Moving on

I have been a very bad blogger for the last seven and a half years. That is not entirely true. The truth is that I haven't been a blogger at all for that time. Not one blog post. My excuse is that I was beavering away at university studies, but since I was only taking one unit per term that is a pretty weak excuse. But here I am and I thought I might try to get this blog up and running again.

A lot has happened in the last seven years. A new grandson who is no longer 'new' but a bouncy, happy, energetic five-year-old is top of the list. He is grandchild number eight and the last grandchild that we can expect, or so we are told. We don't have a blog nickname for him yet. It has been so long since I used blog nicknames for the other seven grandchildren, that I had to do some research to remind myself of them. Here's a list: Cheetah is now a gorgeous young adult at twenty-years-old. Lion is navigating through his teens with poise and confidence most of the time, after all, he is a normal fifteen-year-old. Dragon is in his early teens and finding talent in new skills. He enjoys working with his hands. He is thirteen. Little Bear is on the verge of teenage-hood. She is a mature and delightful young lady of twelve. Monkey is eleven and still living up to his nickname as a lovable and funny monkey (when he's not being a mischievous monkey). Ladybug is transforming in front of our eyes into an elegant young lady who can't stop dancing. She is nine. Butterfly is a lovable, chatty and constantly busy seven-year-old.

No doubt, I'll have more to write about them in the future. For now, I thought I might give you a potted history of our last few years. My university study kept me pretty busy for most of the time and I was doing better than I expected, especially in my writing subjects. I was aiming for a double major of writing and history. The history units were a bit more challenging but I managed to plod along until last year when I got my first pass mark. It felt like a fail because all of my marks to that point had been credits, distinctions and high distinctions. Even to get a P had been a struggle because of undiagnosed health issues. More about that later. In the end, I made the hard to decision to quit while I was still ahead and finish with an Associate Diploma which I had more than covered instead of a Bachelor degree.

Mr Sunshine and I hit a big milestone in 2017 when we were finally able to buy a home for ourselves. We had been living in less than ideal conditions in the family beach hut ever since losing our home, our business and our savings in the Global Financial Crisis. I don't use the acronym anymore after I was explaining to a health worker, who was asking questions, that we lost our house in the GFC. She asked, "What is a GFC?". Townsville was badly affected in the GFC. Unemployment soared. Business bankruptcies were rampant. I wasn't expecting it to be forgotten quite so soon. It might have been a different story if I'd been talking to someone in the retail industry rather than the health/medical industry.

Also in the last few years, we became the parents of two fur-babies for the first time in years. Two lovable, but naughty, dachshunds joined us for two yappy years. They were full of beans and very loving and sometimes very noisy, much to the irritation of one of our neighbours. Unfortunately for several goannas, a couple of snakes and at least one rat they were also excellent hunters. The demise of the rat was great...the goanna and snake deaths we were not happy about. We like wildlife. We worked hard at trying to train them to be less aggressive to other animals (and humans) and less yappy at the neighbours and we were making good progress. As my health status changed, I could see their future looking a little bleaker with them being left alone more often or locked in the house to keep them out of trouble with the neighbours. We made the tough decision to rehome them and it has turned out very well for them as they are now with a family who have two young teenagers and an older dachshund who has a new lease on life now that he has two younger adopted brothers to contend with.


My typing skill, which had never been great, was pitifully slow and mistake-ridden. Dizziness plagued me and made it hard to concentrate and think clearly. Sometimes I walked like a drunk. Appointments with medical specialists sometimes felt like throwing money away when they could find nothing seriously wrong. Tests mostly resulted in a finding of slightly worse than average but nothing to worry about. Our family doctors didn't give up though. They could only reassure me that according to my blood tests I was in great shape, but they and I knew something was not right and it was something that doesn't show up in blood tests or scans.