A Weekend in the Big Smoke

I drove to Sydney on Friday night, and came back Sunday night. At no point did I see vistas like the one above. Thanks to a trapped High, we have had about a fortnight of constant rain, with occasional periods of it bucketing down, typically when I was driving.

So, when I got to the soccer on Friday night, this is what the view was like:

Nevertheless, it was not a bad night. There were four of us: my son, husband, brother-in-law and me. The match was pretty competitive. The Championship-winning women’s team came out at half-time, so we got to see the great Courtney Vine up close.

Our movements that night had been set out with military precision. The son lives in Wollongong; brother-in-law in Eden (but was travelling back from Queensland); and at the end of the night, I was staying in Sydney, son was heading back to Wollongong and the other two were heading back to our place in the Shoalhaven. So we had left one car in Wollongong, one car in Stanmore, and one car in Sutherland, each primed to get someone to where they next needed to be.

For Phase 1 we were all on the light rail to Central, where things were further complicated by there being no trains running all weekend. The Senior Colemen were off making friends with drunks on the light rail while Child the Younger and I were sitting at arm’s length, quietly keeping to ourselves. He then helpfully led me to an Uber and sent me off on my way to Child the Elder’s new place, which I’d been to once for approximately three and a half minutes, while we dropped the car off so it’d be in staging position when I needed it.

We had, unfortunately, written in the wrong address: a lane with the same name as the road we were actually after.

Thankfully, the Uber driver took pity on my swearing, panicking self and told me how to make changes to the trip–as I apologised and explained that we effectively don’t have Uber where I live. There are about two Uber drivers in Nowra when last I checked, and so the likelihood that they are on shift when you need them is remote enough to lead to me being very inexperienced with the app. I got pretty good at using it when we were in the States, but as my Facebook memories very helpfully keep reminding me, that is a whole year ago now.

On this day in 2023: drinking cocktails at a luau in Hawai’i

After that small glitch, I set up my indoor campsite for the night and headed to bed.

Saturday morning dawned … still grey and rainy. Which was less than ideal, since we had three coats of paint we needed to get onto the walls. Child-the-Elder’s partner’s mother, like me, was in town for a party, and so we actually met, shook hands over paint rollers, and got stuck in.

The primer went on great.

Demonstrating the patented Barry McMahon “eh, we’re going to get rid of this flooring anyway, let’s just cut some of it away for better access to the skirting” method

Then we waited for it to dry.

And had lunch.

And waited some more.

And then we decided to add a blow heater to the dehumidifier.

And then thought we’d try the air conditioners for an hour or so.

And eventually the Other Mother-Out-Law had to leave.

And we thought the first room was finally ready. Child the Elder and I prepped everything we needed in there; her partner was set to work priming a door. All of us got precisely one stroke of our preferred painting implement in before we heard a loud pop and all the lights and all the electrical appliances went out.

At first, we suspected that the tenant who had just vacated had perhaps had the power cut off and the “new” power–which they had been told might not be actioned until Monday–had not kicked in. A quick call to the power company confirmed that as far as they were concerned, we had power.

Then we realised that the air conditioners were still working, which (somewhat ironically) blew my tiny little mind. Given that that the lights and the appliances had gone out, I figured we weren’t looking at a single fuse.

By phonelight, the new homeowners peered at the fusebox and discovered that it was not only ancient, it was weird, with at least one safety switch in upside down and labelling suggesting that–somewhat improbably–the lights and the mains were on the same fuse. Which was also not a safety switch, but I didn’t clock that at the time because I wasn’t the one sticking my head in there since it’s not my property. But perhaps I should have, since I was a bit less stressed because … it’s not my property. For them, this was one in a long sequence of events that had gone bizarrely wrong in the two days since they’d got keys. And when I say keys, they were actually given one that worked and a whole bunch that didn’t because the tenant had taken it upon herself to change the locks but not tell anyone (like the owner, or the managing agent), let alone give them a key. So what was dutifully passed over was … useless. And no one knew until they tried to use them.

Cue the calling of 24/7 electricians on a Saturday afternoon.

We thought we had success–the sparky was probably “about two hours away” because, they told the Son-Out-Law, he’s doing a job in Hazelbrook.

“It couldn’t be Hazelbrook,” I said. “That’s halfway up the Blue Mountains.”

“Maybe it was something else-brook,” he said.

Two hours passed and he rang for a status update. Yes, it was Hazelbrook; yes, the sparky was still there; no, the receptionist didn’t know what the nature of the job was or how much longer he’d be.

