Merry Christmas

Sunday:

Merry Christmas everyone!

We spent the days leading up to Christmas cleaning the house, shopping and cooking, ready for Christmas for 20. We all got involved in icing the gingerbread, here is a selection.

We were very happy that both the window and the shade sail for the pool were finished in time for Christmas. Depending on the time of day, the sail can shade anything from a thin sliver to most of  the seating area and up to a quarter of the pool. It has definitely helped ward against sunburn already, we are swimming every day with temps in the 30s. Yesterday the air was 36 and the water was 34! Almost like a bath. We were thinking of getting an image printed on the sail - a phoenix flying overhead - but it was delaying things too much so we decided to just get the plain canvas.

On Christmas morning it was up early for presents. We usually host Christmas lunch but this year we switched to dinner (evening) so we had a relaxed morning examining our presents and having an indulgent breakfast.

The afternoon was chaotic as family came and went at different times - to swim, to share presents, going home again to finish their dinner contribution then come back. It wasn't so much fun, Tim and I would have liked to be in the pool (in between tending to the turkey) but had to take turns waiting in the house to let people in. Actually when I did have a swim it wasn't much fun either due to the little girls, but more on that later. Then there was a lot of waiting around for 20 people to be ready at the same time to open presents together. Like herding cats.

Finally we all sat down to dinner together and that was lovely. As usual everyone contributed... more or less. The two unreliable branches of the family didn't bring what they said they would (of course) which was kind of funny after the mini texting war over what they wanted to bring, especially over the trifle! Only two of us provided dessert instead of four, and they didn't seem to bring much else instead. But there was plenty of food anyway, just my turkey and roast vegetables would be enough for a normal dinner and there were lots of other contributions. The turkey was tender and delicious, the secret is lots of butter! Here you see it half carved.

We played some board games in the evening. The little kids were all very tired and cranky and over-sugared by that point so were eventually taken home to bed.

On Boxing Day we cleaned up the mess from the day before (Tim's aunt had done some washing up, but basically we do it all and are also left to somehow fit all the rubbish and recycling in our bins, it takes weeks to catch up with stinky food waste stored in the freezer - oo another little gripe while I'm here one person took leftover prawns home at my suggestion BUT shelled them here and left the shells and heads in our bin! All the bulky stinky bit for us, gee thanks) then everyone came back for lunch to celebrating Tim's father's birthday. We cooked some BBQ and had leftovers from Christmas, and I made another dessert and bought a cake. Then more board games and swimming in the afternoon. The little kids were all still really overtired, one threw up (too much junk food?) and were generally out of sorts.

Oh my goodness, a word on the little girls. Emma is 5 and Eliza is 4. Emma doesn't have firm control over her emotions and there are frequent tears and tantrums. Eliza thinks she can get away with anything as long as she has a big cheeky grin on her face. Together.... well. Apart from making a huge mess and the dizzying changes from best friends to hated enemies, this holiday period they found the box of Christmas Crackers and sat down and opened every one, and then much worse when somehow unobserved they pulled all the almost-ripe peaches off our dwarf tree (and put them in one mother's bag, clearly intending to take them home) which has wasted half of them as I don't think they will ripen - the whole year's carefully watered crop! So annoying! In the pool they need constant attention of course, they both have swimming lessons but they are only little. They constantly swim out too deep then have to grab on to someone, and if that someone is not strong (Jasmine or Aiden) or a good swimmer (me) then we all nearly drown. Jasmine is a good swimmer but can't do much while trying to hold up a child in each arm. And the parents do nothing, usually tending to the younger child in their arms (we have 3 two-year-olds). I usually avoid disciplining other people's children, but if they are in my house or pool I guess I'll have to start. I was really pissed off about the peaches and did tell them not to do that again.

I was exhausted by the end of Boxing Day and I was really wishing people would leave. Some hung around to well after I wanted to be eating dinner (leftovers) and collapsing. They might have been hoping for an invitation to stay but I needed down time! Finally got them out. I spent most of the following day napping, completely worn out from days of cooking and cleaning and general chaos. I feel like I didn't enjoy it all as much as in previous years. Maybe I'm getting too old to host two days in a row. And the family gets bigger and bigger.

The few days since then it has been really hot, we stay inside as much as possible. I had to do some grocery shopping Friday morning and went at 9am, it was already scorching. Quiet days reading and computer games all morning, board games together in the afternoon (we got five new ones this Christmas!)then a swim. Even with the shade sail we don't risk swimming in the middle of the day, although lying in the hammock in the shade is nice. Family are coming over this afternoon for a swim and then the usual Sunday afternoon Dungeons and Dragons and dinner, it won't be all 20 though! Probably 8-10, I never know for sure.  

