Story Blog

Codine's off for the moment, but if you haven't read 'Turning Stones' it's still up there - free read! http://www.codinebourbon.blogspot.com/.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

3rd March 2011 (Thursday)

It's full-scale war on our sub-tenants at the moment here. Yesterday, spraying the spiders outside the house. Today, bomb-blasting the inside of the house for sundry roaches, spiders, ants and other creepy-crawlies. Tomorrow at 10 in the morning the pest control people are coming to do something about the mice – they were talking about going up in the roof. How that's going to help when they're making nests in the study isn't entirely obvious but I guess they know what they're doing. You'd really never guess it was in such need of pest control to look at the place. I guess that's what a hot climate does for you.

Fumigating today meant that, of course, I had to be out of the house for a good long while. So I went and did my swim, went and did a shop at Coles, and after that just sat and read a book for an hour in the car. I was only just in time to get the place aired out before I had to pick the Littles up.

It's also war on the numerous speaking ticks she's practising at the moment. It's been going on for way too long – it's probably nearly two months by now. If she isn't rolling her plosives excessively ('this bbbbbbook is ppppprobabbbbly bbbbbbboring,') it's speaking in an incomprehensible squeaky voice, or growling at the end of every word, or the final one at the moment is trying to speak with her tongue rolled back towards the back of her mouth so it sounds as if she's got a mouthfull of plastic balls. It's driving me round the twist by now. With her speech background you can imagine I'm not keen on her picking up completely unnecessary impediments as well. Add to this excessive experimentation with Australian pronunciation so she sounds like some demented hick, and it's all a bit much. I do hope it stops soon. And if she's not making weird sounds then she's chewing on her hair, the strings of her hat, biting her nails, sucking on her school uniform ribbon, shoving fingers into her mouth wholesale. You'd think this whole thing would be behind us by now. Oh i forgot about the delight of grinding her teeth compulsively.

The Mr has started his lectures, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This week they seem to have gone pretty smoothly. Today he said there was going to be a meeting on the progress of the lab refurbishment, so we'll see if he's any closer to having a lab of his own. Hmph. What are the chances.

Meanwhile I'm down for reading groups on Tuesdays, so there goes one of my mornings. Still, it's worth it to get a glimpse of what goes on.

Red peppers FINALLY came down in price a little so a bought a bunch for some djuvedj. Haven't had any in ages. In fact it's been so long that I clean forgot (until it was half-assembled) that it's also meant to have aubergine in it, so tonight we're having an aubergine-free version. What a silly. Never mind, hopefully the peppers will be cheap at least a little longer, although these things are very volatile round here. Last year they were quite often down to $3 per kilo, and this time I was glad to be able to get them for $6. I guess it's all the floods in Queensland. One can't really blame them for trouble with the pepper harvest when even the houses have been washed away.

4 comments:

  1. ... FUmigating! lord, I hope we don't have one of those, urghh, very often houses around have the whole yellow and blue coverings over them for days on end, I was just thinking every time PLEASE let us not have to do the same for some reason. Talk about the price of vegetables- due to the uncommon cold around here suddenly one lettuce went up from 99c to around 4$, I announced that lettuce and veggies were now sparse ( grunts and boos from Nea, yeeeeah from Leo ) but still the dollar store saves me often- they have all the rejects from around the place, buy nice even organic stuff for 99c. It all depends what happens to be in that day though, I got a whole bucket of arugula leaves for the said price, a bunch of asparagus and 10 green peppers, bag of apples and bananas, blueberries, courgettes, mushrooms and onions today, all for what is that? 10 dollars today, it was successful and at other places it would be priced about about 45 dollars or more. Still, one does have to take the trips and gasoline is more expensive than ever- when I came here filling a tank used to be 24-5 dollars, now it's 49. Non must be at the all round 6 year change, kinda reminds me of Leo how one just thinks "this can't return anymore" and - there it is again. Generally I leave him alone with the Americanisms, knowing he's the copying type I was, it's probably going to be omnipresent and then disappear when we move.Although the use of "Like" sends me up the walls sometime, it's positively irritating, and I can't say I'm immune either, although I don't quite realize it probably. ANyway wrote enough on someone's blog so off I go, hope that the mice quieten down- XOXOXOS

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  2. Nah, nah, not so bad- just set of a load of bombs in the house and leave. They're quite effective. Of course there's all the putting away of stuff and wiping down surfaces afterwards, but it's doable.
    Just had the Mouse guy come round, he's put a load of stuff down behind cupboards and so on so fingers crossed no more whiskers. Mind you, we didn't see any yesterday so perhaps they didn't like the fumigation either.

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  3. Yes, we looked at the house by Lilian's, looks very good, but costs $650,000, or More? This one would be good too- http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-adamstown+heights-106929328 - but it's in Adamstown Heights, at $600K.

    Hope the viewing goes well tomorrow, Love, Whale

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  4. Suppose you have viewed this obe - http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-merewether+heights-107131406 - Whale

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