Marsden is Here

This weekend (since Thursday, so Mr R has been coming to work with me, where he seems quite content to sit at the next desk with his laptop) both D and E have been in Auckland. This has given me the mental, emotional and physical space to make a list (on the big whiteboard) and power through it. Since Friday evening I have, in no real order because there has been a lot of back-and-forth between tasks...

* Cleaned the stove top, oven incl. fittings and trays, and microwave.
- bonus, replaced the oven light blub

* Shampooed the carpet in the living area, which involved moving everything into one half of the room, dry vacuuming, shampooing, waiting to dry, dry vacuuming again, moving everything back, repeat the next day with the other half of the room.
- includes assorted adjacent cleaning, like wiping down the baseboards and power points while I'm paying attention.
- included sorting a lot of things back to where they should be, putting in the garage to to go to storage, or binning them.

* Installed a video card in D's computer.

* Took a car load of containers to the storage unit, picked up a new cat-tree on the way back.
- did I mention we're expecting kittens? Two, brother and sister, once they've recovered from being desexed. Other members of the household couldn't cope with being cat-less at this time.
* Rearranged the garage to function as a proper spare-bedroom (at least during the warmer months) and cattery. Well, 90% completed this task.
- now that we don't have a spare room I've already been sleeping in the garage when D & I's body clocks are at odds, or she needs her audio book to get to sleep.

* Sewed on a pants button.

* Washed a duvet cover and hung the duvet out to air. I only count this as 50% complete as the duvet was still out when this evenings rain rolled in. At the time I was crashed out for a nap after next four items.

* Line trimmed a battery-worth along the back bank (about twice as much area as I had set myself) and sundry weeding.
* Picked up as much as possible of the mummified / buried and still mostly intact cat droppings from the gravel parking area. (About 1/4 of a brown paper supermarket bag). Did not manage part 2, the gravel areas down the side of the house, but that will wait for another day.
* Shovelled the wood chip across the shared drive back out of the gutter and onto the area it is supposed to be chipping.
- this is one of those strange areas which doesn't seem to belong to any of the 3 adjacent properties, although I suspect it's technically the responsibility of the property whose fence actually runs across it. They are not one of the two properties on the drive. The original neighbours at the end of the drive had it chipped when they were doing their landscaping, I weed it occasionally and someone not-me recently went over it with a line trimmer.
* Swept the bulk of the gravel which had migrated out onto the drive since the parking area was put in back in.

* Four loads of laundry, including Mr R's for the week and his bedclothes. Remade the bed.
* Also sundry other regular chores, like feeding the two of us, grocery shopping and and washing dishes.

* Processed and uploaded the Operation Glorious Porpoise photos.
* Made two other journal posts, including this one.

* Got the DVD drive on the main computer (which recently had a motherboard + processer upgrade) sharing and sharing media over the network and managed to watch one episode of Firefly. I'd hoped to manage more, but at least the technical details are sorted out now.

