Broken and brusied

WH fell off the porch roof yesterday. The complaining painter (CP) and I were indoors when we heard a strange thud and a muffled cry. CP rushed outside, he was nearer the door, and immediately shouted for me to call an ambulance. WH was strangely silent and was in a crumpled heap on the floor. An ambulance trip and 4 long hours at the hospital confirmed the damage: a broken wrist, badly bruised face and eye, sprained ankle, torn foot ligaments and concussion. He has cuts and bruises over his whole body. It seems the ladder moved away from the wall as he was climbing off the roof and that he had twisted and hit the front step as he fell, hence the huge black eye. The doctors were bemused by the fact the injuries are diagonal, usually they all one side. The worst problem right now is the head injury, every time he moves he feels dizzy and WH is not one for keeping still. Short of chaining him down I don't know the answer to that one.

Additionally we now have a large plaster and instructions to keep it on for 8 weeks. It's going to be a toughie. I just ordered a new wide screen tv online. I think he's going to need it. As for the building work, we just finished the porch, the rest looks like it's on hold until next year now. Late November will not be the time to start projects outside. The work will have to go on into a third summer.

Excuse me whilst I do some screaming.

Back to reality

Our holiday seems a lifetime away, almost 3 weeks since we returned now. This last weekend we were away in Southampton and visited the Hillier Gardens at Romsey. So many trees and so little energy to walk round them all. I did get a few photos of some of the stranger ones though.

Tomorrow I see my new (yet again) consultant. The lovely chap I saw in December has apparently left and I'm seeing a locum once again. I just hope he decides to go with the other chaps plan of action or else I'll be having another boat load of tests again. I just want to start some proper treatment, after all I've been waiting 7 months over which time I have put on weight after the steroid trial, have begun to seize up and and now can't walk very well. Additionally the excruciating skin itch is back with a vengeance. What started as a minor irritation when I was bitten on holiday has developed into a large red, raised patch on my arm which itches intensely. It wakes me up it's so bad. Surely a sign of galloping psoriasis if ever I saw one. Fingers crossed that matey tomorrow agrees and finally does something about it. Nothing I have tried works at all. I can't believe that last year I was so well (and so thin - for me anyway) and now I am almost back to square one, just the Lyme symptoms are still thankfully absent.

The last few weeks I have done what I can to help with Mother in Law, saw the death of a very old friend whom I shall miss intensely and provided bacon sandwiches and tea on tap to the other friend who is helping WH to build our porch. At least at home normality rules, it still looks like a building site!

Waking up

A whole two weeks since I wrote anything here and most of that time I have been asleep. I am really not doing so well on the osteoporosis meds and actually stopped taking them 3 days ago. The brain fog is lifting, the sleepiness is going and I feel like a different person. No doubt my GP will have something to say but I really can't go on like that. It's almost summer and I have too much to do. I am STILL waiting another consult with the Rheumatology guy and am not taking anything at all for the arthritis which is having it's own problems like 24 hour pain. Until that is sorted the garden will have to wait.

WH has just left for the cupboard supplier and will be fitting out the utility room this afternoon. Another box we can tick. Yesterday a knock at the door revealed an EHO from the council investigating a blocked drain further down the road. I checked his credentials (yes really !) and let him in to dye test our drains. Walking into the kitchen he stopped dead. "Wow, it's a bit different from next door" and he went on to ask me about the flooring which he wanted for his own kitchen. As he left he said "You've got a great room there, I love the light". Coming soon after an estate agent (for the other house) had said it was like walking into another country it was so bright and sunny, that pleased me no end. So far only WH's sister has made a bad comment along the lines of how small the kitchen was, at 5m square just who is she kidding, it's 3 times the size of hers (meow, meow). So maybe the wait has been worth it and WH has really created his wow effect which was what he was aiming at all along.

I promise I really will post pictures soon.

The waiting game

It's been a hectic week one way and another. WH arrived back from his annual skiing trip along wth the obligatory machine full of laundry; my cleaner, the lovely Ms T had a bad back so I had to clean my own house; we had youngest grandson (19 months) to stay for a night and a day and then had to take him back home over 80 miles away and what with blood tests, hospital appointments and all the usual business-y stuff I'm quite whacked out. WH has been working some odd hours too, meaning he doesn't eat his dinner until after 9pm so I'm still waiting to clear up and wash dishes at 10, my pet hate.

