andrewlighten.com

This sounds pretty familiar:

Symptoms of norovirus illness usually begin about 24 to 48 hours after ingestion of the virus, but they can appear as early as 12 hours after exposure.
The symptoms of norovirus illness usually include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and some stomach cramping. Sometimes people additionally have a low-grade fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, and a general sense of tiredness. The illness often begins suddenly, and the infected person may feel very sick. The illness is usually brief, with symptoms lasting only about 1 or 2 days, but can last longer. In general, children experience more vomiting than adults. Most people with norovirus illness have both of these symptoms.

Been there, done that.

I’ve been ill for 5 days now. I’ve had enough.

I got the swine flu vaccine last Monday and starting feeling pretty crappy on Wednesday; I was very lethargic Thursday and Friday while recovering. During that time, Lisa and the two kids both picked up a tummy bug and were quite ill for a day or so each.

Just as they are fully recovering and I’m overcoming the swine flu reaction I got the tummy bug as well. I felt fine last night and hoped to be getting back to work Monday with a bunch of energy.

Sadly, this morning I went downhill pretty quickly. I felt a little low on energy when I first got up and by midday I was lying in bed unable to really move much at all. I’ve spent the whole day resting as much as you can when your entire body aches, you’ve got a thumping headache that no tablet in the world can fix, and the stomach cramps are at the point of unbearable.

I’ve had a pretty bad fever all day too, but I think that’s finally broken (mind you, it’s now 3am). It’s been nearly 24 hours so hopefully I’ll actually be able to sleep soon and I’ll wake up feeling better. We’ll see.

A few changes to the sickness defcon level within the house:

• Adelaide is much, much better. Back to 100% pretty quickly. I think it was a 24 hour tummy bug that’s been and gone.
• And where has it gone? To Lisa. Her turn to have the sore tummy and sickness. She’s sleeping now, but it’s been a rough evening for her.
• I visited the doctor this afternoon to see whether my lethargy and aches were related to the swine flu shot I got earlier this week. The answer? Maybe, but impossible to prove. Rest will likely fix what’s up. See how I go.

Eloise has sailed through without a problem; let’s hope it stays that way, because there’s nothing worse than watching really young children when they’re sick. There’s little medicine available to help them.

Update: Spoke too soon. It’s 1:30am and Eloise has just given cause for the washing machine to be fired up again. Dang.

Our cute little pet sheep is 5 months old tomorrow.

He was born on the 6th of June (6/6/2009) and we got him on the 8th as a two day old lamb that had been rejected by his mother. Lisa, The Kids and I bottle fed him while he lived in the backyard with the dogs. These days he’s out in the paddock with Malcolm and Maverick. The three of them get along brilliantly.

He’s still friendly and happy to come running up to us when we go out to see him. Adelaide has a bit of trouble with him because she used to jump around the back yard with him as a lamb and he still tries to do that – but he’s now big, heavy and has had horns. Adelaide is getting wary of him after he’s butted into her a few times.

We’re not sure how or why, but he’s lost both his horns. They were only short stubs anyway, but he’s lost them both. One was hanging loose when Lisa went out one morning; she thinks he might have knocked it when leaning through the fence to steal food from the Alpacas. Not sure when the other one went. Either way, it doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest; he’s still happy grazing with the Alpacas, running around the paddock when we go out there and generally doing all the things Alex does.

Three blog posts in one day! Aren’t you lucky?

Two of us are crook today.

• Adelaide spent most of the night being violently ill. Poor kid has a terribly upset tummy. Lisa tells me she’s asleep now, but she had a pretty tough night.
• I’m feeling like death warmed up with a combination of hay fever and a head cold.

Lisa is soldiering on as she always does. I suspect her arms are pretty sore though; she spent a bunch of time in the yard with our fabulous new Honda powered weed whacker cleaning up for the coming summer season.

And yes, I know I should have been out there doing it, but I was working inside the house on a few other equally important things. I did take a break from that and help her clean up inside the backyard. She’s done a great job though; the block looks great.

It’s worth mentioning that I visited Birchip over the weekend. I was there for a two day SES road rescue course. Saturday was all theory and Sunday was spent playing with cars in the local wrecking yard.

A few of us (there were 12 on the course) were booked into local accommodation for the Friday and Saturday nights because of how far it was from home. The Friday night I stayed at the Commercial Hotel. It would almost certainly be the worst place I have ever stayed. The room was tiny. The ceiling was mouldy. There was no air conditioning. There was newspaper covering the cracks in the window. I don’t exactly need to stay somewhere luxurious (a basic motel room works just fine) but this dive was unbearable. Those of us who stayed there Friday refused to go back Saturday; we ended up doing a 180km round trip to accommodation in Swan Hill instead.

Here’s the outside of Mildew Manor:

Special points of note:

• The broken cement sheeting above the front door. Maybe it’s asbestos. Not sure.
• The tyre marks all over the road out the front.
• The swan made out of an old tyre on top of the drive through entrance. That’s a classy touch.

Birchip is a pretty dead town. We met a few of the local SES people there and they were great; they looked after us pretty well and fed us really well. There’s really not much going on there though.

The local station seems to have changed hands a few times and is currently available for lease:

The course itself was the first of three weekends we’ll spend there. This past weekend was a mix of theory and practical. Saturday was spent in the air conditioned comfort of the local CFA station’s meeting room going through the road rescue coursework from front to back. Sunday was an early start in the local wrecking yard working through practical exercises in scene approach, vehicle stabilisation and glass management. The next weekend (late January) will be all about casualty handling and extrication, then the final weekend is a wrap-up and final assessment.

Malcolm and Maverick went to the hairdresser for the first time. They’ve been shorn.

There’s nothing left of them. We do have two garbage bags full of wool though; we now just need to find someone who can clean and spin it for us.