* Did not get to cleaning the Fridge-freezer (which needs it just as badly as the cooking appliances did) but that might be a good place to start next weekend.

~~~
I'm seriously chuffed at accomplishing what feels like a "real person's" amount of work over this period of time and have thoughts about how our home environment is not conducive to this sort of productivity more often, but I don't get to bask in or ponder further it tonight because Mr R has an 8am appointment tomorrow which means a very early start and I had planned to be in bed an hour ago.

This weekend I have managed to

* Clean the windows and aluminum fittings inside (Saturday) and out (Sunday).
* Mow the lawn (Saturday) (although I didn't manage to rake up afterwards) (mower catcher is bust).
* Clean the gutters (Sunday).
* Sundry other housework and property maintenance tasks.

This time last year any of those might have left me wiped out for the rest of the weekend. Today I still had enough in the tank to handle the bulk of cooking dinner and write my first actual journal post in ages (short though it might be) rather than falling into bed and doing a credible impression of a wax dummy.

I mean I can feel the unaccustomed exertion in various muscles. Although my legs have let up they will surely be claiming payback tomorrow for all the ladder-work involved in the gutters. But I'm still functional.

This was on top of a very solid week at work, and sundry other errands during the week.

I always pick up somewhat during the summer hours, but my motivation, focus and amount being accomplished recently is remarkable for me. I'm going to attribute it to finally being of the right meds, and hope that a crash is not pending before the Xmas break.

I did have to give up on going out and being social on Saturday night after all the energy spent during the day, an event I regret missing, but I guess that's that's the tradeoff that had to be made for all the other adulting.

I'm hoping that whatever motivated me to whip up post means that the gates will stay open a bit and I'll be able to get some of the other words which have been piling up in my head out over the next few weeks as well.

D and I have now been a couple for six years. Our relationship has ups and downs but an abundance of mutual respect and a commitment to talking things through as they arise has seen us through without approaching any breaking points. We don't get as much "us" time as either of us would like, as I try and time together alongside as much work time as I can manage[1], house and garden duties[2] and time just for me[3].

( snip )

Over the past few months my self-esteem and self-image have taken a solid beating, for reasons I'm not going to go into in detail. I'm immensely grateful for the generosity which has seen us through but also ashamed and guilty and bitter at myself that it got to that point to begin with.

I feel like it was my responsibility /not/ to end up in the situation and I was confident that I could/would do so; so although I know that a certain part of it was circumstantial I am experiencing it as a deep personal failure.

Like, these were mistakes I should have made and learned from in my 20s when no-one was depending on me, not in my 40s with (at least) two other peoples lives involved. I was handed ... not every, but a great many advantages in my youth and more since; and I have, in my complacency and foolishness, completely failed to make anything of that; in fact lost a significant portion of it.

I am determined to make it back / pay it forward in some form, over the next 40+ years, but I don't yet see exactly how and I am afraid that I never will. Although this has opened my eyes that certain things I thought I knew and did I do in fact not know or do/do well/enough, I am at a loss where to start learning or doing things differently.

And I feel constrained by circumstances with no practical idea how to change those either. [Aside about this reflecting how societal change is hard (e.g. to address climate change) without massive central government or grass-roots leadership; because after a certain point the (infra)structures around us are self-reinforcing.]

~~~

There are small positive signs. Although I may currently be on the brink of a crash (which this long weekend will hopefully alleviate) I have hammered (judicious use of sleeping pills + E relying on my for morning transport) my sleeping pattern back into something which allows me to be functional for most of the day. My fatigue issues are slowly slowly receding; I have been making my targeted hours or better at work for the past few weeks, even though that has usually meant working a half-day or day at the weekend to make up for time missed during the week attending to other matters; i.e. my overall productivity and ability-to-do-stuff is up.

Well OK, we moved in over 2 months ago now, a day before NZ went into COVID19 Delta lockdown. This put a crimp in getting the internet physically connected, so for a couple of weeks I was commuting back to the rental which still had a fibre connection. This was actually in breach of level 4 rules, but I wasn't changing bubbles anywhere and it was a very safe drive from one end of the motorway to the other with little traffic. E came with me once online learning started so she could access her lessons and class chats (and spend the rest of the day playing Minecraft). D. tried not to go slowly mad at home with only a data connection.

It's taken this long for me to have the downtime and energy both available to complete a post. We had a deadline for reaching a certain level of unpacking, that being the boys week down for the school holidays. Various things have been purged in the process including some bits of family furniture which were very hard to let go of. It's weird how items which came with Gladson, which I have lived with and used for 20 years I was able to pass on without a second thought but items which came from my grandparents but I personally rarely used tore at me.

There is still a garage half-full of boxes to be gone through, and the wardrobe in the spare room and some containers under beds/desks.

Anyway, the house itself.







Unfortunately landscaping did not come as part of the package. I'm currently playing a wait-and-see-what-grows game, in which if something looks like it will serve as manageable ground cover it stays. De-stoning and smoothing is probably going to be a several year project, as is cleaning up the unwanted cabbage trees / flax on the back hill (the sound barrier between us and the state highway / railway line). I have long-terms intentions to terrace this a bit and utilise the height for raised garden beds.



(Despite the hill traffic noise is a constant, even at night with big trucks and goods trains, but it is no worse than living next to a busy roads in town. It actually makes for a kind of soothing white-noise. Can't rely on the sound of a vehicle to tell us that visitors have arrived though, constant false-positives.)

( Internals #DontRobUs )

I've been meaning to write bits of this post in some form since February, when it started to feel as if everything was coming together for us. In some ways this lapse has become symbolic of the subsequent feeling of not making progress.

