I need to stop kidding myself. It’s not ok for me to attempt sleeping without Seroquel. I really should never do that ever again. It has been hell tonight. I don’t need pity/sympathy - it’s just a case of poor management. I will need to whack myself with a strong dose of 300mg within the next few days.
50mg at 3:30am tonight has been enough to drive myself back into bed, but i don’t look forward to the conscious sleeping :S.
I have had the distintive sensation that Autumn has arrived much earlier than usual compared to last year. This was initially sparked by seeing a Japanese maple tree shift in it’s Autumn colours, on a section of the street that i live on much earlier than usual - in February, which is the last season of summer here.
This is what it looked like a few days ago on 5th April 2007. The red colouring is a lot more advanced compared to last year:
Last year, i had the journey of patiently waiting to discover what the mysterious bulbs at the front of my house were going to turn into. A shot of one of the first Jonquils last year on 22nd May 2006:
So fun to watch how blogging about the weather has allowed me to pinpoint the early shift of autumn this year! I suspect the higher level of rainfall compared to last year could be the probable cause, as i’m noticing how the extra water is encouraging my other plants to flower more. There’s another before & after shot of my front yard showing how there’s more grass this year compared to 2006 over here.
I’ve been using the central heating’s thermostat to measure the internal temperature of this house, and as i’ll be moving into a house without central heating - I found myself a really cute little alarm clock device that also features a digital thermometer.
{*screams like a girl*} Looking forward to measuring the level of insulation with the next house, but not looking forward to the costs of buying a gas heater as the next house doesn’t have any heating devices at all!
My alarm is set to 5am, so i continue with the journey of getting myself out of bed at a draconian hour to push my body clock forward. It took my son 20minutes to fall asleep last night, but it took me over an hour!
The Easter Hat Parade was a great success and a wonderful delight to watch. There were quite a handful of amazing looking hats, but as i’m self-conscious of privacy issues - I’m sorry i can’t post pictures of some of the amazing hats that were on display. It’s probably ok for me to post the following shot however - which was a funny dramatic moment when one of the mum’s showing off her amazing hat accidentally titled her head back too far in an interesting pose and the eggs ended up falling out of her hat!
Last week, my son’s teacher was concerned about whether or not my son would be able to handle the Easter Hat Parade. With elevated crowd levels, expectations for kids to be in confined spaces following specific routines and my son’s general dislike for singing songs - it was suggested that it might be best for me to keep him at home on the last day of school for this term.
His teacher said that it would be a very significant achievement if my son could wing it, so the plan was to press forward and see how things go. If it became too much for my son, i could always take him home early. His aid said,
“We can do it! I’m sure we can get through it!”
His teacher & aid both laughed out loud and it made me laugh too, as we know how much of a handful Aidan can be.
When i picked my son up from school the day before the parade, i saw him sitting with the other kids *singing*, instead of retreating to his corner in the hallway busy building his next new city. It was good to catch another glimpse of him participating with the class well and having so much fun with the singing too. The Easter songs really impressed him. His teaher commented that they accomodated to his needs, so it looks like they might have tweaked the song by having rabbits driving motor cars and other things that appeal to Aidan.
His teacher advised me that i should take the time to explain that when he comes to school with his hat, he will need to leave his hat on the table.
I put Mr.Chicken Hat on the bed next to where he was sleeping, with a small letter from Mr.Chicken Hat - who was excited to be worn on Aidan’s head when the teaher told him it was ok. If he could do the Easter Hat Parade well, then mummy would have a special surprise for him when we got back home. I woke him up with Mr.Chicken Hat’s long leg tapping him.
“Wake up Aidan! Good morning! It’s Mr.Chicken Hat! We have the Easter Hat Parade today and i have a special letter for you!”
He found it hilarious that Mr.Chicken Hat was waking him up this morning, so it was funny to watch him laugh and equally beautiful to hear him read the letter out loud. My son has often listened to hand puppets more than his own parents in the past, so I think it worked! *lol*
My son survived it and did so well. His aid walked him up to the stage, and then she was able to leave him to sit with the other kids. He remained seated throughout the entire performance with the other kids and sang every song. Made almost-tears began to well around the corners of my eyes. He did it!
I sat down to lunch with his aid and ad a chat about how things have been going. It was wonderful to see him playing with the other kids & laughing. Really reassuring to see so many other kids say hello & greet him with such enthusiasm too.
The woman who’s been involved with the funding wit the board of education had recently sat in class to monitor Aidan and she can’t believe how much progress he’s made. Here’s hoping that this positive trend will continue throughout the rest of the year.