Solar panels

Monday:

I ate really well all week, then stuffed myself with junk on the weekend. This morning I was down 0.6kg to 72.5kg, but I had dipped much lower before the weekend. I felt physically awful this morning, too. My body does not like junk food, even if my mouth does!

Wednesday:

The solar panels are being installed on the roof today (and maybe a bit of tomorrow if they don't finish). I have to be home because they need access to the roof cavity sometimes. It is so loud! Drilling and banging and people walking up and down the tiles. But it will be worth it.

A worker just came in to use the bathroom (oops, I haven't checked it since the kids left for school and my son doesn't have the best aim...) and she was dripping sweat. We've had some warmer spring weather but today is an anomaly - it is 30C! Very summery. Just one day though, back to 20C tomorrow.

Virtual queasiness

Monday:

70.4 kg today, another 1.2 kg down. Awesome. My wedding and engagement rings are getting loose, I'll have to get them adjusted soon.

We have a VR (virtual reality) thingo and on the weekend Tim got Skyrim for it. It's the first really major game we've had for it. Skyrim is a fantasy adventure, swords and sorcery and dragons, that you can also play on a regular computer but with a VR headset it's really immersive. Unfortunately it also made me very queasy! You control how you move around in the game with hand-held controllers but of course your body is standing still - otherwise you would walk into walls and furniture in the real world - and some people can't handle this dissonance. Responses in our family ranged from no ill effects, to feeling like they were going to fall over, to mild queasiness after an extended play, to feeling very sick and having to lie down for two hours (me!). I get motion-sickness quite often in the real world too, or during 3D movies, no it wasn't surprising. Sad though, it looks like a great game.

So hot today, 34C in the middle of autumn. Apparently the hottest April day in 160 years. Who says global warming isn't real?!

Humid

Friday:

I'm really struggling with the humidity this week. It was 87% yesterday, which means the air is so saturated with water that when you sweat it has nowhere to evaporate to so the body's cooling system doesn't work. The temperature has been varied, but its very hot some days and will be up to 39C on Sunday. Exercise is twice as hard as usual, it's impossible to sleep, and I just feel tired and listless. I'm always like this with humidity. I remember when we went to Shenzen, China - just over the border from Hong Kong - for a few days and it was so hot and humid I could hardly move. I hated it. Such a relief when we went up into the mountains one day.

Otherwise everything is fine.

But I didn't get much done today.

Hot weekend

Saturday:

I started the day with some really sweaty and strenuous gardening. Tim always mows the big front lawn but the new turf by the pool is up too many stairs to take up the big petrol mower and I insisted on getting a little push mower so I often do it (Tim sometimes does). It's super hot here so I went out early but it was still blazing hot, especially pushing the mower and stooping to trim edges. It may not sound like hard work but it was! I only got it half done but the heat was too much for me by then I was getting bit dizzy.

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night but not as bad as the first night I think, and still dry mouth today but again not as bad as yesterday. Still good energy and appetite suppression.

Sunday:

My aunt and uncle (on my dad’s side) came visiting for lunch and brought three grandchildren (my cousin’s children) similar ages to my kids. It was over 40C so the kids were in the pool most of the time but none of the adults even wanted to step outside. Tim’s dad and Jo came over too, which was great as it spread the talking around a bit. Five hours can seem quite long! The kids all had a fantastic time though. I hope no one got too sunburned, we made they keep applying sunscreen.

I was really excellent with my food until just after they left when I shovelled in some chips. Then poured the rest in the bin. Not too much damage.

Tim’s brother is putting up a shed in his little backyard, apparently it had to be today (hottest Sydney day in 158 years in many suburbs) because he is going back to work tomorrow. So Tim is over there now in the afternoon heat helping. Crazy.

Last night I finally got a good night’s sleep. A bit queasy today at times, and still dry mouth but not as bad.

Taming the grass

Friday:

I was planning to get serious about my food from 1st January, but then found two good reasons not to wait. On Wednesday night we were at Nick & Ping's and did a bit of a Just Dance game, and my niece Emma insisted on watching all the replay videos. Oh my goodness I'm still so fat. It always surprises me, especially since I've lost a bit of weight recently, that I am a lot fatter in reality than I am in my head. Mirrors, photos, and apparently videos all ambush me.

Then I weighed myself Thursday morning to find my weight, which had stayed pretty steady over the Christmas indulgences, had suddenly caught up with reality too and jumped up a fair bit. I was unhappy with the number. So I decided not to wait another four days to stop eating so much junk.