At last report we were urgently looking for a new flat and our consents had just gone into council. With much gratitude to the previous landlord who extended our lease for the month we needed to find and move into a fairly spacious four bedroom place right at the Christchurch end of the southern motorway and possibly closer in travel time to my work than where we were. We will miss the space when we move to our own little place I am sure...

Said little place at least now has foundations, as of 2-3 weeks ago. There has been a little bit of ground/drainage work on the site since, but I have no objection to the pad getting a decent curing time. E and I drive past each day after I pick her up from school to check. There are several other houses in-construction on the street, most ahead of us, but neither of the adjacent sections as yet.

E joined us in January as planned and I run her our to school each morning and take a break from work each afternoon to go out and collect her. This has really helped move my body clock back towards where it used to be (some mornings are still hard) and on weeks where we don't have too many other errands (usually health related) given a boost to the amount of hours I am spending at work. I still have to put in a little time most weekends, but I am not spending as many very late evenings, which is good as D's shoulder continues to get worse for no discernible (x-ray, ultrasound so far) reason and I am needed to help prepare dinner.

One downside of the new rental is the elements on the oven, which are not consistent enough for D to be able to reliably make eg a cheese sauce. This has constrained our options a little.

So I have reached the point of almost balancing the requirements of household duties, school run duties (which at twice a day Christchurch - Rolleston do add up in both time and petrol) and work commitments with even a little time to myself when I absolutely need to collapse or hermit grumpily. Easter is hopefully going to give me the chance to catch up fully; there are handful of big tasks for tomorrow (Monday) barring interruptions (of which I feel there have been far too many over the past months).

I am admittedly typing this in the office on Easter Sunday to give me a break between two significant sections of work which I intend to get done (one down), but at least I have found the time and energy to do so. And with this out of the way I can move onto another outstanding task, maybe soon even some of the unpacking / cataloguing / decluttering which desperately needs to continue before we move for what will hopefully be the last time in a very long time.

I've managed a couple of other little things in that vein also this weekend, after a significant emotional collapse over the whole state of things last week. Generally though my mood is holding, although it can quickly slide from from positive to grumpy. My sleep for the last little while has rarely left me feeling rested; many dreams with a particular ... texture? feel? which I have come to recognise as meaning my mental state is getting better or worse, but can never be sure which.

Today was Settlement day. So, the past two months, one property at a time.

( Gladson )

( Dalwood )

( Rental )

~~~
And that is only a summary of only the property-juggling dramas in our lives the past two months; but I'm not going to write any more in this post. It's getting late and I still have to pop back to Gladson this evening [listens - in the rain..] to put out the big green bin for collection; and tomorrow to put away the standard size green bin which will have replaced it.

I have been living at my current address since 1993. This house has done very well by me, but I have had to accept that with D's daughter moving down to join us next year it's just not quite the space we need - or can afford even right now*. We've been looking around the real estate websites and talking to a real estate agent and it's doable to move to a

- recently built or renovated (cheaper to heat/run)
- 4 bedroom or 3 bedroom + convertable-to-quiltspace living area
- house on a smaller property farther out of town (lower rates).

... for what we can probably get for this property less the associated costs, and more practical than my plans for eventual renovation here.

The hurdle we've just encountered to is that the bank is (understandably) willing to loan a lot less to a single (part time) income with two dependants than they were willing to loan to the same income + auxiliary from a boarder with no dependants, and we will have to make up the difference when we close off the mortgage here ... which reduces our budget from "any number of perfectly suitable properties" to "we can make it work" :(

(This caused D. to have a little breakdown feeling that the bank's rejection was all her fault ... which is of course nonsense, you might just as well say it's my fault for being too broken to work a full time job, or for getting the unit built instead of cutting C loose and moving properties when D & I committed to the long-term.)

(This is going to be rough on C too (we are keeping him fully in the loop) - he's also been comfortably ensconced here for 20ish years and this is rut-ending-at-the-edge-of-a-cliff territory. We'll be giving him all the support we can to find a new place.)

~~~

One of the reasons for moving now is so we don't end up moving school zones between E's intermediate and secondary years, which has constrained our areas a bit. We know very little about the schools in Christchurch so we've basically had to be guided by deciles and what little advice we've got from friends online. (Feel free to leave your feelings about particular schools in the comments). We've found ourselves looking primarily at two areas - Rolleston initially and, since learning that Mother has signed up for a villa in a new development and will probably be moving about the same time we are, Redwood and surrounding suburbs.

