Hot as hell

For those of you that live outside of Australia or have been living under a rock somewhere, you will not know that the temperature in southern Australia has broken all time records. I heard something about some record being broken from 1908 and then I heard something about driest January on record and now there is the record for the most consecutive days about 40 degrees (Celcius) and also the most consecutive Total Fire Ban days.

For the past week, the temp at the farm has been:

Monday 26

Tuesday 38

Wednesday 44

Thursday 45 (it was 46.5 degrees in the dairy!)

Friday (today) 44

Night-time temps have barely dipped below the high 20's and last night, I don't think it dropped below 30.

However you look at that, it is just hot hot HOT. And tomorrow, it is supposed to be around the mid 30's. And then heating up again for next week. It is so hot here that even the flies aren't flying!!!

We have a reverse cycle air conditioner, but in actual fact, all it does it keep the living room cool. The rest of the house is like an oven. I feel for the kids trying to sleep in this weather, particularly when Tom had to start back at daycare on Thursday. He dragged himself out of bed that morning. We don't own a pool, and when it is hot, we usually find a trough that is brand new, or that the cows haven't been to in a while, and have a dip in that. But this weather was just too hot to venture out into the paddocks with littlies.

So Mark and I went down to one of the rural supply stores and bought a stock trough. Problem was, they had no round ones in stock, so we had to get what is referred to as a 'coffin trough' (long and skinny) and then, in the searing heat of Wednesday, unhook a desired trough, and reconnect up the new one, take the old one - which was now going to be the swimming pool - to the house and get some water in it. Gawd it was hot work! However, the kids love it and have been in and out of it over the past couple of days. It really has saved us (and my sanity) from hot, irritable kids.

I should also update on the whole tooth saga...

By the 2pm dental appointment, the pain in my tooth was causing significant searing pain all over the right side of my head, and I was starting to feel awful - weak, achy...just generally poor. I could barely move and the pain was constant. Unrelenting. I walked into the rooms and when Peter asked me how I was, I nearly burst out crying. I just felt so bad. So he sat me down, took an xray and then performed some tests on the tooth, one which involved putting dry ice on my tooth. I felt nothing, so it was confirmed that the nerve was dead and I probably had an infection. The xrays showed I did have abcesses on the roots of my tooth, hence why I was feeling so crappy.

Peter gave me a local (ahhhhhhh) and the pain - ALL THE PAIN - just disappeared. I told Peter I was coming back every 3 hours for an injection!!! Put simply, he cleaned the infection out, put some medication into my tooth and sealed it with a temporary filling. I am on antis to clear up infection 100% and then I go back in a couple of weeks to have the root canal. The only pain associated with this proceedure, is the pain to my wallet. Struth, root canals are not cheap!!!!

Dentophobes....look away now!

There has been plenty that has been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks, and I have been remiss not to get on here and update. BUT.......I have been suffering from toothache for a couple of weeks now and it is just about to hit the jackpot!!!!!

Before Christmas, I went for my usual 6 monthly checkup and I had a crack in one of my molars. A return visit to my dentist - the lovely Peter - saw him drill what seemed the majority of my tooth away and replace with what can only now be described as a pretend tooth. This took an hour and at one point, I was sure that I would have to get the nurse to actually hold my mouth open as I was starting to loose control of my facial muscles. At the end of it all, Peter tells me that the crack in the molar went up a fair way and he couldn't guarrantee that it wouldn't play up again.

And it did.

In the days before Christmas, I decided that enough time had lapsed that the tooth should have settled down following all the poking and prodding, and that in fact the twinges I was feeling were in fact the crack that had continued. Sigh. So onto the phone to arrange another appointment to look at getting a root canal. It seems that getting an appointment between Christmas and New Year is the simplest thing to do as people are obviously away/entertaining/festive/getting trashed/scared (take your pick). So I get in no probs. Except in that time, I pick up some lurgy from Bridie and end up with bronchiatis. And can't stop coughing.

Well, that's just not going to work - coughing and having to keep your mouth open for an hour. So I reschedule. But now it takes me 2 weeks to get in. But I still have the cough. So another reschedule. But this takes me to the end of February, and that is not going to work because Mark and I are going to be in New Zealand on a dairy trip then. So the next available appointment is early March. People have obviously returned from holidays/gotten rid of visitors/moved out of festive mindset/sobered up/are still scared but are facing their fears (pick one!).

