Good morning from the cold Goldfields of Western Australia. Today we have the fire going - 2-3 days ago we had the air conditioning cranked up, with a bit of wild and windy weather in between. Wish Mother Nature would make up her mind. It's my favourite time of the year so I would love to have some more of the mild spring days - so would all of my fruit trees which all have fruit on this year. First time for the pear and plum trees.
This may end up being a long post so you might want to get a coffee first.
I know it's been more than a while since I've posted anything, but my family has had to come first. Plus, I haven't really been up to interacting with anyone on social media.
Firstly, I spent just over a week with the cheeky monkeys in this post. And I can't believe that our grandson is now 3! Where has the time gone? And I had my first overnight babysitting gig when our eldest son and daughter-in-law went to a friend's birthday and stayed the night in a hotel in the city. The kids survived so I didn't do too bad. Love them both to bits. That is the good part of my hiatus from social media.
Now I come to the stressed-out-to-the-max part of my absence. The weekend after I arrived back home from being with our grandsons, our daughter phoned up in tears because she didn't "know what to do any more". She told us that Police had forced entry into our youngest son's apartment in the early hours of the morning a few days prior and he was in jail. (They absolutely destroyed the door) She didn't know why - none of the kids knew anything other than he'd been arrested and was appearing in court in the city early the following morning. When you don't know WHY something has happened, every bad thought you can think of goes through your head. The first thing I did was go online and engage the services of a good lawyer which turns out to be the best decision I've made (I'll explain more in a minute). Then we arranged for a friend to look after our cat. We came home, packed our bags, and left for the 7-8 hour drive to the city so we could arrive at the courts for when they opened to find out what the hell was going on and what he'd been charged with. We arrived before Law Courts opened - still with no sleep. Once the doors opened, we tried to find which courtroom he was going to be appearing in - via video link, from jail. In the end we had to wait for the help desk to open before we found out. Allegations have been made against him by an ex and he was charged with aggravated stalking. I can't say anything else about the case because there is a trial scheduled for the beginning of November and nothing else about the situation can be posted on social media. Seeing your son appear on a big screen in prison greens is quite confronting. He was about the last case for bail that morning. The Magistrate finally granted him bail - noting that "his parents are in the courtroom", but with strict conditions. He was given a curfew - from 7pm to 6am, and he must answer the intercom at any time between those hours if the police come by to check he's in the apartment. I had to find the way to the prison, with our daughter meeting me there - and wait for him to be released, which took about 2-3 hours. Later that night we decided to stay at the apartment with our youngest son (for 2 weeks), so hubby drove all the way back home to pick the cat up, then drove all the way back without having forty winks.
While hubby was doing that, I decided to check my emails on my phone. I had a message from one of my uncles. One of my sisters choked on some water and she fell head-first onto concrete. Apparently, she died instantly. Everything finally got on top of me and I'm not ashamed to say that I fell apart for a while. My sister was the 3rd one out of 4 - she was 52. Even though I have had no contact with any of my immediate family members, news of her death on top of the day I'd had was just too much for me. After all, she is/was still my sister. I just hope one of her 2 sons wasn't with her when it happened. I know someone was, I just don't know who. Sleep remained elusive. I think I was just running on auto pilot for a while.
Now back to the legal eagles. The lawyer I engaged turns out to be located in Queensland which is over the other side of the bloody country! But he has a barrister he uses who is based in Perth. They're not cheap. But the barrister is a good one. Very quick thinker, and really knows his job. Finger's crossed, we get the outcome we all want in the first week of November.
As a result of everything that happened, we made a decision to sell our house. So, we spent a couple of weeks trying to get the house ready - 4 big loads just to the rubbish dump, which took days. Got all the paint to redo the roof, the whole exterior of the house, and change the colour of the interior. Then we started seriously looking for rentals. OMG. There is a rental property shortage country-wide. There are at least 100 people turn up for home inspections. And the prices - holy shit, they want an arm and a leg - most are around $500-$600 (or more) PER WEEK! That's more than our MONTHLY mortgage repayment. So, after doing all that work (including me going through every room culling shit to either sell at a garage sale at a later date, or throwing it out), and even beginning to pack boxes, we've now decided we're not selling the house! At least it's all cleaned up now, inside and out!
I'm going to be travelling a lot over the next couple of months. Our oldest son is going back to FIFO (fly in- fly out) work and our daughter-in-law has weddings to do (awesome wedding photographer! Taylor & Co if you want to check out her work), so I will be looking after little bean and little munchkin on the weekends.
If you've read this far, you're doing well!
I've also been keeping a secret for about 8 months that I have been dying to share. This also added to the stress of the past couple of months. At the beginning of September, although quite early due to complications, our granddaughter arrived! Yes, now we have a granddaughter, too! I can't wait to meet her. It was a difficult pregnancy and even more difficult birth, and she had jaundice on top as well, but she's home with her mum and dad and doing well. I'm not allowed to post any photos of her, though, which is sad, but I have to respect our daughter's wishes. She is cute, though, with lots of hair.
I will be attempting to post at least something each day. Except maybe the days I will be travelling because being on the train, there is no internet coverage. I hope you all have a wonderful day/evening.
