I may have mentioned in previous posts that Rowies original op date of 7th August was withdrawn as a consequence of the Swine Flu epidemic that was at the time (June/July) sweeping the country and the World. Essentially, the delay was caused by the requirement to have heart/lung machines available and on stand-by for the severest cases.
Last post I said that Rowie's op date was now tentatively set at 3rd September - unfortunately a couple of things have occurred which have set that date back to a now pencilled-in 17/09/09.
Thing 1: Neil Got the Pig Flu...
In typical style, I waited until it was commonplace before contracting it. Couldn't have come at a worse time, and just my having it would be enough to cause a delay. I've had a cold for a couple of weeks, and went back to the Doctor last Monday for a re-check. Doctors seem unwilling to prescribe a suitable amount of time off these days I find (also aware of how old that statement makes me sound) - my doctor prescribed me with a couple of days off and no medicine as it was "probably swine flu". It wasn't, but developed into it this past week and is now fully blown (I'm on the Tami-Flu and everything). If she'd have given me the Tami-Flu last week when I first presented, I'd probably be back at work - but hey, doc's are the experts right??! So, I've imposed a quarantine on myself and have been studiously avoiding everyone...
Thing 2: Rowie has a "Cold"...
...at this stage anyway. Again, this alone is enough to delay the surgery (although Rowie told me today that a cut she got on her finger yesterday was also enough - evidently any type of issue which may cause infection is an instance no-no operation-wise). It's not the pig flu, at least all signs indicate that it's not at this stage. All we can do is avoid one another for the next few days and hope that it doesn't develop into it like mine did.
Rowie is, obviously, extremely annoyed at this new delay. She is being incredibly pragmatic about the whole thing and has today attended the pre-adminision "Stuff you should know" interview at the Prince Charles so as to gain further information.
So - thanks for all the messages of support and make a note, new date is:
17th September 2009.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
We have a Date
Rowie got a call last Friday from the Prince Charles hospital but unfortunately we were out and so only got a message.
She called today and it looks like we have a tentative surgery date of 3rd September 2009.
It's tentative, because we have to wait for absolute confirmation that it will go ahead; however, Rowie is pleased to have a date in mind now.
I will keep all up-to-date as and when we know more.
She called today and it looks like we have a tentative surgery date of 3rd September 2009.
It's tentative, because we have to wait for absolute confirmation that it will go ahead; however, Rowie is pleased to have a date in mind now.
I will keep all up-to-date as and when we know more.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Perspective II: Rowie's Turn
*Blogged by Rowie*
My first active participation in the webpage (beyond viewing it). How exciting! Of course, I’ll just be typing this up and asking Neil to actually load it for me.
I read Neil’s previous blog and had to add a bit more to it. Namely an overview of his gallant undertaking of 90% of the move logistics and labour. Also thought I’d expand a bit on that, “...it was a typical nightmare move...” sentence.
The “typical nightmare move” began with the water leak as Neil told you about. The drama of which was greatly eased by our good friends’ Christopher & Caroline’s generosity in letting us bunk with them for a few days. Please note that the irony didn’t in any way escape us of being in a situation of owning two houses neither of which we could live in. At this point, Neil had packed roughly 50 boxes whilst I had packed about 5. So while I went off to work as usual on the Monday after we sprung a leak, Neil went about packing more boxes, organising plumbers to show up sometime before 2010 and giving Mouse Control strict instructions to annihilate anything that moved in our ceiling. Anything that wasn’t a plumber that is. Mostly. He also hired a trailer to haul our beds up to the new house, loaded said beds and then engaged in ferocious telephone arguments with the solicitors who were stalling on the new house settlement. He was ably assisted in all this by Christopher who I think is the only reason Neil doesn’t have stubs left for teeth from grinding them together in frustration. After all that we arrived at the new house only to find it wasn’t fit to sleep in. Not if we didn’t want to de-louse ourselves the next day. Slight exaggeration there, but suffice to say we didn’t really want to sleep on mattresses on the floor until the floor had been cleaned. Unfortunately, I had been given the sanitised version of what had happened during the day (wasn’t even told about the solicitors at that point) as no one wanted to stress out the chick with the dicky ticker. (I won’t mention here about a certain someone scaring the bejesus out of me pretending they’d electrocuted themselves trying to fix the water leak.) Therefore I was, ashamedly, a little less than positive in my reaction to the state of the new house. Poor Neil was desperately trying to look on the bright side while I was staunchly refusing to budge from my negative viewpoint. If only he’d told me he actually agreed with me (which he told me later he secretly did) instead of trying to be Mr It’s Alright Lets Make The Best Of It & Be Happy, then maybe I wouldn’t have been Ms It’s Not Even Close To Alright And I’m Going To Keep Insisting So Until You’re All As Unhappy As Me. Ah the benefit of hindsight.
