Don’t you dare freecall!

I just called [evil phone/internet company] to cancel the free dialup account they oh-so-kindly set us up with when the line into the new house wouldn’t support adsl.  When the chicky offered it to me, she actually wanted us to pay for it – on top of our $70 monthyl fee for the boradband account we couldn’t use.  Yeah, right, sister – I don’t think so.  So we had two free months, but still would be billed and would have to call to have the amount credited.  The chicky felt a bit sorry for me as M. and I had spent all week on the phone dealing with their stuffups – so she gave me the freecall numbers to have the account closed and credited, so  I wouldn’t have to sit in call queues and then pay for the privilege.

I utilised those numbers today.  And the first gentleman I dealt with snottily remarked "And for your information, in future call the 13 number for account issues".

Yeah, right, bro.  You think that now I have a list of three 1800 numbers, I’m ever going to pay to call you again?  Bugger that for a joke.  Tell him he’s dreaming!

Long weekend

Enjoyed a long weekend at (no longer) our home.  Mum and Dad moved in on Friday so we were officially Guests in our own house.  And it felt good, and stress free.  Except for mum not being able to find tea towels, which was almost a national disaster for two hours until she discovered some cowering in a box.

The autumn sun was perfect and there was a tentative chill to the air.  My friend K. visited from the Gold Coast and we spent Saturday gossiping and then driving around in search of Mark and my dad, who went kayaking for four hours.  Oops – neither had a watch.

Today was spent brunching and then doing some tidying up of some of our residual mess.  The drive home was beautiful – the sun was so warm through the windows of the car that I felt very sluggish and content and found myself driving much below the speed limit quite often, and getting teary-eyed at moments at the beauty of, well, everything.  I think i even cried driving past the macadamia farm on the way home.

 

My handsome dog, having given up on begging for croissants…

We cleaned up so much mess in the house and I actually sat down and organised what I need to take to the hospital on Thursday for my first visit to the birthing centre – I’m very excited, especially about my midwife, Anne, who went out of her way to track me down in another department when I went in for my assessment.  I’m very glad she did this since the midwife who actually did my assessment sounded and looked much like Colleen from Home and Away, and I was tossing up about booking into another hospital.  But then Anne showed up and she even looks like my lovely, respected GP.  So I’m excited to see her this week, and to suss out the birthing centre.  I’ll also be booking in for the prenatal, pysiotherapist-led exercise classes.

And then this evening, a surpriswe visit from Mark’s parents, who kindly took us out to dinner (perhaps because we only have two dining chairs?) and now I’m stuffed so full I can barely pull my chair in enough to reach the laptop.

And the best thing?  Knowing we get to wake up tomorrow and neither of us have to leave the house.  We may do, but we don’t have to.  We can potter around and I can work on my albums, and we can just be.

Please

Drive extra carefully and enjoy a safe and relaxing holiday weekend.  Not the least because I’ll be on the roads and I want to get there in one piece.

Actually, if everyone wants to stay off the Pacific Highway in my area this weekend it would just be so much easier all round.  Thanks muchly!

And, I should have clarified in my last post, the freedom countdown referred to work hours.  So, now there’s officially 7 hours and 53 minutes to go.  Yay!  I’ll be there soon to celebrate.  I’ll bring my knitting.

Mazza and Bruiza…..

…….only 21 hours, 25 minutes to go!!

We are all so excited, and can’t wait to share your release!  I envision a weekend full of Bombay Blushes (well, for you – I’ll have my bad-mama single Blush while getting the both of you abso stonkered).

Woohoo – now it’s 21 hours, 24 minutes!  Counting?  You bet I’m counting!  What will we all do with ourselves?   About what will we complain?  About whom will we roll our eyes, upon whom will we wish the plague?  Our lives will be bereft of Bad Things, Annoying People and kennel cough.  Bliss!  Bliss, I tell you!

21 hours, 23 minutes and falling!

Spesh food

I’ve been on a spesh food cooking binge this week (see previous post re: long walk to Asian grocer).

Tuesday night’s dinner I think I detailed.  Last night we had freshly made tempura – I can’t believe we have a packet of premixed tempura batter on our shelves because tempura batter is so easy to make from scratch – cold water, an egg, some flour. 

Tonight I think we’re having salmon with soba and rice and miso-shiro.

I was plagued by restless leg syndrome last night – apparently it affects 25% of pregnant women and is thought to be caused by an iron deficiency.  Unfortunately, it also seems that many women are low on iron going in and it’s quite difficult to do any catching up with supplements.  I had some RLS last week?  Week before? accompanied by leg cramps – luckily experience with cramps while diving has trained my brain to reflexively lift my toes, thus avoiding the cramp even while my befuddled brain struggles from sleep.  A couple of nights I had Mark massage my lower legs and feet, but I find it now annoying – in a physical sense.  I mean I’d love nightly massages – who wouldn’t? – but the pressure on my tingly legs sets of reflexive spasms which have a sort of tickle to them.  It sops me from sleeping – I had to get out of bed last night and go watch some bad tv.  Infomercials and the FINA World Short Course Championships until 3am, at which point I was finally exhausted enough to go to sleep, by which point Mark had sprawled across most of the bed and was so out of it that he didn’t even notice me flop down next to him.

I think the baby must be having a growth spurt – I have these days where my belly feels tight and the baby sits in funny ways, is more visible or can be more easily felt, and then my abdomen seems much bigger overnight.  Last night I noticed that it was suddenly sitting much higher when I was on my back – usually it settles down a bit and doesn’t have such a profile.  But last night it was enormous.  I’ve found that when it kicks while I’m trying to go to sleep, I just have to put Mark’s hand over the movement – his hands are so big and warm and I don’t know if it’s the pressure but it seems to stop the baby’s most active acrobatic sessions.

