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Thursday 20 December 2007

Finishing the year in the toilet

Well, it's as good a place as any to say Happy Holidays!

Among the accessories recently purchased for the toilet and bathroom was a funky new toilet roll holder. It's a triumph in both design and practicality - it looks exceptionally cool AND holds two toilet rolls at once! Whooppee! The way I see it, with two toilet rolls on the holder, you should never run out of toilet paper (or at least, not without considerably fair warning). You start with your shiny new, empty toilet roll holder, add two new toilet rolls, and when one runs out, you're left with another to start on meaning you can replace the empty toilet roll at leisure, for ever and ever amen.

Except, somehow, this happened, leaving me amused and the husband scratching his head. After some consideration however, the husband has decreed that my analness (excuse the pun) has reached new heights, and I'm compulsively evening up the toilet rolls without even realising it.

Could be.








I'll see yus in the New Year sometime.

Argh

My rings won't be done by Christmas.

My rings will be done by late January.

In theory.

I am an unhappy camper.

Next milestone - I hope they're done by my brother's wedding in February.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

'tis the season to be jolly fa la la la la, la la la la

Because there are only 2 more working days left before the holidays. It's certainly not because of the weather.

Things are moving along at home - the plasterers worked late and finished up on Tuesday night, which means that we can start painting. The husband has already done the ceilings and archi....whatever they're called. The bits along the top of the walls below the ceilings. Looks great too. Clever husband. He's sealing the walls tomorrow which Jess, for one, will be grateful for. Poor little border collie has been grey with plaster dust for the last couple of days. She starts off black, curls up on the floor or by a wall, and that's the end of that. Covered in dust. After trying to clean though for the last few days, I've come to the conclusion that it really is for the best that we're replacing the carpet at the end of this because I really wonder if the dust will ever come out. I can barely get it off the lino in the kitchen for heavensake.

Pluuuuus, my jeweller promised me last week that my rings would be ready this week, so as the week wears on, I'm getting more excited. It's been 3 months of waiting, but the design is gorgeous and I can't wait to have them back. 2 more days to go at most. Unless of course, he doesn't get them done, in which case, bugger.

In the meantime, to keep me distracted, I've got to work out how to turn that SPCA logo into a linky. Help? Anyone? I'm completely backward with all things technical. It's a wonder I even managed to start a blog.

The Husband - Puppy Collector

I was asking for it, really. Tempting fate and all that.

At this very moment, there is a stray dog secured on our property.

That makes it 4 to the husband, 2 to me.

He's like the dog/boy equivalent of a crazy cat lady.

Ginger - Kitty Rescuer

The husband, bless him, didn't even bat an eyelid when, after leaving the house with 2 dogs for a walk at the park on Monday afternoon, I arrived home post-walk with 2 dogs and 2 kittens.

Ahem.

It makes a change at least to the husband arriving home with an extra dog (this was my first kitten collection - he's come home from walking the dogs with an extra one three times!).

Poor little (gorgeous black fluffy) kitties were on their own at the park, and they were too teeny tiny (about 4 weeks old) to be ok on their own, so I took them home and phoned the SPCA (Funnily enough, I wasn't allowed to keep them. It seems that after being talked into 1 kitty and 2 puppies already, the husband was not to be broken a fourth and fifth time) who came and collected them straight away and took them through to a vet for special care.

I absolutely adore our dogs for the way they behaved at the park - Jack for protecting the kitties and flushing the area to make sure there weren't any more and Jess for circling the wider area to make Jack's self-designated job as chief kitty-protector easier, while I tried to work out how to get both dogs and the kittens out of the park with only two hands (Apologies to the other park walkers who saw waaaay more of my flubby tummy than they probably wanted to after I bundled the kitties up in my t-shirt to carry them out. Thank goodness I was wearing a t-shirt baggy enough that I could tie them up in that to secure them and still remain largely clothed). I did make absolutely sure that there was no mother cat before I took them though - I sent both dogs in to the surrounding bush but the only scent was the kittens'. Also, had there been a mother cat, I'm certain she would have been there protecting her babies.

Yay for the SPCA too. Spare them a thought at the moment while their job is especially full-on and they are doing their absolute best.

Tuesday 18 December 2007

I should've made a list

Walking along Broadway in Newmarket at lunch time yesterday, I came across a woman trying to organise three children on a very busy sidewalk. Triplets. Boys. About 3 years old, maybe a bit more. Chaos. Which made me realise that I forgot to ask the hospital last week whether they had a refund policy for triplets (or worse). I could do twins, but triplets is a bit rough, so just a partial refund would be fine. Bugger.

I didn't get a particularly positive reaction though when I asked about return to sender options if they should mix me up a bratski. They laughed. Laughed! Fancy that. Then they had the audacity to say that they couldn't be held responsible for the results of any particular genetic mix! Honestly! Like it would be me and the husband's fault if our kid was spawn of the devil! How rude!

