So is this what a normal routine is like - finally?

I notice that the last time I posted was in May, but that was about something I did even earlier in the year.  The last time I posted about actually mini-ing was in March, when I was doing Woodnook Cottage.  Well some advice: do not leave your nearly completed cottage on a worktable for your darling husband to accidentally knock off and dislodge all the wiring connections or you will be faced with the prospect of having to dig out all the wiring and re-do it!  Not a happy prospect I can tell you :(.  But that is what I am faced with, unless the fates decide that the lights and the fires are going to work after all now I have left them to sulk all this time.  Not likely I have to admit.

After that little episode I had to put Woodnook away while I 'helped' our son Nathan with his half scale cottage, and spent a bit of time doing some of the shingling on the roof trying unsuccessfully to complete it in time for him to display it at our Sydney Fair on the first weekend in May.  Then we went away to a long-anticipated stay at our yearly Grey Nomads Camp on the north coast of New South Wales.  We arrived and set up our caravan the day before camp was due to start, and we really enjoyed the first two days of camp.  The third day I felt unwell and the next day I was really ill - I had come down with viral bronchitis and it was a doozy.  Fortunately this time it didn't go to the chest and become pneumonia thanks to the pneumonia vaccination I have and to some strong antibiotics but I was very ill for a long time.  All of our winter in fact.

I had just begun to recover from this when our son became ill, with headaches, vomiting, dizziness and falling over.  At first he was diagnosed with a severe ear and throat infection and some heavy-hitting antibiotics cleared that up in about 10 days.  However the symptoms continued and my husband Peter and I feared that his CV shunt might be blocked again.  This is a special device that goes into the brain and drains csf from the brain to the abdominal cavity, because of complications from a bleed he had in the brain at 3 days old after his premature birth (27 weeks gestation).  He has had over 20 operations on his brain over the years and the symptoms suggested to us that the shunt might be blocked again.  The GP, who is new to us and doesn't know Nathan, said no it wasn't the shunt but after several days when he was getting worse we took him to emergency for him to be seen by a neurosurgeon.

Sure enough, his shunt was blocked and he underwent surgery again.  This time however it was not as straightforward as it has been before and he had complications, with pressure on the rear of his brain from the way it settled as the fluid drained off.  There were further complications that I won't go into but everything resolved over the next few weeks and Nathan is now home after nearly 8 weeks in hospital, with his skills all back to the pre-operation level.  He does have cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and visual problems because of all the operations and meningitis (a post-operative infection from his first shunt) but at least he has not lost further skills this time like he has from previous operations.

So now he has returned home, and returned to work albeit for only half a day at the moment - he works 3 days a week at a sheltered workshop -  and I am well also. So after all these months we are returning to a normal life.  Or re-creating a normal routine lol.  It feels strange I have to admit but very enjoyable.

I am celebrating by embarking on a complete reorganization of the mess that is my studio.  It was very crowded and I had taken to working in the house, which meant moving tools and supplies to the house for different projects, then packing it all up into containers and putting them back into the studio.  As a result I can't find anything and the whole place is totally full and unworkable.  So I've put tarpaulins up to close in the verandah, put some tables in there and moved some of the containers out there to make room inside.  There are still lots more to move out too.  And I've cleared off my work table, cleaned it thoroughly and have a fresh work surface.  So now I am celebrating by starting to work on Bella Rustica.  At least I know I have everything I need for that in one place!

Each day I am going through the containers, sorting and putting things away or putting them together with other parts of the same project.  That way when I tackle my UFOs I hope to have all the bits I need to work on each project instead of finding halfway through that I can't find a vital piece because I don't know where I've put it.  Then I can reward myself by doing some mini-ing.  First I constructed a kit for a bookcase for Robin Betterley's Teeny Tiny Books, then I began work on Bella Rustica.

It's a huge job, and won't be done quickly.  In fact I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in there at all!  But the joke goes: how does one eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  And that's my motto for organizing the studio.  One bite at a time and it will get done.

So there it is.  Life has been very dramatic for the last couple of months, but I much prefer boring! 😍  And I'm extremely pleased that it has returned to normal - or the new normal.  I hope to have some progress photos for you very soon.