Lynda's Blog

  It’s been a hard week. The lack of progress on our renovations and living in a tiny inadequately heated corner of the house in very cold weather, my husband’s growing health problems, living with an extremely painful neck and the pressure of the voluntary work I am doing has completely overwhelmed me.   We are planning 140 year celebrations for our church and are having a concert. The committee want me to do a drama, a repeat of a monologue I performed earlier in the year and / or a Spoken Word. I have also been shoulder tapped to be in a musical item using an instrument I haven’t played in years. As an older person it is harder and more time consuming to remember lines quite apart from the fact that currently there are few people in the church who have the gift of drama—and of course I need to find or write a drama that would be suitable and organize rehearsals. I performed the monologue in costume at the beginning of the year and simply feel sick at having to repeat it...

  Today I decided to put all renovations out of my mind (although the electrician was coming to fix the power point that was in the wrong place and the concrete contractor was supposed to be pouring concrete). I left my husband in charge and met my pastor for morning coffee. We talked, discussed some issues with our children’s ministry as I had led this for thirty years, laughed and connected. She has become a very special friend. It was wonderful that she had set aside as much time as needed for our meeting so there was no sense of having to rush. Then I went and picked up another dear friend for our scheduled weekly lunch date. This dear friend had been ill for several weeks so it was a delight to have that time together again. Again, we just relaxed and caught up with each other’s lives. On the way home I called in to see my brother for a few minutes as I hadn’t seen him in a while. I am blessed to have a close circle of friends and a loving extended family. I especially a...

  As the renovations had stalled, I sent a (rather terse) email to the Project Manager on Monday morning. Within thirty minutes I had a phone call about the GIB stopping and they then arrived to complete their work. I also asked the Manager of the GIB stopping company to give us a quote on the rest of the work, as I discovered that the Project Manager of our job had only got a quote for half the work needing to be done. He arrived later that morning and presented another quote, ensuring us the work would be completed promptly. Then that afternoon the painter, the electrician and the foreman all turned up to discuss what next. ‘We will be there tomorrow,’ said the electrician. “We will be there Wednesday,’ said the painter. ‘We will get the levelling of the concrete floor done this week,’ said the foreman. No-one turned up Tuesday. No-one turned up Wednesday. Early on Thursday morning the painters, the electricians and the GIB stopper arrived. Unknowingly I walked out ...

  Last weekend, a friend came out to lunch with me at the local McDonald’s restaurant. We had a lovely, long, leisurely lunch. Such a good time! I dropped her back home and drove to my own home for a relaxing afternoon. Two days later I received a parking infringement for McDonald’s. Apparently their parking lot now has a sixty minute limit! So for the half hour that I was over the limit, I was being fined eighty five dollars. That seemed extremely high. Our city council only charges forty dollars for parking infringements. I visited the parking area, and sure enough I saw the signs. They definitely hadn’t been there on prior visits and as I hadn’t expected to see them, obviously my brain simply hadn’t registered them. I spoke to the manager who looked about twelve years old! He was very nice, explaining that the time limit was fairly new before giving me the phone number of the McDonald’s person who was in charge of parking. He too was very nice and suggested I ring the comp...

Hooray! The outside barbeque area is finally starting to take shape. The structure has gone up. Unfortunately, when they dug out the holes for the posts they didn’t consult with us regarding where to put the dirt (which is more silt actually, considering our home is built on an area that was reclaimed from mudflats). The workers followed the foreman’s instructions to spread the extra dirt over the area, completely ignoring the fact that it had been dug, smoothed and the base course   laid ready for the concrete to go in as soon as the structure goes up. This means, we will potentially need to have it relevelled and a new base course down, especially as we do not want the new concrete sitting on a silt base layer. My husband spoke to the workers who are going to relay our concerns to the foreman / boss and we are waiting on contact. Regardless, having already paid for this work to be done, we are not keen to have to pay out for it to be redone.   In the meantime, I have giv...