No one is accountable for anything these days...

It's a sad, sad world my friends.

Sunday 16 December 2007

I do not like green eggs and ham

It's important to put this post in context.

Half a dozen years ago, I didn't eat meat. One year ago, my steak went on the BBQ approximately half an hour before everyone elses. Including the people who like theirs well done. My idea of risky eating is adding mint to my boiled spuds and I was particularly surprised when Pal Sarah served me up cous cous recentlyish and I liked it.

So, don't fall off your chairs kiddies when I tell you that on Saturday night I had a fabulous dinner out with the husband, Pal Stu and Pal Sarah ... at a Yakatori bar. Me!! Japanese!!

Aaaannnd, guess what else?

I had beef tongue.

Beef tongue!

Beeeeeeffffff toooonnnnngue.

How completely brave am I?

(Admittedly, I had a lot of sticky rice as well, but we're focussing on the braveness. Baby steps and all that)

I also had something which I can't remember the name of but which was basically a plate of seared beef (read - I'm still not convinced that it wasn't raw), very thinly sliced and cooked in some clever Japanesey (obviously) way. I think I even had more than one bit.

Very clever Ginger if I do say so myself. Next, I'm going to take over the world.

(The husband feels it's important that I fess up to wussing out on the seafood, but I think it's important that we all focus on the beef tongue and raw meat and move on to world domination)

Thursday 13 December 2007

Orientation

Well, we've been sufficiently counselled, oriented, scared shitless and Al wished happy birthday by any number of medical staff who thought that IVF orientation was a rather horrific way to spend your 30th birthday, all things considered. But, aside from crawling home sporting a flaming headache, I'm feeling good, or at least better, and so is Al. I think the headache is purely a build up of tension pre-orientation eeking itself out. It all seems less scarey now, and however we cope or don't when the time comes, we know it's ok and normal and nothing more than what we need to do is expected of us. The clinic isn't imposing, the medical staff were absolutely lovely, and probably most importantly for me, I've seen the tools they use for egg pick up which was the one thing that was really bothering me. That doesn't seem so bad now either, although it is an effing long needle.

The counsellor took in both of our naked wedding ring fingers and queried straight off the bat if we were in fact married. I don't know if our respective stories of why we weren't wearing our rings (I lost mine, Al hung himself off a plane with his) inspired confidence, but at least the telling of the stories took some of the edge off the counselling session. Having to do the counselling thing was the worst because she wanted to know about the early parts of our journey when things were at their worst, and I'd rather not remember. There was also a tense moment where the nurse had to check that my being a rhesus negative blood type and not having had an anti-D (I think that's what she called it) injection after my miscarriage would possibly compromise an IVF pregnancy, but the answer to that was no. All of our tests pre-orientation came back with excellent results, so even though the chance of success through the cycle is a statistical average of 25% - 40%, we're on the higher side of that.

We were given an indicative time frame of March/April when we got our orientation advice, and the cycle month has been confirmed as March today. I have a good idea now exactly when it'll start, but I'll have a better idea by February and I'll let you know then probably.

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Say what?

The plasterer, who was due to start on Monday, forgot about us. Forgot about us!! How on earth does someone forget about us? Honestly. On the bright side, he started today and it looks great so far ... good enough that I'm not even going to whinge that the house smells like wees (from the lime in the gib compound apparently).

Other redec progress is as follows ...

The electricians have been and gone and forgotten to send us a bill. Woohoo! No doubt they'll work that out pretty quickly, but in the meantime I'll live in hope. Le sparkies put the much needed extractor fan above the shower in the bathroom and my only gripes are that said fan comes with a very bright light which is a bit rough at 6am when you've just woken up, and also the husband has taken great delight in pointing out that now the shower looks like a display case. Pervy bastard that he is, he finds this inordinately funny. Me? I'm getting a builder in to put a lock on the bathroom door. We also had the power point for the fridge moved so that it now lives at the back of the fridge cavity (behind the fridge) instead of at the side. We have a fridge-hole in the wall which the fridge almost fills (it's a seriously tight squeeze - we even had to remove the skirting to wiggle it in there), so there's never been enough room to plug the fridge in where it should be - we've been running an extension cord into the pantry for 4 years. Various new kitchen power points were added to. Very exciting. We just need the new kitchen now ...

Speaking of which ...the kitchen design has been finalised (including redoing the pantry/scullery) and the quote gave us a collective heart attack. Enough said. The kitchen is booked to go in towards the end of January. Happy joy.

The accessories for the bathroom and toilet are all sorted. Towel rail, robe hooks, toilet roll holder. The bathroom is finally completely finished! The toilet is no where even close, but has a nice shiny (double!!) toilet roll holder at least.

