It even has a lemon tree in it, if you can call a stick about waist-high with seven leaves a tree.  Well, it will be a tree, some time in the future.  I also did a good deed, and moved a gardenia from the front of the house to the new garden bed.  Poor little thing, it was getting fried by too much sunlight.  Combined with being in a particularly dry part of the garden, where it only received water if the wind blew in the right direction, it was definitely on its way out.  Now it’s in a shaded spot and between two sprinklers.  If it doesn’t improve, out it goes.

We saw Dralion on Friday night.  It was fantastic.  One of the things I always forget about Cirque du Soleil is the beauty of the music.  It takes you to somewhere else.  It was just incredible, the whole show.  And SO indulged me – we had popcorn, and I had not one, but two Cornettos.  Yum!!  Fortunately, this balanced out with the plain raw vegies I had for lunch, so I didn’t really ‘break’ my diet as such – I just kind of stretched the outer limits of it.

It’s just been such a good week.  Every day we’ve woken up at a reasonable hour (never later than 9am) and we’ve had a coffee together.  It’s been such a great way to start the day.  I even cooked dinner every single night (apart from once, when we had take away).  Plus, the fact we sorted out the garden bed is a big bonus.  Every time we look out the back, we both instinctively look over to the right at it.  What can I say, all that hard effort was worth it.  (Well, it was hard effort for SO, who did most of the digging and reticulation stuff.  I mostly weeded and planted.)  Still, these things don’t last forever, and we’re back to the grindstone tomorrow.  Oh well, it’s given us a renewed taste for early retirement, I can tell you.

valentine’s day

I had a wonderful day yesterday.  I woke up with SO gently stroking my forehead and smiling at me.  He told me he’d made me a ‘real’ (as opposed to instant) coffee.  I went into our our kitchen/dining/living area, and there was the coffee - together with a beautiful bunch of lilies, my all-time favourite food ever, a juicy mango (wrapped in clear cellophane, with a pink ribbon) and a card.  The card said, ‘All I want for Valentine’s Day…’ (open card) … is to be close to you’.   Awwwwwwww. 

I’m so lucky.

lucky

You know you have a wonderful life when you see this….

…. and realise that it applies to you.

The key thing in my life that I wished for was SO.  Not him specifically, but a man who loves me, respects me, trusts me, and understands me.  I am so incredibly, amazingly lucky that we met, and that he feels the same way about me that I do about him.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Picture courtesy of PostSecret.com

family dramas: mother

Ah, the joys of family. Let’s face it, if you don’t have family issues, then you’re not human. I’ve been out of contact with my mother for a while now, probably about three or four months.  This was precipitated by a nasty email she sent me, telling me what a horrible selfish daughter I am.  I decided that it wouldn’t hurt me to take a little break for a bit from her unique brand of crazy, so I did so.  And to be honest, it’s been great. Sad, isn’t it.

I love my mother. However, she can be incredibly hurtful. I received an email from her last night, which had attached a string of communication between her and my aunt, my mother’s sister. They’ve always had a rocky relationship. I suspect it’s because they had a difficult childhood (my grandfather was a nasty alcoholic). It probably wasn’t helped by my aunt’s long-undiagnosed bipolar II. She’s on meds for it now which work well, but she had a few tough decades, where she suffered at the mercy of the mental health system. I’m talking everything from being advised to take LSD (yes, by a qualified doctor – hey, it was the 70s!) to being addicted to various prescription drugs.

She did come back from the brink, and is now a nurse, with a specialisation in mental health. She pays her bills, takes her meds, and is generally an upstanding member of society (with a slight alcohol problem, but no one’s perfect). My mother, however, continues to view her as somewhat Looney Toons.

Anyhow, they’d been arguing about my grandmother’s health care.  In an email to my aunt, Mother says, ‘Now grow up for goodness’ sakes – you are becoming rather pathetic!’ Not designed to engender good relations, one might think.  Amazingly, my aunt replied politely (gritting her teeth, no doubt) and didn’t take the bait.  Aunty did however point out an inaccuracy of Mum’s, which Mother obviously didn’t like, and so responded as follows: ‘I don’t know how you hold down a nursing job <Aunt’s Name> you are a complete nutcase!’

And she wonders why she doesn’t get along with her sister.

What do you do with an immediate family member who thinks it’s okay to treat people like this? This is one example of behaviour which has happened over and over again throughout my lifetime – to me, to her siblings, to Dad’s siblings.  She doesn’t pull it with her friends – she’s not that stupid.  The thought of continuing to deal with this crap until she (or I) dies is not fun.  And yet – and yet.  I do love her. Even though she is distinctly unlovable at times.

Sigh. I think this is one of those unsolvable situations.

update and rambling

Still unwell here, but slowly getting better. The quack gave me a script for antibiotics, but I didn’t get it filled.  He did say that if I could, I should hold off.  He’s been my doctor for over a decade, so he knows how many times I’ve been on antibiotics before, and that I have developed a fairly decent immunity to them.  So yeah, ixnay on the drugs.  This time.  I’d rather hold off until I get something really serious, like blood poisoning (which I’ve had before, incidentally, when an impacted wisdom tooth went horribly wrong).

I have managed to get a couple of things done today.  I dragged myself to the shops, and bought some food.  Stuff like salad, meat, you know, standard foodstuffs.  I even made a salad for dinner tonight, and SO cooked the meat on the BBQ.  It tastes so much better when barbequed.

I also put some more things on eBay.  Slowly but surely, I hope we’ll be getting rid of our excess clothes.  I can’t wait to have my wardrobe space back! Then I can fill it back up, with stuff that fits.   Heh heh heh…. I haven’t mentioned that part to SO yet.  I may wait a while before I do.

I got spoiled tonight After dinner, SO made me a real coffee (ie. with our coffee machine, not instant) and also gave me a glass of port.  Yum.  It’s a funny thing, both my brother and I are really happy drinkers.  We drink, we’re happy, we drink more, then we fall asleep.  SO and my friends all love it when I have a couple of drinks, because I’m an amusing lush.  It’s easy to see how I have alcoholics on both sides of my family.  That said, all the alcoholics, on both sides, tend to be nasty SOBs when drinking….. It’s an interesting conundrum.  Maybe if all alcoholics were happy drunks, my family would get along better. In fact, I can guarantee it.  I still have flashbacks to the first time SO met my mother’s side of the family.  It was Granny’s 90th birthday, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins went out to dinner at a posh restaurant in West Perth.  My uncle (mum’s brother) started a speech at the appropriate time of the evening, and my aunt (mum’s sister) stood up and abused him.  He argued back.  Fortunately, it didn’t end up with food being thrown.  But yes, not the best family occasion ever.  SO was amazed, and fascinated.  Luckily it didn’t scare him off.  A lesser man would have run.  SO chose to view it as free entertainment.