How many telstra employees does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Im sorry, I can't answer that question, Hold please and I will transfer you to the correct department...

Update on my little telecommunications saga - I HAVE PHONE SERVICE AGAIN!! (touch wood)
Trevor never did show up - he may indeed have gone back to prison. Instead a very lovely older gentleman who I will call Peter, came and determined the problem and (get this!) FIXED IT!

It turns out thrifty old Jack who used to live here must have accidently dug through the phone cable at some point and then taken the liberty to fix it again all by himself and avoid paying someone to come out bush and re connect it properly. The downside being that everytime it rained the wires would get wet and short out.

This is what it looked like:

electrical tape won't fix everything...

So now I have these two fancy looking orange star-pickets on the edge of my driveway to mark where the cable is too shallow and will eventually need to be dug in to regulation depth.

Peter admitted that although there has been a work order placed to do said repairs it could quite possibly take 2 years or never actually happen so in the mean time it might be an idea to add some decorations to the star pickets and jazz them up a bit.

I took his advice:




After- A Work of Art!

Before - Boring:







So now that I am able to make phone calls again I will call the aforementioned telecommunications company and tell them I am under NO circumstances paying the bill they just sent me for the last month with no service. If they don't accept my terms I will put them on Hold and divert them to my mobile and back to the home phone... And repeat.

Second Nature

I remember being young and watching my mother change the gears in the car while we were driving. I marvelled at how she seemed to just ‘know’ where the little stick needed to point without even looking, when I asked her how she did it she replied “After awhile it’s just second nature, you don’t even need to think about it.”

Parenting can be a bit like changing gears, it’s hard to adjust to at first, if you do the wrong thing you can end up with a terrible noise! There are also days when you are firmly stuck in reverse and just praying for an automatic. But for the most part after awhile those gears will just flow all by themselves, it becomes second nature and you don’t even need to think about it.

I have now been a mother for 10years, I still stall and crunch the gears sometimes, but not as much as I used to and when I do my eyes don’t well up in embarrassment at the people watching me and judging me as they once did.

I watch friends and family going down the path of motherhood for the first time and I recognise their struggles, I understand their frustrations – I was them once. I am wrangling my fourth 3 year old but now I can grin at the way she still manages to get one over me (in exactly the same way her predecessors did) rather than curse myself for still not knowing better.

We grow up with our children, they probably teach us a lot more than we could ever teach them and as we watch them morph into little human beings with their own opinions and ideas we realise that we just have to take each day as it comes get ourselves into gear and enjoy the ride.

Water Play for Wordless Wednesday

Counsellors, needles and magic wands

I had my first 'Egg Donor' internal ultrasound for ‘base line fertility’ a procedure very aptly called “Dildo Cam” by the lovely Faerie Saerie. If you don’t get the drift already, essentially you rock up to the local imaging place get greeted by someone very bubbly and much younger than yourself who proceeds to insert a “wand” into places Harry Potter only dreams about.

Miss Bubbly then takes multiple photos of your Ovaries, Uterus and measures follicles and checks the endometrial thickness, removes her magic wand, charges you $220 and bids you farewell.
All in all the ultrasound wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be, which is a good thing as I will be having several more once I begin taking the hormones , one every two days in fact!

Then it was time for the counselling sessions, I was to have one on my own and then one with my SIL & BIL – I did the solo one over the phone so that I didn’t have to travel into the big smoke for just the one appointment, this would have been easier if the phone hadn’t been crackling itself into oblivion at the time –did you see my rant regarding a certain phone company?

Despite the phone’s best efforts after a lot of “pardon?” “what?” “hello??” we got our thoughts across and she deemed me sane enough to donate.

The second counselling session was with all of us, it only went for 20min as we has already discussed everything with each other and have the same opinions regarding donation, ethics etc which made it nice and easy.

With the all clear from the counsellor and results from blood work and ultrasound in tow, my SIL and I headed off to the FS (fertility specialist) yesterday and got the OK to proceed as well as the details of which drugs she will put me on and their dosage rates which are based on my blood work.

The two drugs I will be taking are ‘Gonal-F’ which is daily for approx 14 days and ‘Orgalutron’ which sounds like a bad ass transformer robot but is in fact a drug that stops ovulation, this is taken daily once the follicles grow to 14mm (as determined by ‘dildo cam’) to ward off early ovulation. These are both by self administered injection which while Im not needle phobic - I foresee the actual sticking of them into myself as well erm...  a challenge.

So its really happening now! We officially start the cycle early July.