I spent an hour and a half at least in the garden, working on the garden beds that don't yet have an edging of rocks so the pampered lawn has really invaded. I turned bits like this:

 Into this:

It was quite hard sweaty work, the grass had put down lots of roots along the runners and took a lot of effort to rip out. Next cooler day I'll work on getting the rock edging in.

We had people over in the afternoon for a swim and Tim's dad also dropped in with Jo, and Jo's daughter and granddaughter, on their way home from spending Christmas with Jo's family. I put out lots of leftover chips and chocolates but only ate a little bit of cheese, a few grapes, and one Lindor ball. I call that a win! Calories good for the day.

I had a really bad sleep last night. That operation I had a year ago to remove fibroids fixed the heavy periods but didn't take away all the pain. It gets bad each month the week before my period, and I was lying awake in a lot of discomfort for quite a bit of the night. Still aches today. It's 34 C here so I'm tired and sore and hot and not feeling very happy. Still staying away from the bad food though. We still have some in the house but it should be all finished off on Sunday night. Anything left after that will go in the bin.

Back to study

Thursday:

I returned to study on Monday, so I've suddenly gone from full-time mum (doing a bit of writing) to full-time student + mum. I'm finding it a bit hectic!

My campus is in the city, and the times of day I go and return mean I have to park a long way from the train station and never get an express - more like "all stops to the city", so it takes me about an hour and a half commute door to door (so three hours a day travel total). The walk from car to station and station to campus means I'm getting nearly 10,000 exercise steps on the three days I go in, so that is an up-side to the travel! And I read on the train.

I'm doing five subjects face-to-face, whichever ones were being held within my kids' school hours, and four subjects at home online (plus homework of course). I've done a bit of each so far and enjoyed it all. My classes are mostly all the same people (about fifteen of us) with a bit of variation as some like me don't go to every class, or go to a different class at a time that suits them better. Mostly women, mostly aged in 30s or 40s with a previous career and maybe child-rearing behind them. I'm pretty standard for the group though at the older end of the spectrum.

Obviously with the full-time workload something's got to give. I still collapse in front of the TV for my favourite shows in the evening but no computer games for me, a lot less playing with my phone or iPad, and I haven't done any writing. Not sure when I'm going to fit that in. So far I've been too tired after dinner for any study or creative work. I have done some study with the kids home in the afternoon, I told them I was going to work for an hour so they'd need to entertain themselves, so five seconds later they were chatting to me and showing me a new YouTube video or something. In any case, most afternoons I am driving them back and forth to dance lessons, gymnastics, youth group, dentist appointments etc. I'll be doing as much study as possible within school hours on the days I don't go in to campus.

I get half an hour lunch break on one of my campus days and none at all on the others so it's a matter of inhaling an apple or piece of cheese when we're given a bathroom break. My sister-in-law was saying I'd be able to go out and have lunch at Chinatown - ha! I barely get to leave the building. I take a series of healthy snacks to scoff between classes or on the train.

Sorry I'm going to complain about the heat again, Monday was ridiculously hot and my official student card photo looks like a sweaty tomato with glasses. Tuesday we had storms and heavy rain so that the tunnels under the city were running with water and I was wading through puddles in wet shoes (I still prefer that to the heat) then a couple of bearable days (31 today) but from tomorrow it's going up over 40 degrees for three days. I'll be staying home inside as much as possible; but I worry about Aiden playing tennis outside in that kind of heat, or going to my sister-in-law's for dinner when her parents disapprove of using the air conditioner.

We've had some progress with the pool and more work over the next few days, I'll post photos after this stage is done. Not everyone comes when they say they will, common complaint about tradesman I know. Our poor front and side lawn were just starting to recover a bit from the previous depredations, now they have been completely destroyed again by more heavy machinery driving over it during the wet stormy day. We don't have grass, we have mud with tyre tracks in it. Drying into interesting ridges and holes full of weeds. Well we can't worry about that bit now, we'll fix it when the backyard is all done.

I am really enjoying the study and I don't mind being busy, it gives me purpose in life.

Oh, and I forgot to mention on Monday, I lost 1.3 kg last week after getting back on the diet healthy way of life wagon.

Sore

Tuesday:

I knew my legs would be sore today, but I was wrong about which bits. My calves hurt the most when actually climbing up the rock stairs, but it's the muscles at the front just above my knees that are stiff and sore now. Going down stairs is very painful!

Didn't do much today. Just the grocery shopping. I feel guilty that we didn't do more but it was so hot today. The kids played board games and iPad games and got bored. Tomorrow will be worse, 38 degrees C.