His reward was iced choclate & milkshake with wedges at the Waygoose Cafe in Leura. A special iced muffin waiting for him in the fridge too.
I was so proud of my son’s ahievements today. He came downstairs and gave me a big f2f hug. It’s very rare that i get moments of my son reaching out to me like this, so i enjoyed the moment while it lasted. He then resumed his usual “backward hug” on my lap.
My husband’s currently away at the National Folk Festival in Canberra. A shame he missed the day, but was able to share in the joy of our son’s achievements when i gave him a call today.
“He actually *sang* all the songs?!”
Yeah - that was pretty incredible…
Sorry I’m late with my memory picture journey with things being so busy, but here is one of them.
The lookout point at the end of a bushwalk in Leura that lives just around the corner of where we currently live. We did this walk last Autumn.
A picture of my son with his new found “stick” at the time. He had a long phase of collecting them, which was one of his peculiar quirks at the time. I don’t remember when the stick colleting started, but i do remember how much trouble one particular stick caused on a previous bushwalk for my father in law’s funeral about 2 years ago in the Megalong Valley. My son found a stick, but then he lost it. No other “replacement” stick would do.
My brother in law tried to present another stick to him in order to calm him down,
“Here! I’ve found your stick! Here it is!”
…but my son could see straight through the bullshit and it made him cry even more. *lol* Distration techniques like that have never worked and have usually made things worse. It’s as though it makes him more angry & distressed because people are trying to invalidate or minimise his feelings by changing the subject or bullshit at him. He’s always been like that. It’s very difficult to trick, con or lie to him - he always sees striaght though it. He’s got an amazing ability to see & perceive truth through the words & actions of others.
It was incredibly stressful for Mitch & myself to have a child so acutely distressed over a simple stick, but thankfully - the furneral still had very funny moments i’ll share at a later time. When we watch the video, my son’s crying is something that our whole family can truly laugh at now. It added so much great drama on the day and in ways, it’s quite funny that he was the only one crying during the funeral when everybody else was laughing! 555
The only way my son could find peace, was for my brother in law to make the perilous treck back to the cave in order to to retrieve the specific stick my son had left behind.
Seeing our son pick up his new stick on this bushwalk, reminded my husband & I of that stressful time. It had made me feel rather sad on the day, because our life with him has had to face so many stressful moments like that with no understanding of why things could upset him so much. I was sad because i couldn’t understand why.
On the otherhand, my husband & I could still smile with,
“There he goes again! He’s found *another* stick today!”
…and laugh.
Who knows if this is how the Oz Whistles Stick just happened to appear on our front verandah the day that he was discovered! Maybe it was a stick that our son had found. *555*
This was the first photo that caught my eye while scanning through my archives, because it’s so iconic of what motherhood has been like for me. A picture taken by my husband as we’re very close to arriving home after the bushwalk. I was unconscious during my son’s birth and my body can still struggle with not feeling as though I really am his mother at times. I wasn’t able to have the traditional “madonna & child” relationship with my son, so trying to understand what motherhood means to me has been a long journey of walking towards somewhere else.
I enjoyed how small his body looks in this photo compared to how big he is now. He’s grown so much.
Finished the chicken (erm… now 10pm! 555). I hope my son survives the Easter Hat Parade at school tomorrow, so i’ll post more updates then.
We chilled out in the bathtub with candle light tonight and i’m looking forward to slipping into a toasty warm bed to soothe the aching muscles even further! It’s way past my bed time and the garbage still needs to be taken out {gah} - so I’d better time out and start winding down.
G’night!
I’ve never been a great fan of bad smelling houses. I can’t tolerate living in places that wreak of mould. We’ve seen quite a number of properties with serious waterproofing & ventilation problems here and quite a few real estate agents seem to turn a blind eye to it.
In one place, all the curtains on the windows had mould. The indoor air smelt terrible. Real estate agent’s response:
Oh, that’s only because the house hasn’t had a good airing for a long time. You just need to open the windows to clear it out.
Yeah right. Cuh! If only i could convey just how bad things were smelling in the underhouse storage area of that house! :O When mould starts beginning to form on curtains - the house has a problem with adequate ventilation & waterproofing. If I see moss or other moisture growing near the corners of the bottom of the house, I know that the house i’m living in will be prone to rising damp. My experience of living in this house, has taught me how important it is for things to be well waterproofed from the top too.
