Staying inside

Tuesday:

We've had a few cooler (comparatively) days, but back to blazing hot today and tomorrow. We couldn't leave the house this morning waiting for tradesmen, but I don't think I would have wanted to anyway. Even going to the movies or something indoors would probably involve leaving the car outside in the sun for a while. So hard to drive when the steering wheel is burning your hands.

We'd had a minor problem with the heat pump for the pool, one corner of the touch screen wasn't responding which was annoying. The screen part was replaced this morning. Still under warranty, obviously. We haven't been using the heater lately of course, no need to in summer.

Also I had organised a Salvation Army pickup and that was this morning. Two bicycles that the kids had grown out of and a few bits of children's furniture and other things a bit heavy/big/unwieldy for me to get to a drop off centre. Tim and I put it all in front of the garage this morning and later in the day it all disappeared. I assume it was the Salvos! If they knocked I didn't hear. But they had a list of what I wanted to donate so it was probably obvious that this cluster of items was for them.

I made an gaffe over it though. Two years ago when we moved here, Tim's cousin gave us a house-warming present that didn't suit my personal taste. On the weekend I put it next to the door to remember to put it out for the Salvos, still in the original box. And that cousin came over for dinner on Sunday night. They didn't say anything and I only realised after they had gone that it was a bit obvious I had never used it and was getting rid of it. I hope they weren't offended. I think they are too sensible to be bothered. Not everyone likes the same things. My sister-in-law has been known to give something back to be exchanged, and I didn't mind at all. I'd rather she had something she liked (or in that case was cookware that didn't fit her small oven).

We still have a lot of things to get rid of, but not worthy of passing on, and I have organised a council pickup in January. The garage is already looking much emptier.

Another cleanup project was started today, Aiden's bedroom. He has a small bedroom and a lot of stuff. He is given more and more things every birthday and Christmas, and we don't cull much of the old stuff. A lot of it is great, for instance for his birthday he got a big remote-control boat (used in the pool when no-one is swimming) and a couple of build-your-own-robot things. Lots of fun, but they are bulky items that take up a lot of shelf space. Today we cleared half the floor and the top of his chest of drawers. A good start. I need to buy some boxes for his Lego. He has accumulated a huge amount over the years and it's currently in a couple of really big plastic boxes that he can't lift or move. I think several smaller ones would be better to make them accessible. He's not as keen on Lego as he used to be though. In a few years we can pass it on to the younger kids in the family.

We swam later in the afternoon when the sun was less burny.

Here is Grumpy the blue-tongue, looking bad-tempered as usual.

 And Draco the water dragon.

 He went behind the big pot, climbed up, and is peeking at me from over the rim.

Great day

Thursday:

Today was a great day. I had my cataloguing exam and I'm sure I aced it. And I enjoyed doing it! I had studied hard and was well prepared. I find the work something like solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle, mentally challenging but in a good way with a sense of achievement when it's done. I am hoping for 100%, but I know it's likely I'll get something wrong that will have me saying 'doh' when I see it!

In my afternoon class I got my official result back from the face-to-face exam a few weeks ago. The teacher did give me great feedback at the time, but it was nice to see 'excellent' on the page!

And the third thing, chronologically first, was a big drop in weight overnight. When I weighed myself this morning I wasn't sure I believed it and had to weigh myself again to check. After three weeks of almost no loss, my weight had been going down each day this week but today a whole 0.7 kg drop. That gets me down to 76.2 kg! I have been eating more carefully but also exercising hard. I started up 'Dance Central' on the Xbox again, an hour each day of dripping sweat.

I'm sleeping much better and I'm feeling good.

The only thorn in my side is the ongoing pool heater drama. We need to get a final inspection certificate to say the pool is fully completed, safely fenced etc etc. We had fixed any interim issues, like the height of the fence, long ago. But then our neighbour complained about the potential noise from the heat pump, before it had even been turned on. And although once he heard it he said it was fine, that official complaint is out there being a nail in the wheel of progress. It's been going back and forth between us, the pool company who installed the heat pump, and the certifiers (who are very very slow to respond to anything). This has been going on forever! They came out to do their final inspection on 29 August, more than six weeks ago. I'm going to ask our neighbour to put it in writing that he is ok with it, and I also need to check that it is far enough from the boundary fence. Endless phone calls and emails back and forth.

Anyway, I'm not going to let that get me down. It will work out in the end. And I'm happy today!

Vegetable patch

Saturday:

Today I had Tim home to help me with the vegetable patch. He attacked the bed with a pick and managed to break up the rocks/compacted soil deep enough for my little seedlings to survive. Lots more rocks emerged, of course. They breed in the dirt. Jasmine and I planted out the baby vegetables.

They don't look like much yet, but they'll grow! Tomatoes, jalapeno chilli, capsicum, beans, peas, snow peas and cucumbers. I have some herbs to put in pots at the end but I accidentally put the potting mix in the garden bed along with the manure yesterday. I'll get some more on Monday. 

Jasmine's ear and throat seem to be all better, although she still has a runny nose. 

