updates- sort of

It's been so long since I've been able to post with anything new to update but finally I have some small updates. Roof plumber called in yesterday to look at installing additional downpipes. yippee and solving a minor but potentially rust creating issue. hopefully work will be done in the next week or so. Developer finally organised someone to take away the trees he "removed' for us as part of the deal of us buying the block just over 2 years ago...

waiting for:
Still waiting for Trees for along what was an easement at the back of the property of course.
Plasterer to return to complete his ceiling fix that he started over 4 weeks ago and promised to return 3 wks ago, so the painters can return. ( he turned up on Wed, no notice and expected Dh to let him in right on taking kids to school time and with a house that needed to be plaster dust proofed instantly!)


and our lovely ceiling fan that blew up 3 weeks after install may well be mended/replaced within the next few days or early next week. My brain has turned to goo and I can't remember which Dh said it was when I got home from work yesterday. B... lightings electrician rang and wanted to know how long it would take him to get here. dh said he didn't seem happy when he said about 90 mins. They had better not expect us to pay for him after making us wait over a month. He'd better turn up with the correct fan with wenge blades or there will be hell to play and You will be able to hear me in Queensland.
We have the rest of the house's lighting to buy yet. We won't be shopping at B.



Also we finally got someone out to give us our first fencing quote for the 110+ m of fencing we still need. Fencing man has said it's closer to 117m. Now we wait for the quote to come back. He's booked 4 wks ahead. But it's a start.

Looking forward to the weekend. Eldest son and I are heading up to the city to go to the West Coast Blues 'n Roots Festival. He's very excited too. His first concert/festival. We are going to see Gogol Bordello. ( interesting band)

Plus a few other performers, I hope. Now he just needs to get well as he's been sick and off school most of this week with some viral bug.

A quiet life- yes please

nothing much happening here although I would like to think we are going to do a few things around the house this weekend.

Since my last post we'd had another trip to Perth to celebrate birthdays. My mum's and my F.I.L's.
So this week we've all been quietly getting over the quick visit. Next weekend I'm off to Perth again with the eldest. We are going to the West Coast Blues Festival in Fremantle. Our eldest has professed a liking for a particular band who are touring Australia and well, a bit, "out there". Given son number 1 rarely shows much excitement over anything I suggested we go and see them. Probably the only time a teenage boy will ever want to go to a concert willingly with his mother. woohoo So Gogol Bordello here we come! Watch Out! Perhaps we should wear some Purple--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_81l4DXlwM

I'm not sure how much of the festival we will see. It is a 12 hour event starting at 10 am however Gogol Bordello aren't on until after 8pm on Sunday night. So we are planning to stay in Perth for the night and return home early Monday morning.

Now to explain my urge to do "something" with our house this weekend. Mum and my Aunt are coming back from Perth with us. I will be taking them down to Busselton ( 70 kms away) on Monday afternoon to check out Mum's possible new home. Mum has an appointment to meet the sale rep, hand over a deposit and pick flooring and window furnishing colours for the brand new retirement villa she is planning on buying. Then they'll be returning to our place for dinner and to stay the night. Mum's already booked her sister and herself onto the Tuesday coach/train journey home. Dh just has the task of surviving Tuesday morning with them both. Ooops.
If it wasn't the last 3 days of work for me for 2 weeks I would have taken the Tuesday off as well to help out.


So the house is still the same as ever. The Developer still has not planted the trees at the back of our block. Hubby saw him on Wednesday and asked what was going on. He was told next month or after that, we assume depending on some rain making an appearance.
I think I'll just start getting fencing quotes regardless and hopefully get a fence up without waiting.

The plasterer has vanished leaving our ceilings with plaster stripes waiting to be sanded.
It's been nearly a month since the plastering was done. ( he was returning the following week to sand) You might remember we had held off doing any more wall painting until the ceilings were repaired.

Bec.. Lighting are dragging their feet getting an electrician to come and replace/repair one ceiling fan that blew up 3 weeks after it was installed. so we've been one ceiling fan down since Mid Feb. We did suggest we use the local electrician, collect a ceiling fan ourselves ( closest store is 90 + mins away) but they want to use "their" guy.

There seems to have been a lot of interest in some of the blocks around us this week. Not sure if the Developer has dropped his prices or what. But we've had quite a few cars driving around and people getting out and wandering over the sand pads on a articular couple of blocks. Hubby actually saw the Developer on Wednesday organising a mini bobcat drive to clean up the blocks. Since then the bobcat driver has been around every day, all day, scrapping and tidying up.

Meanwhile the house across the road from us has been having the float done on the internal walls this week. Next i imagine they'll either put in the glass windows or do the white plaster or ceilings. I have only walked through the shell once, before the roofing started. It doesn't feel right to go over there now and to be honest I'm not that interested anyway. I guess they'll be in September /October or so if they keep at the same pace they took for our place.

This weekend

Had a little adventure this weekend. I feel a bit over whelmed but that could be the wine I am now enjoying.

