Tag Archives: moving

thinking inside the kitchen

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In recent decades much has been written about the male domination of science and innovation, and my feminist mindset has always replied “yeah, that is because she was kept uneducated and pregnant in the home.” I still feel that to be the major cause, but in the short weeks since our move, and our continuing  existence living out of boxes, I have started to wonder about another cause : women’s adherence to what is “right”.

Take the humble egg slide for an example. It has form and function, if not beauty, but it performs its designated task to perfection.

However, what happens if one is cooking eggs and one cannot immediately find an egg slide? A woman (me) looks for the nearest like tool – a cooking utensils that is flatish or at least a tool that is designated for cooking.

 

Not so the man (Mr FD). He goes straight for the silver cake server. Open drawer, there it was; an item not made for cooking, merely a dainty, SILVER implement that has form, function (serving) and beauty. The man (Mr FD) has no self doubt, qualms or regrets. He uses the said silver cake server as an egg slide, not once, but twice. Indeed, until the woman (me) makes extra effort to locate the correct egg slide in the box marked kitchen utensils (drawers)  and places the silver cake server in a faraway place (probably never to be seen again and certainly never again used for cooking eggs!).

And that, dear reader, is one reason why women have had so much difficulty being innovative and creative: we stick to those damn rules, and a cake server is going to do what a cake server  is going to do!

I have broken from the mould though. For years I have been horrifying our daughters with such examples of wild abandon as storing a piece of cooked silverside roast in a lettuce keeper!

And that, dear reader, is why I am the Flamingo Dancer!

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sweet dreams are made of this

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I cannot believe  how excited I became this afternoon driving home. It was just the thought of home and the peaceful serenity that awaited me there that was so enticing. Sadly, I had to stop and buy groceries, including schmacko treats  for Augie, before I was actually able to arrive home. (My, what do they put in those dog treats? Augie goes berserk for them. Are they covered in “eat me” salt?)

So far, I have had none of the dreams of returning to our previous home that has always accompanied our previous moves. No matter how excited I was about the move in the past, I always dreamed of going back to the old home, or being found in the old house in the weeks after the move. This time (two weeks in) and zilch. Just the sleep of sweet (?) exhaustion.

I did dream about being in hospital and Bruce Springsteen visited my bedside (!) and I also dreamt of being on a reality show, but nothing related to  my own reality! Maybe fame and fortune awaits me, with new famous friends?

Who said it was just a big ego?  Mr FD, are you reading my blog again? What did I tell you about reading my blog? Who is a naughty boy, then?

Country garden puzzle

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Our poor garden has been a little neglected in recent times as the occupancy of the property was left to one person, and so it will need a little care to get it back to its best. However, it is still absolutely beautiful to us.

There is one tree that puzzles us. at the moment it is bare with long velvety seeds pods hanging from it. The seed pods were like a green velvet a day or so ago, but are drying off and turning more brown, before the burst open. They are beautiful works of nature, but I have no idea what the tree is named.

I was hopeful that one our my Australian friends might be able to assist with an identification.

That is the neighbour’s roof in the background. Their house is situated at the front of their block, and so next to our forest front garden.

Mr FD also planted out Dad’s crow’s nest fern almost on the 12th anniversary of his passing. It has found a home with a larger crow’s nest and some staghorn ferns that were already planted in the garden. All can  be viewed from any of the front windows of the house, and I can see it from the kitchen window as well. Peace at last.

vegetating in the country

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It is difficult to carry off eau de chiot in pearls and heels, but if anyone can, I will, naturally.

I have the distinct impression that I smell of Augie Dog today as he slobbered/chewed/hung off my trouser pants legs this morning as I left for work. One week in the country and I have a new early morning routine- feed Augie, take Augie outside for a toilet break (hopefully in time!) and watch the birds in our eucalyptus trees until I need to leave for work. In the past it would have been watch the early morning news as I ate my breakfast. Not having cable TV or the internet (or even a land line phone) has helped the new routine along as well, but Augie and his routines, or rather, lack of routine, has taken over our lives.

Daughter1 and Mr Boy came for lunch Sunday, the first time they had seen the house. Daughter1 said it looked like an amalgamation of all the houses we had lived in over the years, and as if our furniture had come home! I can’t argue on either count! The baby blanket that I purchased through Etsy for their expected baby arrived during the week and D1 brought it to show me. Pink on one side and a bright monkey pattern on the reverse side. Her Daddy, Mr Boy, likes monkeys, hence the monkey motif. There are pink flamingos, there can be pink monkeys too! Don’t even try to argue, I am a displaced person living out of boxes, and not to be messed with in the short term, or any term for that matter.

