There has been so much that has overwhelmed me in the last week that I am just going to write it all in bullet points and not elaborate too much, or I would end up with a thesis length document. As it is, I am not likely to get away under 1500 words. *[1713 actually]. Oh, I forgot. I don’t know how to do bullet points on this thing. Shit. Oh hey- they just appeared. That’s handy. So here goes:
- DH’s Mum asks me what to get him for his birthday. I tell her specific coffee mugs I have spent 45 mins on internet finding out their exact details, model number and everything so she can’t get it wrong. She gets it wrong. His dad hasn’t organised a present, so his mum hands over the mugs (which don’t fit under our machine) to him to give. Now HE is giving the wrong mugs and she has lost the receipt. She phones to tell me the ins and outs and how to organise with FIL to sort the problem. I tell her I don’t want to be middle man, and hand the phone to FIL who happens to be staying. The following day I get a message on my machine about the situation. I don’t give a rat’s arse. YOU fucked it up, YOU sort it out, and I don’t even want to hear another thing about it. Irritating!
- draftswoman emails me mid last week to ask if Monday 18th 3pm is ok to come over and discuss the plans. I already emailed her outlining which days and times I was available. I even said “I am not around on Monday or Tuesday”. Irritating. Why cannot people read properly?
- Thursday I get an email from B: there is an outstanding lawyers bill to deal with. Short version- bill mailed to her in March, didn’t arrive, then threatening legal action letter arrives Thursday saying pay bill by Friday. I try to pay Thursday online but they don’t send me bsb and account number. Nor do they send it Friday. I send a cheque Monday with apologetic letter so they don’t sue me, and ask if they could send me the original bill, the receipt for the money I paid them in January, and the documentation for the outstanding amount. Still haven’t heard from them. Fuckers. Incompetent. Irritating.
- Friday B and M call me to talk about clinic appointment they had to start IVF cycle. Turns out clinic have not given B the drug we asked them to (I wanted to use up my gonal F from my November cycle) even though we talked to doctor and the coordinator months ago and they said we could. DH phones Dr- oh! He just forgot. Sorry. Asks DH what dose donor is on. As if DH knows!? HE’s not her doctor!! Try to get hold of co-ordinator who doesn’t phone back. And then have to wait all weekend until Monday before we can sort it out.
- I start feeling better and spend the whole weekend in the garden trying to catch up on stuff that really needs doing. DH is on call and continually gets called away, so is not much help, but does the best he can. I wear myself out, of course.
- Sunday night, next door neighbour’s agisted horses eat our bamboo plant over the fence. It has taken 4 years to grow, 4 hours to demolish. Horses are hungry because there is not enough feed in paddock. Owner put a third one in last week. Idiot. Neighbour works away and is uncontactable -refuses to give us mobile, does not have landline. We suspect he does not have a mobile either, but is too embarrassed to say so. Horse owner is not only uncontactable but a drug addict and mentally unstable, so would be of no use to discuss matter with anyway. We are up until 11pm in the freezing cold trying to put up a makeshift barrier from long sheets of tin. Irritating. Why can’t people take better responsibility for their stuff? (one horse got out a couple of weeks ago and was on our property for several days. These people are unreliable).
- Get message from friend about to give birth to second child. First we heard about it. No reply from birthday message to him in January, sent her card in June and response was “oh sorry we felt a bit awkward telling you our news, so just didn’t say anything”. yes. YOU had uncomfortable feelings that you didn’t want to deal with, so it was easier to neglect our friendship and make us do all the emotional work if we want to stay connected. Don’t worry, you’re not alone there- many, many of our friends do this to us. We love having to deal with our our own uncomfortable feelings and then add that to having to make you feel better about yours. Then get birth pic via email. Made DH send the congrats card- buying it and giving it to him was as much involvement as I was willing to have. Yes, I could let these friends go. But if I did that every time this scenario played out, I wouldn’t have many friends left.
