Bit of a personal post today. 6Sept2018

G'day everyone,

Warning-

Long text only, not craft related post.

This post is very long, so if you don’t want to read about me, my life and the happenings in the Hampson’s Hovel lately, skip this and come back when I’m back to my semi regular tutorial/product posts.

You may have noticed that my regular Tuesday and Friday posts have been a bit erratic lately.  I’m going to share some things deeply personal that’s going on within my family so you can understand why sometimes, there’s a “break in transmission’ so to speak.

It is also no secret that I have some health issues and when I get levels of stress that are more than the average every day, well it can take it’s toll and I get a bit unraveled for a while.   That’s what’s been happening. Lupus and fybromyalgia is flaring and I've had a few bouts of shingles this year already.


Firstly some great news, my son is about to take the plunge and get married. Which is the best news we’ve had in a long time. However his life with his partner is pretty full on this year as his father-in-law to be was officially diagnosed with motor neuron disease back in around February.  It’s a horrible disease and well they thought they were going to lose him last week. A few nights and days spent in the hospital and he was stabilized and is back home again but with full time care. His future is not going to be very long as his body is rapidly deteriorating and he’s already lost the ability to speak and walk. It is very fast progressing

This lovely man who we only met for the first time in February, is probably not much longer for our world and it is heart breaking to see my future daughter, with her almost 3yr old little boy, trying to cope, watching her father wither before her eyes.  Only 3 years ago her mother passed away in her arms, from breast cancer.   You see my son has seen a lot of loss already in his almost 27yrs. His last girlfriend’s mother had already passed away from breast cancer. He watched my own mother slowly die from heart disease through the first 15yrs of his life. We lost her nearly 12 yrs ago at the age of 69. Crikey, I’ve only just recently turned 60 myself.  I’m so very proud of my son and the man he has grown in to. My husband and I have done something right in the way we raised him and the love and care he has for those close to him shows.  I watched him the other night with his partner’s little boy and he’s a natural daddy, sigh. They can't wait to a baby together and give Aiden a little brother or sister.


Now we are playing the waiting game with my own father, who my son lives with (they don’t live in Sydney).  It looks like my father may have lung cancer. He’s had to have many tests.  So I left Sydney to go up to him and get him to and from the appointments.  I believe he is having more but he doesn’t tell my brother and I everything. I found out yesterday from my brother’s visit (he lives interstate from me) that there are more, longer and involved, tests he has to have.  

My father hasn’t told me this so I need to put my big girl pants on and put him on the spot and make him tell me.  I know it’s going to be hard, but I don’t want to suddenly get a call one day saying that’s it, he’s in hospital and there’s not a lot of time left.  I’ve a special needs younger sister who lives with my father but she can’t drive is not much help at all to him in that department.  My sister is a whole other kettle of fish and my brother and I have agreed, it probably isn’t going to be good for anyone if she eventually came to live with my hubby and I.  We have this subject to bring up with Dad and my sister. I know initially she will be a bit hurt but both my brother and I agree, she’s better off staying where she knows people, knows her routine and has a small place of her own within a complex that can look out for her. That was a huge realization that hit me when I left Dad’s place last weekend to come back to Sydney.

So you see, there’s a lot going on in Wirgie’s world right now.  It seems my Herbster (hubby’s affection nickname) and I have been playing a waiting game for so long. We want to sell up and move out of Sydney. We don’t want to stay in New South Wales and many of my readers here, customers, friends and family, know that we want to move south to a more quiet area where we don’t have the hustle and bustle of Sydney.  Don’t get me wrong, Sydney is a beautiful city and I have some wonderful friends up here, but it’s not a friendly city for us anymore.

We have plans and goals that are on hold whilst I wait for my younger hubby to catch up to his legal retirement age. He is a retired naval officer who still works for the department of defense as a specialized systems analyst  in his field.  He is at the moment, the only one within Australia with his knowledge, training expertise and experience  to deliver the training through his current employer to the navy.  It is a high stress position and he works to the navy’s timetable, not your average every day marine engineer’s time table. Long hours, much travel and sheer frustration when the government changes the ‘goal posts’ so to speak mid courses sometimes.  He's off to Melbourne again for 3 days soon so I'm home alone with the 2 kitties. Luckily I love my furbabies and they don't answer me back LOL.

Add to this the ongoing '12 month + saga' of trying to have a new fence built and the landlord/owner of the two rentals next door to us threatening court action (which we now have to deal with via his lawyers) to remove our beautiful massive jacaranda tree before he'll agree to a new fence. (not happening) The fence is now falling down and disintergrating because he's moved some of it without consent. So yeah, life is a massive bowl of cherries (yum) with loads of pips to spit out coz they'll break ya teeth, yuck!

There  you have it.  I medically retired over 5yrs ago from my government job but I'm more busy now than I've ever been.  Hence why I love my crafting even more, why I love being a Stampin Up Demonstrator online and also why sometimes things do not go as planned and like clock work.