ummmmmmm....

HELP!!

Ok, I did it...I ventured over to Vox...

I created an account...

Filled in my profile...

yada, yada, yada

BUT...

how do I find people?

where is everyone?

where are everyone else's blogs?

It looks like it is a HUGE community over there...

Is there anyway of seeing who is online?

I need a map and a compass ASAP

Please!!!

Taxi driver...

Just Another Of My "Jobs"

Moving back home wasn't in my plans - long term or short term - but, as it has turned out, has been fortunate in some respects.

My parents live here and both of them are getting on and now in their late 70's. Dad has been ill on and off for the last few years and in January this year became significantly worse than he had been. Bear in mind that the nearest town for seeing specialists is a 140km round trip it isn't easy for either of them to do that sort of driving on a regular basis.

Bring on CC - now all kids are at school (yes, Miss 3 has turned into Miss 4 and is now Miss 5, therefore at school) - taxi driver extraordinaire!

Over 5000kms has been added to the odometer or speedo or whatever that thingamajig is called on my car since we moved home...another 140 added this morning.

Now dad is a stubborn old thing - insists he can still do things he could always do - he has now learnt one lesson....don't stand on a chair on a concrete floor to hammer a nail into a beam. (He has problems with remaining upright on solid ground as it is and has had several falls since he started getting unwell.)

Left elbow needing to be wired and pinned the result of that escapade. Back and forth to hospital for surgery and in following weeks fracture clinic.

The week after he has cast removed from arm (at this stage he is totally fed up with hospitals and I could do the drive in my sleep) he gets results of a colonscopy and is booked in (same hospital) for surgery. Needed half the large bowel removed.

*lecture time (of sorts)*

Bowel cancer is rampant in my father's family - several of his brothers have been diagnosed with it - all but one of them have died from it. For the last 4 or 5 years I have been trying to convince mum to make sure he gets screenings done. Finally he agreed to it....the result of the colonoscopy? A very large tumour and several polyps..had they been left even just a few more months it would have been inoperable.

Yes, screening and tests are uncomfortable and somewhat embarassing but come on folks...far better to go through that than to have to deal with the other option. IF there is any history in your family..if you have reached those "ages" make appointments and get them done - for peace of mind if nothing else.

*end of lecture time (of sorts)*

Dad goes into surgery...half a day later he is still not out of recovery. Was several hours after that we find out he has ended up in HDU - not on the ward where he was supposed to be. Walking in and seeing him hooked up to all those machines with tubes coming out all over the place was frightening - he seemed to have aged 10 years overnight. For the first time ever he looked frail; he looked his age. His blood pressure was dangerously low (at one point it was 75/42) and his oxygen sats in the low 80's. He wasn't a well man at all. 

I think I mentioned up there that he was a tough old coot...

3 days of HDU and he was back on the ward - and complaining (knew then he would come through this ok.)

Now 6 weeks down the track he has had his final appointment with the specialist - he doesn't want to see him again for another 12 months.

In my mother's words, "he is back to normal. He's a confounded nuisance. He's bossing everyone about again."

He's a tough old coot.

I should mention that 2 weeks after dad came home from hospital mum was booked in to have a cataract removed from one of her eyes. Again, the surgery for that the 140km round trip from home. The check ups with doctor afterwards ditto. (Co ordinating appointments for the pair of them over the last couple of weeks has been fun to say the least lol). As of next week however mum is allowed to start driving again...and I can take off my taxi hat for a while.

I'm not complaining at all - am relieved that we were here at the right time as they would have really struggled to cope with everything without my help. I wish I owned shares in an oil company though.....

Procrastinating....

...I'm good at that

I vaguely remember sitting down a while back. I vaguely remember making an entry along the lines of "I really need to get back into this whole blog business". I vaguely remember trying to make a conscious effort.

But hey...better late than never right??

(I can't for the life of me remember what font or font size I used to use.....am guessing this will look completely different to earlier entries...oh well...)

Sometimes things happen in life that make you sit back and reassess everything. They might be big things or small things but no matter how big they often have a huge effect.

There was an explosion here yesterday - at the service station diagonally across from our house. A diesel tanker exploded without warning - the owner of the service station died. A middle-aged man, married with 5 children - the eldest of them 21.

Only a few hours earlier I had been into the servo for petrol...had a chat to his wife when she served me just like any other day...wished her a nice day as I left. 3 hours later and her whole world has been turned upside down.

The mood in town is very subdued - a small town, everyone knows everyone else - this is affecting everybody. How suddenly things can change...no warnings...nothing...how fragile human life really is.

RIP Tony

I realise now that I am leaving major gaps  - small town?? WTF?? Last time I posted regularly I was still living in Doonside....how time changes things in big ways huh?

To cut a very long story short - we had to move. Guess most folk are aware of teh rental crisis going on in Sydney...yep..got us too! Owner of our place was unable to keep up mortgage repayments so had to sell...at very short notice. I lost count of the number of properties I looked at in Sydney that were within budget- most of which would not have been suitable for housing animals - and there was hot competition for those! In the time frame I had to work with (bear in mind we had to vacate early in the new year so looking in the run up to Christmas etc not a lot of fun) I drove hundreds of kms in the surrounding suburbs in the hope of finding somewhere suitable that wasn't going to blow my budget completely out of the water. Alas....mission impossible. Lots of sympathetic real estate agents but sympathy doesn't put a roof over the heads of kids.

A house came up...in my old home town *gulp*. The biggest appeal - the rent less than half of what we had been paying in Sydney already and about a third of what I was looking at having to pay to stay there.

The old home town....in the middle of freaking nowhere! argh

We moved - between Christmas and New Year.

6 months on I am almost used to the fact that the nearest Woolworths is 50kms away. The nearest "good" shopping centre a mere 70kms away. I very quickly learned to be efficient with shopping but man oh man, there are so many times I really miss my old IGA being just around the corner.

I miss civilisation often...but am getting used to the much slower pace of life here. I don't know how long we will stay....but for now it is working out ok. (So many things that at this moment are popping into my head.....but need to get them into a semblance of order before trying to share them.)

The shitty times are less than they were - have certainly been a lot of good times - the balance is there.

And so back to today...

have spent the hours while the kids are at school sitting here and reading this blog of mine. It has been a long time since I went through it. So long since I read any of it. Some of it seems so remote and vague.....other parts of it I have literally been laughing out loud.

This time...I promise myself as much as anyone else... I really will start sitting back down and writing.

PS....have taken note of the comments you gusy have left and the messages as well re the other blog site...am going to get a move on over there as well when the motivation really does kick in......see you on the other side!!

Been away far too long...

Don't Know Where To Start

Hmmmmmm....is going to take forever to get the thoughts in any sort of order...is funny hey, time seems to disappear so fast and in such a way that you lose all sense of perspective. I hadn't realised that it had been so long since I last logged in here - shit, is almost 12 months - really don't know where the time has gone.

So much has happened - have got no idea where to start...

so many changes...

so many things gone wrong...

some things have actually gone right *shock horror*...

so out of touch with everyone and everything in so many ways though...that I really do regret. "Sorry" is my middle name  - well, it should be - and guilt. My god, just thinking about a handful of things that have happened I realise how I should have handled them differently; my judgment should have been far far better than it was; only hindsight vision is 20/20 - at times I think I should have had a dog leading the way.

There is no way in this one entry that I am going to be able to deal with everything....

one little bit at a time...

A break...

From All Things Net

I was told a few days ago that I was too dependant on my online friends and that wasn't a good thing. Strangely enough, it was one of my closest friends who told me this - a net friend originally but now also a real life one - and it has taken until now to realise what he meant.

Take care all.