Something has gone very wrong with the pelvis.

It has been on a steady decline for a few months but today I have attained a whole new level of shitfulness*.

The GP was consulted last week when things began getting out of control, when I could no longer manage the pain without some prescription drugs.

The ridiculous thing is that it seems to have just continued to worsen since then. If it weren’t obscene to do so I would love to post some pics of the swelling. My lower back and …… lower front?? Anyway, the front of my pelvis, are both ridiculously swollen. Swollen as in makes your body look distorted. Freakishly swollen.

I cannot sit up. Every muscle from the middle of my back to my knees seems to spasm if I do.

I can’t really find the words to express the negativity in my thoughts at the moment. I have avoided this blog because what should I say?

I don’t know where this is heading. I am not getting better.

No one has any ideas. There is nothing that can be done to help me apparently. This is just fact. It has been over four years and I have investigated every quack, poking and prodding specialist and witch doctor there is.

What do you do if the doctor just says, “Oh, it should just be better by now. I would have thought it would be better”. That is not helpful.

What if this just continues? Continues to get worse, with no reason for it?

The pain is such a  strident factor in my life. It is like a loud hum that is the background noise for everything that I do. So loud is this white noise of pain that recently when we were out shopping I got a real shock. The pain stopped. I was standing next to Beefcake waiting for a lift and I turned to him and told him that all of a sudden there was no pain. It was indescribable. I could breath, I could hear, I could feel. It only lasted a few minutes but it made me realise how much this is affecting me.

I am not prepared to live like this for the rest of my life.

What is the alternative though?

Sorry people. You don’t need to say anything. I just needed to vent this. I am a tangled bundle of dark emotions. Decent pain relief was supposed to fix that but alas, this pain is a tough nut to crack.

*Now I wouldn’t have thought that was a real word but WP says that indeed it is so who am I to disagree.

I received  a note home from Poss’ school yesterday.

A note about a super spectacular “Flight of Fantasy” art show to be held at the school.

“Fantastic “, you say, “how wonderful that the school is fostering the students’ creative abilities, it must be a very fine school indeed”.

Indeed it is a fine school.

When I first read the note this is just what I thought. I thought, “how nice”, as I glanced at the note, stuck it to the fridge and herded the children out the door for school. I really didn’t give it another thought until Beefcake asked me if I had read it.

Me: “Um, yeah, I’ve seen it, it’s an art show or something”

Beefcake: “Yes, but did you actually read the note, Ali?”

Me: “Um, kind of, it’s an art show?”

Beefcake “Yeah, it’s an art show for students. They say here that you don’t have to pay for entry”

Me: “Oh, okay, that’s nice, they usually make you pay for that sort of thing”

Beefcake: “Yeah, there’s no entry fee but you will be able to purchase your own child’s art for the very reasonable price of just $20″

Me: “What the #*%&????” (children were present)

Seriously people.

The note advertises an art show that is-

“to primarily be a celebration of the children’s art and a chance to come together for a fun afternoon with our community, with music food and refreshments”

Now, first of all, that is their run-on grammar-deficient sentence, not mine. I don’t need their help in that area. Second, I am sure that refreshments will be offered for a fairly extortionate reasonable price. It will be a delighful afternoon.

I am sure.

They are also looking for parents to assist with setup, picking up supplies (they have requested a small truck, if someone should have one spare) and framing the “artworks”.

So, just to clarify.

The school would like us to come along to an event, free of charge (picture the underlined portion in flashing neon lights, I do!) , pay three times the going rate for a can of warm lemonade and a stale cupcake, pay $20 for our child’s masterpiece, which we have both helped to frame and facilitate the exhibition of and give up a Sunday afternoon for the privilege.

Yeah.

The fundraising committee at Poss’ school need a little reality check. I knew that a fair few parents at the school had their heads up their own arses, but seriously??!!

They finish off by saying they will be offering a convenient pre-purchasing system to “avoid the rush on the day”. So we should also purchase the art just for the love of our children or something, without even sighting it first?

Somehow I don’t think there will be a rush on the day.

Does anyone else think that this is absolutely nuts??

