A bad day

Yesterday was not a good day.

Mum

This seems to have been sorted. After my email to Dad yesterday, I got another email from him saying:-

Ooops ! My reply to your "realisation" message was meant to be reasonably "Light Hearted"
"Buggerit"...I must have stuffed it up !

To which I replied:-

Oh Dad. It wasn't the text of your message which upset me, it was the idea that I'd upset Mum, and also, by upsetting her, had upset you. That was never my intention. I just don't want to talk to you guys right now because I've already spent most of the morning trying not to cry at work and I really don't want to make it any worse - I was just worried that your immediate reaction would be to reach for the phone

I then spoke to him yesterday after I went home and it's all good between us again.

Apparently, Mum wasn't that upset by my email - there's been other stuff happening (more on that below).

In some ways, I was more upset by my Dad being upset with me than anything else. Dad and I have always had a very good relationship - we are very alike in personality and usually bounce off each other very well. I can still walk into his office, which everyone else avoids as it's his inner sanctum, and in my sweetest voice say "Daddy darling..." and he'll turn around, smile indulgently and reply "How much?" ;o)

So Dad's reply was meant to be more of a "silly old moo" (that's what he calls my Mum) and "look at what she's overeacting to now" than having a go at me - there was an element of seriousness about it, but he wasn't at all upset with me. Which is good. I'm not sure if I would be able to cope with my Mum if I didn't have my Dad there to lighten the load with.

My niece

So the reason Mum called me? Nothing to do with the emails. My niece is in hospital for a few days - Dad actually told me this in one of the emails, but I didn't get a lot of details. So I actually took a couple of hours off work to head home and give them a call and find out more details. I didn't want to call from work in case it was bad news and I started crying at work (again *rolls eyes*). I had been home for only about 2 minutes when the phone rang - it was my Mum, she'd beat me to it. She had actually meant to ring me at work, but had called the home number by mistake.

Basically, my niece has been on a variety of drugs for a while because of a problem with her liver. They suspect that she will probably need a transplant once she's old enough. She's only 4yo, so that will be a few years down the track yet.

So anyway, apparently she had a recent set of blood tests which showed an improvement in her liver function and so my sister-in-law reduced the cocktail of drugs she was on (in line with what had previously happened whenever there was an improvement).

Turns out this was the wrong thing to do - the specialist (who had been overseas) saw the blood test results and said that there wasn't actually an improvement overall, only in some areas.

So the reduction in the drugs could have caused liver damage and she was put straight into hospital to go on a drip of the drugs and be monitored over the next 4 or 5 days. I spoke to Mum about it for ages and it seems that she's not actually sick at the moment, she's really in hospital so that they can easily monitor her progress and get a large dose of the drugs into her quickly.

So I'm feeling a lot better about that now.

My nephew

With everything happening with my niece, my nephew has gone to my sister-in-law's parent's farm for a few days. I can see the benefit in this - means they don't have to worry about what to do with him when they have to be at the hospital with my niece or seeing her doctors. But the poor little bugger is also sick. They thought it might have been german measles. How awful - 20 months old, feeling crook, and don't have mum to look after you. I felt so sorry for him.

But it turns out that it's just a virus which was producing the rash, not german measles and he's not feeling too sick with it, so can still run around the farm with his grandpa checking out all of the trucks and tractors. So quite likely he's quite enjoying himself.

My best friend

So I call T (of T&S) last night to cry on her shoulder. Considering my Mum was partially the cause of my need to cry and also going through enough at the moment, I didn't want to talk to her about it all. I was originally going to go around there to do this, but she didn't get my message until 7pm and by then I figured I should just stay home, not have a late night. So instead, I cried on her shoulder over the phone.

She is such an amazing person - she managed to make all of the right noises about what's been happening with my family and was completely understanding about why I'm so hurt about what happened with the Fairy. And did all of this while breastfeeding her baby.

We also chatted for a bit about some problems she's been having with her mum and her father-in-law. Apparently, they are just a bit too hands-on with the baby. Not that she minds them being so involved, just that it's hard to get him into a routine if they keep disturbing him out of it. I can see where she's coming from. My mum does the same thing to my sister-in-law. So I tried to make the right noises with her problems as well.

And I hung up the phone feeling better than I had all day.

The weekend

So now it's Friday of course and I have to do my usual wrap-up of my weekend plans. ;o)

I'm off tonight to see Falling Angels with the Law Student. I'm really looking forward to it. I've missed the Brisbane International Film Festival the last couple of years because I've been overseas at this time of year. And it's possible that the Dendy guy will come too.

Tomorrow I'm off to the races in one of those corporate boxes. This is a very weird thing for me. I'm am totally not a corporate yuppy. But the Nymph talked me into it - she thinks I'll enjoy it, and I like to try new stuff and have never been to the races before and never been in a corporate box type of deal before. So I'm basically going for the new experience. Of course, the biggest problem was - what the hell do I wear! My wardrobe is not exactly full of designer dresses and big hats that are the usual dress at the races. So I've compromised - I'm wearing slacks, an antique lace top, velvet jacket and boots with a heel (as opposed to my usual Doc Martens). It all starts mid-morning and I'm expecting it will last into the evening.

Sunday I'm planning to recover from the hangover I'm likely to have from Saturday (drinks are included in the ticket price and I like to get my money's worth) and then I'm heading over to T&S's place for dinner on Sunday night. I think we could possibly both use some more chat time.

And that's it. No gigs!

Listening to: The Kerbs - Live EP