I wish we had our pool.

Hiking

Monday:

Weight this morning 80.1 kg, up a little.

I knew today was going to be hot, tomorrow very hot, Wednesday stupidly hot. So if we wanted to be outside at all, it needed to be this morning. We went to a park by the river, but the kids didn't approve as the playground equipment was all on sand and they didn't want to get sand in their shoes. So we went for a walk. "Along the river" quickly became an almost vertical climb up the side of the ravine. There were steps cut into the boulders and carefully placed rocks, up and up.

And up and up. A couple of times I stopped for a rest and claimed I couldn't go any further but we kept going until we got to the lookout more or less at the top. At least I think this was the advertised official lookout, there was a little plaque on the rock but no fence, I didn't go too near the edge! My calves were hurting quite a bit and I bet I'll wake up stiff and unable to walk tomorrow! I took some photos from the top but they don't really show clearly how steep it was or how high above the river, which you can just see between the trees.

We climbed down again (hard on the knees), had a rest in the shade, then drove home and had some ice cream! It wasn't really part of my diet plan for the day, but then neither was an exhausting hike in the heat. More than an hour later after a rest, ice cream, and a cool shower, I was still hot and tomato-red in the face. And rather shaky about the legs.

Still hot

Wednesday:

Another scorcher today. I tend to feel quite ill in the heat, which I don't really understand as I'm in a relatively cool house. I mean I'm not actually out in the heat. I have air con for when it gets too hot in here. I wear light cotton clothing. I should barely notice that there is a heatwave outside. Yet I feel very tired and queasy and wilted.

Cool change scheduled for tonight.

I waited at home again to receive another parcel. There will be a couple more coming this week. I really want to get out to finish my Christmas shopping by the end of the week so I hope they both come tomorrow.

Hot

Tuesday:

It was so hot today. I think they said on the news it was the hottest December day for 10 years. I stayed at home because I was expecting a parcel, but it wasn't a day to be out anyway. Air conditioning all the way! Tomorrow will be the same. Even with the air con on, I feel a bit sick with the heat. Wish we had our pool!

Cupcake decoration

Wednesday:

The unrelenting heat is set to continue through the rest of the week at least. I went out for a walk this morning as soon as I'd got the kids off to school and nearly melted. Luckily I don't have to go out again, it's going to get a lot hotter. Poor Jas on the crowded school bus on the way home!

One of Jasmine's school subjects is Cooking or Home Science or whatever they call it (it was Home Economics back at my school which is a weird name for a cooking class, as far as I recall there was no budgeting or anything like that). They've been doing mostly healthy food but they have an assessment task of icing cupcakes. She's chosen an animal theme with a sheep (mini marshmallow wool) turtles (spearmint leaf lolly shell) and paw prints (oreo cookie and brown m&ms) - all researched on the internet by herself - so I walked up to the shops and bought a truckload of sugary junk for her. This afternoon she did a practice batch.

Not bad! Not sure about the sheep's head. And she used pink marshmallows for practise, saving the white ones for the real thing.

These (banksias I think?) are just outside our front door, in full bloom. I think this variety is called "birthday candles".

And these grevilleas are overgrowing our mailbox. Both plants attract lots of native birds. And some interlopers. I got dive bombed by a pestiferous Indian Minah Bird on Monday. Little bastard. It's early autumn, not even the season for making nests from my hair or protecting nests, unless he had late chicks.

Circus Oz

Thursday:

This afternoon we went to see Circus Oz, an acrobatic-style circus. Just fit athletic people doing amazing things, no animals. It was an hour drive away and we didn't know exactly where it was, we drove around nearby streets looking for parking and found a good spot about 1 km away - anything closer had a 1 hour parking limit. 1 km is a negligible distance except that it was really stinking hot. By the time we got there I was feeling pretty overheated. We followed some other families up a side street (not actually the advertised address, although only a couple of hundred meters away) to the Big Top set up in grassy area surrounded by a water park and restaurants - and also a multi-story car park! Oh well. The mini tent antechamber was about 50 degrees C so we all had ice cream. Medically necessary I assure you! Then they let us in the Big Top where it was thankfully air conditioned, so only uncomfortably warm instead of "I'm going to need an ambulance in a minute" hot.

The circus was great! It was fairly small, about 12 performers, and we were in the second row so quite an intimate experience! They had a unicyclist carrying a girl in various lifts, a girl with a dozen hoola hoops, acrobats, trapeze, juggling, most of it with a bit of humour added. We weren't allowed to take photos (I assume it's dangerous if you distract a trapeze artist at the wrong moment) except when one guy came out to pose specially for us. He said he was a triple threat: not singing, dancing and acting; but gay, indigenous (Aboriginal) and adopted!