This weekend was a 3 day weekend <> so I had organised to pick Mum up from Perth, approx 225 kms away and bring her back here. I booked a Bunnings ute/truck for the Friday night collection for a 24 hours stint. My plan was to collect the "ute", drive to Mums and then sleep, load up the ute and drive home and then return the ute before the 24 hours was up. I also had in mind the idea to bid on some ebay items that were due for collection on the Saturday morning. I managed to win a nice large 68 cm flat clr tv yippee to replace our 24 yer old tv on it's last legs that the kids watched in their play room, to collect. My problem turned out to be that in my flurry of ebay bids one slipped in that I had missed checking location on and was a good 30 kms from Mums oops and yes I won it.


Anyway Collecting the beast managed to be not too bad except for getting used to driving a manual car after 6 + years driving an auto. ( spent almost 10 mins in the car park convincing myself that perhaps there was something wrong until I finally let the clutch out far enough to reverse)
At this point I must say I only manged to stall the car once in the entire 24 hours of driving time!( forgot the clutch) Which I am quite proud of.

Anyway I finally got out of the Bunning car park and started heading to Perth on Friday night. After the first 180 or so KMs it started to get a little dark and I noticed the dash lights were not working!!!! arghh.. I drove the rest of the way relying on other cars and the occasional light from a street light and I have to admit the light from my iphone a couple of times to double check the speed. phew. Saturday morning i was able to find the dash dimmer switch but because it was quite bright by this stage I couldn't tell if the dimmer switch had just been turned right down or if the light was truly broken.

Eventually I arrived at Mums to discover she'd organised the neighbours to load on the BBQ in the dark.. errm yeah Mum, wonderful. I was hot , tired and hungry and wanted a rest, I really didn't care. Morning came and I drove off to collect the tv 30 kms away and return. We then frantically loaded up the rest of the truck with plants. jammed packed. and the scary thing is Mum still has more of the same. We loaded the truck frantically for 45 minds or so and then tried to cool off before leaving asap.
Mum has decided to sell her house and find a retirement village. I kept asking her if there was anything else she wanted me to take. Of course once we got home she thought of several large, heavy items. blahhh frustrating as I can take the plants in the car boot but not heavy stuff so while the ute/truck was hired it was a perfect opportunity for heavy things.

And off we went. the ride was very hot and windy, the truck was supposedly airconditioned but the air was hot not cool. We stopped within a 100 kms of home and bought petrol to fill the tank at Perth/city prices and as we stat trying to cool off before getting back into the truck a g/f rang wanting to know what we were doing tomorrow. Nothing I said. A very good friend I had not seen much recently, I was thrilled to have her planning to visit us.


We got home by 2.30 but needed to leave by 3 to meet some people at a retirement village in Bunbury at 3.30 to check it out as a possible place for Mum to buy into. phew...

Home we came, then there were frantic actions to unload the truck, clean it out, grab a drink and quick refresh before heading to Bunbury. We made it to the Retirement Village and the people we were meeting for 3.45, only 15 mins late. All hot and bothered but we did it. .. Mum enjoyed her visit and discovered she had a bit in common with the people I'd found for her to meet. at 5.00 we said our goodbyes and hurried off from our visit to get petrol and return the Ute in time for its 5.30 return. JUST.

Phew I discovered I had traveled 487 Kms in barely 24 hours. ( the Bunnings man had forgotten to write down my starting milage, I personally know I had to have done more than this as I think it was well over the 500 kms. ) BUT given they charge heaps of additional mileage for every km over 100kms i wasn't going to say a thing.

Hubby and the boys met us at Bunnings and we went to the foreshore to cool off for 30 mins and then further into town for a Chinese meal to finish off the evening. Mum was a bit heat struck and so was I. Thank goodness Hubby was driving home.

we had a quiet Saturday night. :) Yesterday, (Sunday) Mum and I decide we'd investigate the fresh markets in the next town !4 kms away, we'd be back by 10 and then check out the 2 junk shops in town to see if we could find a cheap tv type cabinet for the new tv. we made it through the markets and began t head back to town when my gf rang to say she was 1 street from us. oops. only 10 hours ahead of expected. So directions given and by the time Mum and I got home she was there having a cuppa with Hubby. Poor hubby, even females to males but him the only adult male... I think he found it tough as I scrubbed off the bbq and he was pretty much "informed" by the others that "he" was the bbq cook. hmm not my doing. I usually BBQ. Not that we BBQ often.


Last night we had a great BBQ. Two hours or so afterwards Mum went off to bed and g/f and I went off to try and investigate where some "live' music was coming from. No luck .. oh well. off to bed for visitors and I finally crawled into bed at around 1.
Anyway it's 4.12pm Monday now My g/f left early-ish this morning and Mum got on a bus to take her to the trainstation to head back to Perth at just before 2pm.




I feel a bit numb. ( might be the wine) I need a weekend to recover though as much as I loved the visitors. Is this how it is for other people who have visitors??? It's a bit of a rare occasion for us as we live a fairly quiet life normally.

Hubby has run off ( 2 hours ago ) to visit a mate. ohdear.