The current timeline is

- declutter and box up for storage everything we can over July. The kids are down for both weeks of the school holidays.
- The last two weeks of July / first weekend of August finish the boxing and move boxes and unneeded furniture to a storage unit, get the grounds tidied and house cleaned professionally
- to market over August, both selling and hunting. It's impractical to expect the properties we've been looking at to still be available (although if they are perhaps the price will be reduced) but I'm confident the same sort of stock will be available.
- ideally offer conditional on selling, sell, buy, and sort out all the money at the end of August
- Possession / move end of September / October.

~~~

* It's a serious blow to the confidence to realise that while you always thought you were good with money it turns out that it was just that money was always there and when it actually gets tight you pretty much suck at being able to budget and spend in a disciplined fashion.

The first type is a feeling in my brain like a wall being pushed against from the other side with significant force or perhaps the skin of an over-inflated balloon on the verge of popping. When it's there I have great difficulty doing anything, let alone talking about it. My brain just wants to ignore all responsibilities and shut down.

I don't know what is causing the pressure but I suspect a welling of frustrations and helplessness and nothing-I-can-do-so-I'll-put-it-asides catching up with me.

Someone shared on FB the other day some bullet points about trauma. Actually lots of people are sharing things about trauma, mostly due to the pandemic stress most of us are under, but a couple of the points in this one stood out for me. One was that in times of crisis parts of our brain will shut down in order for us to survive. This struck me as being much like my feeling that after I have come out of a black patch, my system has done it by cannibalising some other part of myself.

I've been getting that feeling a bit again recently.

The other is that in-depth processing may happen years later, when we feel in an emotionally safe space to deal with it. While I didn't recognise those times as a "trauma" event when I was living through them I guess they were. So if I ever want to get those parts of myself back (if that is even possible) I need to find that space to unpack.

I don't know if it is so much I don't feel safe, as it feels like I have two options; complete emotional collapse and inability to continue meeting my commitments or keep pushing it aside/down so I can be there for the people who are depending on me. The first is just ... not an option to me.

D is insistent that I need to talk to someone about this stuff, so I have a phone appointment with my GP tomorrow to talk about what options are out there. I simply don't know what the options are; my previous counsellor was a desperate measure and I really don't know how or if he helped, and self-directed research has just left me feeling overwhelmed and if anything even less able to continue looking for help.

~~~

The second type is more positive. While the new garage/unit was being built I also acquired a medium sized kitset garden shed for the same company. Over the past couple of months (over a year after it arrived) I have been gradually putting it together as spoons and weather (calm conditions needed) allowed. Last weekend it was basically completed and yesterday (Saturday) I put on some finishing touches like the inside screw caps (so hands don't accidentally get ripped up) and some raised flooring (as the concrete pad which it is sitting on was broken apart and more-or-less put back together while the drainage for the unit was being put in). I also went and picked up the first carload of firewood for the season, about 1 sqm which stacks up neatly against one side wall. So in future I may look at having larger loads delivered as there is plenty of space.

Today I looked up information on the throttle regulator for my lawnmower and fiddled with the springs (which I inexpertly replaced a little while ago, one had snapped) a bit. It is still all-or-nothing, but at least now "nothing" actually turns the mower off. I mowed the front lawn and the mower also now lives in the shed rather than under the eaves by the back door. Probably next weekend I will get around to moving the regular gardening tools into the shed as well, removing some of the clutter from the garage.

On the subject of gardening I have been doing pretty well at filling up the (large) green bin with garden waste each week, so I feel progress is being made there. The pruning is basically all done, now begins the digging.

I'm getting on with stuff one job at a time, but there are time constraints vs so much to do and whenever I start making a mental list it rapidly gets overwhelming. Right now I am looking at a huge pile of stuff in the lounge which has needed putting away for several weeks, and which in my mind needs to be done before I can move on to another thing which really needs done before the next school holidays.

Feels like the walls are closing in ...

Produced 270 units
Exported 96 units (@ 9.67c/unit)
---
Used 174 units (saving 26.86c/unit)

Total reduction in power bill = $56.04