Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

It has been an eventful week, one way and another. Wednesday was very wet, which was a bit of a contrast to the general state of the weather which has been warmer and better than usual for this time of the year. Nicky has had another full week at work which has been good. Claire has had a slightly quieter week at Uny now that she has got all her assignments done and has moved onto revision and preparation for her exams. I have had a very mixed week work wise. I haven't had a great deal of work again. The job I did on Thursday was fine, but on Tuesday I was informed that the job I had done on Monday had turned out to be a disaster. I paid for things to be put right which the customer didn't expect, but I was shocked by the mistake I had made. In a similar situation a week or so before I had not made the same mistake. It has left me giving a great deal of thought to how i operate and to my future. Our non-working week has been quite a bit busier. On Monday evening I went to a cam...

It's been a bit of a "heads down" sort of week, though not to avoid the rain too much, thankfully. Nicky has been well and has had another full week at work. Claire has been slaving over hot assignments, and I have had some work to do. Socially we have had a quiet week apart from yesterday, which was very busy for Nicky. She got up early to make a birthday cake for Mary Drillion's 98th, and then delivered it to her after dropping Claire off at work. She had a chat with Mary for awhile though I understand it was somewhat cyclic as Mary's memory is on the wane. Then she went of for a mammogram, which even though it was in the same suburb as where Mary lives took awhile to get to. Nicky had time for a quick natural break once she got home before Stella, Lucy and Katie collected her and went of to Kim's baby shower. This had been organised at a friend's house and along with much conversation, excellent food and exchange of gifts and stories, also included game...

Nicky has had a full five days at work this week which has been great. She has really been enjoying felling well, until today. She had a bit of an episode this morning. Nothing as bad as before, but she felt dizzy and nauseous for a while, and her head has been feeling odd since. She did eat some chocolate last night which she hasn't reacted to before, but maybe that was it. So, we have had a quiet day at home enjoying the sunshine between the patches of showers. Claire has been as busy as ever, completing another sizable assignment this week along with her lectures. I on the other hand have had a very quiet week, doing just one small job yesterday. On Wednesday evening Nicky and I had dinner out at Bricklane with her church life group. It was $15 pasta night which was excellent - we both really enjoyed the pasta and the price. Wednesday was really wet, wild and windy, but then Thursday, Friday and Saturday were great - an Indian Summer. We have been having temperatures 3 degrees h...

It has been a bit of a week. On Monday while Nicky was getting ready for work she had another migraine episode. As a result of this she only worked two half days this week, on Thursday and Friday. However, Clem called in on Monday afternoon to collect some boxes and mentioned that some people have a problem with processed meat. Nicky had eaten some at lunchtime on Sunday. Then on Tuesday (I think) Felicity phoned and suggested that flavour enhancer 621, also known as mono-sodium glutamate, might be an issue. We checked the packing for the meat and found it had 621 in it. We also found 621 in the OXO cubes which I used to make the stock for the curry which Nicky had before a previous episode, and the night before her first episode we had a Thai takeaway which could well have had MSG in it. We are not 100% sure that MSG is the trigger for Nicky's episodes as it is present in other things which she has eaten and not reacted to, but for now we are avoiding it to see what happens. On T...

The film is on pause at the moment; I needed the loo and while I was out of the room for two banana second's Nicky thrust the phone into Mike's hand so that he could ring his folks in England…I'll explain more later. It has been a wet week, most of the time, which is making the laundry (which you all know is close to my heart) a logistical nightmare. It is not really cold enough to have the heaters on in the house yet so getting stuff dry is a bit of a problem. Anyway, Monday was a public holiday with it being Easter Monday. I think we just pottered around the house in the morning due to the weather, and then Mike Cox arrived early afternoon with a camper van. We went out to do a bit of shopping and Mike came with us before having a good evening of catching up. At about 5am on Tuesday morning Mike and I went out to the airport to collect his Helen who was arriving from England. Once we got her home we had breakfast and got ready for the day. Mike and Helen just "chille...