I think it was about this time that I contacted the schoolfriend whose party I was supposed to be attending and sent my apology. There were tears and despair in front of me and to depart to pound the wet streets of a different part of Sydney in sequinned shorts just seemed all kinds of wrong.

At some point, Child-the-Elder called a different 24/7 electrician and relayed the story, and said how they’d flipped all the (existing) safety switches but nothing had happened.

The bloke on the other end of the phone went into full Dad mode and told her that there would be a similar safety switch in the electrical meter room, and if she could get into that, then that would make a lot more financial sense than paying a weekend call out fee for him to do it.

And so began the “running around the building trying to find the guy with the key” portion of the evening. Somehow, she got the number of the guy with the key, who very helpfully told her he’d not be home til 11pm, and by the way, if they make a mess in the common areas, they should clean it up. Presumably he has access to a vacuum cleaner powered by magic, as opposed to electricity. I also note that when he appeared and had lovely chats with her male partner the next morning, there were no housework tips involved. But I digress. He did agree that he would open the necessary door when he came home at 11pm, and I naïvely believed that this would mean all the problems would be solved when we rocked up in the AM.

In the midst of all this chaos, her best-mate-since-birth called to say that her conference in Sydney was over and she was trying to make her way back but was a bit stranded because there were no trains. And so we went on a little adventure to find her, and the Son-Out-Law bought us all gelato, and he and I took turns patting Child the Elder on the back when reality hit her hard, and then we headed back to the “old” flat which they are in the throes of packing up, to try to get some sleep.

Which is when we realised that both my blow-up mattress and theirs were probably at the new place, and we were one bed down.

While both girls expressed their ongoing horror at this plan, I took advantage of the relative comfort to have a cuppa, a shower and charge my phone, and then got an Uber back to my unpowered indoor campsite. I very optimistically plugged in my phone, believing that the power would be returned at 11pm. And then got some sleep – until about 2am. With nothing else to do, I headed down to the car to use the seat warmer, charger and listen to a podcast for a bit. It was in here somewhere that I decided to look at the fusebox and realised that some had never been upgraded to safety switches and that in all likelihood no switch in the world could be flipped to save it. So first thing in the morning I texted to say, Sorry Kid; but you will need to call out a sparky, Stat.

And not long afterwards I got a phone call to say that they’d processed the same information, come to the same conclusion and that someone would be there at an agreed time.

The sparky did, in fact, turn up at that time.

He spoke to them politely, told them that their fuse box was not legal and it needed to be made compliant. He could fix it properly or he could walk away and do nothing but there was no patch-up job option. These were all conclusions everyone in the room had already come to privately. He offered them a generic brand or a name brand.

He told them it would take two hours. It took less.

He told them how to test things if the safety switch was ever flipped. He showed them how top pop the covers off the faceplates for a better finish on the painting.

I said to them: Congratulations, you’ve just found your sparky.

By 10am, we were painting again.

Once again, after a late lunch, we had to all sit around waiting for paint to dry. Child-the-Elder and I have both done a lot of painting–she’s been my right-hand woman for home renos over the last fifteen years–but we’ve never painted during such a long rain event or with such high humidity.

Eventually we got the final coat on the walls and I started the rainy drive home about 7.30 PM.

They’ve since had the floors sanded and revarnished and the grout in the bathroom redone and the place is looking so much better. Hopefully in time the pain of that first weekend will fade and they can enjoy their new home. And they will be pleased that they didn’t leave the singular key and walk away, which was an idea actually articulated on more than one occasion.

The Road to Hell

I just read back over my New Year post and gosh, I was cheery. Full of good intentions!

It’s been three months since my last “weekly” post. That probably has some significance.

Although we have moved into the extension which now has adequate means of blocking out light, and it even has an Occupation certificate, the pool build is ongoing and despite the fact that it looks finished and has pumps and heaters and fences and gates and filters and covers, it is still officially a building site until it also gets certified.

Astute readers will note it is now Autumn, in these parts.

Here’s the reason why it remains uncertified:

On fencing installation day, I heard an almighty crash. And I ran.

Then I saw the fencing guy standing there, looking perplexed, with shattered glass all around his feet. I figured I had nothing to add and went back to my desk. And so we wait.

There are two reasons why I ran when I heard the crash. Their names are Calpurnia (don’t worry; we’re calling her Callie) and Clover, and they are the most adorable troublemakers we’ve seen … well, since Tinkerbell and Scout were the same age, anyway.

Working with these guys around feels a bit like a mini-Staypuft scene.