Tell me I’m not alone here people. Poss’ school is crazy, no?

I had another little excitable reorganising fit today. It’s bizarre. We only moved in here two months ago and already I am bored and needing to rearrange the furniture. I had never really been happy with the organisation of the lounge room so I moved a bookshelf and rearranged some other things, moved the toys, cleaned, cleaned and cleaned, voila! A new room. It feels bigger and fresher and good(er). Beefcake was his lovely tolerant self. He smiled and told me he thought it looked good. He kissed me when I told him I would probably change it again in a couple of months. What more can a crazy person ask for?

It is a bad sign that after only two months I already need to rearrange rooms to keep myself sane. I think I need to choose some nice paint colours and do some more decorating. For now the reorganising has done the trick and I feel very cheerful. This is a good thing as people with dodgy pelvises should never move furniture. It’s a pretty hard and fast rule, just so you know. So I am cheery and a bit sore but as I would have been sore regardless I feel a  bit of extra soreness as a trade-off for a new room is pretty good really.

I saw a show about plastic surgery this evening. It got me thinking. I have always hated my nose. It is kind of large and lumpy. I have a deviated septum. It is just ugly really. I used to think that I would most likely get it done one day. Anyway, on this show I saw, there was a 16-year-old girl getting a nose job. At that age, had I had the opportunity, I almost certainly would have been rid of my ugly and monstrous nose. These days, I don’t mind it so much. Sometimes one of the kids will make a comment about it or for some reason I’ll have a self-concious day but for the most part I know it’s not too bad. It’s my nose, it makes me, well,  me.  And who the fuck has time to think about that sort of thing anyway?

I wouldn’t bother getting my nose fixed these days. I guess I put that sort of energy into fixing up the house and rearranging rooms. I wonder about getting something like that done at such a young age. Would you live to regret it? Poss looks like she will end up developing my nose and I’m pretty sure that I would not let her have teengae plastic surgery, unless there was some really important reason for it to be done.

Are there aspects of your face, your body that you would change? Are there things you might have wanted to change once but now are happy with? I’m curious.

I am sure that blog worthy things have been happening in our lives. I am sure I should be writing them down but I seem to have lost the part of my brain with a little light bulb that turns on when something happens and sends forth the thought “I should blog that”. I am not sure where I have put it. There is a significant pile of washing in the laundry* and it may well be at the bottom of that. Alternatively it could be in the car, where we seem to accumulate bags and bags of rubbish and jumpers and half-eaten apples, it could be there.

Anyway, until I do find it. Here are some interesting bullet points related to things:

• We put up the very lovely acrylic splash back that looks exactly like glass but is not. We did it ourselves, we did. It looks good. The kitchen is nearly finished now and just needs a coat of paint. Most importantly a coat of lovely black paint to the frame of the very special and important  most favourite window. I will post spectacular unveiling of the kitchen photos when we get around to it.
• Slightly related to the above point is the fact that the rangehood is up. It is not connected to electricity yet and it does not have a flue going into the ceiling and is therefore non-operational in every way meaning I must open the windows every time I cook but it is up.
• Also slightly related, the oven is being connected to electricity tomorrow, slightly later than expected. I shall season the oven and then I shall bake and bake and bake until we are wallowing in cake. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Wallowing in a room full of assorted cakes? I thought so too.
• I’m not sure if I have mentioned this but I can’t be bothered to check so: There is not enough electricity. What I mean is, we have an ancient electricity connection. It has never been upgraded so there is literally not enough electricity coming into the house. Not enough, that is, to run the oven and any other major appliance at the same time. Not enough. The old meter is very quaint and cute. The very colourful previous owners of the house considered it the guardian of the house and as an artist, the female of the couple had even painted it’s portrait, yes they were totally normal. It is going to cost us thousands of dollars unless an electrician will agree to be paid in cake, which I may have some trouble providing if the electricity is not upgraded. Hmmm.
• Pudding threw a coaster at Grub. It hit her cheek just below her eye. It split the flesh open and she has  a bloody scab on her face. I am very glad it did not hit a fraction higher. She really would have lost an eye. He was so distressed by our displeasure that he became hysterical and claimed that the dog had thrown the coaster. This is despite the fact that I was in the room and witnessed the whole thing. He is not good with taking responsibility for his actions.
• We took Grub and Pudding to the museum today as the older two are with their father. Pudding was chasing pidgeons in the grounds, being actively encouraged by Beefcake. I was very tut-tutty, as is my way, and Beefcake was all disagreey, as is his. This went on until I saw a young girl, no older than Pudding and dressed in a very pretty pinafore, race past and kick out at the pidgeons yelling at top volume fucking pidgeons, fuck. I decided Pudding could do worse than run at the pidgeons and left him to it.
• Beefcake has fallen asleep on the couch and I am now going to wake him up by flicking water at him because that’s just the kind of wife I am.

