Sorry, I got lost

Okay, so I haven’t been around for a while but there is a good explanation for that. First of all, there was the month-long holiday in Aussie. I was too busy bonding with alcohol, ducks and my new handbags to find the time to blog.

I arrived home from the holiday full of snot and Aussie germs. After a month of telling myself I’d update this site as soon as I got home, I was just too crook to care by the time our flight landed in Invercargill.

The whole process of getting home was a nightmare in itself. After all the hassles with Air New Zealand changing our flights, we had to fly Gold Coast-Auckland-Christchurch-Invercargill.

Before we had even boarded our first flight, my head was pounding, my temperature was up and I felt like absolute crap. I’d never flown trans-Tasman with Air New Zealand before. It was a bit of a ‘mare.

• Simply waiting to board our flight was awful. The departure lounge was packed and there weren’t enough seats. It was the airport equivalent of battery farming.
• All three of our flights were late, meaning we were running constantly trying to ensure we made it on time for the connecting flights.
• I phoned the Air NZ helpdesk a few days before our flight to check there were no further changes. I also asked about our bags: would we have to collect them in Christchurch. I was told no, that once we re-checked our baggage in Auckland we’d be good until we got to Invercargill. Then, in Auckland, I asked the question again as we checked in. Again, I was assured that our bags would go all the way to Invercargill without us having to touch them. So it was something of a surprise to be told when we were getting our boarding passes in Christchurch that we’d need to retrieve our cases and check them in again.
• Finally, there was the small issue of items missing from our cases and damage to some jewellery.

You live and learn, I suppose.

We returned home from your holiday to the news that my husband’s parents were both in hospital, then got a call to say my mother-in-law had taken a turn for the worse so had to make a quick trip to Alexandra, their home town.

Sadly, my mother-in-law passed away on November 17. Her funeral was held the following weekend.

My father-in-law is finally out of hospital and trying to get his head around looking after himself and simply being by himself. After 58 years of marriage, it hasn’t been an easy transition for him.

So there you have it, that’s why I’ve been neglecting this site of late.

Sorry.