Today marks a year of the children's school being located in Halswell. There was supposed to be a celebration with our school, the associated high school and the school that we are all sharing space with. Organisational failure meant nothing much happened. That's ok - its not really something I wish to celebrate. I know it's a good thing that the ( Read more... )

Caution - contains whining and self-pity.

It's a month today since the earthquake. We are well over the adrenalin of the first few days  when being alive still felt like a bit of a triumph and lots of things are starting to get normal - ish. We have power and water and a toilet which flushes (though advice as to whether to use the latter is ( Read more... )

It's suddenly hit me very hard that, at some stage of next year, I'm going to have to decide what I'm going to do once I have large chunks of the day during which I am not actively engaged in childcare ( Read more... )

I don't know when I last posted anything longer than 140 characters. I think some of it is that I have a couple of things I want to blog "properly" about that have required some mulling (and may yet get mulled into non-existence) and I've been postponing the "dear diary" postings while I've mulled. Today I will post a list of minor gripes.

1.  I am ( Read more... )

Yesterday we got a few guesstimates about various water heating options then asked our bathroom contractor to provide quotes on a heatpump system. The numbers he's come up with are WAY higher than we expected and I have no idea whether it's a fair price based on his knowledge or our house and plumbing or if we're being totally reamed (rheemed?) I ( Read more... )

The shine has totally gone off the whole new bathroom thing. We're still waiting on a couple of little details to be done. There's a bit of skirting that didn't go right and we still don't have a toilet roll holder and now the hot water is all funky. We talked to the council building inspector and there's now way around it - if you put in a new ( Read more... )

Maybe it's encroaching winter or a need for more B vitamins but I've been feeling all out-of-sorts and unfulfilled lately. It's been a while since I've felt like there's anything I'm really good at or even particularly competent at. I keep hoping I have some talent that everyone else has noticed but that I'm not aware of however when I mention this ( Read more... )

Because we've had plumbing work done we've had to have a tempering valve installed on our hot water system to comply with the building code. Since that went in on Friday the hot water pressure has fluctuated so wildly that it's impossible to shower. The building company has a few solutions but the only one they reckon is likely to be successful is ( Read more... )

The years just seem to roll by quicker and quicker. Twelve of them today and all of them fabulous. We're not doing anything special today because we weren't smart enough to sort out babysitters in time so we'll aim for an outing next weekend instead. Jamie, gem that he is, found me a copy of the big Sound + Vision Bowie Boxset which is wonderful ( Read more... )

School started this morning and I'm sick of it already. Crispin has been in a state of high anxiety about having a new teacher and moving to a different floor. Anxious enough that I had to spend pretty much all day at school with him. Jamie can't look after Ferdi at all tomorrow so Crispin will have to fly solo for a good chunk of the day - he'll ( Read more... )