Testing testing

I want to see how this this looks when I post it from my phone.

I have been a busy bee and there have been changes here with work and the same dreaded medical aid that I posted about last. So if I can post from my phone there will be more from me!

Let's see how this looks!

Medical Aide

Following hot on the heals of my friend and fellow blogger Alma I thought I would tell my medical dramas! It is said that things happen in threes well I am up to 5! Hell this must stop now!

• Kid 1 has bleeding mole! Cannot get into dermatologist of choice till end of November - clearly Botox and fillers are way more lucrative than kids with bleeding moles! So I get into second choice and after PROMISING Kid 1 that I won't let the doctor hurt him (bad lying mommy) we toddle off in the middle of the school day (and Kid 1 needs all the hours of school he can get as he zones out of most of it!) and we get told the doctor is out on an emergency! An emergency outbreak of pimples? A fast growing mole? - he is a DERMATOLOGIST!! So an hour later we see the guy who says "We need to cut the mole off!" (See bad lying mommy comment above) This is done fast and yes, painlessly and the hour we have waited washes away as Kid 1 does not hate me forever! He then looks at my few little bumps and says "You have Cancer!" So on the 26th it is off to the theatre for the song and dance or removing 3 Basel Cell Carcinomas. Promise it wont hurt? That's 2!

• Mommy has a black out while driving! This is never a good thing! So blood tests and an examination later I am off to the cardiologist! He prods and pokes and scans and tells me that yes those little flappy things are needed - they are the valves! Right! Then an ECG - lying on the bed! Piece of cake! Then he expects me to walk on the treadmill - that in itself could make my heart STOP! 10 Minutes later he declares my heart in fabulous working order but just to be sure we need to do a 24 hour ECG - so on Thursday I am going to get hooked up to a portable monitor to see how my heart manages all day: That's 3!

Doing kids Homework

My hard life



• Kid 2 gets hurt while playing rugby/jumping on the trampoline/being a boy and complains or ultra sore ribs! So on a Saturday night we dash to the emergency rooms for overpriced after hours x-rays and a fear of punctured lungs, if not broken ribs! An hour and a purse emptied of money later we go home with suppositories (forever after known in our house as Butt Medicine) and a child who says he needs the bathroom! After a massive um, how shall we say it . . . lets just say that butt says it all, he declares he is better. R1000 is the most expensive poo anyone in our family has ever had! That's 4!

• Max the Cat of Wonderbag fame comes crawling in out of the storm last night - soaking wet, dirty, smelly and crying! Toweling him off and settling him on my lap we look for wounds but find nothing but he continues to cry and moan and eats nothing - Max who eats EVERYTHING wants nothing! We are on high alert! He shivers for an hour then he sleeps on a pillow at my bed side and does not move even after covering him with a warm towel! The Vet is my first stop today! The vet says he thinks he was in a fight and while there is no puncture wounds there is a lot of bruising and a highish temp! He now looks like a patchwork quilt he has been shaved in so many spots! Max prances around the vets rooms and even manages to jump off the examining table! We get home and what does he do - He LIMPS around the house looking for the pillow! I have a Drama Queen cat! That's 5!

Wonder Bag???

I was the very lucky winner of a Wonderbag from Jane-Anne Hobbs at Scrumptious South Africa and at a time when I have had no stove I thought it would have been the perfect time to use it but alas I did not get around to doing so!

When I unpacked the package from the post office (which causes great delight in our household) my boys were all "What on earth is that?" and "How lame! Can we have the box?" And the cat agreed that the box was well worth fighting the kids for as he just LOVES boxes too.
If you can climb in it it is MINE! says Max the cat!
If you can cut it up to create stuff it is MINE! says Matthew the 10 year old!
No one was much interested in the contents and if truth be told (sorry Jane-Anne) but I have not yet managed to get a chance to use this fabulous creation!

So it has been in my study/library/dumping ground and yesterday I saw that Max the Cat has won the war!

Jane-Anne I promise I won't cook the cat and I will now go to the Wonderbag website to see how to use this great cooking devise and I will send you photos of the meals I produce!

Cooking up a storm!

We have progress!

This is how we got the hob to fit at last - well this was the moment AFTER the granite was finally cut:

5mm of granite cutting = diabolical mess



 And this is what I wrote into the dust on my dining room table:

Can a single written word be sarcasm at it's best?

 

 I think it may all be worth it though!

But now, as someone just reminded me, I have to cook! Hmmmm but for fun I bake!

Please lets renovate just a little!

When I decided to blog I wanted a place to rant/vent/talk without interruption (love that the most ha ha), and then I wanted to explain the crazy, and then I wanted to get followers, and now I want to explain the crazy again! So a circle it is and the crazy you are going to get!

