And so much has happened. I’m not going to write it all here, some is still too fresh in my mind and the added stress of thinking about it again is something I don’t need right now.

In short, I left the BF. Took my stuff, my son, and ran from his violent abusive ass. I finally feel free, and even though my situation isn’t great right now, its still better emotionally than before. I no longer feel trapped or without a future, or fearful of my safety or that of my childs.

I just can’t seem to feel settled, wherever I go. This is a nice house, but the rent is too high and as a result we go without a lot of luxuries and other things. I’m not too fond of the neighbourhood and don’t want my kid to grow up and go to school here. Its not a bad area, its just the teens here seem like tards that have nothing better to do than key cars and wander up and down the streets lighting fire crackers. I don’t want my kid to be like that. >.<

I really miss the area I used to live in, but there are hardly any places for rent out there and when there are they are way too expensive. And its more isolated, which is hard when two people are sharing a car. But its where I grew up, went to school.

I think I have a few issues to sort through as my son nears school age. I’m very picky about where I want him to be educated in this area. Part of me just wants to pack up and head for QLD where everything is fresh and new and we can maybe actually get to the beach and enjoy the nice view for a change. Unlike here, where everything seems stale and old (to me, anyway).

On the other hand, I think of just getting a unit in town with a courtyard and a close proximity to shops, schools and parks and that might be ok for him. For a while.

I think I’ll always yearn for him to experience growing up with open spaces around him, room to run and play without the fear of some freak murderer or paedophile stalking him from the bushes. The memories I have as a child growing up on a 30 acre hobby farm with my grandparents are precious to me, everything felt so safe then.

How the times have changed. It makes me sad, and I worry endlessly as a parent for the well being of my child.

We’re all settled in to the new place. It’s really nice.. 3 BR + study. The yard is smallish but at least it’s fenced in. Very spacious home. The only things wrong with it is the broken TV antenna – we can no longer get ABC2 which my son absolutely loved to watch. Especially Giggle and Hoot, and the Hoobs. Not anymore, because this landlord is like the rest… never wants to fix anything. *Sigh*… also the place had termites and even though they’ve been killed off, no-one has come to clean up the poisoned termite crap in one of the build in wardrobes in the 3rd room, so that room is off limits and essentially useless.

The rent isn’t too bad for what it is but its not sustainable for us in the long term. I’d have to put my son in day-care and give up study and seek full time work, somehow get to a job with only 1 car between us, and pray that I’d get something that would pay enough to cover the day-care and then add to the household costs (doubtful).  So in the meantime we are stuck, waiting for my property to sell, as we have been for the past 4 years. Only then can we really move on and enjoy life.

But anyway, thanks to the previous landlord and the huge electricity bill he left us with, things are really tight at the moment. I’ve been de-stressing by making jewellery and polymer clay stuff, and playing WoW when everyone is asleep. At least it stops me from wanting to lose it at people when things get too much for me.

Just hoping everything goes smoothly and the sooner we are out of this hell hole, the better.

I just wish I knew the reason why I’m so tired, perhaps it is stress getting to me or something else. The last year has been hard. And now I’m ultimately preparing to do battle against my father and threaten him legally (after getting advice from a lawyer tomorrow) to allow a price drop on our co-owned property so it will actually bloody sell and not just sit there like it has for the past 5 years. He doesn’t care, he owns 2 houses, can still pursue all the pleasures in life (and believe me, he does pursue them…) while I am stuck renting indefinitely. He wants more money from the sale so he can have a nice amount to enjoy his twilight years with (and spend on whores, sorry but it is the absolute truth) while I need my half to buy a freaking house for my young son to grow up in. With a price drop I could still buy a house, easily. He however will have less to spend on his (whores), new wife who thinks he is her sugar daddy, oh and the ex-wife whom he still hasn’t paid a divorce settlement to.

Jeez, so selfish. What else can I do but look after my family. But I’m so tired.  Have taken a few preg tests which are all negative, so next week I’m off to the doctor to see if I can get a thyroid and diabetes test done. I have a feeling its thyroid, since it runs in the family. But you never know. Blah.

I can’t wait to get out of here and to the new place. And hopefully, a better landlord.

So, it all started last May when the existing hot water heater broke, and was replaced with a second hand one that didn’t work for 3 days because the landlord and his plumber son didn’t know what they were doing. When they finally got it working, it would make a constant humming noise and the hot water would only last for 5 minutes, which was hard to believe with such a sizeable tank. Come August, and my electricty bill was $1150, over double what it usually was. I started hassling the real estate agent to get the landlord to check out the faulty heater. He took his sweet time about it.

Over the following months he:

• got his son to disconnect the top element in an effort to stop it drawing so much power, which resulted in him breaking it and me going without hot water for 3 days before it was working again
• took the thermostat off the old hot water heater and put it on the current one when the heater broke yet again
• completely re-wired the thing when it broke again before Christmas

During that time, I got another bill, $930 (for a quarter).