We are going to run the pool heat pump for the next few days and see how much it warms up the water, a heatwave is predicted for the middle of next week, up to 31C!! That is summer temperature, not the second week of spring! Maybe Tim and I will get to try out the pool. But not if the water is still freezing. 

Good and bad

Saturday:

Starting with the good news: this morning Tim and I were out the back discussing the soft landscaping (plants) and we saw Craig in his backyard (we have a high fence but if we are on the high part of our backyard and he is in the low part of his, we can see each other) so we called him over to ask how he felt about the heat pump noise. "Is it on right now?" he asked. I almost danced with glee. He was about 2 metres away from it and he couldn't hear it! So yay. He says it's fine, our air conditioner and the pump in the shed are louder (possibly an ungracious way to give in, to mention our other noises) and we had a nice chat. So the heat pump is fine, we can get on with the landscaping. Only one more hurdle to go - "final inspection" of the pool from the council. They already approved the fences, so I don't know what problem there could be, but you never know! I'll organise that on Monday, I was waiting to hear if we needed to move the heat pump first.

Now the bad news. I mentioned a few weeks ago that my father-in-law Des's partner Jo (they've been together at least 5 years but could be longer) found out she had lung cancer. Apparently she did smoke for 50 years. She is 70 years old and very obese, so the prognosis didn't seem good. The doctors spent a few weeks doing more painful tests - she wanted to get the lump removed straight away but there were frustrating delays - then operated yesterday, planning to remove the affected lobe of her lung. But the cancer had already moved into her chest. They closed her up without removing the lobe, no point. When we heard from Des last night, Jo was still recovering from the operation and didn't know yet. But this is obviously very bad news. They are going to try chemo and/or radiotherapy and ever-optimistic Des thinks she still could have a good few years. Having had both my parents die from cancer, I am more pessimistic. I feel very sorry for Des, he looked after his sick wife for years before she died about 10 years ago, now he is going to go through it again. I don't know if we'll be visiting her in hospital this weekend, we'll see what she wants us to do.

Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic. Some people respond very well to treatment. I tend to expect the worst, I think.

Today we did a lot of gardening, just about all the dirt is moved to where we want it. It was beautiful outside, like spring which is only a week away. Lots of hard physical labour with shovel and wheelbarrow. I had a lot of energy today. No interest in sitting inside, I wanted to be outside doing! The dry mouth was much less today which is great. Good appetite control.

Hungry

Thursday:

Brrrr it's cold!

Yesterday we finally got the heat pump for our pool plugged in. We turned it on for a few hours (we have no intention of running it all winter, it's to extend the swimming season into spring and autumn) and it seemed very quiet to me. I went over to our neighbour's house and told him it was on so he could listen and tell us what he thought, let us know if the noise was a problem. I was in and out of the house all afternoon, digging in the garden, so if he came over to speak to me I missed him. And I was out all today. So still don't know his opinion or if we need to get the heat pump (huge thing, and plumbed into the other pool equipment) moved to further away from the fence.

The tiler broke his 50 millionth promise to come and clean up yesterday, it's been over a month now I think. I didn't want to let him off the hook but it's taking up too much valuable real estate in my head! I plan to put a bad review online but otherwise let it go. Aiden and I attacked the stains (I think it's concrete dust?) all over our new rockwork with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of water, and it comes off with a bit of elbow grease. Or we could hire a pressure washer from the hardware store, maybe. I'm stick of waiting for him and stressing about it. Let it go.

And the other ongoing thing is this skip bin still out the front. I think I've called four times and texted twice. Yesterday he said, 'oh didn't the guys pick it up on Saturday? It was on the list.' 'Well no, they didn't, it's still there.' 'Ok, we'll pick it up today or tomorrow.' Well guess what tomorrow is over and it's still there. I guess I call again tomorrow. It's kind of funny really, but a pain.

After two days when I felt the Duromine wasn't working as well, I then had two good days, but today it seemed to have no affect at all. Hungry, tired. I've eaten my calories for the day and haven't had dinner yet. And slept on the train this afternoon. And I'm very cold, but I can't blame that on the Duromine, that is just winter. I am really really craving KFC right now and I don't know if I'll be able to resist when I go and pick up the kids from sport. I think it's time to increase my dose up to 30mg, which is what the doctor suggested I do after a week (it's been more than a week). I can always go back if the side effects are bad or something, but I seem to need more than the 15mg. Most people do. I'll give it a try.

Roller Coaster

Saturday:

Life is a roller coaster, isn't it?

I was so happy this morning. The pool is finished, and full of water, we still have to do the 'hand-over' but it looks great.

And we're getting a skip bin put out the front this morning so we can get rid of all the piles of rubbish and get started on the garden.

But then Tim was taking Aiden to his tennis lesson, and was trapped by an angry neighbour outside. Craig is the one who put in the complaint about the heat pump for the pool, which has still never been turned on. We understand his concerns but haven't done anything about it yet, the pool company is supposedly following it up, we weren't too worried yet as we were not even going to turn it on for months, we're not using the pool in winter. We've got time to put up barriers and/or lots of plants or at least find out what needs to be done, like moving it further away from the fence (difficult and expensive). So a silent heat pump can hardly be disturbing him, can it?

