A "rest" day

Sunday, a “rest” day (15^th July)

On Sunday morning I awoke early and after another trip to the toilet realised I was in for another stress-induced urinary tract infection. Not fun. The irony of it is that when I've visited Springsure in the past, I've frequently gotten sick! And usually at Christmas time, for that is the time that we’re most usually up here. Therefore the hospital (the only after-hours medical option) has a chart on me. 

Last time I visited the Springsure hospital I’d managed to bite my cheek at the very back and developed a nasty infection (a couple of days before Christmas, no less). I’ve also had gastro and various other infections in this town. I wonder if it is the stress of seeing my in-laws or maybe just the long drive to get here?

But first we had to organise our first meal in the motor home. That meant booting the person sleeping in the table position out of their bed so that we could put up the table. Actually organising a family in one of these things takes a bit of finesse. With so little floor space, and a lot of double-usages, it just isn’t possible to be very much out of sync. You can’t have staggered meals, for example, but you do need to take turns for getting dressed and using the bathroom.

Sunday was a rest day, a day to spend with family. We headed off across town on foot to the Anglican church where David’s cousin’s child was being baptised. It was a bit of a cultural challenge because I’m not sure the boys have ever been in a liturgical service before.

After church I walked the boys to the playground and then myself to the hospital. It really is a tiny town (600 people). But the streets are wide. You could fit several lanes of traffic on them! And hardly anyone walks. I felt weird walking the streets yesterday, it was very quiet and almost the only people were in cars driving past. I don’t think I’ve seen one bike here. There is so much space, the yards are big, the houses (though mostly quite old) are sprawling, and the footpaths wide. The one place that isn’t large is our motor home and I feel quite at home in it!

The sky as we headed out for lunch to David's cousins'
property. Amazing! David calls it a "mackerel" sky.

After I got some antibiotics we headed out of town to David’s cousin’s property for a post-christening/first birthday party. A lot more relatives were there, I hardly knew anyone. But by this time I was starting to feel the effects of the infection and just needed to sit still, quietly shuddering on the inside. Do you know what this is like? It is kind-of like shivering, except that it your insides, not your outsides that are shaking, it didn't help that there was a chilly wind blowing.

Mid afternoon we came back to our home-on-wheels and I lay down and read for a couple of hours.

While I was doing that David was investigating the motor home. Not because he was particularly curious, but because there was still one thing we hadn’t figured out. The motor home wasn’t switching power sources. When we unplugged the connection to power it was supposed to switch over to the “house” batteries, but that wasn’t happening.

At about 6pm David’s family came over again. Did I mention that we are parked in the backyard of a “family” house? It is a “town” house owned by David’s aunt who lives a long way out of town, so far that it isn’t always possible to get home after a trip to town. Many extended family members use it, and we’ve slept there ourselves. It is a quite old and, because no one lives there permanently, is a little soul-less. But my in-laws have many memories of the place as they’ve spent many a night there when visiting family during holidays.

We had a lovely relaxed time with David's immediate family over a simple meal of toasted sandwiches. A good memory to take with us as we go on our way, probably not seeing them again for another two years.