- Monday we go to Bunbury, he has an anaesthetic list, I have shopping. It has been frosty overnight, DH checks on some plants. We discover rabbits or possums or both are ringbarking all our trees in the orchard. Get out there in minus 1.8 to put tree guards on as many trunks as we have time for before we leave. I start the day feeling pressured- when am I going to have time to finish this task, and how many trees will be destroyed while it is left unattended? I wish we could just net the whole area, but right now we really can’t scrape together the big big bucks that is going to cost. A lot of the stuff I need at the shops is unavailable at the stores I visit. Futile running around pisses me off, and Bunbury’s roads are atrociously designed so it is hard to get places easily. I hate that city.
- Co-ordinator phones back to say B has to be on puregon because she didn’t respond well to gonal last cycle. OK, that’s fine. Why didn’t you tell us this months ago when we discussed it? Poor communication, clinic keeps us in the dark no matter what we do. Beyond frustrating, and also not great to feel that their communication is so unreliable. Pass message on to B, via voicemail, who loses it and I have to email her the following day. Not a big deal, and I understand she feels under pressure to get it right, and that’s great she’s taking such care, but still. One more thing.
- Tuesday I go to Busselton for acupuncture. Nothing particularly goes wrong, but it is the fourth long day in a row and I come home, unpack, cook dinner and am thoroughly exhausted. Feel guilty that another day has gone by without dealing with the unprotected trees.
- Wednesday (today)- a day at home catching up on housework etc. Dug up the whole potato crop (because they go rotten if left in soil after a frost, and Monday was a frost, and neither Monday nor Tuesday did I have time to attend to the task). I saved most of them, which felt good. It rained on and off all day. In between showers I dug potatoes, picked produce for tomorrow night’s meal, dealt with more tree-guarding (and a bit of sad pruning of beyond-salvageable limbs) and attempted to begin the task of weeding, which has gotten out of control over the past 6 weeks that I have been unable to get to it. Discovered my leftover tulip bulbs were going mouldy in containers I had stored them in due to lack of stockings at time of planting the crop, so felt compelled to rescue them immediately from certain demise and put them in stocking legs which I had re-stocked at the op shop yesterday. I hope they dry out near the fire without too much loss of life. Inside, while it was raining, I did loads of dishes, prepared tonight’s meal, prepared tomorrow night’s meal, tidied, put washing away, made juice for tomorrow morning, made phone calls trying to organise things, filled the woodbox, fed the worms, put shopping away from Monday, tried to rescue my sourdough started from two months of mould and neglect and failed. Went into town, dropped stuff at accountants, paid a tax bill, picked up the mail, meat from butcher, stuff from supermarket, money out of bank. (As little as I could manage on, since this month we have 21 thousand dollars worth of bills due and eighteen thousand in the bank. DH had to sell two grand’s worth of shares to pay the credit card. This upcoming IVF cycle is costing about 12 grand, and I have no idea where that money is coming from right now). Then I thankfully had my counselling session where I dumped all of this stuff, and MORE, and now I feel like I am just about able to cope. Almost.
So that’s my last week or so. There’s a bit more to it, but you get the idea. I’ve been doing very gentle yoga-ish exercises each mooring, and yoga nidra each afternoon, which I think is keeping my sanity intact. I have been off sugar for about a week, and my body feels better for it. I dropped 900 grams of the 1.8 kilos I put on post miscarriage. The other 900 will probably take some exercise to shift, but I am not even thinking about going back to the gym yet. This recovery feels very tentative, and the stresses of the past week are not helping my adrenals.
Tomorrow could have an equally long list of things to do, but I suspect that it would be far better for me to let most of it wait (except the rabbit proofing and the 2pm appointment with draftswoman) and rest inside while it rains rains rains for the remainder of the week, watching episodes of Hoarders and feeling smug that my life isn’t THAT out of control. So I think that’s what I’ll do instead.
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