Car is still in the shop after a week – the transmission guy seems now to think it’s a computer problem but his autoelectrician is only available sporadically as his wife gave birth last week and the baby is in and out of NICU, unfortunately.  Puts things into perspective a bit – but I still would like my car back at some point.

My Big Red Felted Hat.

My hat got a workout yesterday.  I’ve been a sedentary creature these past 5-6 months with the odd game of frisbee or a 500m walk being my only exercise.  Unfortunately our car is Sick (like, really, really sick) and so I have been stuck at home.

Wait.  Did I post about moving?  I didn’t!  Last post was the first kick of the baby!  Baby nows kicks lots, and rolls over, and I can feel bits of it as it does so.  General moving about during the day lulls it, of course, so it’s not till I go to bed at night that it starts aqua aerobics.  The kicks are so strong now they are visible through my clothes.  I had my first appointment at the hospital a couple of weeks ago – my exam.  Well, assessment anyway, to ensure I was fit to book into the birthing centre instead of just the labour ward.  All is good to go, and I was especially chuffed that the Isis team (the birthing centre) midwife I had spoken to onthe phone, who will be the head of my little group of midwives wow this is a run-on sentence so I will put in a random full stop.  Anne, my midwife, saw my name on the list of women for that morning and came down from the birthing centre to seek me out in the hordes in the paediatrics waiting room.  I was worried that I would have some sort of instant dislike to my midwife, but no – Anne is a comforting mix between my regular GP and Wendy who used to work at the newsagency in my home town.  Petite, that lovely very dark grey hair, glasses and kind, big eyes, with a smile on her face and a soft reassuring voice.

So I get to go see Anne on the 20th, with Mark, and do a tour of the birthing centre and start organising for the pointy end of this process.  Mark freaked out yesterday when I pointed out that in a mere three weeks I will hit third trimester – it’s a really no-getting-around-it sign that, well, there’s really no going back.  Have I said Eeek yet?  No?  Eeek.

So.  Moving.  Mark gave his notice to UP on a Friday night in November last year.  On the afternoon of the following day, I got two pink lines… the first test I’ve failed in a while, perhaps ever.  Bad timing, huh?  So followed several months of Mark searching for reasonable jobs closer to home.  The one he wanted most, he got, but the salary offered was contingent on us moving.  So, last week of Feb, I found us an old miner’s cottage close to the city in an industrial suburb by the port which is now trendy (the suburb is trendy, not the port) and we moved in first week of March, just after our second wedding anniversary.

What does it say that I just typed ‘weeding anniversary’ first?

The cottage is tiny, so we had to jettison lots of Stuff, which makes me deliriously happy.  Even still, there’s too much stuff.  Stuff!  We’re about four kms from the heart of town, and we’re very happy here.  The best bit?  We’re having to rent our house out, and we were lamenting this – but lo, my parents need a house for a while, so they’re moving in.  This is mututally beneficial, although I think the benefits are stacked a little more on our side.  Not only do we get tenants we trust completely, who will look after the house because they love it as much (if not more, given that they built it), but we still get to visit the house and stay there on weekends!  Yes, folks, we have a weekender.  Of course, now I’m not travelling so much – when you live Up There, the travel to Down Here is an unavoidable occurance every week – I’m finding the thought of going Up There arduous.  But until we’re done with the last bits of moving out and house fixing before M&D move in, it’s every weekend – last weekend, this weekend, next weekend – which is a four day weekend anyway.

I’m making this post long but basic because I have so much catching up to do.

My hat.  Yesterday.  Sick car (this is the recap of last week’s episode for the viewers at home).

I decided to cook Mark a Japanese feast last night.  As I didn’t have a car, and wanted to get to certain shops which would have closed long before Mark got home, I decided to walk there.  A distance, I discovered afterwards, of 5.5km return.  I had intended to catch the bus home but decided not to in the end – I was having too wonderful a time walking, although it was too hot.  If I do it again I will set out earlier.

I’ve found my new favourite place, I think – the footpath runs right behind the city’s seafood markets, so on one side you have the beautiful smell from the loading dock of a fish market (people hate that smell, but it makes my mouth water, and in a good way) and on the other you have the genteel old trawlers, resting after a hard night’s work.  There’s no shade, bar a small cafe on the corner of the building, and I think that a couple of mornings a week I might trundle there with my knitting and sip a few coffees and enjoy the morning.  Sometime I might even get up extra super early and go down to watch them unload.  That would be well before 6am though so I’ll have to be committed.  And accompanied.

So the delicious feast last night – I ended up buying too much so we decided to split it into two nights’ worth.

Last night we had crab-stuffed rice balls, pickled carrot and cucumber, spinach and sesame seeds and miso-shiro, followed by home-made green tea icecream.

Tonight will be miso-shiro and rice followed by fresh vegetable and king prawn tempura and then more green tea icecream, which will exhaust my carefully hoarded stock of matcha.  I’ll have to see if the Aisan grocery stocks it.  If not I’ll source it in Sydney next time I’m there.  Oh, I also have a salmon fillet which I will have to do something with.

It was so good to sit down with Mark and have a treat like that, and to have the satisfaction of Japanese dishes cooked from scratch, sauces and all.  My mum bought Mark a Japanese cookbook a couple of years ago, and regrettably we’ve not used it until yesterday.  I don’t know why, because it’s such a marvellous book!

Anyway.  I must go – I have to catch up on all the tidying and sorting and packing away of the Stuff we brought from the other house on the weekend.  What with yesterday’s trek and Monday’s marathon to get a photo album finished (more on that later)I have not yet had time to sort all my girlie bathrrom products, nor the dregs of the kitchen utensils and widgets.