After just one week living in the country and two snake encounters (the second we identified as a brown tree snake) I am finding it very hard to remove myself from my rural retreat and re-enter the world of education and work. For the two days of the weekend, it as if we live in our own little cocooned world and then Monday morning reality arrives and it is hard to switch on the grey cells, but needs must.

Things uttered around The House on the Hill:

“I thought the light was on outside, but it is just the damn sun!”

“What are you looking for?”  – “My lost youth.”

“No, Augie, no, AUGIE, NO! Damn, where’s the mop?”

listen to the serenity

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I anticipated being welcomed by an estactic Augie Dog when I arrived home from work, yesterday, but he preferred to nap and so the Happy Family movie I was playing in my head all the way home will have to roll another day! Son reported that Augie had been a good puppy dog, and we had no pee or poo issues all day!

The drive to and from work is longer, but actually an easier run than my previous drive. This morning as I drove the connecting road to the freeway a car flashed its lights at me, which of course normally means traffic police ahead, but in this instance was to warn me that a dead wallaby was on the road ahead. Poor little thing, I do hope some nice person moves it off the road before the trucks complete the job. Not quite a job for a Flamingo Dancer in pearls and heels…

BIL and his cute granddaughter (aged 4) popped in yesterday morning when only Son was home with Augie. I think they came to meet Augie. Augie was most taken with the little girl as she ran around and made noise. He probably scared her a little, or a lot, as he put his paws on her shoulder (she is a tiny 4 year old, Irish genes!) but no doubt Augie loved having another pint sized person! It is nice to know that family can just pop in without a major planning exercise now. I actually have some cousins living further down our road, and no doubt will reconnect at some stage.

I love the solitude and the privacy. We live behind our front native garden and wall of tall eucalyptus gum trees filled with rosella parrots, and maybe a wallaby. The previous owners have planted staghorns and other ferns beneath the trees, but it is so dry and hot that they aren’t looking their best, and I must admit we haven’t exactly been sprinting out to water gardens as yet. There is a sprinkler system with timers, and two large water tanks providing 10,000 gallons of water, but that is a job for another day.

The temperature is expected to be 37C today and the fire alert is high. Luckily (?) the bush land directly behind our block of land has already burnt right to our fence line, so hopefully we won’t face a fire threat in the near future, but we will have to have a fire plan, and soon.  A train line runs along the other side of the hill and trains can spark grass fires, so one must be prepared.

It is a different world we live in now. It can be hard and unforgiving, but at the same time it is beautiful and nourishing. I know it will prove to be the right place for us. This morning I took Augie outside for a run and I was standing on the lawn, watching him play, the birds were singing in the trees, and I could see across the valley to the hills in the distance. Life was good. Life is good.

watch?v=prnQLmVg5V8

Augie takes over

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Moving day was the nightmare that was. Monday was an incredibly hot day, and towards the end we ran low on energy, but the dramas with the buyers continued when they requested a pre-settlement inspection on the day we were moving out.

We had four moving men, two moving vans (we had to use mid sized trucks to be able to negotiate the driveway) and the buyers: husband, wife and child spent about an hour and a half inspecting the house. The final complaint was that the weep holes in the brick work were too wide, to which Mr FD replied, “Mate, I’m not rebuilding the house for you!” Even the agent told him he was being ridiculous. I just wanted to ram the end of my floor mop up his … but instead went to the farthest end  of the house.

And, AND he asked if we had to connect the electricity for them! I repeat, he asked if we connected the power for him! At this stage, I was ready to turn his head into a Halloween pumpkin, but the realtor sensed murder was about to en enacted so he managed to finally scoop them out the door. It was at this stage I decided I would leave the family bathroom tub in need of a dust…

Then our bank didn’t have the settlement documents ready for the booked time, and settlement had to be delayed for a half hour, which could have allowed any party to pull out, but eventually it was done, but the bank didn’t follow along the lines of our understanding, so there are still some issues to work through! Further reason to distrust banks, in my opinion.

The moving men, were congenial and made every effort to work carefully, but as the day wore on and they grew tired their care factor shrank and so all the carefully marked boxes got moved into any, and every, room, so now we have to search the entire house if we need anything specific. I spent most of Tuesday walking in circles trying to sort boxes and locate items that it seemed important to one of us that we find immediately.