Well it can. Tim was subjected to a 15 minute rant about everything from legal action about the 'non-compliant' heat pump (apparently he has access to information we don't?? He said he'd talked to our certifier which is very annoying as they haven't spoken to us) to concrete dust from the construction on his clothes on the line to us doing everything vindictively because we don't like him. Apparently we never speak to him, we never consult him about anything (I thought we did! About the fence, anyway, which I had thought was the only thing that would affect him.) Very confused, we fed his dog when he was away and I though we were fine if not good friends with them.

Right at the moment I don't like him at all! I'm utterly miserable. Have we been bad neighbours? Is he an unreasonable person? A bit of both? I feel guilty, sad, worried, frustrated, depressed. I've never had to live next to an enemy before. Seems like he hates us. Will we be banned from using our very expensive pool heat pump, and can we get our money back on the grounds they didn't tell us it wasn't compliant? Will Craig complain when we run our water feature waterfall - will that be too loud too? Or if we have happy children squealing as they play in the pool in summer?

Tim was surprised when one day I described them as our 'old' neighbours, he says they're not much older than us. Obviously I was getting the curmudgeon vibe from the start. Although they had a huge noisy NYE party soon after we moved here.

Or is he justified?

I just don't know, I'm too upset. We can't get on to the pool people or the certifiers today because it's the weekend, so we don't know what is going on. Does the pool company have information they haven't passed on? I've never had any kind of dispute with a neighbour before, I feel like I'm getting a stomach ulcer. I'm scared to go outside in case I see him and he yells at me. I would just start crying if he did.

In our last house we had a big tree that dropped a branch on a neighbours roof and broke some tiles. We were on very good terms with him, we had the rest of the tree branches trimmed so it wouldn't happen again and offered to pay for repairs (he had spare roof tiles which he put on himself so we didn't need to). It was all amicable and stress-free. I certainly didn't feel under attack by him pointing out the damage and asking us to have the tree trimmed, it was just something that needed to be done. It doesn't need to be like this. First we heard of it was a letter from the certifier saying he'd complained.

Neighbours

Monday:

Dramas with the unfinished pool continue. We're waiting for the team who do the interior surface to recover from illness and catch up on their backlog, no idea how long that will take. That was supposed be the last thing directly related to the pool itself (not the landscaping) but...

Today I got an official letter saying there had been a complaint from a neighbour about the pool's heat pump, saying it might be a noise nuisance and do we have approval for it.  !!  First of all, the f*cking thing has never been turned on so how can they complain about the noise already? It supposed to be the quietest available, a brand new model, but to be honest I have no idea how noisy it will be. But neither do they. The neighbour was not named, but I assume it is the one the heat pump is nearest - also the only neighbour we actually know. It is not near their house, it is up the back of the property. On the other side of the fence is their pool. Over the back fence is also a pool, if it was those neighbours. I mean, WTF?

Oh, and if it was either of those neighbours (and who else could it be) there are a few things we could complain about if we were the type. But I have no intention of getting into escalating neighbour wars.

And secondly, what "approval"? I have spoken to the pool company, who are following it up for me, and they said they have never had to get approval or had any problems before. I can't find anything on the internet with a quick search about having to get approval for it. But there is probably a local council rule somewhere. Oh boy. What fun.

Of course the tiled area next to the pool is still "almost finished" as it has been for weeks. Every week the tiler promises "by the end of the week". I swear I didn't have this much trouble with tradesmen in Canberra. I think our tiler got behind due to illness and is now juggling a lot of jobs and we are just low on his list of priorities. It's all very disappointing.

In hopefully good news, I got my job application in for that part-time library assistant job. Applications don't close for another week so I won't know for a while if I got an interview.  Who wouldn't want me, right? But I haven't done a job application for a long time, I'm a bit out of practice. Both the people I asked were happy to be my referees.

I'm more used to my change in hairstyle, it's ok. Very pale blonde though so my dark blonde roots are going to be very obvious! And my sister-in-law was here for dinner and said something about my hair getting so long when I'd just had a dramatic (I thought) amount cut off! But usually I have it pulled back and now it's out around my face.

I have sleep apnoea, diagnosed three years ago, and I was compliant with my CPAP at first but really dislike it so haven't used it consistently for ages. It's important because it keeps me breathing at night, but I just can't sleep with it on. Today I had a consultation with a specialist dentist about getting a mouthguard made that holds my jaw forward which is supposed to help keep the airway open. I don't know though, it cost about $1200 and no guarantee it works. Like most of my other health issues, my sleep apnoea would probably be resolved by me losing weight. Wish that was as easy as it is to say.

My hips have been bothering me a lot, on and off. I'm seeing an exercise physiologist tomorrow. I wonder if she'll tell me to lose weight too. Good advice, really.

To end on a happy note, next weekend I'll be taking my daughter on a visit back to Canberra to a friend's party. Tim has taken her a couple of times but I didn't go, I haven't been back since we moved. This time I'm taking her and have lined up a few favourite people and places. Should be fun. But very cold! It's nearly mid-winter here and Canberra in the mountains is much colder than Sydney on the coast.