Bedspreads for the bedrooms have finally been chosen and cost a fortune, but I swear the money was worth it just so I didn't have to look at any more duvet covers and bedspreads. Bless you Harrowset & Hall for providing all the help a girl could want, as well as stocking scrummy linen. And, as always, the big finger to the unhelpful ponce at Emma Lea who just looked at my wall colour and curtain samples and told me I'd never find anything to match, then proceeded to tell me that I should have chosen my duvet first and decorated around that. I wonder if he'd have been more helpful if he had a crystal ball and saw how many dollars Harrowset & Hall was on the receiving end of ... Plus, seriously, what an arse - who does that? Decorates around the least expensive furnishing in a room? (and, erm ... no offence if any of you have done that ... ahem)

Two sets of curtains have come back, and they look so cool. I'm busting for the plasterer to finish so I can hang them up. The other two sets have gone off for altering now too, and are due back early next year.

We've got the blinds for the kitchen and the weird shaped window in the end guest room which proved a 'mare to find a curtain for. We were going for cedar/wooden blinds but it turns out they cost lots and our windows are all weird shapes apparently. So, hats off to Freedom Furniture for their eco blinds which are recycled plastic and wood, cost a fraction of wooden blinds and are designed to be cut to fit. Oh, and yay for their pre-Christmas sale too which made it even more economical. Kind of sets off the Harrowset & Hall visit. Slightly. That's what I'm telling the husband anyway.

The first lot of insulation went in last week (1x internal wall), and you saw yesterday what happened with the second lot. Ahem. We'll give that another go at the weekend and hope for a slightly less messy result. I have to say though that the stuff we already have in is great.

The plumber didn't turn up. Why doesn't that surprise me?

Tuesday 11 December 2007

When Air Foam goes bad

Air foam is insulation that gets pumped into the walls - it goes in as a dense liquid, foams up, fills the wall cavity and does its insulationy thing. Hehe. It also does this if you've got a special combination of factors in play ...













I would have taken a photo of the inside of the cabinet that had the drawers in, but I got chased out of the kitchen so all I got was the drawers. The chasing also resulted in the fuzzy pic quality sorry. Who knew that a highly amused Ginger leaping around in the rapidly expanding (where it shouldn't be) insulation brandishing a camera wouldn't be appreciated?

(Fantastic product by the way - completely not their fault that we have shite gib in the kitchen)

Thursday 6 December 2007

Motorway ponderings

I have decided to end a week (and let off some of the steam which seems to be steadily gathering in the midst of the redec!) in which an extraordinary amount of time has been spent sitting in my car on the Southern Carpark wondering how it is that Aucklanders don't seem to be able to drive in the rain, by picking on middle aged blokes.

Two things.

Firstly, what on earth possessed Porsche to make a lilac 911?? And what on earth possesses someone to buy one? I mean, you're a middle aged bloke, feeling the decline a bit, so you decide to buy a Porsche. You walk into a dealer, past all manner of lovely shiny sleek black/grey/cool coloured European cars, spot the lilac Porsche, clap your hands in glee and hand over your American Express? Seriously? Doesn't buying a lilac Porsche, to compensate for whatever one buys a Porsche to compensate for, negate the purpose altogether?

I don't think even a hairdresser could get away with a lilac Porsche.

And secondly, full kudos to the middle aged bloke I saw driving an MX-5 to work the other day, sporting the number plate DWIFED. You've got to give a guy a cigar for being prepared to advertised that a) someone stole his wife b) he's having a midlife crisis and c) that the wife didn't leave him with enough money to buy a decent convertible by which to express his midlife crisis.

Meow.

'twas three weeks before Christmas

and the redec at home is kicking up a notch so it's going to be veeery quiet from me over the next week because the plasterer starts on Monday and we have a power of prep work to do between now and then so not much time for bloggy puddling come an evening. I don't even want to think about what sort of state we're going to be living in while they're working. As it is, our furniture and worldly goods are mostly being relegated to the garage, and good luck to you if you try to find linen in our linen closet - you'll find booze, books and general crap, but no linen. To be honest, I can't actually remember what I did with the linen ...

So kiddies, over and out for a day or two. Or three. Maybe. We'll see how it goes.

And just as an aside - apologies for the sudden addition of word verification for comments, but I've had to delete a couple of spammy ones lately so I'm hoping to nip that in the bud.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Curiosity and all that ... well, Jazz.

The problem with this (pic below) is that that hole leads to two cavities - the roof, and the wall. Very, very easily the little bugger could have either fallen, or, more likely, jumped down the wall cavity (and having her running around in the roof was less than desirable also). Getting back up would be the problem because there aint much room in the wall cavity, so it would have involved removing walls (and kitchen cabinets) to get her out again. We won't think of how le feline may have injured herself.

It took quite some time, a lot of calling, talking, encouraging, waving smelly cat meat across the hole, and, in the end, brute force executed at just the right moment to remove her. I doubt she'll be talking to the husband for a few days , though she's already been back on top of the microwave trying to work out how to get past the newly installed barriers.



Monday 3 December 2007

Today's lesson kiddies ...

Always check with the husband how he intends to spend his day before doing the vacuuming