My sister arrived with dinner and I could have kissed her feet. We now live only 10 minutes apart, in different towns but a very easy drive, so we can see more of each other. Sister brought Mother Flamingo Dancer to our new house on Tuesday morning, and though Mum had great difficulty getting out of the car, and negotiating the two inch rise into the house she appeared to enjoy her visit. I now live about 4 streets away from her care facility.

I ventured out to buy groceries in the afternoon, and had to drive passed a road side fire. Even though I drove to the opposite side of the road, the heat from the fire was intense through the closed car window. Luckily, the fire burned away from the road and so it had moved on a bit by the time I made my return trip.

Augie Dog moved in late Tuesday, and as Son  had to go out that night, Mr FD and I were left at home to moan about our aches and pains and dogsit Augie. Augie is 10 weeks old and he likes to chew things; poop and wee. He is so cute though that we all melt despite the mess. Of course, Son and Mr FD have poop patrol which was my condition, one of my conditions to agreeing to a dog.  Augie trots behind me as I wander the house looking for lost things, until he is exhausted then he flops and sleeps, while I still wander the house looking for lost things. The boxes, I must add, do work a treat to keep Augie boxed into the areas where he is allowed.

Third day in our House on the Hill, Son walked outside to find a brown snake sunning itself on the stone steps leading to the top terrace, which was going to be Augie’s patch and where the clotheslines is situated. Son watched as snake slid into the stone wall face. I went to phone the local snake catcher, whose number I already had stored, but despite messages left on his office phone and mobile, twenty four hours later I am yet to hear from him. Note to self not to rely on the advertised snake catcher.

I also called the pest control man, who said that he didn’t really handle snakes and to call his wife who had some numbers of people who did. So, I phoned his wife and she gave me two mobile numbers. The first snake man said he would really like to help me out, but he is was in Western Australia until December, by which time we both agreed he probably would not be able to help us. The second man was an hour’s drive away until the end of the day, and if the snake wasn’t in my house wouldn’t come until day’s end. So again, he was of little use. Pest control man phoned back to say he was now just down the road and would come to have a look, which he did, arriving with a steel rod with a hook (stick envy, here people) to pick up snakes. Naturally, by this time the snake could not be sighted, no doubt deep within the wall, and providing the pest control man with a “city slicker” story to tell his mates.

I also managed to emasculate Mr FD in the process (my job here is done) by calling in another man to handle the snake. Mr FD’s knee pain had driven him to find comfort on our bed and so I hadn’t disturbed him at first snake sight, so when the pest control man arrived, Mr FD had to prove he knew how to live with snakes. Son and I just wanted to live without snakes, but of course that isn’t going to happen. Did the damn thing have to appear the first week, though? The previous owner left a note instructing us to “keep the door from the garage to the house shut at all times, as there are snakes about!” Any further proof required to convince us was provided by the discarded snake skin hanging between the branches of a tree on the terrace.

The telephone company had no record of our application to connect a phone service, so we are relying on mobile phones and ipad for communication. It also means no cable television, but there has been little time for that anyway.  The ensuite shower bath creaks when we stand in it, and if it wasn’t a ground floor bathroom I would be worried, but we have always had plans to remodel it. A plus was the discovery of a brand new white shower base in the garage, which will fit perfectly, so one win!

A small kangaroo, or it might be a wallaby, as we haven’t been able to sight clearly through the trees as yet comes to eat in our garden each morning , so I am thinking the vegie patch might require a fence, as well as Augie needing  his own yard.

So three days in we have had fire, pestilence and no technology. Welcome to life in the country!

City Flamingo Dancer to Country Flamingo Dancer

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Moving Day! Off to The Village we go, to the House on the Hill…

Back…soon?

into the finishing straight they go, Flamingo Dancer leading by the neck…

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I am just so over this moving thing. Night after night I go to bed, expecting the Fairy Moving Mother to arrive in her magic moving van during the night and whisk me away to our new House On The Hill, but everyone damn morning I wake up in the same blue bedroom, and to make it worse, with the same damn Mr FD beside me. The only box thath as moved in the night is the one that Mr FD fell over in his race to get to his side of the bed before the light goes off (and if you believe that lie, maybe you should be the next special envoy to the middle east). He usually falls over them as he crawls out of bed to the bathroom in the night.

Monday is M for moving day; out to the moving van, off down the highway and up the hillside drive to go into the new house. We are getting to that stage where energy is running low, panic is setting in and things are getting thrown into boxes. It was a stage I had prayed we would avoid, and I did actually sort some of the boxes that had been stored in the garage from out last move in 2002 when we ended up doing the same thing, but it hasn’t been helped by Mr FD’s self-professed “complete denial” that there was actual hard yakka (work) to be done. He really does believe in the Fairy Moving Mother!