After it being rewired at Christmas, it seemed to finally work fine, so nothing more was said until April, when I got the shock of my life when I opened up my electricity bill and saw $1700 owing. That is not including the outstanding amount that we were paying off with a payment plan… the total was $2,230…

So I switched that damned heater off, and only have it on about an hour a day to heat up the water, and it lasts all day. The electricity company sent someone out to check all my appliances, and they informed me that that water heater is meant for an off-peak system, which the flat we live in does not have the correct wiring to support.  Off-peak is impossible here, so the hot water heater just keeps heating the water all day and night. Now, it is a 4800 watt heater, and is “quick recovery”, and costs 93c an hour to use!!! That is nearly a dollar an hour, multiply that by 3 months… oh boy.

The electricity rep also calculated my usage since I’ve been turning the heater off most of the time, and it has dropped from 65 down to 40.1.

And the worst part? There seems to be not a damned thing I can do to make that old crook of a landlord responsible. I contacted the tenant advice line, and after hearing my case, was informed:

“The landlord is not obliged to provide an energy efficient water system. Legislation doesn’t really cover this area”.

So thanks to my landlord who didn’t want to just buy a new hot water heater and be done with it, and due to his effort to save himself some money, he has cost me thousands of dollars in electricity bills. The worst part is, he probably knows that there is nothing I can do against him. This is the reason we are moving, and incurring more moving costs, bond and renting a place that is significantly more expensive because it is all we could get.

Karma, bitch. I really hope it comes back and bites him in the ass. And not a moment too soon.

Sleep until everything has changed, hopefully for the better…

Usually, and ever since we’ve been living here (about a year), we see this guy out wandering. He is always dressed nicely and I had assumed that he was walking down to the RSL. It’s only recently I saw where he actually goes. But anyway, he’ll be walking down the laneway, and if he sees us, or ANYONE, he backtracks very quickly into his old rundown house with its fallen down and broken fence. The entire place looks abandoned, aside from the grass being mown. He hides until he thinks people are gone, then walks out again. Countless times when I’ve been driving home I’ve seen him do this.

I figured that he is just an old man that doesn’t like to talk to people. He looks a bit scared if we have to drive past him (as in, he’s too far from his house to hurry back inside if we happen to go past).  We think he’s just a harmless hermit that likes to go for walks many times a day.

Recently I saw where he actually goes, and I was a bit surprised. He dresses up nicely and walks down our laneway, then up a smaller laneway, then heads around the block and goes in his front door. He doesn’t actually go anywhere. Not to the shops, or to the RSL.

Anyway, we were coming home from a drive on Sunday when we pulled into the laneway and there he was, standing in the laneway and peering over our back fence. Our first reactions were “wtf is he doing?? He’s looking over our fence!” Then as we got closer, he saw us and hurried on his way. I was rather pissed off considering our fence is quite high and he’d have to make an effort to look inside. And the fact that we have a 3 year old that lives there. My partner got out of the car to open the garage door and said “he is harmless, though.” But continued to watch the man as he walked quickly away.

I really don’t know how harmless, or how dangerous he is. But I’ll be keeping a closer eye on him from now on.

Time to stay inside and keep the air conditioners on >.> 45c sucks!

At times like this, I wish I lived near the ocean.

8 hours, that’s all I need. Or maybe 10, with the way I’ve been feeling lately. It seems I only get enough sleep when I’m really sick. >.<“

Coffee is my friend today.

Was a very long day for me though. I’ll get a good nights sleep tonight (hopefully). After picking up my son we had to drive an hour to pick up his dad, then back home again, to make dinner and to keep my son occupied I helped him make some small sculptures out of this weird rubba-dubba-doo modeling compound that I picked up from the supermarket. I’ve been looking up clay tutorials on the internet and think I might buy some sculpey clay eventually and try some of them. They look like fun and making things like that relaxes and un-stresses me.

One thing I’ll mention here before I forget is about my friends son, the one I’ve written about before in this blog. He went to pre-school with my son today, and beforehand I stopped by at my friends house for a few minutes so we could go together for the first time. She asked if the boys wanted to use the toilet and my son REALLY needed to go, so she said ‘come on’ and he followed her, only to be screamed at, then shoved over by her kid. Her kid got reprimanded, but I just took my son outside, into the car, and to the pre-school (only 2 mins away) and let him use the toilet there. Afterwards my friend and I had a chat about her son’s ongoing behaviour and bullying towards my son… I know it’s not just my son that he does that too. Pre-school should be good for them because her kid really needs to toughen up a bit, the slightest thing happens to him and he throws himself on the floor and is a really little drama queen at times. He does it for attention.

Our children have such different personalities I don’t really see them being friends in the future, sadly. She did say that her son doesn’t realise that if you treat your friends like that, you will end up with no friends. And my son is so outgoing and social that he won’t have any trouble making friends on his own. Will see how it goes as they grow. At this stage, every time we see them (and that isn’t often), my son gets hit, or bitten, or pushed, or smacked with toys because her son has offered his toys to play with, then yanked them away and became very antisocial. It’s extremely confusing for my son to know what to do, or what he can play with.