Long drive home in lots of traffic, we picked up Chinese for dinner. We made it home just before the rain started, hopefully it cools everything down a bit because it is sweltering here right now.

Down

Wednesday:

We brought four fruit trees in pots with us in the move, one died but the peach tree has set fruit which is lovely.

Although that could be a sign it is dying and this is its last-ditch effort to reproduce! If that is the case, it's not as dramatic "dying" as the other one that shrivelled up and went brown all over.  This one looks pretty perky.

Jasmine and I are both feeling better today. I'm not even sure if I was sick. Without the illicit chocolate, I am eating pretty low carb (almost entirely from vegetables and fruit, occasionally other things like a bit of quinoa or one taco shell) and that tends to mess with my mood and energy levels, but "they" say if you keep on you get used it when your body switches over to burning fat instead. I have tried many diets, lifestyle changes, whatever you want to call them, and reducing carbs seems to be the only way I lose weight so I am trying to push through this rather depressing period.

I am fighting hard for my health here. Other times I have given up at this point because it didn't seem worth it being miserable just to lose weight. But it is worth it if the difficult part is only for a short time. This is not just about vanity, although that is certainly part of it, it is about insulin resistance, sleep apnoea, sore joints, high risk of heart attack and stroke. It is about my life.

I also always struggle a bit in school holidays when I don't get much time to myself. I don't want the family to go away for long - just a little while!

I kid myself that eating healthy would be easier if I was alone here, without home-made choc chip cupcakes sitting on the counter, but given my history of overeating mostly when bored and lonely that is probably nonsense. If I was home alone I'd find something else to eat.

We walked up to the library in the afternoon. The exercise did make me feel a tiny bit better emotionally, but horribly overheated. I was glad to be home to air conditioning. I had a long cool shower then listened to Headspace before making dinner.

Three days in a row of completely sticking to my diet plan.

Breakfast was taco salad (without the taco shells). Why not?

Lunch was rainbow chicken stir fry.

Dinner was peanut beef with Asian vegetables.

I am certainly eating plenty of food, and most of it is very tasty. Not having between-meal snacks is weird for me. Usually even if I am on a strict diet I organise it so I can have a little snack in the afternoon, probably in the morning too. And sometimes the evening! But I am eating huge amounts of vegetables and they are very filling, they seem to keep me full until close to the next meal when I can convince myself to wait another hour. If I am psychologically desperate for something, I have a cup of tea.

Water intake was bad today. Always something. This weight-loss thing is a full time job.

Not a great day

Wednesday:

Well it's that time of the month and even my feet are swollen up, my shoes are uncomfortably tight! I've never had that happen before, or not so I noticed. I had to dig out some old shoes that had had some of the life worn out of them. I can't go barefoot, the sore on the sole of my foot makes it quite painful to walk without padding underneath. I'm also headachy, have distressed digestion, the whole deal. I don't feel particularly moody, but we'll see if something happens to set me off!

We've been having dramatically variable weather here ever since we moved. Every week swings up and down and back up again. Today was one of the stinking hot days, with a storm in the evening. I haven't got used to the humidity here yet, Canberra was very dry. Here fruit goes bad more quickly, the bin needs to be emptied daily or it stinks, and I break into a sweat every time I move.

My hunger was weird, I ate a lot during some periods of the day, good food and bad, large portions of whatever I could get my hands on. Other times I felt nauseous and couldn't eat at all. I had two bites of dinner then had to go and lie down.

My daughter is the one with the social life at the moment. Her school has lots of end-of-year activities going on, it's the end of Primary School so I guess that is a big deal. A disco, movie day, dinner and dancing, presentation night tonight. And then the day after school finishes here Tim is driving her back to Canberra so she can attend the  graduation celebration at her old school!

I didn't do much today except organise and back up some photos online, and read. I have the horrible feeling I've wasted yet another day of my life just sitting around at home, not even doing anything to make that home a nicer place to be. Then I move my head and the pain stabs back in and I think sitting around is the best thing for me today. Maybe it's not PMS. I don't usually feel like I have a nail stuck in my left eyebrow for that.

Heatwave

Friday:

I got up this morning to a freezing house. Tim had left the air conditioning on all night, and then closed our bedroom door so we were nice and warm, but as soon as I left our room my toes started to get frostbite. I had to put on socks and a dressing gown. But I quickly came to miss that chilly air. We had heatwave conditions today. I was fine inside, but when I went to pick up the children from school (much too hot to ride their bikes) I could feel my nose-hairs crisping up. I can be very grateful that our new house has excellent air conditioning! I feel sorry for everyone who had to be out in it, including all those poor school children in hot classrooms. In Aiden's class they were doing experiments with water displacement, putting their bare feet in trays of water to see how much the level would rise. Excellent idea!

