Thursday, November 17, 2011

Buttons





Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Catch-Up


Its been a while since I last updated, there are a few reasons.........


The first is that I've been online less and less.


The second is that its been a fairly shite few months with little blog-worthy excitement to note


The third is that priorities have been elsewhere


In a series of kicks received lately the first was the loss of my licence. This (while entirely my fault) was a real pain in the proverbial. I had received a few speeding fines on my motorcycle and amassed 12 demerit points inside 3 years meaning I could either lose my license for 3 months or last a year with no demerit points and keep my license. Given all my indiscretions were on 2 wheels I was confident that I could last out 12 months restricting my motorcycle use and opting for the car more. I last 10 months and unfortunately as turned out ended up being done......in my car.......on the way to get my vasectomy. I was speeding, I was nervous, I explained to the cop where I was going but they didn't seem to phased so I copped a fine and about 2 months later had the pleasure of handing in my license. Its been ok, better than I thought I'm lucky that where we live is a short walk from a bus stop. Had I been living on our land I'd be screwed (it is 8km from the nearest bus stop). I don't mind catching a bus then a train into work, or a train home however the bus home is a little testing, there isn't a lot of leg room for people over 6'6 nor are some of the passengers the most civil. My commute has gone from 75-90 minutes to usually just over 2 hours, this sucks, it means I get home later, have to get up earlier and arrive home more tired than I normally would be.


The licence situ has also led me to deciding to sell my Ducati, while I find the hypermotard the most fun bike I've ever ridden I do need to settle down a little, I had decided to get a more cruiser oriented bike when I turned 40 but now i'm content to sell the hyper then get a harley of some form as more of a project, While I love riding bikes I also love wrenching on bikes just as much so a project will keep me occupied for a while.




On the home front this pregnancy has hit MB for 6. Her energy levels and health were very low for the early months of the pregnancy and as the months went by she didn't seem to improve, actually I started to see her go backwards, no energy, very snappy at first I think we both put it down to pregnancy hormones but certain key indicators raised alarms we suspected that she was suffering antenatal depression. She is now taking medication and speaking with a PANDA specialised psych and has been improving with every week. I've been trying my best to make sure that the house is in order with washing and folding and cleaning kept on top of. I don't want to go into any more detail and probably won't mention it any further but I thought it worthwhile to mention it as it doesn't receive the same recognition as postnatal depression. I do hope after bubs has arrived and we start regaining some normality around the house MB can too.

I've been without full use of my left hand for almost 2 months now. I was breaking up pine kindling for the fire a while back and went to snap a piece by hand, the wood didn't snap but it hurt my hand, I stopped breaking wood thought nothing of it. A day later my had started to get more sore the more I used it another day later I couldn't move my thumb and by the next day I couldn't even do up the buttons on my shirt. I knew something wasn't good so a trip to the ER and although nothing was broken I still required plaster to treat a torn thumb ligament. I was stuck in plaster for a few weeks then saw a surgeon who decided that it was only a partial tear of the thumb UCL and didn't require surgery, but would need to be braced for 4-6 weeks. I have my 4 week review next Friday so here is hoping its all good, its (my thumb) still numb in places and gives me a twinge if I overdo it but all in all has improved especially this last week.

On the NEVUS front....... (sorry I don't post about it enough I realise quite a bit of my traffic hits orginate from google searches regarding NEVUS). We had a bit of a scare last week, Mr C developed a strange lump on his ear, it was probably about 10mm X 3mm X 5mm and sort of resembled a blood blister but was blue in colour. It seemed to come from nowhere, neither MB nor myself had spotted it the previous day. C didn't recall hurting his ear or catching it in the garden or any other activity It really scared me, I spent hours googling images of melanoma finding things that looked identical or totally different and everything in between. MB snapped a few shots and emaild them to C's dermatologist who was very quick to call back and explained that the likelyhood of it being melanoma was very low given the speed in which it developed. Five days later and its now reduced in size and appears to be healing up. We are still taking regular photos and will continue to monitor it but it was certainly an unwanted extra stress. C is still on wait at teh RCH for his next nip/tuck job for his eyebrow, this has perhaps been the longest we have waited for any of his surgeries, which is fine but I can't help but worry it will happen right about the time bubs #7 arrives (just because we don't do anything by halves).



Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Mr B, Mr T, Miss L & Mr C are all attending school next year. We have enroled them in a nice country school just down the road from where the new house will be. It's small, about 70 students in total. We met the principle about a month ago. Mr C has already done one prep orientation day as have the other children in their prospective classes. B will be going into grade 6, T will be going into Grade 4 and Miss L Grade 2. As with most small country schools all classes are composite and we really got a sense of closeness and community from the place, the boys know some other students through their basketball and the plan is for all the children to attend when C has his prep orientation days. I won't go into the events and thinking behind this move just yet, i'll save that for another day.

That is about all I have, til next time......