But Neil was my hero and had the cleaners in bright and early the next morning. Luckily for us they were quite switched on (well one of them was) and discovered that our oven was missing the inner glass on the oven door. Which means, best case scenario the oven won’t work efficiently or at the correct temperature. Worst case scenario, the glass will explode and blow my legs off while I stand there stirring something on the cooktop or kill Oscar/Missy as they happen to be walking past. Needless to say we haven’t tested the oven door limits and are STILL awaiting a replacement part which we keep being assured is “on the way”.
Hmmm, gee, what else? Oh yeah, there was the box of our belongings flying off the trailer at 100km/hr on the highway. There was the trailer that was lent to us by one of Neil’s work colleagues that got broken. There was Missy injuring her paw by almost ripping one of her claws out somehow and bleeding ALL over the new patio (giving my heart another shock it didn’t really need. Did I mention that someone pretended to electrocute themselves in front of me?). There was the high speed internet connection we were assured would be available at our new address and wasn’t which Neil then spent over a week getting hooked up (having more ferocious telephone arguments). There was my reaction to being told my surgery had been postponed. Being emotionally retarded I spent the next 24hrs behaving like a complete beast to everyone within slaying distance and then realised why I was acting the way I was acting and spent the next 24 apologising to anyone who’d come within my target range. There was the joy of basically camping in our new house for a week with beds, a bar fridge and toiletries. There was the dickering with the insurance folk about who was going to pay for the repairs (and how much thereof) to the old house, including the Oscar-size hole bashed in one of the walls by the plumbers during their “exploratory” work. Neil once again handled this, along with the real estate agent and the stress of getting tenants in to start helping us pay the mortgage! There were plenty of other fun things too but I won’t itemise the whole lot. Suffice to say Neil summed it up with “it was an exercise in whatever could go wrong did go wrong”. BUT, nobody got hurt (although somebody did pretend to electrocute themselves – did I mention that?) so it really could have been worse and we should be grateful it wasn’t.
So basically whilst Neil was handling pretty much all of the details and hard labour, I focused primarily on getting Oscar settled into his new school and new before-school-care and trying to maintain some sort of status quo ante with usual rules and routines. Not an easy task as our sensitive, slow-to-adjust, I’m-7/8yrs-old-it’s-all-about-me boy had a few melt-downs expressing some interesting behaviours and languages. This has improved somewhat but Oscy is still struggling to find his niche at his new school as, having been to his class a couple of times now I can attest, there are some “big personalities” for him to contend with. Fortunately he has begun to make friends and there are some children in the street he has made friends with too (not without dramas of course) and because they can all ride bikes suddenly Oscar can too!
So don’t get me wrong... it’s not all bad news. I just felt the need to expound on Neil’s previous blog and talk a little about that “typical nightmare move” sentence. I don’t see toooo much that’s typical about it but I must acquiesce that most moves are nightmarish in their own way. I also wanted to try and get across to what great lengths Neil went to, to protect me from the huge majority of the stress of the move which he really didn’t mention at all in his page.
Am worried now that I’ve rambled on a bit and my first blog is getting too long so will do another one another time with all the good news highlights and I promise – no whinge-fest!
xo
My first active participation in the webpage (beyond viewing it). How exciting! Of course, I’ll just be typing this up and asking Neil to actually load it for me.
I read Neil’s previous blog and had to add a bit more to it. Namely an overview of his gallant undertaking of 90% of the move logistics and labour. Also thought I’d expand a bit on that, “...it was a typical nightmare move...” sentence.
