a glorious day

10.5.2012

We have just had a glorious sunny day. Gary and crew started paving outside the house on Wednesday and already we have a mud free entrance. I have started to catch up on the accounts but progress is slow because now that we are living in a proper house again I have relaxed and feel no particular need to rush at anything.

We have also had a slow trickle of visitors, neighbours and other people who have helped us get to this point so we have spent time just sitting and talking. Tonight we went with Bo’s boys to football practice so that she could practice her singing in the city and then attended yet another Steel’s Creek meeting. The gist of the matter is that there is still money in the fire fund kitty but extracting it is a complicated puzzle and no one is prepared to divulge the rules.

At least Erin and Eva came to this meeting. Usually it is just the old retired community members and the younger set, who have kids, are not represented at all. I have very little hope that we can get any help for people who still do not have houses. I have heard that there have been several suicides up at Kinglake and I am not surprised. Edd and I still have masses to sort out before we will be back to a normal life style and I am sure that we are not the slowest to get things tackled.

My strategy is to knock off the issues one at a time. I am pretty sure that catching up with the accounts is the first priority. With all the building there were so many financial transactions going on that this task is a lot larger than normal but I have kept all the receipts in some sort of order so it is not impossible. It would be nice to have a shower in the house but I think I need to know where we are financially before we start on any more projects.

Edd has been trying to get the services working. He has phoned the shop about the problem with the oven of the new stove and today the gas arrived and the new underground gas tank was filled. The solar panels heated the water today but the wood stove heats it on cloudy days equally well. The snag is that the pump to the radiators is not working as it should and I cannot get the stove hot enough to cook on with out boiling the water system!

Al will have to move out of his rented house soon so helping him get a roof over the families heads for winter is another priority. We actually wonder how we ever managed to fit going out to work into the time equation. I have not really started work in the garden yet. We are still eating fruit from the strawberries and there are still capsicums and pumpkins but I have planted little else.