Its a brand new year - or a twisted tale of ringing it in, bringing it on - and o-rings...

Welcome to 2019.  I have plans for 2019.

Well, the short-term plans are for the first week of 2019 - sort of an extension of the plans I had for the last week of 2018 with added urgency because I go back to work on the 7th.

To misquote The Princess Bride (because who doesn't), I have got my 50th to plan, my house to re-arrange, my life to renovate, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped!

Life, however, has a way of inserting itself into great plans, doesn't it?

The front room looks reasonable - a few large bags of op shop donations and far clearer than it has been for years - well, except for the large family heirloom sideboard that needs to find another family member to look after it.

Paris' room looks emptier - it had an enforced clean-out a few weeks ago due to misalignment of priorities and a standoff over a 10 minute clean.

We shan't look into most of the other rooms just yet - still on the list.

But the big ticket item for today - the living room - looks amazing - all walls are now primed and ready for some colour.

That was where we had aimed to be today, but as I said, life and insertion...

You see, we have amazing water pressure in our kitchen.  We have already replaced all washers at least 3 times in recent memory, and the hardware has been replaced also.

One of our long-term plans is to move the kitchen into the living room area so that it is more open plan and the room it is in can become a sitting room come office space - so the whole "we have to overhaul the plumbing" courtesy of the blessing of high water pressure has been one of those jobs that are in the "can we please put it off until the planets align" basket.

Unfortunately, it seems Aquarius was rising and had a hangover today, because the current fix for the  musical "ping ping ping" of dripping taps (holding your mouth right, turning the right tap off hard while adjusting the left tap and giving the spout a bit of a tweak) decided it was no longer going to work at lunchtime.

Lunchtime, when we were about to celebrate a morning well spent with paintbrush and roller, lunchtime, when we had an afternoon of bathing in the ocean and resting on our laurels to contemplate - lunch time, when all hell broke loose.

It is possible I exaggerate when I say "all hell" - although V can colour the air with epistles when dealing with plumbing issues that do touch upon such themes.

One minute, he was rinsing the brush for storage overnight and the next, opera to the tune of gushing water was ringing forth.

It is New Year's Day - I only have two children to ransom, and neither would possibly raise me enough for an emergency plumber on a public holiday.

V is handy enough to try things once, so the water was turned off and 3/4 of the fixtures removed from the existing kitchen wall to determine the depth of the damage.

V is smart enough (ish) to know that when you try to remove the last fixture and all of the tubing behind moves with it, it is possibly best to stop and just swear at it a bit more.

We are blessed - it is Summer, we have an ocean and sea-side showering facilities.  We are also blessed with neighbours and friends whom we can cadge showers and laundry options from when we get to that point.

But we did have to suffer this evening with doing a camping wash up in a pan, and Paris learned how to brush her teeth with a cup of water as her rinsing and spitting option.

And we now have to look down the barrel of getting a plumber at a reasonable rate asap.

2019 - you have been an adventure so far.

So - Happy New Year!!  How has the New Year been treating you?