The floor tiles in the bathrooms & laundry here have been a major source of stress. This was the problem we were facing when we first moved in - a photo of the ensuite’s shower recess…
The tiles for the ensuite & laundry were all loose with a hollow tap. If we walked with bare feet, the tiles would lift off the floor. If your tiles are like this - you’re going to face a bad waterproofing problem - which will not only damage & loosen the tiles further, but will cause problems with mould that will damage the house further.
This is the patch up job that was done to waterproof the shower recess in the ensuite with the rather artistic application of silica gel around the corners.
With the tiles being in such bad condition, water was getting underneath them and creating mould underneath the silica gel. No amount of domestos could remove or bleach the mould living inside the silica gel. With water getting underneath the tiles, this is what was happening to the room adjacent to the shower.
Maybe some people can comfortably live with that but it would be a red flag for me if i owned this house. We put in a request for repairs to the real estate agent. It took 3.5months before something was done about it.
There were two tilers that came in to review the tiles. One was happy to go ahead with the bandaid solution, quoting about $2000AUD for the job. Another tiler refused to accept the job because in his opinion, everything needed to be ripped out and done all over again properly, otherwise the house would continue to experience the same problem, quoting $6-8000AUD for the job.
Naturally, the landlord opted for the cheaper “patch up” job and while the tiler did a great job, here’s an account of what’s happened since. The entire floor of the laundry was ripped out and resurfaced with new tiles, but whenever it rains, we now get puddles of water entering into the room! The section near the door is always very wet. Take a look at what having that much water lurking on the floors like this is doing to the wall now!
Pretty bad huh? This corner of the laundry had a very small amount of mould building up in this corner before. Since the installation of the new tiles - the problem has grown monumentally worse. The wall, door frame & the bottom of the door are beginning to rot & decay at an alarming rate now.
The door is unable to open properly all the way too. The level of the new tiling to blame at first, however if the door continues to get water logged & begins to expand even further - i’m quite sure it’ll be even harder to open the door.
Extending the floor tiling like this to the outside was not a good idea. As the floor must have a “dip” to allow excess water to run into the drain hole, you can’t defy the laws of gravity - so this is why water has begun to enter into the laundry from the outside when it rains.
This is an external shot of the laundry’s exit showing the roof line, which i think it the real source of the problem. Not much awning space there to shelter the rain from hitting the side of the house.
Another external shot of the house further down this side of the house. The guest bathroom where the window is. There’s even less roof awning here and it doesn’t have any gutter either!
The house is about 15yo. At first I thought the reason for why the tiles were getting loose was due to settlement issues with the foundations shifting. I’m now convinced that the real cause is due to inadequate waterproofing from the roof & sides of the house. With the rain hitting the side of the house, water is getting logged into the red cedar walls and making it’s way underneath the tiles and other parts of the house, which is causing other non-waterproof materials & structures living underneath & inside the house to expand. The outside of the house is probably well overdue for another paint job to treat the wood. I wonder just how overdue too, because the garden was clearly neglected for at least 8 years before we moved in.
The following is a shot of our walk-in wardrobe. It had a serious moulding problem here before we moved in. I’ve cleaned it up since, so it doesn’t look as bad as it used to.
The source of the problem was the roof. A piece of metal flashing was installed into the corner of where the roof meets the wall.
The workroom space in this corner downstairs was also smelling a little mouldy. While the flashing has helped the problem considerably - I can also see how it’s still a temporary solution as you can see how the water is getting logged into the red cedar around the edges of the metal roofing in the picture above.
A shot from the back of the house. The window on the left, is my son’s bedroom. The window on the right is the ensuite adjecent to it. Again - not much awning form the roof nor any guttering to protect the sides of the house from rain, with some parts of the red cedar getting water logged.
There’s also another problem with the branches of the pine tree next to the corner of the house overhanging on top of the roof too. It’s allowing too many pine leaves to sit on top of the metal roof, which i’ve been told an lead to corrosion due to the amount of acidity in the leaves. The branches grate against the roof during windy weather too. Another reason for why it’s not good to have pine trees tower on top of your roof here? It’s because the cockatoos are going to spit the pine cones onto your roof and wake you up with loud bangings at 5am in the morning. *lol*
An here’s what things are like on the inside of that window. There’s mould beginning to form on the curtain.
I’m a strong advocate for the use of exhaust systems to suck up the excess moisture & steam during showers out of rooms as they’re very effective at preventing the formation of mould, but it’s obvious that the exhaust system for the ensuite is not working properly at all.
