Personal and Domestic Plumbing Perturbations

As a month it's been memorable, not in a misty-eyed, rose-tinted glasses mode though; more like a veritable mensis horriblus. It started with the Stephen's-Day thaw, one of those once-in-a-lifetime, extraordinary weather events that saw the temperature soar from a bracing minus seven to a balmy plus eight in the space of 24 hours! Our house being of the Baby Boom generation with all the attendant physical figaries of third age, was perhaps built to withstand such events while in its first flush of youth but not now in its sixties. As with all cantankerous 'auld wans, when placed under such extreme environmental pressure; our house burst a pipe. The water broke through the ceiling just left of Boy Wonder's bed and flowed unimpeded through the house until it had laid waste to three ceilings, one floor, quite a few pieces of furniture and a brand-new space ship which had recently landed courtesy of a very kind gentleman delivering goods from somewhere north of Greenland.

We were homeless but unharmed and in possession of a fully paid-up home insurance policy, it could have been a lot worse we reasoned calmly. Of course it could, I know it could, but six weeks in and still no sign of a moving-home date I have to admit to having a meltdown and to believing in my own self-indulgent, snot-fest that it couldn't possibly, ever be worse than this! I hadn't realised how much my home serves to anchor me in the chaos of the open water of life with a kid with a secondhand kidney. Well at least now I know (note to self: avoid repeat of homelessness at all costs).

As luck would have it, Rory's own plumbing, although considerably younger than that of our humble home, had its own foibles. I believe the technical term for his condition was a 'kink in the pipe'. Probably due to the meteoric rate at which he is growing, this 'kink' needed a lot of investigation and a whole heap of monitoring. The added complication of spending at least one day a week in a hospital on the other side of the country does little to aid the affliction of temporary homelessness.

In the midst of the maelstrom created by staunching the flow in some pipes, while trying to increase the output of others, the HSE saw fit to cancel Boy Wonder's medical card. A mere slip of the pen almost put paid the very costly supply of anti-rejection drugs. As is usual with all things HSE-esque, it took a small non-renewable forest of paperwork, coupled with the intersession of saints, scholars and, I dare say, a near-schizophrenic mother to get it back.

I have greeted the recent arrival of spring with a sense of exhaustion so pervasive that I have been unable to think never mind blog. I'm hoping the stretch in the evenings will loosen the logjam in my brain and allow some light to flow again.

Cheers,

Ann