The “typical nightmare move” began with the water leak as Neil told you about. The drama of which was greatly eased by our good friends’ Christopher & Caroline’s generosity in letting us bunk with them for a few days. Please note that the irony didn’t in any way escape us of being in a situation of owning two houses neither of which we could live in. At this point, Neil had packed roughly 50 boxes whilst I had packed about 5. So while I went off to work as usual on the Monday after we sprung a leak, Neil went about packing more boxes, organising plumbers to show up sometime before 2010 and giving Mouse Control strict instructions to annihilate anything that moved in our ceiling. Anything that wasn’t a plumber that is. Mostly. He also hired a trailer to haul our beds up to the new house, loaded said beds and then engaged in ferocious telephone arguments with the solicitors who were stalling on the new house settlement. He was ably assisted in all this by Christopher who I think is the only reason Neil doesn’t have stubs left for teeth from grinding them together in frustration. After all that we arrived at the new house only to find it wasn’t fit to sleep in. Not if we didn’t want to de-louse ourselves the next day. Slight exaggeration there, but suffice to say we didn’t really want to sleep on mattresses on the floor until the floor had been cleaned. Unfortunately, I had been given the sanitised version of what had happened during the day (wasn’t even told about the solicitors at that point) as no one wanted to stress out the chick with the dicky ticker. (I won’t mention here about a certain someone scaring the bejesus out of me pretending they’d electrocuted themselves trying to fix the water leak.) Therefore I was, ashamedly, a little less than positive in my reaction to the state of the new house. Poor Neil was desperately trying to look on the bright side while I was staunchly refusing to budge from my negative viewpoint. If only he’d told me he actually agreed with me (which he told me later he secretly did) instead of trying to be Mr It’s Alright Lets Make The Best Of It & Be Happy, then maybe I wouldn’t have been Ms It’s Not Even Close To Alright And I’m Going To Keep Insisting So Until You’re All As Unhappy As Me. Ah the benefit of hindsight.
But Neil was my hero and had the cleaners in bright and early the next morning. Luckily for us they were quite switched on (well one of them was) and discovered that our oven was missing the inner glass on the oven door. Which means, best case scenario the oven won’t work efficiently or at the correct temperature. Worst case scenario, the glass will explode and blow my legs off while I stand there stirring something on the cooktop or kill Oscar/Missy as they happen to be walking past. Needless to say we haven’t tested the oven door limits and are STILL awaiting a replacement part which we keep being assured is “on the way”.
Hmmm, gee, what else? Oh yeah, there was the box of our belongings flying off the trailer at 100km/hr on the highway. There was the trailer that was lent to us by one of Neil’s work colleagues that got broken. There was Missy injuring her paw by almost ripping one of her claws out somehow and bleeding ALL over the new patio (giving my heart another shock it didn’t really need. Did I mention that someone pretended to electrocute themselves in front of me?). There was the high speed internet connection we were assured would be available at our new address and wasn’t which Neil then spent over a week getting hooked up (having more ferocious telephone arguments). There was my reaction to being told my surgery had been postponed. Being emotionally retarded I spent the next 24hrs behaving like a complete beast to everyone within slaying distance and then realised why I was acting the way I was acting and spent the next 24 apologising to anyone who’d come within my target range. There was the joy of basically camping in our new house for a week with beds, a bar fridge and toiletries. There was the dickering with the insurance folk about who was going to pay for the repairs (and how much thereof) to the old house, including the Oscar-size hole bashed in one of the walls by the plumbers during their “exploratory” work. Neil once again handled this, along with the real estate agent and the stress of getting tenants in to start helping us pay the mortgage! There were plenty of other fun things too but I won’t itemise the whole lot. Suffice to say Neil summed it up with “it was an exercise in whatever could go wrong did go wrong”. BUT, nobody got hurt (although somebody did pretend to electrocute themselves – did I mention that?) so it really could have been worse and we should be grateful it wasn’t.