The end.

*Not sure if I have mentioned this before but, hah! It is not, in the strictest sense of the word a traditional kind of laundry. That is to say, it is a laundry. It is the original laundry for the house, which was built in 1895 (not sure when the laundry was built, probably not then but not long after either). It is a corrugated iron outbuilding, which the previous owners disconnected from the water supply and sewer. The plumber has connected a cold water supply for my washing machine but there is still no sewer so the washing machine drains into a large plastic tub, which we then empty with buckets. Good for arm strength. Arses for my pelvis. Also full of Beefcakes tools and a chest freezer (and redback spiders).

As anyone who reads this regularly will know, Beefcake works from home. His hours are very flexible as he works for a company on the other side of the world. This means that he can sometimes have meetings at 1am and the like but for the most part it’s great because he can organise his work around our family a fair bit. He gets to be around for things that a lot of working parents aren’t able to take part in. It’s great for the kids and we manage pretty well spending so much time together (as a general rule). Like any other job, Beefcake accrues leave, which he likes to take and have a total break from the stresses of his job. He is currently halfway through the first week of two weeks of annual leave he has booked.

It’s a weird thing. Ordinarily we get along well. We have occasional brawls in the street disagreements in an ordniary week but we are usually pretty okay. We like each others company and we don’t feel too much need for time apart. When he is working he is relatively easy to get along with. When he is not, he’s a nightmare.

I swear, he is having hormonal problems or something. He must be about to get his period any day now. It’s unbelievable. He rants and carries on like a pork chop. This morning he claimed that I was “persecuting him” because I asked him not to open a packet of bacon. Those were his exact words. I couldn’t help it. I got on the phone to my sister and the two of us had tears of laughter streaming down our faces as we giggled about it.

He’s like a tantrumy child. It’s as though his brain can’t cope if he has nothing to do. I need to find more DIY for him to do before he suffers a complete meltdown.

This afternoon though, he gave me such a little gem of blog fodder to share, I have been chuckling to myself ever since. He has an aversion to fish, you see. Fish of all kinds, even the smell of a fish makes him freak out and feel ill. He’s very dramatic about it. I was having a grumble to him this afternoon about the fact that we don’t have a lot of fish in our diets because of his dislike for it and the fact that the kids need their Omega 3’s and all that jazz. This is what my grumpy old man of a husband had to say about that:

“It’s all a conspiracy from the fish producers, anyway” …… “You never needed fish in my day”

And there you have it. No word of a lie. He really is that much of a ranty old fart. I have often joked that as he gets older I will need to buy him a “ranting chair” which he can sit in and lecture everyone as they go by. He’s shown signs of heading that way for a while but I think by the end of this fortnight, he’ll actually be ready for it.

P.S. I am gonna be in so much trouble when he reads this. I’m evil, me. I know it’ll piss him off but I just can’t seem to help myself.

Edited to add: I have been corrected. I actually said something about eating fish three times a week  as well and Beefcake actually said something about fish industry propaganda NOT a fish industry conspiracy. Important details people. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. You shouldn’t believe a word I write.

Really, I’m not sure where my time goes.

