Of Breaks From Neighbours, The #Autumn Equinox, And The Rest Of My Week

The nasty neighbour was away last weekend. We were able to walk around and do things without anyone complaining about it, and Lilie and I were able to play ball without someone banging to say we were being too noisy. It was wonderful! It sounded like the other neighbours were also enjoying the freedom to do things without suffering abusive language for doing them. Shame she had to come back.

I made the most of the peace while we knew she was away on the weekend to get some boxes packed, especially since I was actually feeling reasonably good healthwise for the first time in what feels like forever. We would have been done with packing what can be packed ahead of time by now, but a combination of reluctance to do much because of the neighbour's banging and shouting, and my health issues, means we've not been getting the packing done as quickly as planned.

By the way, I got a letter from the doctors about my blood test. I guess they made my test a priority because of how bad I've been or something, because I got the letter from the doctor this past Thursday, which was only a week after I had the blood test done. I didn't expect to hear anything from them unless things were bad, and certainly not that quickly. Usually it takes at least twice that if you have your test done at the doctors surgery instead of going to the hospital. But it was good news. My HB levels are up at 13.3 or 133. My levels haven't been that good in forever. That's actually in the normal range, which proves my issues have been because of the bleeding, since the shot is still doing its thing. The hospital said for them to be checked every month. However, since the results were good, the shot is keeping me from bleeding, and I'm on iron tablets, they're saying for me to wait three months before having it checked again, unless I start feeling really bad in the meantime, the shot stops working, etc. I'm sure my veins are pleased to hear that. In theory, that means I'll not be getting checked again until after surgery. Speaking of which: still no surgery date. No surprise there, but it would have been nice.

Anyway, on Tuesday Kelly and I took Lilie in to town, and we had lunch while we were there. We went to a cafe called "Cafe Mocha" that hasn't been there all that long. The guy who owns it is the guy who owned one of the other local cafes when we first moved down here. He sold the cafe to go do something else, but is apparently now back in the business of owning and running a cafe, since he recently opened this one. Kelly stopped there for a cup of coffee one day, and when he realized it was the same guy - since he recognized him - he knew we had to go eat there. He's an excellent cook. The person who now owns the cafe he sold isn't. Anyway, we enjoyed our lunch, and Lilie enjoyed being in the middle of town where there were a lot of people for her to try and get attention from, most of whom were only too happy to give her the attention she craved.

On Friday evening, nasty neighbour was being a real pain. It kind of felt like she was trying to make up for being gone last weekend or something, because she was in full on complaining and banging mode. So, when there was a knock at our door at 9:30pm, we very nearly ignored it, assuming it was her, and not really feeling like a face to face meeting with her. Good thing we did answer it though, because it wasn't her. It was a gas man come to turn our gas off. There was a leak elsewhere in the building, so he needed to turn off all the gas to the building while it was being fixed. His van disappeared from outside shortly before midnight, but our gas was still off at that point, meaning we had no hot water or heating. At that point, we weren't sure if he'd fixed the issue but figured we'd be sleeping so could make do with it left off for the night, or if he hadn't been able to fix the issue. He'd made sure we had his card before he left, so we figured we'd wait until noon the following day - which was yesterday - and call them if we'd heard nothing. It was only a little before that when we got our gas turned back on. Apparently the guy had managed to do a temporary fix before he left Friday night, and someone was meant to come in early Saturday to turn our gas on - I guess he'd assumed we'd be asleep by the time he was done - but it took until shortly before noon for them to realize nobody had. Like I said, he was only able to do a temporary fix Friday night. Turns out a lot of the piping will need to be replaced, which means someone will be coming out "probably next week" to turn the gas back off and do that.

This weekend is the Autumn Equinox... Just in case you've been hiding under a rock somewhere and didn't know. Specifically, the Northern Hemisphere marked the autumnal equinox on Saturday September 22nd 2018, at exactly 9:54pm EDT (or, Sunday September 23rd 2018, at exactly 2:54am BST, for those of us in the UK). Thought I'd mention that bit of information, in case you're interested. Either way, regardless of whether you consider the equinox to be the start or midpoint of the season - something opinions differ on - there's no doubt that Autumn has now officially arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. The cooler temperatures are proof of this. Not that it's been cold. It's just been cooler than the Summer was, which is a very good thing in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get a really cold Winter again this year. We've already started having storms. Not really bad ones like in some areas though, thankfully. We could do without the devostation storms sometimes leave in their path - which our area has luckily managed to avoid so far - but I am glad for the cooler temperatures. Plus, I have to admit, I do enjoy listening to storms. Lucky temperatures haven't gotten too cold yet though, or we'd have been sharing the little electric heater we have with Joshua (it won't keep the whole place warm, but it would keep him warm, and we could go hang out in with him for a bit to warm up too). There's been a bit of a nip in the air a few mornings, but nothing more than that yet.