My task today was to work on getting the house in order. We still have plenty of boxes still to unpack, but I'd also been letting general tidying and maintenance slide. I worked on the lower house today. We have a split level, with four steps up from the mainly carpeted lounge/dining/master bed/ensuite bathroom and garage, up to the mainly tiled rest of the house. I tidied and vacuumed and folded laundry (I always use our bed to fold clothes on) and unpacked a couple more boxes and rearranged the garage a bit and took all the empty flattened boxes out to the garage. The original plan was that the boxes were a loan from the removalist company but now they say they rarely come this way and I might as well keep them. I don't want 148 cardboard moving boxes! I will advertise them to give away once we've finished unpacking.

And I paid some bills and sewed a spare button onto Aiden's other school shirt (yes, already) and looked at wallpaper online and basically felt like I had a very productive day.

I also found plenty of time to read. I borrowed a random book from the library the other day, from a shelf where the librarian displays some interesting books to tempt you, completely different to what I usually read, but I could hardly put it down. It was a crime thriller called "Eeny Meeny" M.J.Arlidge about a policewoman tracking down a serial killer who traps two people together and starves them and only released one if they kill the other person. So one is dead the other traumatised. Maybe not ground-breaking literature, but it was very exciting. I stayed up too late last night and then finished it after lunch today.

Cool change supposed to come through tonight.

RTA

Thursday:

Moving state means I have to change my driver licence instead of just getting a change of address sticker put on my old one. It's free though, thank goodness considering I still have four and a half years to go on my five year licence. There isn't an RTA (roads and traffic authority) office really near here, but there is one near where my sister-in-law works so I organised to have lunch with her last Monday and made the trip over there.

My hair was perfect for the photo ID, make-up good, clothes nice. All my documents ready. I got a ticket and waited patiently to be attended to. But there was a problem. Because I had a driver licence in this state, New South Wales, in my youth in my maiden name, they now needed to see my wedding certificate. Even though I've had an Australian Capital Territory driver licence in my married name for the past thirteen years. Not good enough, sorry. Frustrating. But I quietly went away without venting my annoyance and unpacked some more boxes and found my wedding certificate and went back in today.

Hair only mediocre, sore eye, wasn't looking forward to photo. I needn't have worried. The office was much more crowded and I had to wait an hour, only to find I still didn't have the documentation I needed. They had very specific requirements as to proof of change of address, the only one from their list that I could access was a copy of the contract of sale for buying this house. And of course a copy wasn't good enough, I needed the original (currently in the hands of the lawyers). Why did I ever think it would be that easy!?

What a waste of a morning. I will have to go in a third time after getting a signed declaration from someone who lives in NSW and has known me for more than 12 months (luckily there are plenty of those around).

Today was ridiculously hot. I drove the kids to and from school as it was too hot to ride (Tim fixed Jasmine's bike last night, it's fine). Picking up Aiden is always a small hassle because by the time I've collected Jasmine there are no close parking spots at Aiden's school. Last week the storm opened just as he got out of his classroom and we practically swam back to the car, today it was struggling through the magma heat a couple of blocks, feeling our skin crisping up like pork crackling. Tomorrow is forecast to be even worse, 41C (105.8F). We've put water bottles and juice boxes in the freezer for them to take to school, they might still be cool by lunchtime. And we've got air conditioning and ice cream to come home to. I'll be staying safely at home the rest of the day when I'm not ferrying the kids around.

I remember a persistent rumour back when I was in Primary School that if it got to 45C they had to let us go home. That turned out not to be true (how could it be, with a lot of parents at work!) but they did let us sit quietly in the classroom and gave us free icy poles (like frozen lemonade) from the canteen. Last year (or the year before?) we were driving home from a beach holiday when it got to the high 40s, even over 50 in some places. It was fine in the car, but every time we stepped out it honestly felt like getting into an oven. That was an unusual heatwave, even the 41C predicted tomorrow is a bit excessive and we wouldn't have more than one or two days like that each year. I suppose they are going to get more common.

I've been really sleepy all day. I foresee a summer full of naps. I've stalled a bit on the unpacking and haven't even looked at my novel yet. Cool change on Saturday, hopefully we'll get more done on the weekend.