Right now I am “looking after” the children. They are watching Playschool. Well, Pudding is watching Playschool, one hand in my cardigan pocket the other feeding his plastic builders ruler through the buttonhole as he nags me to put a youtube episode of 80’s transformers on for him. Thank you Beefcake for introducing him to that. Grub is slowly but surely unpacking the large bookcase in the corner, taking special care to tear dustcovers as she goes. Oh, hang on, now she is trying to scale the tv cabinet in an attempt to grab a dvd she has spotted. So, yes, the term “looking after” should be applied loosely here.

The problem is, I am finding it increasingly difficult to find two unencumbered seconds in which to write anything on my blog. By the time I have my hands free in the evening (which by the way never happened last night as Grub insisted she be held ALL NIGHT) I am too exhausted to talk or think or blog.

Pudding is feeling poorly. He…

….Slight break there where I was forced to dash across the room and rescue my precious, precious iphone from pudgy little hands (it is good for banging on the floor by the way) and then kiss and console very pissed off baby.

Yes, Pudding. He has a high fever. Probably the Swine flu. He is very lacklustre, demonstrated by the fact that he is sitting next to me as opposed to leaping about between the couch and ottoman shouting about pirates or boxing. Poor litttle love. His usually fair complexion is positively ghostlike in it’s paleness today. I hate it when he is sick, although I should be grateful that he is being still and quiet it’s too unnerving for me.

The big kids have gone to their Dad’s as he has returned from his European holiday. It is a public holiday. Everyone else in Australia is off work but Beefcake works for a UK company so he is working upstairs.

It is cold.

Time is up.

Being yelled at by baby. Must be held and boobed. Pudding saying Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy on repeat is now half on my lap.

I have no photos or anything interesting to post. It’s a wonder that I have bothered to write this but I am filled with guilt at the post free days on my blog.

There will be no proofreading. I’m living on the edge.

The end.

The situation, as you may have gathered from the title, is dire. The interent was supposed to go on today. We were too busy* until after business hours to actually check that it was working. It was not. I am using the backup wifi on Beefy’s computer. The stupid help desk person has told us someone will call tomorrow or maybe the day after. This is not satisfactory. I am miserable. I had planned a glorious night of wading through the hundreds of blog entries clogging up my feed reader. So, so sad.

Beefcake’s keyboard has a dreadful action that I loathe and it is larger than mine in order to accomodate his dinner plate hands. I keep hitting the enter key by accident and it is making typing this a complete chore.

So.

Bullet points:

• Move went well, although I have never been more exhausted or sore or swollen pelvised in my life. We shall never move again.
• The new house is slightly more in need of renovation than we had deluded ourselves into believing but it is still lovely and more importantly, it is ours.
• The new house desperately needs a kitchen. The current kitchen consists of two cupboards, a sink and a manky old stove. No benches, no other cupboards. Nothing. We had the ultimate day of shopping high yesterday and purchased super special, very swanky oven, rangehood and dishwasher as well as new kitchen from large Swedish flat-pack icon. Much money was spent. This was quite scary but all in all we are very excited.
• We must now prepare the room and install the kitchen before Beefcake’s leave ends. He returns to work on Monday. We may have our heads up our arses.
• The plumber told us that he would come towards the end of the week to do the plumbing work that needs to be done before we can install the kitchen. We are now both paranoid that he meant next week, which would be an absolute disaster.
• We have no connection for the washing machine either, it really would be a disaster.
• We are okay with DIY. We have renovated two other houses. We do tend to fly by the seat of our pants though**. Pray to the gods of DIY and renovations.
• Pudding was so bored when we were very busy this afternoon that he decided to copy the dog and poo in the back yard. He ran the idea past Beefcake first but was not deterred by being told “no”. I was not best pleased.
• The dog was confused by her new doggy door for the first 24 hours and peed in the house as well as whimpering by our bedroom door that she was busting to go outside at 6am. I was not best pleased.

* Beefcake needed to “chase” channels into the walls to conceal electrical cabling. He did this with an angle grinder. He did not take appopriate steps to protect the contents of the back part of the house from brick dust. It took us four hours to clean up all the gritty red clay dust. Dish pan hands have a new poster girl.

** By fly by the seat of our pants I mean we laugh at the thought of stupid things like planning for prevention of billowing clouds of bright red dust filling the house.