hmmm

Feel dizzy, lightheaded. I've taken to keeping a bag of sweets or a bar of chocolate near me to stop me shaking. Had fun yesterday when I tried to go for a blood test. Found out that the only way they could eventually get blood to flow from my arm (after trying to warm me up with blankets and a heat pack) was to lie me down and dangle my arm off the edge of the bed and hope that gravity did all the work. Fun? Not really.

Also feel just one step away from tears. Constantly, they're always there and I know that if someone just looks at me the wrong way at the wrong time they're going to just flow out of me. Sometimes they do anyway (and the double episode of How I Met Your Mother dealing with pregnancy tests, fertility issues and then the sudden loss of one character's father did not help in the slightest).

Need to call doctor next week and be reassured even though I think that these are fairly common symptoms of my medication. Still, in the meantime I did what any normal person would do and googled the facts and side effects of my medication. Of course.

Found something that amused me greatly. On a page headed 'Clomid facts and comparisons' I found the following under the warnings:

"Avoid becoming pregnant while you are taking it"

For those of you who don't know, Clomid is given to those women who are having trouble conceiving. It's supposed to boost your system to help you get pregnant. Somehow, this isn't really reassuring me.

Houses

I am obsessed with househunting. My husband can't understand why I go through the real estate part of the weekend paper. Every weekend. I'm not at the point where I go to open houses (unless, of course, it's the neighbour's place...) just for fun but sometimes, just sometimes, I'm very very tempted.

It's normally just an idle curiousity that drives me. A 'what kind of place would we buy if we could afford to' sort of thing. It drives me crazy, however, when I'm looking at the price range that we could buy in and finding houses that look really good and could be absolute bargains for us but know that we can't put in any offers or do anything until this place is fixed and we can sell it. So, at present, I'm a bit cranky with slow insurance companies. And the body corporate.

There are some sorts of houses from some areas that I would just love to live in and I think that's what I keep looking for. If I was in Britain, it would be an older house, possibly full of little corridors and rooms that surprise you when you walk round the corner because you really didn't there would be a room there. One with character, anyway (and, for the record, that doesn't necessarily mean beams and tiny rooms). Oh, and a big fireplace.

If I was in Melbourne, it would definitely be a house similar to the one my sister lives in. A single story wooden slatted house, with a veranda and wrought iron decorations. There are suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney that have houses just like that on wide, tree lined street. Street after street of them.

Here, in the tropics, it would be a Queenslander. For those not from around here, it's quite simple. This is a hot, wet climate. Prone (in case you hadn't noticed) to flooding. The original people who settled here knew this and they designed a house to cope with it. Also, crocodiles can't climb. So, a typical Queenslander is a single story house on stilts. Usually the floor of the house is high enough that you can walk under it. They are usually designed around some central rooms with a wide veranda that goes around the entire house. Sometimes this is enclosed, or at least partially, with old fashioned casement windows from wall to wall so you can open up any part of the house to let the breeze flow through. They are open, airy houses perfectly suited for the tropics.

I love houses. One day...

Lucky really

The last few days have been...different...to say the least. We shut down the office at work on Tuesday lunchtime. We spent the next 24 hours packing up stuff because we live at a beach suburb and were hearing at that point stories of 6m storm surges. That would have come at least through the ground floor of our house. Yay. We moved to my parents' in law's house in a different suburb (more importantly, a higher suburb).

Anyway, by Wednesday lunchtime Yasi had headed further south than previously forecast and we decided that home was where we wanted to be so we left my car, full of all our electrical stuff at Kewarra Beach and headed home.

I must admit of all the things I thought I would be doing Wednesday night, sleeping was not one of them. However, I was exhausted and fell asleep on the sofa. Occasionally I woke up as lots of flying leafs, twigs and probably the occasional branch hit our garage and roof and my fish tried to escape from the tank. My husband reported that the upstairs windows were bending and shaking under the force of the wind. We lost power fairly early that night.

Thursday morning came as a relief and whilst walking down Yorkeys (I live at Yorkeys Knob, go on, chuckle, you know you want to...) main street, there were trees down and debris just everywhere. The 50k signpost was still upright, but the actual sign was at the bottom of the pole and facing the wrong way. The sea was just incredible. We never get surf up here and it was pounding up the beach. Or, at least, what was left of it.

Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come for us. The ensuing thunderstorm that parked above us for Thursday afternoon and night was incredible. 10.5 inches of rain in 24 hours, most of which fell in a 6 hour period. We had most of our neighbours out helping us in the pouring rain with the wheely bins trying to move the water on that was threatening to flood our house.

It was ironic really, that as we were trying to save the ground floor from flooding, that the roof decided that it couldn't cope and I went upstairs to discover a small river pouring from our lightfittings in the spare room. Onto the spare bed. Onto the carpet. And, as it turns out, through the roof, through the walls, through the built-in wardrobe, through the window casement and through our downstairs ceiling. Bugger.

Now we just sit and wait for the insurance assessors, the electrician to tell us that we can turn our lights and fans back on and use our upstairs power points, the builder to tell us what needs to be done to fix our rapidly mouldy house.

I will say one thing. We were really bloody lucky. We have a roof, we have walls, we have a house (albeit rapidly mouldy one). If cyclone Yasi had come where it was intially forecast we most likely would not have anything right now. I'm so glad that we do, and I feel so desperately sorry for those so near to us that now have nothing.

Nearer family

Oh I am so happy!! I will have family in Australia for the next four years!!! (hopefully) I know that they will still be a four hour plane flight away but it's a damn sight easier and cheaper than Britain! And I love Melbourne so yayayayayayay!

Update on phone frustration

We received this month's bill and, amazingly enough, Telstra had stopped charging us $11.00 for the T-Box. Oh yes. They had, instead, charged us well over $200 as a cancellation charge.

Needless to say, after a mild heart-attack, I contacted Telstra. No more going through the accounts department for me. I went straight to the heart of it and called complaints. I spoke to a lovely chap who took one look at the record of calls on his computer, took a deep breath and apologised wholeheartedly. He sorted it out, confirmed that there had been a huge mistake and then thanked me for being so nice about it and not shouting at him.

And so it ends.

Until next month...

Some fun

I couldn't help myself with this one, it just made me laugh. Please, if you need cheering up just follow the directions below:

1. Go to 'Get Directions' in Google Maps;
2. Type in 'Japan' as your starting point;
3. Type in 'China' as your destination;
4. Go to point 43.
5. When you stop laughing, tell someone else.

Why?

Some days, it's all going well, and then something, some little thing will happen. Someone will say something completely innocuous, I'll catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye or, without warning, it will hit me like a sledgehammer and then the tears come.

I'm not actually depressed. My doctor told me so. It's happening less these days and I'm getting better but sometimes I just can't stop the tears, that's all and the one thought just goes round, and round, and round in my head.

Why not me?

Then, by and by, it passes. And I'm happy and relaxed again and I get on with my life and everything's good but a part of me knows that deep down, that question lurks sometimes hidden, sometimes yelling and screaming to get out.

Why not me?