Lunchtime walk

Wednesday:

Lovely start to the day; breakfast in the covered courtyard (I allow myself bacon around once a week) after everyone else had left. I don't usually read newspapers, but this local one was delivered so I decided to get into the spirit of the area.

I went inside to my desk and the kookaburra visited. I mentioned yesterday I was giving them cooked meat, well a lot of it was left behind so I guess they didn't like it. This morning I put out some raw meat - trimmings from my steak - and that went very quickly.

I did deskwork most of the morning while waiting for a registered letter to arrive. You'll remember settlement on our Canberra house was supposed to happen last Monday but there was a document missing, well that was all sorted out and we settled on Thursday. Today we got the cheque. As soon as it came I walked up to the shopping centre and deposited it into our account. As soon as it clears it will of course go on the mortgage for this house! It was a great relief when settlement was finalised.

It was very hot outside, but I walked the back way along a path in a very narrow strip of bushland, only a couple of hundred metres wide at most. Sometimes you walk along directly behind houses, other times you have native bush on both sides and can only see houses and streets off through the trees. I feel safe because I can see civilisation at all times (but I still wouldn't walk it at night). Much more shady than walking along the roads, and about the same distance.

It was nearly lunchtime when I went out but this time I made sure I wasn't hungry! I did buy myself a food treat while I was there - a mango. Yummy. And I dropped into the library to exchange my books. Then I walked home to a house about 10C cooler than outside, had a drink and recovered, and had a lovely lunch.

...

It turned into a very stressful afternoon. Jasmine texted to ask if I could pick her up from school as it was too hot to ride home. Timing was going to be an issue with Aiden getting home soon, so I told her to ride part-way and I would pick her up at a particular side street. Getting out of our quiet street took forever, with three or four schools within a couple of blocks of here (two private) the pick-up traffic was horrendous and there were cars backed up all around the round-about as if they were parked there. But I got out eventually by being a bit pushy and drove to the meeting place. Jas wasn't there yet. So I kept going, all the way to her school. The bike path is right beside the road, how could I have missed her? Drove back to the appointed corner, waited, stress levels rising. Where was she? Time was ticking on as well. As I got out my phone to call, she texted me. She'd gone down the side street instead of waiting at the corner, and was right down the other end!! Miscommunication there. That street is blocked off to cars half-way down, so I had to go round the block. Got there eventually.

Next challenge, the bike wouldn't fit in the car. I'd been worried about that. She's now using my old bike, so it's small adult size. I tried to take off the front wheel like Tim does, but with no idea what I was doing. It wouldn't come off. Flashbacks to when Tim broke his shoulder blade and I had to get his bike into the car to drive him to hospital. That bike needed more doctoring that he did to get it back in working order after I was done with it. With my stress levels at exploding point, I got the wheel half off which meant the bike could no longer even be wheeled along, let alone ridden. I used brute force and wrestled the bike into the back seat where it stuck out at one side. Drove home with the car door slightly open, to find Aiden waiting but fine. I was probably silly to stress so much, but I honestly don't know what he would have done if he was waiting for a long time. We don't know any neighbours and we hadn't discussed it. I don't envy Tim trying to put the wheel back on the bike, I may have left some random parts behind in the gutter.

Beach wedding

Sunday:

We spent the weekend at a beach wedding, with a lot of driving each way. Three and a half hours to Sydney, dropped the kids off with family, then another two and a half hours. The beach was beautiful and the weather perfect - at least I thought it was just the right temperature but the guests from sunny Queensland thought it was freezing! Depends what you are used to.

The bride was one of Tim's many cousins, I don't think I'd actually met her before. I didn't know a lot of people. Tim's father and a couple of aunts. Tim's brother was there, but as children weren't invited my sister-in-law just came to the beach ceremony with my niece and then they stayed at the beach while we went on to dinner.

You notice there are no photos of me. I did take some, but was deeply unhappy with them.

The reception was in a pavilion at a pretty farm. The grounds were lush and green with a partiere garden and roses. The food wasn't so great, but I kind of expect that at a wedding where the caterers are trying to feed so many people all at once. One unusual thing was that all the speeches were after the first course, so everyone got pretty hungry with the long wait before they got their main course and dessert. But the speeches were touching and funny.

We stayed at a hotel nearby and breakfasted near the water,

then headed back to Sydney. We'd left the kids with cousins who live a couple of blocks from the ocean, so they'd had a great time. We walked along the esplanade and had fish and chips at the beach (much more crowded than the isolated beach where the wedding was!)

then walked back.