Now when Mum (ie me) is a former English teacher with a PhD in English literatures, you get themed pet names. Cats are named after favourite book characters; chickens after the Doctor’s companions. When we had quail, they were named after characters from Bridge to Terabithia and lived in an aviary named Janice. (Geddit?). Fish have been named after Mulder, Scully, Lone Gunmen etc.

Naming the kittens proved trickier than one might think, since there is still a dearth of strong, female characters out there. I went back to childhood and in one instance, there was a seven book series featuring only two females. And they were named Jane and The Lady, so that wasn’t going to work.

For the record: Scout & Calpurnia are from To Kill a Mockingbird. The late, great, Tinkerbell was named from Peter Pan (I looked for more options from the same text, but there were very few: Wendy or Jane, or the racially problematic Tigerlily, or Nana, who was both a dog on the page and stage, and a grandmother in our household, so that wasn’t going to fly. As it were). Clover comes from What Katy Did, which was probably my earliest introduction to representations of disability in literature. Clover was the eldest sister after Katy and was described as being “pretty and clever with a cheerful disposition,” as being loved by everyone and loving them in return.

Callie and Clover were being fostered in Lithgow, and I saw their pictures on a local Facebook group and fell in love. And so I ended up in Lithgow for the second time in three weeks, having just been back for a school reunion. This time, I caught up with a school mate who hadn’t made it to the reunion, and we talked for hours. We’re booked to be back there in another three weeks, for the wedding of another dear school friend. The Spousal Unit is totally on board with this, because he reckons that when I visit, I come home happy and stay happy for, like, days.

For someone who actually lived outside of Lithgow (apart from eight months in 1978, but that’s another story) and always felt a bit Other, going “home” to Lithgow has been something of a revelation to me. When I left for Uni, I didn’t think I was all that attached –we had lived in three states by the time I was in first grade, I went to 5 different primary schools, and after going on a high school exchange, I effectively only spent nine months with my ultimate year 12 cohort–so I never had a particularly strong sense of belonging anywhere. But that year 12 cohort went a long way to change that, and I’ve since been told, on more than one occasion, that I was–and am–a “Lithgow person.” And Lithgow people have the back of other Lithgow people permanently, as far as I can tell. So when I go back, I feel very safe, and at home, and understood, and like I don’t have to give a back story because there’s a shared history there.

Adopting two wee feline babies from there seemed like an apt way to bring a little bit of Lithgow into our daily lives.

New Year, Same Me

And, as I added when I said this to my spouse in response to some God-awful ad for new year weight loss programs … “because I’m an effing delight.” Or something like that. 😉

I have managed to restart some (good) old habits with the turn of the calendar … my morning pages and my morning walk, aka the morning ritual that hasn’t been done consistently in … well, it might even be years, at this point. I’ve been in my new work-from-home role a couple of months, and the build is more-or-less finished, meaning that I’m in my study/home office, so the feeling of “camping out” while transitioning roles is pretty much gone. I say “pretty much” because yesterday was my first day back, and it was challenging. The NBN guys who came out on December 20 said it was too wet to complete the task so even though we’d moved the furniture and computer equipment into the brand spanking new study so I could work from there (Happy Birthday to meeee!), it turned out that the internet didn’t actually work reliably in there, as I discovered during my first hour of attempting to work in there yesterday. So the Spousal Unit went off to buy a wifi extender and then I spent about the next twelve hours trying to retrain the printer and all our other wifi-reliant services.

I sent my colleague a text saying, “Look what I got for my birthday!” She congratulated me before pointing out how much less fun adult birthday presents can be. Not pictured: “Real” annual present of a trip to a musical with Firstborn, who also has a pesky just-before-Christmas birthday

I was doing this “retraining” on very little sleep because I’ve sort-of moved into the new extension, but one blind was the wrong size and one shutter can’t be fitted until something else is, and so on I only sleep on cloudy nights. Which the evening of January 1 was not. So I was not in a good space to be trying to think things through, and feeling vaguely homicidal.

Lovely and light-filled … which is great *during the day*

Nevertheless, we persisted. Without a homicide that would have stopped us making it to our 26th Wedding Anniversary today. Five years ago we were in Paris; one year ago in Fiji. Today I’m in the home office and gritting my teeth as he watches things too loudly elsewhere in the house. Seems like a pretty good metaphor for the ups and downs of a long-term marriage, really.

Also, please note that it’s “WordPress Wednesday” and I’ve actually logged in to WordPress. On a Wednesday.

And now, onto my next good intention … finishing up the proofreading and Indexing of our Vampire Diaries project. It’s due in four days (five, if you count the way the time difference works in my favour). You can preorder here from McFarland in the US, or I’ll be selling them from my website – probably by the end of January, but it might end up being February.