This week though it should be a little calmer. A slack week business wise gives WH the opportunity, finally, to tile the kitchen. With a short visit from the depressed painter looming, to do some touching up, I can almost see the end of the kitchen in sight. The one thing which conspires to thwart all this is the non arrival, STILL, of the sideboard which I ordered at the end of November. Actually it did arrive, despite all the suppliers promises (lies?) on New Year's Eve (should have been before 15th December) but when we opened the packages, the top was badly damaged as were 2 of the drawers. Hasty photo and email exchanging confirmed that it was a manufacturing fault and that we would be supplied with replacements within 5 working days. They didn't arrive. I took this up with Trading Standards or as they are now known Consumer Direct and it should all have been sorted by last Friday. It hasn't. So now I'm still walking round 3 large boxes, we can't finish the last unpacking and sorting out in the kitchen and the whole thing is now, not to put too fine a point on it, getting on my flipping nerves.

This whole experience of internet purchasing for the kitchen has actually soured my view of the process. An order for cooker hoods and stuff was cancelled because the firm failed to deliver in the set time and then could not even tell me when the goods were likely to arrive. Eventually I got a refund by resorting to my Credit Card company. The supplier had now gone bust so I'm glad I dealt with that straight away or I would now be seriously out of pocket and still awaiting the refund. The sideboard cost more, a lot more, and because I technically have all parts claiming a refund is not so easy. The firm used Paypal and they don't want to know, neither does the credit card company because a third party (Paypal) was involved. In future I will confine my internet purchasing to household names, little unknown firms will be a no no. They truly don't deliver.

So for now I wait and wait. I've turned my attentions to the old bathroom. It doesn't look like WH will be re-fitting that in the near future so the painter will be painting it as it is, the blind will be going up instead of my dreadful temporary curtains and a shiny new mirrored cupboard is waiting in the wings to go on the wall. Meanwhile WH will be finally fitting out the downstairs cloakroom and the utility room, all I need for that is a couple of cupboards, everything else is in the garage, just like me, waiting.

A chink of light

Two years ago this week my Mother died, the end of 15 hard years of worry and aggravation when I knew that she would rather have had my sister as her main carer than have to make do with me, whom she always regarded as second best. As sister lives on another continent it wasn't to be. After the death came the relief and the calm of a certain knowledge that I was no longer on permanent call-out, albeit 140 miles away, and the luxury of being able to spend whole weeks at home without having to check my messages every 20 minutes and worrying that if I went out anywhere I would have to leave again in a hurry.

The effects, over the final seven to eight years of having to drive to her home in the middle of the night at short notice, go rushing up on a Monday morning because she needed a loaf of bread and she refused to ask anyone else, living in a 'guest room' for 4 weeks whilst hospital visiting a patient who complained the whole time and having almost daily phone calls from carers who were denied entrance, carers who had been shouted at, carers who had been accused of stealing and a doctor who thought I was a waste of space (after all I was ill with Lyme Disease too) can scarcely be over estimated. They took a toll on me that I had hardly noticed until the weight lifted. I took time to recover. I also spent the best part of the following 12 months sorting out her affairs, will, probate etc as I was the only person able to do it. I remember attending a probate interview at court being hardly able to walk. My step-daughter had dropped me off outside as there was no public parking but I then had to wait for her return outside the opposite side of the road in freezing temperatures, barely able to stand. Daughter was stuck in the midday traffic and the whole interview had taken less than 10 minutes and not the 30 I had envisioned.

I didn't expect much relief that first twelve months but I did get a little more than I bargained for. We decided to buy this house and that decision more than anything else has coloured the last twelve months along with WH being diagnosed with depression, the awful result of his appearance as a prosecution witness at a murder trail, a particularly nasty and vindictive customer and his general sadness at the effects of aging.

Today the house project is on its way to being finished. We had planned to have it finished 9 months ago but the downturn in the building trade coupled with the fact that every single outside contractor we have employed has let us down at some stage or other, lead us to decide that outside 'paying' work would come first, WH being in the enviable position, even now, of having so much work offered to him that he can pick and choose at whim. He may as well earn whilst there is still work there to earn from. Other local tradesmen without exception are not so lucky.