So basically whilst Neil was handling pretty much all of the details and hard labour, I focused primarily on getting Oscar settled into his new school and new before-school-care and trying to maintain some sort of status quo ante with usual rules and routines. Not an easy task as our sensitive, slow-to-adjust, I’m-7/8yrs-old-it’s-all-about-me boy had a few melt-downs expressing some interesting behaviours and languages. This has improved somewhat but Oscy is still struggling to find his niche at his new school as, having been to his class a couple of times now I can attest, there are some “big personalities” for him to contend with. Fortunately he has begun to make friends and there are some children in the street he has made friends with too (not without dramas of course) and because they can all ride bikes suddenly Oscar can too!
So don’t get me wrong... it’s not all bad news. I just felt the need to expound on Neil’s previous blog and talk a little about that “typical nightmare move” sentence. I don’t see toooo much that’s typical about it but I must acquiesce that most moves are nightmarish in their own way. I also wanted to try and get across to what great lengths Neil went to, to protect me from the huge majority of the stress of the move which he really didn’t mention at all in his page.
Am worried now that I’ve rambled on a bit and my first blog is getting too long so will do another one another time with all the good news highlights and I promise – no whinge-fest!
xo
Monday, August 10, 2009
Perspective
First things first...
Rowie was scheduled for surgery 7th August, however thanks to Swine Flu the hospitals are overflowing with patients and so the operation has been put off until "sometime in September"... exactly when in September we don't know yet. Obviously will keep all posted.
We have now finally moved into our new place - address and 'phone number will follow via email shortly.
Our move could best be described as an exercise in proving that whatever could go wrong, went wrong...
Firstly, two days prior to settlement on the new house, we were enjoying a night with some friends when we noticed a hissing noise coming from the guest bathroom. On investigation, we identified that one of the pipes in the roof had burst... On further investigation (by Rowie), we found the source of the "burst" - alarmingly, the break in the pipe had a definite rodent-y feel about it, like a mouse (or more likely rat) had chewed through the pipe (it's a vinyl pipe - nothing but the cheapest for these new houses!).
Naturally, I panicked - firstly I HATE mice/rats, and secondly I HATE having to go into the roof... could be anything up there! However, friend Chris is one of those people who will have a go at anything, so the next day we headed down to Bunnings (Hardware store) and bought what we thought were the required bits and pieces... It seemed like a good idea at the time, and after all, how hard can plumbing be?? Turns out, it was quite hard - mostly because the bloody vermin hadn't stopped at the one area, and "fixing" (well we came close!) the obvious leak only weakened the other leaks (never did find out how many there actually were). Essentially, a critical and total failure of the (cheap and nasty) plumbing throughout the house... at this point, I called a plumber and went into emergency mode.
We are very lucky, we have good friends who offered us a place to stay so that problem (at least in the short term) was solved. I went into planning mode. Firstly, since the whole point of this was to get our Beresford place ready to rent, it seemed logical to focus on fixing the plumbing "issue", so I posted myself at Bereford and waited for the trusty plumber to appear... and waited... and waited. 10.00am he said he'd be at there - he turned up at 4.00pm. We expected to go through settlement at 4.45pm that day, so the best outcome seemed to be to get our beds and essentials up to the new house, bringing the move-in date to the Monday, and then go back to plan 'A' and move the rest of our gear on the weekend...
So we got the keys at 5.00pm (after a major drama with the so-called solicitors), and in we walked... into a sticky mess of a house very recently vacated. Rookie mistake was to not specify a requirement to have the new place cleaned prior to settlement... won't make that mistake again. We stayed another night at Chris/Carolines...
A few frantic 'phone calls Tuesday morning had us a cleaner. I must have upset a few people as I started calling at 6.00am! We had our cleaner secured by 6.45am, so the new house was on track again. The old house however, was not going quite so smoothly. The initial repair done by the plumber had been attacked by whatever had holed up in our roof and had destroyed it, resulting in the work needing to be re-done... this was not good, as we all know plumbers costs quickly get out of hand... At this stage, I put the plumber on hold as obviously this appeared to be a vicious circle. Time for the exterminator. I called around and found the exterminator that would "guarantee" removal of the offending whatever-it-was-in-my-roof and got him to guarantee next-day... which he didn't do. I swear, these tradespeople think we're all happy to sit around waiting for them for hours on end!