The regular light in the ensuite has been broken since the first day of moving in. Never trust real estate agents who promise that things will get fixed when it’s spoken through their mouths. It never gets done, so it always makes me laugh when they try to be & sound so bloody sincere during the periodic inspections. *lol*
The problem I’ve found with exhaust systems pumping out air towards the roof of the house, is that they have a tendancy to bring far too much dust back inside. I don’t know of any sytems that pump moisture “out” of the house through the side of the wall, but i would definitely consider investigating it further in the event of building my own home.
With the master bedroom adjacent to the ensuite being lined with carpet - this room will eventually begin to smell very mouldy if the exhaust system is not fixed soon. Let’s now take a journey to the front of the house and check out what the awning of the roof is looking like over here…
You can see how the water is getting logged into the wooden decking and how it travels towards the side of the house where there’s a water shoot extending down from the gutter. It was a very poor building & construction technique to allow the decking to penetrate into the side of the house like this. The water logging has caused this side of the house to expand, pushing & warping the wooden window frames too.
A shot of the roofline on the front verandah, where again - there’s not much awning to protect the house from getting hit by rain on the sides.
As for the bandaid solution on how to fix this problem?
…yeah, let’s just shove some more silica gel in to fill up the cracks! *lol* Oh well - at least it helped to prevent some of the cold drafts coming into the house last winter. =P
The guest bathroom tiles are currently in a very shocking state, where they’re all becoming very loose and experiencing the same problem of lifting off the surface when you walk on them with bare feet. The rate of damage has been increasing rapidly. The more water that gets onto the tiles and falls in between the grouting after a bath in this room, the worse the problem gets. As the former landlord has sold the house, it’s obvious that our request for repairs has been totally ignored, so we’ve just had to live with this shit.
I look forward to moving out of this house next week, because those tiles have been shitting me just as bad as biege coloured carpet in the former rental appartment we were living in the inner-west suburb of Sydney known as Newtown. {*gah!*}
The real estate sales pitch on the house when it was put up for sale, had words along the lines of,
“Recently renovated!”
- which has highlighted to me why it’s really important to investigate and find out what the reasons for the specific renovations have been, along with a details of the actual work that was carried out, before you buy a house. It could very well be a patch-up job covering up a much bigger problem.
It’s been a really interesting experience for me to watch & learn from. This house has thankfully not smelt too moudly since we moved in, but i can see how the problem is going to get worse if people don’t pay attention to the current problems it faces and have them resolved soon.
Here we’ve had the tiler’s focusing all of their attention onto the floors, when the real source of the problem has probably been the bloody roof. For now - i’m grateful that i don’t own this house, because the amount of money required for repairs & maintenance to keep it in good shape is literally going to be….
…through the friggin’ roof!
I thought i would be burning the midnight oil tonight, but i’m glad that i’m not. After printing 30 pieces of embroidery, i was only able to (sort of) finish one whistle bag!
The construction panned out to be much tricker than expected and the polar fleeced lining is to blame. Too hard to line satin with it due to it’s stretchy nature, although the finished bag does have a lovely soft plush feel to it. I still need to spend more time reflecting on the closing mechanism, as velcro’s just not right for this kind of finish. A press stud could work well, but yeah - i need to spend more time just thinking about taking it to a whole new different level.
The last time i helped my husband out before a festival, i didn’t sleep at all and spent hours upon hours sewing in structural panels & waterproofing the walls further. Even sewed in tie-up tags for the floors & wall. I vowed to myself that i would never spend another night like that without sleep ever again. I vowed to myself that i would never spend the excessive hours that i did preparing documents for our insurance claim when a lady ran into our car.
I feared i would be facing the same again tonight, another feat of unreasonable excessiveness - but i’m glad it’s come to an end. It’s only 2:30am atm, so I have a few spare hours to slip in some sleep of some kind.
Upside - i’ve mastered my sewing machine with embroidery and printed many custom-designed motifs, in beautiful colours that look like jewellery. I’m pleased with my design work - that on it’s own, was rewarding and i know i can turn all of that effort into something incredibly breathtaking with time.
I hope this is a lesson i am beginning to learn - that it’s not ok for my time to be sucked up by things that take too much time away from where i need to go myself. I can’t afford to not sleep. It’s far too hazzardous to my health when i do that.
The habit of pushing myself too hard, feeling too responsible for things which are beyond my own sphere. I’m glad i can put the hard efforts of the last 48 hours to rest. I’m glad i spent yesterday tending to the housekeeping. I got a phenomenal amount achieved.
Tomorrow, i will have about 5hours to work on making a chicken. I look forward to having the time to wind down and take things at a slower & more reasonable pace.
For crazy thinking mums who have a bloody sense of humour!