This weekend I unpacked the last of the 60-odd boxes which had been stored for up to 2 years in the garage at the other house, a truly momentous occasion. Now all we have remaining in there is stuff that should be in a garage and which can be brought here when this one reverts to it's proper use and stops being the builder's workshop and tool store. We now have just the two bathrooms, a cloakroom and the gardens still to do. The gardens are my job anyway and will occupy me over the summer whilst we are still here.

If we had been able to take our original course (which was get the keys in April 07, build in May to Oct 07 and move-in in Nov 07) we would have had tenants in by now. Instead we didn't get the keys until July 07, started building in November 07, due to planning delays, then lost most of the winter to rain and floods and a bricklayer who only worked 2 days a week at most so we didn't move in until July 08, the time we had planned to be moving out to somewhere warmer than here. Which brings me neatly round to my little chink of light at the end of the tunnel. Greek light, that is.

Last week I booked to go to our beloved Kalamos for the fourth time, this time for almost 3 weeks in May. It will give us a chance to look around again and make some decisions regarding our eventual move. By then the garden here should be well under way and the majority of the inside work completed. WH is seeing a new consultant soon so his depression should be getting some proper treatment too. My project managing duties are now almost over and I have time to spend on other pursuits; at present I am literally getting my office in order, unpacking and sorting the mountain of paperwork brought in haste from the old house. I now have time to read for pleasure again, I had almost stopped for those 2 years as I concentrated on planning applications, orders, insurances and probate. I get time to go off with friends window shopping, garden visiting or even better plant buying. Recently I've been trawing the web for apartments to rent and places to go and visit.

I can finally see that little chink of light and it's getting brighter by the second.

Don't ever work for the general public.

I've been running round all day collecting things for WH and delivering them to his work site, actually somewhere he's been before and to where he was bound to return at the end of a warranty period. A builder's life is never simple, particularly when the customer is a prize pratt with obsessive/compulsive disorder and that's just for starters, even his family think he's a nutter. Anyway after delivering a load of insulation to stop his pipes knocking, pipes I hasten to add which were fitted by A N Other and not by us, I then had to deliver 4 cupfuls of cement from another job to fill a minuscule dip in a brick.

I met the depressed painter on that trip, he was tiling under a worktop which you can't see unless you lie on the kitchen floor and crane your head at a very unnatural angle, but hey, the customer is always right and all that, we will do these jobs without charge, with pleasure. By the same token, it gives us untold joy to sand down the underside of a worktop which also can't be seen because it feels rough when you stroke it. WHAT?? WH did say it was because it was cheap, the ones we usually fit are light-years better quality, but that remark, strangely, went unnoticed.

Later on I had a phone call, "Could I just deliver some cups of coffee from the local garage as by 1pm the customer hadn't offered any of the crew a drink." Again their wish was my command and it cost the best part of twenty quid to get coffees and extra cans each for later in the day. By that time WH was in need of paracetamol and luckily I found 4 under the seat in the car, wrapped I hasten to add. As to why they were there at all, it's safer not to ask. Having delivered these, I shot off again quickly, the customer by then peering at me over the top of his pc screen, handily situated right in the centre of the front room window, angry no doubt for distracting the workers for all of thirty seconds.

Just as well I couldn't stay long as the painter was about to tell me about his latest trouble with his mother, she doesn't like the smell of paint in his van. I thought we had problems.

Sod's law

Damn, bugger and blast.

I did a lot of packing for the move last week and sorting out WH's house prior to No 1 daughter and family moving in and I thought I pulled something in my stomach as WH handed down some boxes from my loft. The next day there was a distinct ache. A timely visit to the GP confirmed it, my hernia is back. I'm really mad, things were going so well and now I'm back to not exerting myself, no lifting or carrying and being generally careful. Dancing for 2 hours at the Hayseed gig probably didn't help either.

I see the surgeon again on Wednesday and this time I will be begging him to do the 'proper' final stuff with the mesh. After all it's not the NHS and surely if I am paying I can have what I want? Last time I went with his considered opinion that it was not necessary the first time. No of course not, that way you get to pay for 2 operations when the first doesn't hold. Usually I'm moaning about the NHS, this surely makes a change.

I'm going 'Private' again for the same two reasons I did before, far less risk of catching anything with my lack of a decent immune system and the much greater nursing care given as I didn't know exactly how, as a Lymie, I was going to react to surgery. This time there is a third reason, my window of opportunity to have surgery is minuscule, restricted to one convenient week only. So another operation is looming again, hopefully as soon as I can fix it after we return from Denmark in 4 week's time. That would give me 4-5 weeks recovery before the great Corfu Holiday. I need all my strength for that.