I go on the cancelation list and luckily get an appointment for the 27th January (tomorrow). Yippee. However, in the week just past, my tooth has gone from slight twinges, to full on debilitating pain that makes my eyes pop and takes my breath away, to now, not being able to eat at all. And I have a dull throbbing in my tooth. I am worried that I have an infection up there somewhere and that Peter is not going to be able to do anything until that is fixed.

I am not the bravest person when it comes to dentistry. I can handle the 6 monthly checkups, I can handle the occasional filling. I have even had 2 wisdon teeth removed in the chair with just a local. But the thought of having ongoing work and repeat visits...not something I am looking forward to.

Not to mention the upcoming bill!!!!

We'll see what tomorrow at 2pm brings.

Some kind of fascination??????

This is slightly old news in our household now, although it relates to New Years Eve.

Due to a few things happening at the farm, we decided to hold a bit of a NYE bash for a modest amount of people. Even though it was BYO meat and grog, I still needed to organise salads, bread, utensils, odds and ends, ice, tables, clean up to the calf shed....... I also became the proud owner of an iPod Classic for Christmas, courtesy of my lovely husband, and as such, we decided to use this as the source of music for the eveneing as I also got one of those docking stations. Problem was, I really didn't have a clue as to how to get music on there.

So come 2.30pm, I am sitting in front of the computer downloading songs from my pitiful array of CDs. After being in bed for only 1/2hr, young Master Tom appears at the office door saying he needs to blow his nose. I grump at him, throw him a tissue and he goes back to bed. At about 5.30pm I decide that he'd better get up, although a late sleep was fine as he was going to be up late that night. I go into his room to find him crying on the bed saying that he had something up his nose.

Alarm bells start ringing inside my head as this is not the first instance of a foreign object up his nasal passage. So I get a tissue and get him to blow really REALLY hard. Nothing. And it sounds blocked to me. So I go get the torch. With him bent backwards and me peering as intently as I could, I just caught a glimpse of something green. Dark green, not snot green. On questioning him what it was that was lodged up there, he quite cheerfully tells me that he bit the end off the T-Rex's tail and stuck it up his nose!!! Why? I ask you....

A bit of background for those new to my son's nose mining adventures...... The week before his 2nd birthday, he went through a phase of sticking things up his nose - sultanas, cheese, ham, chewed up bits of tissue - however, I always managed to get them out either by getting him to blow, or by extraction with the tweezers. The day before his birthday, I noticed that the mucus that was constantly running out of his nose was luminious green in colour and smelt like something that should have been buried for a long time. As we were going shopping for party supplies, I decided against taking him to the doctor. But the smell was so rotten, that on arrival home, I rang and got an appointment the next day (his birthday) to see the doctor.

On seeing the doctor, Tom makes a screaming run for the door. As a result, we had to take him to the hospital and the doctor had to take him into theatre to remove it under general anaesthetic. It turned out to be the chewed up top of a sultana box. What a way to spend your birthday!

Ok, back to 2008. So based on previous experience, I waste no time in taking him into A&E to get someone more adept than me with tweezers to dislodge ol' T-Rex's tail. As it turns out, one of the registrars was on call and whilst I wouldn't want to say anything negative, my personal thoughts were that all he succeeded in doing was to push it further up Tom's nose. He did try to get it while Tom's was under a twilight sedation, but no go. So he called in his supervisor.....who just happened to be the same doctor that took the sultana box out 1.5 years ago!! He also tried while Tom was under a twilight, but the thing was so far up that he didn't want to knock it into his airway which was unprotected at that time. So, once again, we bundled the lad off to surgery to unblock his snozz. It is about 8pm by now and the party is in full swing.

And success! After 10 minutes in theatre, Ian comes out to say that everything is ok, and obviously thinking that I'll be back here again in the future, tells me he'll see me next time!!!!



Tom waiting for theatre with "Dr Bear" - the teddy the nurses gave him in A&E

By the time he'd recovered from his drugs, we finally got home just before 9.45pm. And just like kids are, his feet hit the ground out of the car and he was screaming around with the other kids having a wonderful time playing chasey and jumping on the trampoline (albeit a little unsteady). He lasted about 45 minutes and went to bed. The guests at the party thought it was very funny that I missed Christmas 2007 because of one child and I was potentially going to miss NYE 2008 because of another.

Bret (my uncle) found all this extremely amusing and took to calling Tom, "Nostrasaurus: the evil nosed dinosaur".