let it rain

we've had rain here almost constantly for about 4 days now - it's been lovely. The kids are a bit over it though. Oh and it makes me very sad we don't have tanks - but in order to have tanks you have to have functioning gutters - us, we just have 'strategic' drainage points at various spots along the entire guttering of the house - who needs a tank ... pfft!!

So, we decided to stay ... we wanted to go, but it had to be right, and there were a few things that just weren't. We had no g'tee that Max was even going to be able to get into a school (international) over there as a lot of them were full already for his age level. And although we had a housing allowance as part of the package - it wasn't enough for us to be able to live within walking distance to a school AND be on a train line that was close enough to where Arie would be working. The company kept telling us these things would all be fine and would be worked out when we got there ... but for me, these were deal breakers - I wasn't prepared to go on the off chance that these things might work out.

In addition Japanes workers get no sick leave ... If you get sick you have to use your annual leave - and I'll get to that in a minute. I read a study on the internet which said that only 20% of the workforce over there used their annual leave for leisure activites. 40% used annual leave for their own sick days and 40% for the care of sick family members .... wow! No wonder they're all so highly strung and commiting suicide all the time (huge sweeping generalisations there!!!)

Standard annual leave is 12 days per year with 15 public holidays (which is about the same amount of public holidays we get depending on the state you live in) ... 12 days!!!!! A would have got 2 days leave when the baby was born - so who knows what we would have done with the other 2 children while I was in hospital ...

So for those and a few other reasons which are way too complicated to go into, we decided, sadly, to stay - but now the decision is made I feel good about it. A has also been told by another player in the industry that when we decide to go, to let them know and they'll arrange it - and not on local hire terms either - so that means he'd have the same entitlements he would have here ... so the plan is to do it a few years time.

For now we're tuning our attention to some renovations and trying to decide how far to go with them - do we raise the house and do a full on renovation or do we sell and buy somewhere else???? Life is full of decisions I don't really want to make!!! Why can't someone just tell me what to do.

I'm experiencing extreme frustration at the moment with my latest uni assignment ... yeah, yeah, I know I say the same thing every semester - so A tells me anyway. But this is really doing my head in. It's a very theoretical assigment and I'm having trouble wading through all the academic self important talk of all the books etc ...

Next week Max starts a "Happy Coconuts" which is a group that does sport lessons for 3 to 6 year olds. A is concerned that he can't catch a ball!!! So they spend a few weeks at a time learning the basic skills of a variety of different sports - next week they start AFL - which Max should like because he likes to kick and handball around the back yard ... he just can't catch the ball! :)

Still got the hangings on of something - perhaps a mild sinus infection - certainly not 100%, but life goes on.

Had my first hospital appointment this week - just a paperwork session really - back to see the doctor in 2 weeks.

OH .... guess where I spent 2 3/4 hours on Wednesday night??? The EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF THE MATER CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL!! Max swalloed a 1 Yen coin - between the size of a 5 and 10 cent piece. I just sent him back to bed - he wasn't choking, he could talk and swallow etc etc, and thought it'd just come out the other end ... well, to be sure I called the 13HEALTH number they have here where you can speak to a registered nurse - and they said "oh no, you have to take him straight to the emergency department, if it passes through to his intestinal tract it can cause perferations etc etc - they'l have to remove it from his stomach under anesthetic" GREAT! So at 8pm I packed Max into the car and drove to the hospital (not far from us) ... anyway, to cut a very long night short - after waiting forever to see a doctor in a room full of vomiting children, he had an x-ray - coin is in his stomach - the DO NOT remove them, and they DO NOT cause perferations - he can just poo it out! The doctor said the only time they worry about it is if the coin gets caught beteween the throat and stomach - which obviously wan't the case with Max, who later told me he thought his trip to the hospital was "fun" .... It certainly wasn't for me, and I'm hoping like mad that we didn't walk out of there with more germs than we came with.

So that was my excitement for the week. :)

Sorry for the long post - I had to make up for my short non-post just for PH!! - and I can't be bothered spell checking, so there'll be loads of mistakes cos I think faster than I type - or is it the other way around?!