Hello Queensland, here we come. We're moving North...

Blow the trumpets and bang the drum - The Phone of Destiny has finally rung and we'll be moving to Queensland in January! 

Woo-hoo and hallelujah!

For the past few weeks my Beloved's phone has been constantly at hand as we awaited The Phone Call.Whether pulling down a shed or inserting a cannula my Beloved has been on constant alert.* 

Of course, it was the day we decided that we wouldn't be hearing for another few weeks that The Phone of Destiny finally rang.My Beloved - the med-student, soon to be ex-med-student# -  will start his internship in his hometown in Queensland.

We have had all our fingers and toes crossed for this and have been hoping like mad. Much as I appreciate the green rolling hills of Gippsland and the beauty of the changing seasons down here, these four years have been a brutal and often lonely slog and we're both desperate to be close to family and friends.

My head is a mess of schools and kindies to enrol in, packing up the house, removalists and storage. We'll be staying with my Beloved's folks for a bit until we find a house so we don't have to worry about that, but I am making lists of all the lists I need to write up.

We're fizzy with excitement. 

My Beloved wants to return to his folk and I am looking forward to having a 'village' again. Living so close to my Beloved's sister again is cause for fireworks and champagne just by itself. 

Apart from that, the four years we've been here is double the length of time I've stayed in any other place since I left high school and my feet are itching for a change.

We're looking forward to weekends spent fishing with friends in balmy waters and weekly friday nights wine and cheese with all the family. While it's true that I'm essentially a cold-weather person, and I think temperatures involving sock-wearing are most spurring to my creativity, I spent so much of my twenties on various pacific islands the Pacific Ocean slipped into my blood. I'm frangipani dreaming now.

Queensland folk - prepare yourself - we're coming your way!

#Touch wood. We only have two more rotations to go, so we're hopeful he'll pass…
*Med admin people are a strange breed. Last year when internships were being offered top students missed out on their first preference hospitals because they were in theatre attending operations when their phone rang and they couldn't scrub out in time to answer. Queensland health have a policy of phoning potential interns once, and if they don't answer, going on to the next student on the list. This made us nervous. 
Let the celebrations begin - we're going home!

Checked Out

Last year I was checked out heaps.
It made me feel like a Very Important Person and not so much like a mum-with-her-hair-in-a-bun-cos-it-hasn't-been-combed-in-a-week.
This year I've hardly been checked out at all. It makes me feel like a Not So Important Person.
Last year I was checked out, with satisfying interest, from the ends of my tippy-toes to the tips of my hair on an almost daily basis.
This year, not so much.
My Beloved has real-live-sick people to check out this year, as he's been based at the hospital for his studies. I have no longer been needed in my role of pseudo-sick person. I have been all discarded as he moved on to the new and really-sick.
It used to be so romantic. My beloved would take my hands in his and lovingly stare at them. "So I'm looking for signs of abnormalities or deformities. I'm looking for any signs of clubbing which would indicate heart disease-"
Generally at that point I would tell him to work on his bedside manner. No one really wants to be told they're being examined for signs of 'deformities.'
But My Beloved has his end of year exams coming up soon.* And it turns out that the exams you do on really sick people and the exams you're tested on, are different. For one thing real patients don't like a running commentary about how their baby-doc ** is checking them out for signs of deformities.
So .... wait for it - I'm going to be checked out again!
All of which means that if you don't hear from me in awhile it is because My Beloved is staring deep into my eyes - "So I'm looking for Kaiser-Flescher rings which would indicate..."


*And has been informed that if he fails and we have to re-do the year I might start talking to him again in June or July. So I figure I need to help out however I can. Failure would also mean a complete ban on computer games which, oddly, seems to be of more concern to him.
**This is what the International Medical Students used to be called in the Solomon Islands. I always liked it.