In any case, because I’m a big tough guy with super genes, on Wednesday afternoon I started feeling a tad poorly. I was in bed by about 7:30pm and awake with sweats and chills by about 9pm. This sort of continued until about 11pm Thursday (I was only out of bed for a few hours on Thursday afternoon). As usual, I was convinced I had some virus that was going to murder me in fairly short order, so I laid about feeling sorry for myself.

Friday I had to go to work (which turned out being a whole day sitting around waiting to do my part, and not getting on at all, so I have to go back in a couple of weeks instead), but I was feeling a little bit better. Friday night I tempted fate and ordered a pizza.

This is how you know I was actually sick – for the first time I can remember (so, today), I ordered pizza, and only ordered one pizza between the two of us.

Saturday was a nice day with family and friends, but 10pm in bed and I still felt like it was a very late night.

Let’s see how Sunday goes with family functions etc…

The other night the wife made us a chocolate pudding for dessert and I genuinely asked for half a serve, because it was “a bit rich”.

I am sickening.

Obviously I won’t speak about their identities in any way, but not a single person who had anything to do with any of them seems to have anything positive to say, and they are responsible for so much misery and frustration for so many people, that I just want them to go away.

To a desert or a rock in the centre of an ocean, or something.

And that’s me being particularly gracious after hours of calming down.

I really worry for myself, in that I just don’t know how I can get past this.

The boy has been sleeping very well for the most part, and tonight went down without any fighting or crying at all. I truly hope this stays consistent. The only real obstacle to that, is me… I’m on daddy day care duty all day tomorrow (Monday) and I hope that not having mum around won’t stuff up his routine. I also hope that I’ll be disciplined enough to keep him on schedule.

Does anyone want to come and help?

Of course, it’s not always that easy. I usually have no problem getting to sleep, in fact if you put me on the couch in front of a TV show that I’m really keen to watch there’s every chance I’ll wake up a few hours later with cold feet and a sore neck, wondering where everyone has gone, and why my tea is so cold. I’m aware that many people, however, have terrible trouble sleeping on a regular basis. On the few occasions I’ve had trouble sleeping, it’s usually been because I’ve got something important on my mind. Either I have a big event coming up that I’m nervous about, or I’m replaying some previous event over in my mind from every angle (usually trying to figure out how I could have handled it better). I have huge sympathy for those people who are constantly troubled by insomnia, because I know how difficult it can be to do the most basic task when you haven’t had enough sleep. I suppose that’s why the military and other similar organisations use sleep deprivation as part of their training and selection processes. If you can perform under that kind of pressure, then you can handle anything! I believe it can also be used as a means of torture. I know that I’d be tempted to tell my secrets to anyone who’d let me get some rest after a few days without sleep.

In any case, I have no idea what the baby is stressed about, or whether he’s trying to get some sort of information out of us, but he’s not very keen on sleeping, so hopefully these people can sort him (and us) out. I’m working over the weekend and most of next week, so I won’t be there with them. I suppose that means the nurses will say that the only way he can sleep is for me to do some sort of difficult task, just to punish me for my non-attendence.

In any case, he’s gone to bed now, and it all sounds quiet. Phew.

This morning a bloke who works in one of those industries went to work. I don’t know if he had a chance to say goodbye to his (reportedly six) children or his partner, but I hope that he did. A few hours later he was dead. I’m sure that in time a lot more details will be revealed, and that someone will be blamed. There will probably be a raft of new safety lectures and policies introduced for the organisation that he worked for. I dare say that a lot of talkback radio hosts will be baying for someone’s blood… just whose, will depend on a few of those details, or at least the ones that get reported.

But before we have too much of a chance to play the blame game, I’d just like to state that I truly hope that this bloke made a point of saying goodbye to his family, and I hope that he’s happy with the decisions he made during his life as to his stance with his Maker. I try to always make a point of kissing my loved ones goodbye before I leave the house to go to work (no matter how early in the morning it is), and I believe that old saying about not letting the sun go down on an argument is a fairly good rule to live by.

Obviously I’m slightly more interested in this particular matter than many people are, but it doesn’t matter what you do with your time, we never know what’s around the corner.

Sorry for the downer.

I passed my interview exam thingy (which Howie obviously knew about very early on, based on the email he sent me) and I’ve now got a permanent job doing the same job I’ve been doing for the past year or so, only now I’m getting paid at the rate you’re supposed to get for that job. I almost had a few minor (major?) meltdowns in the two weeks they took to tell me, but I think we’re past all that now. I’ve been frantically rushing about trying to get all of the cool stuff that I’m now entitled to before someone in admin realises that they might have to actually spend some money instead of telling everyone that they’re meant (in theory) to be supporting that they don’t need the things that they’ve asked for to achieve the goals that their job demands. I suppose their job is to be horrible and stingy, and they seem like they’re pretty good at their job.

