Mad Hair Day

We’re going to skip the usual preamble about what a crap blogger I am. I’ve said it before, you can all read the dates and it’s going to be no surprise to anyone that I haven’t posted in ages. Because that’s what I do.

To fill you in on the minutae of my riveting life (it’s all go here folks!) I’ve been a little unwell. Those of you with good reading skills and excellent memories might have noticed my earlier mention of a slight fever. Well, that wasn’t the half of it. Actually, it turns out I had bacterial gastro-enteritis. Salmonella to be exact, and it was even less fun than you’d imagine. It really hit in the early hours of the morning the day after I arrived home and I spent a week or two convalescing. Since then I’ve not been quite right and now we (that’s me and the doctor) think that the tummy bug has exacerbated an underlying condition. No idea what yet, but with my luck it isn’t going to be anything glamorous.

In the meantime I’ve not done much knitting although I am churning out a sock-yarn strapless dress for Barbie (that would be my daughter’s Barbie. My Barbie would never wear anything so gauche. She prefers her knitted evening gowns to have sleeves, dontchaknow?) and I’m knitting on the pink socks featured a few posts ago and predictably neglected.

It is summer here now, you see, and the weather is getting hotter. My chickens (we have four now) have stopped laying in protest at the inadequate leisure facilities. I think they require sun-loungers and popsicles at regular intervals, if not scantily clad waiters with umbrella-d cocktails.

We also have the builders in. I’d like to say it’s because we believe in supporting local tradesmen through economic hard times. But actually it’s because we also have a hole in our bathrom wall  as my daughter slipped and put her foot through it. This was because the original owner put wall tiles on the floor (slippy!) and the shower cubicles leaks water from around the door. On the bright side, if she hadn’t bounced on her bum and stuck a leg in the plaster we wouldn’t know that the shower cubicle has in fact been leaking around the bottom for what looks like a decade and that the wall behind is rotten. And the floor. Yep, that was lucky, wasn’t it?

We decided to not fix it up half-arsed but to rip out the entire bathroom and start again once the new wall and floor is done. Our en-suite bathroom also has killer floor tiles so that will need doing too so we’ll put in a new shower cubicle there at the same time (are you noticing a hint of the snowball effect here?) as it was designed as a ‘wet room’ which was apparently trendy a few years ago. Bloody stupid idea, to my mind. More of a wet towel/ floor/ loo roll/ corpse-with-a-cracked-skull room, if you ask me.

And right after that we’ll put on a new bedroom for the builder (he’s been here for ages mending the roof and guttering. A word to the wise: never leave your man alone for two weeks with his new chainsaw if you have trees near your house), as I think he might as well just move in as he spends so much time here. It pretty much feels like it already. You forget how much you take privacy for granted until the day you meet the new plumber while prancing about the house straight from the shower while looking for fresh underwear in the oh-my-god-it’s-the-size-of-Everest laundry pile that now fills the previously open-plan lounge-diner. Yep, he’s not going to forget me in a hurry.

I’m off to Auckland this weekend for the annual girly weekend with my nearest and dearest female relatives. We shall be finishing the Christmas shopping and drinking wine. I have Christmas down pat this year, I’m pretty much all organized for it now and I’ll be droning on about how efficient I am in the next post coming up in the near future.

Or not. It might be Easter by then.