A Reality Check

Sunday May 14

Where have I been for the last two weeks? Hiding is not quite the right answer but it comes close. Mostly I've been feeling tired,  depressed and generally being unwilling or unable to hold or perform a coherent thought, sentence or action with any degree of capability.  I've upped my medication, thought about quitting work about every five minutes, been more grumpy than usual and have avoided as many issues and people as possible while at the same time feeling like crap because I wasn't getting anything done. More importantly I've been a pain to live with and fortunately Ros has been mostly staying at Cait's where she's doing the full on Grandy thing while Cait is back at work full time for a few weeks as acting manager.

On the day I got fed up with the whole thing and decided to have a chat with my GP, I read an article by Dr Rob Gordon in the Bushfire Recovery newsletter. Rob is a psychologist and one of the top disaster trauma experts in the country. Apparently most of what I've been feeling is a fairly typical transition response which occurs some 3-4 months post event.  I reckon that saved my GP about 20 minutes of additional listening and certainly made me feel that there was/would be an end to the current chaos.

I'm not 100% but the direction is up not down - most of the time.

What's been happening around me?

Notwithstanding the black cloud which has probably been hovering over my head these past few weeks and certainly permeating my brain - lots of good things have happened.

A Fabulous Day's Effort!

Cait's Mates - who in no particular order include Nicole & Michael, Angela, Sean & Becca, John and Naomi, and all their respective children numbering about 11, as well as my fellow Defender owner Stephen, came up to the farm and built a retaining wall below the water tank, put in the posts and cross bars for the clothesline, cleaned out and repaired Fort Chook, emptied rocks and bricks out of the old fishpond, picked up a bag full of filter tubes, piled up assorted junk, moved heaps of mulch, began landscaping the front garden, had a ball running wild around the place, sliding down slopes, climbing on logs, riding Hugo's mini-motorbike and finally collapsed around the campfire before dragging exhausted kids and themselves off home. A fantastic effort!

Ros Get's a Shed

One of the things I'd planned to get done during the working bee was to erect the second 10m2 shed that I'd bought from Stratco for Ros. Unfortunately digging the holes for the retaining wall took a lot longer than we'd anticipated so last weekend, son Benjamin and grandson Willoughby arrived and we completed the retaining wall and got almost all of the shed completed on the Saturday before the rain started. I finished the roof on the Sunday and this Saturday I got the door on and doorbolt attached with the assistance of Willo and Cait. Cait and Phoebe also shifted several wheelbarrow loads of mulch and Angus spread it in all the wet and hollow spots. Place is beginning to look quite civilised. Mind you I had to spend quite a bit of time digging trenches to catch water at the low points and direct it over the edge of the slope. Hopefully the next downpour will demonstrate that I got the levels right.

Caravan Renovations:

The fairly heavy rain we have recently experienced threatened to collapse the caravan annexe until I took the pump off the tank and used it to drain the water and pump it into the main tank. While this quite a good way of collecting water I was seriously concerned about the structural integrity of the annexe, particularly as we've just begun winter and the pumping is a very manual processs and relied on me being there at the time to prevent a disaster.

A call to Sydney and a quick discussion with Ros' sister reminded me that there are some special struts designed to prevent pooling of water. Somehow this information had got lost and they were obviously just what we needed. Getting them into place was the stuff of which divorces are made. Eventually after dismantling most of the annexe sides, several evil exchanges between Ros & I and a significant amount of frustration, I discovered how to unlock the roller mechanism which enabled us to  rotate the roller into the correct position and slot everything into place. It is now a thing of beauty and looks like it will withstand anything short of a tropical storm. 

In an ideal world I'd finish this catchup tonight but I'm determined to get some sleep, so that's it for now. I'll publish this and do an update tomorrow.

Cheers