Check-In

Time for a check-in.

The check-in is: I’m feeling a bit out of sorts, and then I feel guilty because I shouldn’t be feeling out of sorts, and then I remind myself that it is unhelpful to be trying to tell my brain what it “should” be feeling because that is not a path to better mental health by any stretch of the imagination, and I probably should go back to doing Morning Pages to process this stuff but I haven’t, and uh-oh, that’s another potential guilt trap, right there.

Brains, amirite?

And so in the immortal words of Leonard Hofstadter, I sometimes hear myself interior voice whining: “so my question is–what’s up with that?”

Pretty sure my face often looks like this, too.

I feel like I shouldn’t be feeling out of sorts because I think I actually love my new job. I’m working with a great bunch of people. It very much reminds me of when Child the Elder first switched schools and one teacher after another addressed her by name, told me how she was settling in, and said how great she was at the first Parent-Teacher afternoon. Eventually one teacher called me on my Hofstadter face and asked why I looked so surprised, because CTE is a good kid. I told him I knew–but I didn’t think her last school did, because they just kept telling me that she talked too much (in one instance, famously, while calling her by another child’s name). Same kind of energy, here–scheduled meetings happen on time, but the person who appears on screen asks, before any “work stuff”–how I’m settling in, and there’s a bit of chit-chat about our lives etc. Small kindnesses, that make you feel appreciated. It’s a really lovely thing, and I’m fascinated by how routinely it happens, especially since we’re in a very distributed online environment so there is no water cooler or tearoom in which to first establish the relationships.

And as for the work itself–I’m researching UDL with a view to creating some best practice guidelines to make subject webpages more accessible to more students, including students with disabilities. In other words, I’m back to inclusive education practices and using my training. This is stuff that I’m good at. That’s pretty cool.

In the last fortnight, I have also helped (a little) with the Teaching Academy’s online L & T conference, facilitating a panel; and on the Research side of the house, one abstract I submitted and had accepted has, just this past weekend, spawned an additional two contribution requests. I’ve also accepted a request to review a paper on mental illness and popular culture for a psychiatry journal. I’m still on the Board of Directors for a local disability service provider and we have the AGM this week, so there are a few balls being juggled just at the moment; none of them ones I would want to drop.

In the background, the home renovation project is in Week 11 of a scheduled 14. I am so incredibly grateful that we chose the team we did–I can talk to both the owner and the foreman honestly and know that it’s going to be a respectful conversation and that I’ll walk away with the information I need. Even more impressive, they’re keeping to schedule. I am stressed to the eye teeth because they are due to finish mere days before Christmas and this is throwing my usual over-planning and over-decorating tendencies into disarray, but can I just reiterate: they are scheduled to finish before Christmas. The rooms even look like identifiable rooms, now.

I do have to keep reminding myself that we need to keep the job moving, though, because that is 11.5 weeks of people being here from about 6.45am pretty much every day. That is a LOT of peopling for an introvert (and it’s also an uncomfortably early start for a chronic insomniac). I basically have a peopling-hangover every day now, but I can’t tell everyone to bugger off for a day or two and let me reboot, or the schedule just won’t be met. This past weekend was the Spousal Unit’s birthday so we had family visit, and we had tradies here on Saturday (albeit briefly) AND Sunday. Again, I am beyond grateful–and I made sure to serve them birthday cake–but it means there has been not even a short reboot opportunity this week. I’ve formed the habit of making something for the workers for morning tea, but I haven’t managed to find time to #bakeforthebuilders for the past three days, which I hope they are not taking personally–but I just haven’t had that extra little bit of capacity.

There’s also a lot of decision-making involved in a project of that size. Decision-making gets progressively harder with a people hangover. Switching gears between tasks also gets slower.

Add to all that, we’ve been hacked and/or had our virtual identities stolen, I guess, with attempts to gain access to ATO accounts (his) and Apple (mine) within the space of about 36 hours. Thanks once again to Optus for letting customer details make their way onto the dark web, I guess. Also on the to-do list: change mobile provider.

(OK, maybe there are some reasons for my brain to be screaming “stop the world, I want to get off!” just at the minute).

On Sunday, I’m heading over to the Wagga campus for the first time, before a three-day retreat and planning session. But in one of the afore-mentioned honest “how are you going?” chats with my boss, I admitted that I am feeling a bit tired and like some cylinders are occasionally misfiring. She promptly advised me to take an afternoon off and refill my cup–time to be taken in lieu of the time spent on the long drive out to Wagga on Sunday.

