Now that we are using entropy as an overall workplace management technique, we're down to me and Dylan running the aged care hostel. I think Dylan is about seventeen. When he's not washing floors and helping with the clients he sits at the lunch table unpacking his internet purchases of "steampunk" accessories. Today his steampunk welding goggles arrived. "I can't see a thing through them but they're so cool!"
I smiled fondly, remembering my own youthful days when you didn't care if your shoes were so ridiculous you couldn't walk or you were freezing to death in a hanky-sized dress. If you don't know what steampunk is, have a google, it's great. Google "steampunk burning man festival" and check out the mobile home.
Anyway, all the aboriginal staff seem to have disappeared so the hostel is now being run by white people, using radical organisational methods such as phone calls, communication and turning up on time. Dylan is extremely intelligent and mature; he's working in Meeka for a few months to save up some money for school back east (his grandparents Doris & Norm run the hospital), so we trust him to stay overnight at the hostel on his own. I think. When I came back this afternoon to do the dinner shift, he'd bought me a little box of chocolates, isn't that sweet? Can't wait to tell Gary he's got competition!
On my way home from the hostel at around 7:00 pm I saw several little kids (toddlers etc) asleep on the footpath outside the Meekatharra Hotel and the Royal Mail Hotel (they're right across the street from each other). I think we're on day 2 or 3 of constant drinking now, the poor little kids must be exhausted, not to mention hungry. The community patrol bus will be doing the rounds, collecting them and taking them to the "safe house". Welcome to your future of abject shitty empty nothing, kids! Then later, when you're going around smashing things & taking drugs & sniffing solvents to express the fury and hopelessness that you have no internal or external language for, we'll hate you for being aboriginal and set you off on a life of welfare, jail and pointless government programs. Don't worry about money - we have an endless supply to help keep it all going.
On a positive note, the chooks like their new chook house (I haven't decorated it yet). Smokey made a late night raid on it but Ethel stood her ground and sent him back to his palatial two storey penthouse. Ethel is such a character! She comes and stands in the sliding doorway to see what I'm up to in the kitchen, cocking her head with curiousity and clucking little questions to herself. I'll probably come home one afternoon and find her making scones at the kitchen bench.
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