Afterwards I had planned a fairly active summer, festivals, craft fairs and the like until August when WH is due to have his shoulder operated on again. He had this done before in 2002 and it wasn't too successful so they're doing something more radical so he can continue to use it. If that works he is scheduled for the second one a few months later. In the intervening time we will most likely decamp to Greece where there will be no temptation for him to use it to any great degree. In any case he has been told he will be off work 3-4 months, not the 6 weeks he managed last time.

Quite where this puts the house move in the scheme of things I'm not sure, I will be out of action for 3-4 months as far as that goes so it looks like WH will be doing it all himself; that's when he's finished the house which for the last 4 months has been a single handed job as it is. We did get rid of the semi-permanent skip last week so that's a start, just a kitchen roof to get on and a kitchen to fit and we might be half-way there.

The arrival in 4 weeks of WH's nephew back from his annual 6 month sojourn in the Far East will give a second pair of experienced and lightening-quick hands. He generally works for us for the other 6 months of each year but has been so busy with other things for 18 months we had to do without our Main Man. His return is eagerly anticipated, not least by me, so WH will no longer feel he is doing the whole kit and caboodle himself.

Sometimes I am really sick of being sick, after 16 years I should have learned it's always two steps forward and one step back.

Up to the roof

We have finally reached roof height on our extension. The bricklayer had 4 days left to do at the beginning of December and the weather has been so awful ever since it has taken until this week to get those 4 days of work done. Now the timbers are on and we are just waiting for the roofer to add the final layers. Then we can start on the inside, only 11 months since I first set foot in the house. WH is off for a much needed break this weekend, his annual skiing trip. I'm staying in the relative warm here.

Meanwhile this house is for sale and has been advertised once, with 2 viewings. It's being advertised again shortly but it looks like the weather is set to stay wet and floods surround our village. Sadly, not the sort of weather I would go house-hunting in.

One week later

Whew, can't believe a whole week has gone by so fast.

A momentous day today as I have put my little box-type house on the market after 22 and a half years here. I said I would stay a couple of years and then find something bigger. Events always conspired to thwart it. Now however, the time has come and the deed is done. The first ad is due next week. Seems strange so close to Christmas but the HIPS fiasco has made it timely now and I get to save about £700 in the process.

Round the corner and the scaffolders have finally come so we can press on upwards again. A quick site meeting with WH confirms that we *should* have a roof on the extension by Christmas and on the kitchen by New Year. The weather continues to wage war on the brickies so the build is much slower than it would have been had we started on schedule in June. As it is we're not doing badly coming to the end of the seventh week, particularly as the building inspector doubled the size of the foundations at a stroke and delayed us a full week.

I wanted to be in for Christmas, Easter looks much more likely now!

Work in Progress

After weeks and weeks of destruction, things are starting to take shape. We are actually building, hence my being away from the internet and having to get out and do stuff. OK, OK, it's only delivering breakfasts, keeping the tea stocked up and fetching sundry parts and supplies but it's all in a good cause.

The top pic is of the rear extension and the other one is the living room, now without the kitchen sticking out and with the fab new glass doors which will eventually open onto the dining area and to another set of glass doors leading to the wonderful south facing rear garden. Already I just LOVE it. Not least for the sun which streams on the back of the house even on a cold November morning.

The best news of all? My fig tree is surviving and has loads of figs developing for next year. Roll on Summer.

Mud, Mud, Glorious mud

After weeks of nothing much very visible happening on the new house, today saw the start of the groundworks. The crew were due at 9am. They arrived at 11 and had a tea break, six phone calls and a big conflab. After another few phone calls they decided they needed more equipment so off went the tractor and trailer to fetch some. Another truck appeared. Some more digger parts appeared. They had another cup of tea.

About 2pm they started and cleared the whole back-garden in about 40 minutes. I fetched 6 year-old grandson to watch after school." It's boring," he said, "they wont let me do anything, I'm going home." I watched fascinated.

All that is left is a pile of rubble to be removed in the morning, a pile of bushes to be replanted and a wide expanse of flat clear space where the lawn will be. No dead trees, no stumps, no little twee brick walls, no giant weeds.

I love it.

Just got to dig the foundations tomorrow then we will be really motoring on.