Monday, January 28, 2013

The things that matter.

©Ben 2011
(from fishing boat)
The things that matter (in no particular order): a long Scrabble game ending in a draw; tossing socks into a distant laundry basket; Josef's guitar lessons and playing scales; tap practice; exercises of various kinds; feeding banana tips to Jazz ; rinsing dishes really well; writing and revising travel stories; a good night's sleep; Uncle Peter repeatedly twisting the front door knob on his visits; very late lunches in food courts; shopping for salmon fillets; meals and outings with Tess and Dan; clean hands; reminding dad not to overeat; Thursdays when mum stays home for a while; rare messages from school friends; Tassie people and places; memories of Berlin; appointments at Box Hill; occasional gatherings at the rel's houses; visitors to the kitchen; a temperature of 23 degrees or above; well-fitting socks, shoes and clothes; grace before dinner; music; keeping bugs safe from harm; staying well and many more.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Floating.

©Ben 2011
(from fishing boat)
Some popular and everyday things don't seem to matter: Australia Day, career plans, Christmas, cricket matches, football finals, Melbourne Cup, movies, New Year's eve, news and current affairs, office football tipping, Olympic games, television, tennis tournaments, study plans and the list goes on. Out of the mainstream and floating away. What's left are little things that happen each day.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

How long is the string?

(web image)
In the midst of a hot hot summer, thoughts turn to the next cold cold winter and, in a rare attempt at forward planning, we're working out how to efficiently and cleanly heat the house. Hydronic heating may be the answer. Yesterday, we had a visit from an installer who, reminded by a phone call, arrived three hours after the appointed time. He was nice enough, with tens of years of experience in hydronic installations and much advice to hurriedly offer but, alas, not so good at listening. Cost will be an issue and we don't want to do the entire house, which is an unusual requirement since we should be concerned about house resale value. We need radiators that won't gather dust, any dust, and hence are overly suspicious of designs with vents and grills. In the back of the mind, there's the nagging question of how long we'll stay in this house; and the answer to that depends on how long recovery will take; and that, it seems, is related to the length of a proverbial piece of string. Investigations continue.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Waiting rooms.

Waiting rooms always have televisions switched on and screaming for attention. We have to endure an overweight cook adding salt, butter and cream to the dish of the day; the harsh-yet-fair judge berating both plaintiff and respondent over their hesitant answers to tricky questions; an unknown celebrity untangling her twisted family tree; manly actors and glamorous actresses dramatically portraying the undramatic lives of wealthy Americans or; worst of all, test cricket! All punctuated with flashy advertisements for unnecessary items that everyone simply must have. It's almost enough to make the pile of uninteresting magazines worth browsing. Fortunately, a pen and the back of an Officeworks receipt is enough to keep me occupied. We've waited in four such rooms this week, one of them twice, and the end result is that, due to unrelenting unrelievable side-effects, the medication that Ben has relied upon for so many months has to be gradually reduced and something new slowly introduced. The replacement will be decided at an appointment next week and the decision is difficult because all the meds have side effects. There'll be more waiting and more inane television which is completely unnecessary because we learned how to be patient a long time ago.