We are having the house painted!
Well I could just stop there I suppose it is enough to pull your hair out especially when there is zippo privacy as all the windows in the back of the house are being painted, and they are all of the bathrooms in the house and I have had 4 cups of coffee!

Then the stove packs in!
One plate, oven and grill at a time till eventually I manage to convince he, who holds the purse strings for any rather large purchases, that if he ever wants a cooked meal again he was going to have to cough up to have it replaced! And it is built in and who knows what horrors we will find when we try to fit the new one! So dragging the family to the appliance store was last Saturday's Fun Family Outing! We look at the row of shiny new stoves and I ask the Hubby, "Which one do you like?" to which he replies "the Cheap one!" Now why am I not surprised and why did I bother to ask! Can be delivered on Tuesday (and not the cheap one).

Then the Microwave packs in!
Now no stove and no microwave - the universes way to say STOP COOKING!! But the hubby decided to remind me that there is a little company called Mr Microwave around the corner from our house and he bundles it into MY car for repairs the next day - am I not busy enough? Coffee Networking mornings are very important! So luckily for R250 and in 2 hours a very nice man Doug, fixes my microwave so at least we can eat! Damn here I was planning my takeaways for the week!

Daddy Dearest comes to fit the new stove!
He arrives 2 hours late (cannot get good help these days - especially when it is free) and dismantles the old stove with the one remaining hot plate and then finds . . . the new hob does not fit into the old hole! By about 5mm and it is granite! So he tells me to call my granite guy. Is that under G for Granite just after G for God? Where on earth does he think I am going to find a Granite Guy? If I had a granite guy I would not need Daddy Dearest!

The Carpenter!
Here to fix all the wood rot and the bits an bobs that need doing, as well building a shelf for the under counter oven to stand on (no more warming draws in built in ovens you know) tells me that we need to buy a burglar guard for the bathroom window he is replacing as he did not see that the original window has BUILT IN STEEL guards that are the shape of the cottage pane window! Hubby freaks out on the phone, I have to tell The Carpenter that he has to sort it out! The man is 80 if he is a day - how do you fight with the elderly?

Man I need an increase and a bonus!

So we sort out one problem after another, I hit mommy mode and do the school, tennis, rugby, homework thing and the wrestle my eldest into the shower for him to tell me "Mom there is no water coming out of the taps!" According to the water department there is a burst pipe 2 roads up and we have a 6 - 8 hour wait for water and it is 5:30pm!

And I have not even told you about the visit to the Dermatologist yet!

Tender Friendships!

How do we moms cope when our children fight with their best friends?

How do we moms cope when the best friend's mom is our friend too?

I am the kind of mom who asks my child "So what did you do?" And "Why on earth would you fight with your best friend?" And "How are we going to fix this?"  Well this week we have had the drama in our household and even though I do not believe that my son is an angel - which 10 year old boy is? I do know that this has been hard for him too as he is not really sure how to handle the situation with his best buddy who he has known since he was tiny!

So I dug deep into my parenting base and told him that while there is always 3 sides to every story - yours, mine and the truth - there is one universal thing I believe! If someone we care about is hurting, and we have in any way contributed to this, we have to be sorry for causing the pain! So we talked about feelings and emotions and hurt and pain and while I am not sure how much of it he really grasped he understood that friendships are tender and important and that we do what we can to make those around us comfortable to be with us! But not in a way that compromises who we are as people!

So when he bounded up to me the next day after school telling me "Mom we need to talk" the smile on his face speaking volumes, I was sure we had done something right. "Mom, I told him I was sorry I had hurt his feelings" and then "and mom he said sorry too, but I am not sure why. But we are all good! Can we have a play date tomorrow?"

And the universe was back on track for that moment!

Cleaning is Cathartic!

I am trying hard to be organised! It is not easy as I am a classic hoarder! You NEVER know when you may need something you know! So I keep bits and bobs and thingamajigs and whatchcoms (my granny's word) for the future when you just may need them again.

So I got boxes and a labelling machine as I thought that if I am going to hoard it may as well be in an orderly fashion.

It is working but it is a slow process and I am still not happy to chuck out "stuff". I am also diabolically sentimental so anything that was from my late mom, or my kids, or anyone who loved me enough to give me something is hard to get rid off.

Today I cleaned out the medicine box and thew out 16 bottles of expired meds as well as about 22 blister packs of outdated pills and potions and I have streamlined one part of my life. Wow it feels good and all the waste glass, paper and cardboard went into the recycling which feels good too! What also feels good is that clearly our family is not sick too often.

Look at my medicine box now:

I have a friend who knows me too well. She told me that "Shoving stuff into a cupboard is not actually cleaning!" Nice one Jax!