Forced myself to check to see what clothes have not rotted away due to me not taking the washing off the line for like, a week, and got round to other tedious chores aimed at minimising the risk of cholera, e-coli and salmonella outbreaks around the house. I think I am still decompensating for years of being horribly organised; it's so liberating to do radical, rebellious things like leaving socks on the floor. Except then I have to look for them under the house, which is where Boy likes to take them. At least I always know where they are.
Doing extra shifts at the hostel this weekend; Lynette is in hospital in Perth. Her husband broke her jaw in two places. This is the third time she's been hospitalised by him. He's done jail time for it and will probably be doing more. Lynette keeps going back to him. So that's why Raelene struggles to keep Lynette employed at the hostel, despite all the absences - she has been trying for years to get Lynette out of the terrible cycle of abuse. Sadly, of course, this is pretty much normal for many aboriginal women out here. It was good to chat with Paul at the brigade the other night and hear that there are a few aboriginal kids at the school who seem to have a better future ahead of them.
My drains are still a bit slow; I have given up on getting a plumber, and am now planning a simple grey water filtration & watering system - you feed the grey water off into a modest "mulch pit"and some gravel, and through to where you want your plants watered. Project Number 8,516. I can find all the hose & PVC pipe I need at the tip - it doesn't get much more DIY than that! It's just a matter of not pouring anything toxic down the drains (apart from our scary town water that is). Simple! Ha ha! Getting under the house will be excellent practice for my Confined Spaces rescue training. Maybe I'll also find Ethel's egg stash - she's so wily.
Gary came over after work and we enjoyed our usual routine of making dinner & watching Dr. Who, shouting at the dogs (they bark at everything) and wondering which project to do next. We only sleep over at each other's places two or three nights a week, which is a really good arrangement - we're both so used to sleeping alone that having another person fidgeting & snoring every night drives us crazy, and Gary panics if I get up in the night to use the loo. "Where are you going?!" "Tasmania." "What? Are you leaving? Am I awake?" But we see each other every day, and he often drives past my place in one of the big trucks, letting off the big truck horn as he comes down the street so I know to come out and wave back.
Another fire call-out last night - Gary & Cam took the bush fire tanker out while we stood by at the station, but it was just another bin fire, this time down at the creek park, and it put itself out before any of the grass or trees caught on fire. It'll be a different story when this stuff happens next summer and the plants are all tinder dry. Fortunately in our area, bush fires aren't such a worry as there are lots of clearings throughout the bush and you don't get those monster fire fronts developing.
Lordy - I've been up since six am, building fences, looking for socks, looking for Ethel's eggs, writing my Peak Hill article for the town paper, feeding the folks at the hostel, making dinner, buying a paint sprayer, googling mitre saws, printing out the lyrics to "Man Of Constant Sorrow" for Gary's next musical debut, pulling ticks off the dogs, meditating with Smokey, looking at the living room wall and thinking "I need to do something about that", and explaining to the chickens that it's not good for them to eat the styrofoam planter boxes. Just a regular day.
No comments:
Post a Comment