All Facebooked out

Sorry to anyone who has been waiting for some news - I've been sucked into the Facebook world. Try looking me up on Facebook and you will find out what I am up to.

All alone (except 7 cats)

Its Monday and Vik is taking the girls back to University. this is something I normally do, but he has to go into the city anyway.

This gives me about 10 days advantage on the Wii Fit to try to get to the top of more of the high scores before they come home again and known me down.

I currently have surgery scheduled for the 25th June for a Hiatus Hernia repair. I have to do 4 weeks of a special liquid fasting diet before the surgery (a horrible concoction called Optifast) to shrink the liver as it covers the stomach. This makes the surgery safer. I am not looking forward to it. I'll be on a liquid diet for 3-6 weeks afterward as well.

Two weeks since the kids went to Uni

Its not been two weeks since the girls moved out and in to University accommodation. Generally things seem to be going well for them, there's been an armed defender's squad shootout across the road from them, a suicide from a 17 floor build just down the road and they hate their flatmates. All seems par for the course.

As well as the seedier side of city life they have been enjoying the Auckland street festival; Tamara has discovered goat curry and Kate deep fried garlic bread.

Vik and I seem to be getting into a routine. He cleans the kitchen and changes the litter tray for first kitty of the apocalypse (i.e. Mitre) and I do every thing else.

I not longer have any protection from RSI and both of my wrist rests are being used as a kitten mattress as this was the only way of stopping Mitre from sleeping on my keyboard (while I'm trying to use it).

Iced Tea

We are all melting. For the last couple of weeks its been incredibly hot, usually into the 30s C. Until this week it was blue skies and sunshine, now it is drizzle and humidity that has hit 100%.

While the kids and Vik were in Queenstown I decided to figure out how to make iced tea. I first was introduced to the stuff in the US of A at the tender age of 14 and the instant iced tea I was given was so disgusting I didn't try it again for 25 years. I then discovered that the Asians know much better than the Yanks how to make the stuff and started drinking Chinese and Japanese versions.

Some web surfing showed it was pretty easy. To my surprise, when the rest returned, Vik and Kate took to the stuff as well and we are drinking it by the jugful.

So here is my iced tea recipe. Makes 3 litres (that's about 12 cups for those of you still using the old measurements).

Boil a kettle full of water and make a big pot full of tea. Leave to brew for a good 10 minutes. I use leaf tea from Tea Total and often used fruit flavoured teas (blackcurrant is especially popular).

While the tea is brewing, place about 1/4 cup of sugar (or to taste) in a large jug and add some of the freshly boiled water (just enough to dissolve) and stir until clear.

When tea is brewed, half fill the jug up with ice and pour tea on top. Stir and chill.

Enjoy

I'm sure you have all given reading this by now

But here I am again.

The reason this blog stopped for a while was really a series of unfortunate circumstances which took most of my time and energy and hopefully have passed for a while.

In November I got shingles. If you've had this the enough said. If you haven't, may you not, and if you have children, get them immunised against chickenpox which is a minor children's illness so they can never get shingles which is a very nasty and extremely painful affliction for adults.

December went to worst, starting with Vik having another kidney stone and followed a few days later by Kate being hospatilised with severe abdominal pain. They discovered a number of things but they think the main source of the issue is a food intolerance, probably gluten. As we already have one daughter officially diagnosed with a gluten and dairy intolerance this wasn't a surprise and had already noticed that a lot of Kate's symptoms were similar to those for Crohn's disease.

With Christmas approaching, Tamara got Norovirus which she had over the festive period recovering enough by the 27th to nurse the rest of us while we had it.