Anyhoo, with the vermin problem taken care of, the plumber was back on. The urgency was apparent, at least to me - however the plumber didn't share my urgency... 12 days it took him to finally fix it!
In short, it was the typical nightmare move... but we're in our new home now and it's been worth it I think. Writing it down now, it seems that everything that happened was fairly trivial, although at the time I was close to breaking point on a number of occasions. Rowie's impending surgery seems to put it all in perspective really... it's just stuff that happens, nothing more.
Rowie was scheduled for surgery 7th August, however thanks to Swine Flu the hospitals are overflowing with patients and so the operation has been put off until "sometime in September"... exactly when in September we don't know yet. Obviously will keep all posted.
We have now finally moved into our new place - address and 'phone number will follow via email shortly.
Our move could best be described as an exercise in proving that whatever could go wrong, went wrong...
Firstly, two days prior to settlement on the new house, we were enjoying a night with some friends when we noticed a hissing noise coming from the guest bathroom. On investigation, we identified that one of the pipes in the roof had burst... On further investigation (by Rowie), we found the source of the "burst" - alarmingly, the break in the pipe had a definite rodent-y feel about it, like a mouse (or more likely rat) had chewed through the pipe (it's a vinyl pipe - nothing but the cheapest for these new houses!).
Naturally, I panicked - firstly I HATE mice/rats, and secondly I HATE having to go into the roof... could be anything up there! However, friend Chris is one of those people who will have a go at anything, so the next day we headed down to Bunnings (Hardware store) and bought what we thought were the required bits and pieces... It seemed like a good idea at the time, and after all, how hard can plumbing be?? Turns out, it was quite hard - mostly because the bloody vermin hadn't stopped at the one area, and "fixing" (well we came close!) the obvious leak only weakened the other leaks (never did find out how many there actually were). Essentially, a critical and total failure of the (cheap and nasty) plumbing throughout the house... at this point, I called a plumber and went into emergency mode.
We are very lucky, we have good friends who offered us a place to stay so that problem (at least in the short term) was solved. I went into planning mode. Firstly, since the whole point of this was to get our Beresford place ready to rent, it seemed logical to focus on fixing the plumbing "issue", so I posted myself at Bereford and waited for the trusty plumber to appear... and waited... and waited. 10.00am he said he'd be at there - he turned up at 4.00pm. We expected to go through settlement at 4.45pm that day, so the best outcome seemed to be to get our beds and essentials up to the new house, bringing the move-in date to the Monday, and then go back to plan 'A' and move the rest of our gear on the weekend...
So we got the keys at 5.00pm (after a major drama with the so-called solicitors), and in we walked... into a sticky mess of a house very recently vacated. Rookie mistake was to not specify a requirement to have the new place cleaned prior to settlement... won't make that mistake again. We stayed another night at Chris/Carolines...
A few frantic 'phone calls Tuesday morning had us a cleaner. I must have upset a few people as I started calling at 6.00am! We had our cleaner secured by 6.45am, so the new house was on track again. The old house however, was not going quite so smoothly. The initial repair done by the plumber had been attacked by whatever had holed up in our roof and had destroyed it, resulting in the work needing to be re-done... this was not good, as we all know plumbers costs quickly get out of hand... At this stage, I put the plumber on hold as obviously this appeared to be a vicious circle. Time for the exterminator. I called around and found the exterminator that would "guarantee" removal of the offending whatever-it-was-in-my-roof and got him to guarantee next-day... which he didn't do. I swear, these tradespeople think we're all happy to sit around waiting for them for hours on end!
Anyhoo, with the vermin problem taken care of, the plumber was back on. The urgency was apparent, at least to me - however the plumber didn't share my urgency... 12 days it took him to finally fix it!
In short, it was the typical nightmare move... but we're in our new home now and it's been worth it I think. Writing it down now, it seems that everything that happened was fairly trivial, although at the time I was close to breaking point on a number of occasions. Rowie's impending surgery seems to put it all in perspective really... it's just stuff that happens, nothing more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)