Our new fridge and washing machine are being delivered today. I don’t get to play with them until we move, as they are staying in their boxes until then. I assume they will be in boxes. The washing machine that we borrowed from MIL will be deposited back on Saturday. She no longer leaves her care facility for home visits, but we shall keep the peace and return the washing machine, that no doubt we well be called on to sell on her behalf when the house is sold in the near future. The new machine is much bigger anyway.

We had to buy a new fridge as the shelves cracked in our present fridge. I didn’t think it would groan through the weight of another Christmas feast, so it is being delegated to the garage as a drinks fridge in summer. The present drinks fridge in the garage is being assigned to the footpath for the scrap metal merchant. Strangely enough it became a drinks fridge when its shelves cracked also. I don’t know what we do to fridges but we do seem to have a knack for breaking shelves. Mr FD doesn’t climb in to frighten small children or anything, well, as far as I know. The new fridge has tempered glass shelves so we are hoping for the best. Maybe it needs a camera just to keep a habit on what Mr FD gets up to when I am not there – he has always been intrigued by that little light that goes on and off when the door opens and shuts. Now that I think of it, the little light stopped functioning in both old fridges years ago. What does he get up to?

It is all those kinds of things that require thinking and organising that weasr one down, not just the packing. Logistics. Decisions. Communications. BUYERS (did I mention that they wanted to bring forward the settlement date to suit themselves? They wanted to settle before the weekend, not on Monday. Our lawyer said no, knowing it was impossible, without even asking us. I am sure it was to get out of paying another week’s rent). Anyway, this time next week, I shall sit on my front patio (deck, porch whatever you call that outdoor thingy area in your country) and take a photo of my serenity to share with you.

I just have to remember which box has the camera in it…

How a heated wheat bag became my new best friend

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Oh my, I don’t think there is not a muscle in my gorgeous body that is not screaming in pain today. So much packing, so little physical fitness.

Yesterday, I reached the level of taking paintings and mirrors from the wall and wrapping them in bubble wrap. Today, will be the last of my sorting in the garage, and I will start on the pantry and our walk in robe.

That should mean that next Saturday I can concentrate on preparing garden pot plants (potted plants for those Americans of a certain persuasion, not POT plants)  for transport. I dug out the bird’s nest fern, that my Dad gave me when Mr FD and I moved into our first house, 35 years ago, and sent it over to Daughter1 for the next week or two, for safe keeping. It is my living link to my Dad, and it has survived six house moves so far, this being the 7th! Dad would have loved our new garden, and I am sure the fern will flourish there, as will we.

Considering that all goodwill towards the new buyers has all but boiled away, we will be taking everything and anything from the garden that we want. I doubt if it will be there in a week or two anyway. It all comes back to the tried and true maxim : treat others the way you would like to be treated yourself. We are now treating them the way they have treated us (and their own lawyer it seems, who asked our lawyer if he wanted a new client, as he never wants to deal with the buyer ever again! It is some comfort to know it wasn’t just us!)

Question of the day : what do we say to our neighbours? Do we warn them, and apologise; or say nothing and hope for the best?

[A Wheat Bag is a cotton corduroy bag filled with non-chemically treated Australian whole grain wheat that can be used either hot (heated in a microwave) or cold (stored in the freezer)]

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more. *

Not quite, it seems

How can something that was planned to bring happiness to our lives, turned into such a trying and stressful event. I am writing of our house move. Yes, the house is unconditional and we settle on the 22nd. House sold.

The buyers we hoped for turned out to be the Buyers from Hell, and if it weren’t for our adherence to our belief that two wrongs don’t make a right, then there was more than a moment or six when we would have walked away from the sale. In the end, I can only hope that The Big Whatever has a stick list and adds them to it; or at least that Karma bites them on the bum!  Any goodwill that might have gone along with the sale has totally evaporated too.They had originally asked for us to tell them how to work the water pumps on the tanks and we would have, but not now.

If the house had a consciousness, I would be apologising profusely for abandoning it to occupiers who are morally bankrupt, but once again all we can do is never give it a second thought. We have sold several houses before, some with real problems, but we have never, ever, experienced behaviour as we have this time.

I just keep telling myself that a little in over three weeks we will be resettled in our new home, and this will all be a horrible nightmare. Never again, never, ever, again.

*excerpt from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.