Frozen

Posted on Wed 18 October 2006 at 08:54

Right, I know it is still early spring here but bloody hell it was cold in this house when I got up this morning.  I woke up about 5.10am and went through to put on the gas fire in the living area, thinking it might help to heat the place up a bit before I had to get up for a shower at 6.10am  Well, if it did help, I hate to think how cold it was before that!!  I haven't been so cold in ages and you all know how I feel the cold at the best of times.  I swore I would completely change my routine and shower before bed after that, but it's not how I like things done.  However, I came in from work and Steve had been on the spend again (beginning to dread going to work - what will appear next?!!) and there is now a new addition to our home - a revolving heater.  I am hoping it will heat the bathroom sufficiently for me not to have to dread getting up..... An English colleauge told me I would need a fan or A/C by the summer as it gets so hot... all I can say is BRING IT ON!!

Work is going OK, doing ward based orientation  at the moment, but after the first two weeks there is a full week of District Health Board orientation and I will need a 4 day 'calming and restraint' course shortly too.  Calming?  Would that perchance be similar to the control and restraint practiced by you uncouth people in the UK?! 

I have been out and about a bit escorting patients as an extra as I am still supernumary, it has been helpful to walk about and try to get my bearings. Monday is a bank/local/something Holiday and is apparently triple time and damn me - I have to work.  ahh well, them's the breaks!!   Apparently I will be on earlies on a 4 on, 2 off permanent basis.  I like the idea of knowing what your rota will be on a regular basis like that.  I have already been informed by the team on that rota that we are on Xmas morning - not a problem - I have chosen to work  Xmas morning for years, the only years recently that I haven't were my student years.

And talking of Xmas, how strange will that be in the middle of summer?  Once the boys left home we stopped doing a traditional Xmas dinner and went for Chinese or Indian instead.  We don't even know if our stuff will be here for Xmas and I am not buying more decorations etc.  I think it is time for new Xmas traditions for a new country anyway.  I'm certainly not going to sit here on a glorious summer day wishing I was freezing in the UK weeping quietly into the sherry.  Stuff that!! A pint on the verandah of even better, bugger off to the beach after work.  And yes, I will be posting it on here!!

There is a chip shop/Chinese takeaway just up the road so they very kindly provided tea tonight - a small celebration of our fortnight in NZ.  I can't believe how much we have acheived in that short space of time, it feels like we have been here for ever, which is good.  The chippy/chinese combination seems to be a common one round here - what a bonus!  The point I started out to make was I ordered a battered sausage with my noodles and they could have sold it as red pudding, it was that similar.  It maybe isn't an everlasting red pudding supper, but it will be an everlasting supply I would imagine.  So, there will be no need for me ever to return to Britian, sorry but that's how it is!

Waffling now, time to stop

Karen B