It’s so lovely to be shown that kind of care and grace. Now I just need to work on routinely extending that to myself.

Update

There’s not a lot new to update since my last post.

The VC’s Strategy Event pivoted to online (remember when “pivot” was synonymous with this, and this alone?) and her visit was postponed.

I’m under regional restrictions but my husband, who works in a school in the Shellharbour area, is under stay-at-home orders, so I can’t really go anywhere or do anything, either. I could go places without him, I suppose, but that’s not really in the spirit of the marriage nor the lockdown–if he is in any way an infection risk, you’d have to imagine I would be, too, what with living here in close proximity and all.

Theoretically his order will lift on Monday because he’ll have been home for two weeks and revert to being regional. But we’re anticipating an extension of orders in a bit over an hour’s time which would mean that if he goes to work for their staff development day on Monday, the clock resets.

Today is a day or great excitement in our household because our new oven is being delivered. Unfortunately it’s also a day of some disappointment since the sparky can’t come to install it until next week. So my plans to bake up a storm as I head into my leave period are on hold.

Tony and I turned on the Aussie v Aussie Wimbledon quarter final at 1.30am.

Six years ago today I was en route to London to see my dear friend and longtime collaborator, Ros Weaver, and we just happened to squeeze in a trip to Wimbledon on the finals’ weekend. It was a longtime dream come true and I still get quite a jolt during the coverage when I see the local shops or the Dog and Fox and have “I’ve been there!” moments.

It was an amazing trip. In addition to watching the doubles’ finals on Centre Court, I had a few other pop culture and high culture highlights, as well–ranging from Womble-hunting on Wimbledon Common, finding Sun Hill Station, Abbey Road, and Mamma Mia on the West End, to watching Richard III at the Globe.

One day, we will travel again. But it’s just been confirmed that for the next week, we’re not going anywhere.

Ten Fingers, No Frostbite

One week on, and I am again sitting here cursing the cold as we again have tradies here who “need” all the doors wide open. Despite my complaints, no fingers have actually frozen and broken off in that time.

This week, it’s the tilers. Now this is massive progress and has been the cause of much jubilation in our household. You see, we stopped using the ensuite quite some time ago, because we had leaks into the wall, the floor, the bedroom carpet; and from the shower, the vanity, the drainpipes; and just to make sure we had the whole set of malfunction, the toilet had a busted seal so would randomly start –and almost immediately stop–the flushing process several hundred times a day. And night. In the end I turned the water off to it and we moved out.

So we and the builder were anticipating some massive plumbing rectification works might need to be added to his otherwise reasonable quote.

Imagine our excitement when the main cause of the issues turned out to be just a small missing bit of waterproofing at the site of the leak, no bigger than a twenty cent piece! And when the drain problem turned out to be silt and gunk that had built up – much of it, apparently, from the last time we unexpectedly had to rectify waterproofing problems in there, just after we moved in thirteen years ago. Because obviously, shoving it into a pipe that is required for drainage makes more sense than sweeping it up and binning it.

(Well, I was excited. My husband is mostly cranky at the dudes from last time. Since I can’t even remember their names, I figure that ship has well and truly sailed).

So the upshot of this is that everything is progressing faster than expected, and the tilers did the floor yesterday and are moving onto the walls today. This is about a week ahead of schedule. Which is good, because I’m just beginning to struggle with the juggle.

Our tilers are what you might call “traditional” tradies. I’ve been having flashbacks to when my dad used to bring people in to “help” on our ever-changing and ever-growing family home. Think playing the radio from the car, lots of smoko breaks, beanies and flannos. Which is fine most of the time, but sometimes challenging when you’re working from home just on the other side of the open door.

For example, I’m having no problems listen to Outkast second hand while typing this. Yesterday’s Dua Lipa while trying to take notes from an academic journal article, however, was a bit trickier. And Zoom calls with the Boss while tiles are being cut are very interesting indeed.

I am sure I can deal with it for a few more hours. I’m hopeful the tiling will be done today. The floors are dry enough for them to walk on, so it’s all systems go. And the builder says he’s not coming back until Friday to start the reinstall, which gives me an opportunity tomorrow to sneak in some painting before the fittings go in.

We have a floor! Which looks exactly like our old floor, because in addition to not actually waterproofing 100% of the floor last time, dudes miscalculated the number of tiles required, so we had another ten plus sq m in the laundry cupboard. Surprise!

These days, my idea of bliss is being able to put a painting platform right up against a wall, rather than trying to suspend myself over the top of a toilet or perch atop a vanity.

It’s the little things.