My promise to myself was to blog at least once a month, surely it has only been a month...
Kent's birthday tomorrow, the 7th, that means it's September mmm, the last blog was 6 July. I guess a lot has been going on (she says thinking hard). Lots has revolved around my chemo, darn it, so let's just get that part out of the way first. I have completed the first 12 week session of the strong stuff every 3 weeks and survived better than most. I have just had my 3rd session of weekly chemo which goes on for a further 9 weeks, so far ok. Struck down with diahorrea and vomiting last Saturday, the hard thing is trying to figure out if it is a reaction to the chemo or just a bug, am now thinking it was a bug as apparently it is going around. Sapped my energy a lot, luckily I have Mondays off and work Tuesday afternoon so have had some time to recoup.
There have been some changes in the house, our Korean friends have been recalled to Korea and their place has been filled by Prashant from England. Sarah & Braden from Canada are still with us doing forays out around NZ in their car when they have time off from teaching. We also have Lewei who hails from China (up by Mongolia) now boarding upstairs with us. We all get on well and enjoy each others company, once a week we have a 'family' dinner together having turns at doing the cooking. Even Lewei who swore he couldn't cook made a wonderful spicy amazing stew one night, I think his Mum helped on skype. Skype makes the world a bit smaller doesn't it.
In NZ we don't have unlimited internet, strange I know, but luckily we are on a fairly big data package which everyone in the house shares. Thanks to this I get to talk to my sisters in USA and daugther in Oz every week or two. Kent is busy still working on a firewall/control computer which he is building from parts garnered from TradeMe, the NZ equivilent of EBay. He's a closet shoppaholic really, gets his joy from finding bargains and buying them hence we have to be careful about entering Bunnings the huge hardware store just down the road...
Yesterday he found the floor of the garage! Of course everything goes into the garage when you move anywhere and it becomes the storage cupboard for anything that doesn't yet have a place. Then when you finally get stuff distributed through the house the actual garage stuff has to be sorted. Kent has made a great mezzanine floor that covers his old Norton and trike which are future projects and put shelves up there to store all the garage crap that you can not possibly throw out as you will need it tomorrow. Our neighbour who works as a builder up at the hospital brought him home a huge workbench/storage cabinet on wheels that will hold all his tools. So last night the car actually got parked inside the garage.
Kent's first project is getting his Harley street legal so we can go out on rides with the Sulphur City Motor Cycle Club. Kent has been a member almost since its inception and this year we are celebrating it's 25th rally, we want to arrive on our bike! NZ really is THE most perfect place for riding a motorbike, except for the other idiot car drivers on the road who are not careful enough and regularly wipe out one or two of us. Our Harley is a big old shovel, it's so heavy I can't lift it off the stand and can only ride it with Kent on the back to do that for me. She lays into the stand so much she almost falls right over. A cool ride though and LOUD! What a lovely sound, safer too, cars can hear us coming. Having no rubber mounts between the engine and the frame means the bike vibrates as you ride :) feels great but things keep vibrating off, life becomes a constant fix up before you ride session. It's such a cool bike, I'm looking forward to being on her again.
Our garden is looking good. We bought some fruit trees and Kent planted them out in an area of lawn that we plan to turn into a small orchard. We now have an apple, plum, peach and nectarine growing. Kent has made planter boxes too and we have celery, pak choi, broccoli, cabbage, peas, silver beet and tomatoes planted out now that it's spring.
I see I am writing in the first person as opposed to past posts where it could have been either of us writing so we wrote 'outside' looking on. This year it's just been me writing...
Ah, nearly forgot, we have another new addition to our 'family', a cat as yet un-named. We got her two days ago from the SPCA, she is dark tortoise shell and is 20 mths old. Having lived half of her life in a small room there at the SPCA she is finding the space in our home a bit daunting. She is living in our bedroom with short trips out into the big spaces beyond now and then. So far she hasn't eaten anything (her food is in the kitchen quite a distance away) but seems happy enough. The SPCA said we have to keep her inside for 2 weeks, what happened to the butter on the paws thing... She loves a cuddle and is really curious so won't be able to stay in this room long I would think but she is a bit skittish with sudden noises. As she starts to realise she is safe and loved she will become more confident.
We are so looking forward to summer, already the weather is warmer and we are seeing the sun more often - great since I am solar powered. We had a mild winter except for the early part of August when shock horror it snowed right here in Vegas! Real land on the ground flakes too, everyone was out with their cameras. We went through our 3 cubic meters of wood in 3 weeks and had to order more. The house now that we have dried it out properly is quite warm and gets cozy as with the fire going.
Catch you next month.