I’m now on holiday for a couple of weeks, which is lovely. We’re heading south in the morning for a few days’ camping. That could be a lot of fun, or it could be terrifying, now that we’re three instead of two. I’m not quite sure how babies deal with tents, but I’m quietly optimistic. And if it doesn’t work out, we can always head home a few days early.

Speaking of home, we’ve finally found somewhere to live instead of the two rooms in my sister-in-law’s house that we’ve been in for the past year. We’re going to be renting the ground floor (self contained unit) of a house that belongs to a friend-of-a-friend’s father. The father will be our upstairs neighbour, but I’m told he’s nice enough. We’ll have a couple of bedrooms, a loungeroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all that space! I’m sure we’ll fill it up very quickly…

The house has progressed slightly, in that we now have a concrete slab to build on (thanks mainly to some incredibly generous friends who donated hours of their time, and dozens of blisters on their hands!). The timber frame is (in theory) going to be delivered/assembled at some stage in late January/early February, and the windows get delivered shortly afterwards. At this stage the estimated finish time is late 2012. I don’t know how we’re going to survive that financially/emotionally, but I suppose these things always take a long time. I’ve watched a lot of episodes of Grand Designs over the years, so I’m aware of how often these projects blow out in terms of budget and timeframe. I don’t want that to happen though, and we’re certainly at the low end of the ‘grand’ scale in terms of our ‘design’. It’s nice getting a little bit excited by the thought of loungerooms, or vegie patches, or treehouses though. I’m trying hard to visualise things, but it’s difficult.

I don’t think I’ve realised just how stressful 2011 has been, actually.

In a fairly short space of time, we decided to buy/develop a property with friends, then sold our unit, and bought said property, whilst contemplating far more debt than I’ve ever had before.

We lived in a small part of a house with family, who were generous enough to allow that.

We battled with Council, and had to do a lot more manual labour than my soft hands are used to.

We had a baby.

I took on a heck of a lot more responsibility at work, and studied for/sat an exam which had fairly significant consequences for me career-wise.

I think that it’s quite reasonable to assume that I haven’t been the most pleasant person in the world to be around throughout this year (not that I’ve ever been very nice, really), so I’m especially grateful for all the people who have been incredibly patient and generous towards me despite my long list of faults. My wife is rather kind to me, so I suppose I ought to show her slightly more gratitude than I tend to.

I’m absolutely exhausted at the moment, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I’m hoping that the next few weeks can be a real time of refreshing for me, and for our family relationships. Hopefully 2012 will be a tad more settled, and will allow us to be more of the people that we should be.

I was told that today was their last day of interviews, so results would be out by this evening, but still no word as of midnight. Most people are left to sweat for 12 hours or so. One bloke found out by the time he’d travelled back to our office from the place where the interviews are held. I’ve been waiting over a week.

I have no fingernails left, and my stomach is turning.

Yay nerves.

We started with a huge bit of luck that gave us a great result in a job that we were under pressure with. We were following up one possible line of enquiry, when a person who was completely unknown to us happened to be in the room. A short time later someone was very unhappy, and our bosses were extremely satisfied.

From there I went to my exam. While I was driving there I noticed someone who we wanted to chat to. A quick phone call later and some colleagues were on hand. The gentleman decided that he’d rather not chat, and made himself scarce. In the meantime I’d had to quickly drive a few suburbs for my interview/exam. Being late wouldn’t do. As I was arriving, I received a phone call telling me that the interviews were running ahead of schedule and that I was now required inside on an urgent basis if possible.

The actual interview/exam went reasonably well, except for the fact that I completely froze on a couple of occasions, and forgot the answers to some very basic questions. The panel were very generous and gave me a few prompts that assisted greatly. Despite that, I think that it went fairly ok, and the panel seemed positive as I was leaving. I vaguely remember them using some positive sounding phrases, but beyond that I can’t be certain (everything was a bit of a daze). The results won’t be officially published for another week or so, but hopefully I’ll get some good news then.

I arrived back at work and heard that the gentleman who we’d been wanting to speak with was still managing to avoid us. A few moments later I heard one of my colleagues speaking to us via a wireless communications device, mentioning that the gentleman had been seen running away from a person’s house (where he had apparently been hiding) after being located by some residents there. A rapid car journey later and I was able to see the gentleman being ‘spoken to’ by a large canine who also works for our organisation. It turns out that the gentleman had been unpleasant to both the canine and his human friend and was now paying the penalty for his incivility.

I don’t believe in karma, but occasionally a little bit of balance/justice is brought back to the world (this is not the sort of gentleman that you might want to bring home to meet your mother, unless you were particularly unfond of said mother).

I was slightly buzzing by the time I finally left work (after the usual unpaid overtime). I was even able to leave the massive study guide folder at work instead of dragging it home to make me feel guilty for not putting in sufficient hours of study for this exam. Phew.

The decision was therefore made for pizza and wine, accompanied by an episode of QI.

Now I just hope the littlest one decides not to scream again tonight, and let us all get some sleep… for tomorrow we work on house foundations. My days off are probably never going to be relaxing, are they/.

I sure do know how to par-tay.

Very, very nervous.