It was a hot day, much hotter than yesterday, and I had sunscreen but no hat. By the end of all this time in the sun (including quite a few extra blocks to the car as there was no parking anywhere near where we wanted to go on such a lovely day) I was headachy and a bit nauseous. And sunburned on the side of my neck where I missed a bit with the sunscreen. The drive home seemed long and difficult and I was very glad to be home, but apart from possible mild sunstroke it was a lovely weekend away.

I can't wait until we're only 20 minutes away from the ocean!

My cousin's wedding in a heatwave

Saturday:

 

Yesterday was my cousin's wedding. We left the kids with a friend for a sleepover, taking them over before school so we could drop off overnight suitcases. Then Tim and I set off for the four hour drive. It was a stinking hot day, 37 degrees C (98.6 F). And an hour into the trip there was a weird rattle from the engine, a bit of plastic may have fallen out (or I may have just driven over a bit of plastic on the road, not sure), and the steering became very sluggish. I pulled over and we looked at all the tyres and under the hood but there was nothing for our inexperienced eyes to see. I drove on cautiously and we realised that the air conditioning was no longer working. And Tim connected this to the resistant steering wheel (power steering gone) and that something must have gone wrong with the electrics. Not much we could do on the road in the middle of nowhere.

We continued on, the steering seemed safe enough it just took a lot more strength than usual to turn the wheel, especially at very low speeds like trying to park. Losing the air conditioning, on that particular day, was much more of a problem. The car got hotter and hotter. Opening the window was like opening an oven door, and the fan just blew hot air around. We had drinks, but I felt very dehydrated and horrible.

We got to mum's, dripping sweat and exhausted. There was no option of a different car as mum's had recently been rear-ended and hadn't been fixed yet. A drink and a quick cold shower was the best we could manage before getting into our wedding gear and back into the hot car. Tim had a stressful 45 minute drive through unfamiliar territory but we found the church and made it just before the bridal party.

The ceremony was nice if very short (less than 15 minutes, cut to the bare bones - it was a Catholic church for the groom and I would have expected something much longer) then we stood outside under the shade of trees for as long as we could bear before Tim and I with mum and my brother headed off to a nearby pub to sit in the air conditioning and have about six cold drinks.

Mum was coping amazingly well with the heat, considering. Actually she was getting cold easily and carried a shawl around. She has been really tired again lately. Very worryingly, her whole abdomen has swelled up and is hard and uncomfortable. She looked pregnant. Her GP (family doctor) had no idea what was going on so she is waiting to see her oncologist (she has breast cancer that has spread to her bones) in two weeks to have a new round of tests.

The reception was at a restaurant right in the middle of the city, almost directly under the end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Poor Tim had to drive us through the middle of the city in heavy traffic as people left work for the day. It was nice being right on the water, by that time we were starting to get a little breeze as relief from the horrible heat. My outfit looks hot but actually it was light and floaty with air vents and I don't think I was much hotter than in shorts and a T-shirt.

The reception was nice with good food, funny speeches and a good band. I didn't overeat and I drank a lot of water as well as some juice and a couple of soft drinks. I was chugging down liquids all day but hardly had to go to the bathroom at all, I guess my body wasn't willing to give up any of that precious fluid! No alcohol, it only makes me feel a lot hotter.

Of course my cousin looked lovely. And very slender.

Almost as soon as the formal part of the evening was over and the dancing started, mum said she was tired and the music was too loud and she was ready to go home. So we drove back in the much cooler evening and stayed at mum's house. She tried to check we had everything we needed but after she went to bed I found I didn't have any sheets. I was sleeping in the spare room (where my kids usually sleep) and Tim had the tiny futon that we usually share all to himself. I just draped the quilt thing over one leg and that was fine. I was too tired and hot to care.

Today was much cooler, thank goodness, and we made it back to pick up the kids before lunch. And came home to find our hot water heater had sprung a leak and the laundry floor covered in water. I rang and organised someone to look at the car Monday morning and Tim rang and organised someone to come and fix the hot water tank Monday afternoon and then we both collapsed.

The new expansion for the computer game World of Warcraft just came out on Thursday. We tried to log in then but there was a long queue because so many people are playing, and I went to bed before we got to the front of the line. Tim stayed up and played a little bit but we like to play together, as a team. As soon as we got home today we logged on to get in the queue. That was two and a half hours ago. Tim's computer currently says "Position in queue: 2121. Estimated time: 822 minutes". So I don't know if we'll get on before tomorrow! Oh the estimated time has changed to 316 minutes (it changes a lot), so maybe tonight? It will all settle down in a week or two, usually there is no queue at all, but right now everyone is excited about the new content. We'll get to play eventually. I just glad to be home in the cool.