Take for example my encounter yesterday with the former owners of our house.

Just as we had pulled out of our street I saw them drive past us and turn into our street. Thinking that they were perhaps trying to contact us we decided to turn around and drive home to check.

We met them on the road and both stopped our cars to have a chat. We talked about things that we had done to the house. They were full of questions and wanted to hear all about it. They seem to have a very strong emotional connection to the house and I think they are a bit sad that they no longer live here.

It is here that I must add that, the day we took ownership of the house, they came around to collect some final property and have a chat. The owner went on and on about how she loved the great big old hills hoist. She said she would take it with her if she could. I knew then that we had plans to remove it but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying that we didn’t like it*.

We had talked about contacting her to ask if she would like it when we got around to taking it out. We definitely intended to. We did. The thing is, when we  actually came to pulling it out we just kinda forgot. We had the scrap metal guy coming to collect things the next day and we wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be hanging around the yard for weeks at some point so we ripped it out a bit earlier than planned.

Fast forward to the car yesterday. There I am sitting in the car thinking “Don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline”.

The conversation finished and I was so pleased. I managed not to say anything. I knew she would have been upset.

It wasn’t until a good five minutes later that I realised I had told her. I talked all about where we would put the “new clothesline”. She had looked upset, I just didn’t really follow what was happening because I am actually a social moron.

I was kicking myself. I felt so silly but then I thought, you know what? It’s MY house. Being worried about this is going to extremes in thinking about the feelings of others. It’s my clothesline.

Now I don’t feel guilty at all. Hardly. At. All.

But next time we see her – I’m hiding.

*Exception: I can omit things and bend the truth if it protects someone’s feelings and there is no need to be truthful that overrides this. Geez, I am not a total social moron.

On saturday we got to do an exciting bit of demolition in the back yard. The laundry/shed that had lately become a snake haven was destroyed.

It was some of the best fun I’ve had in a while actually, if a little bit disgusting. A colony of ants had infested the structure, every nook and cranny was crammed with them and, as it turned out, their eggs. Just a tad revoulting I must say. So, without further ado. Here are the pictures, I know you’ve been hanging on the edge of your seats to see them.

The laundry/shed before demolition.

This is what happens when you are married to someone who is actually nine years old. Why bother actually emptying the laundry before demolishing it, simply begin kicking (yes I said kicking) the walls out as soon as you get outside because you can’t contain your boyish glee at being able to wreck something. Moron.

We pulled off some of the corrugated iron wall sheets and then it was time to tackle the jasmine, which I estimate had been growing on the roof for some decades. Apart from the large amounts of living plant matter, there was a layer of dead, then a layer of general detritus (bones, snail shells etc) that was infested with slaters, then a kind of mat of root matter and soil. Lovely. When I finally got down to the roof sheets and managed to lift them I was greeted by thousands of ant eggs laid between the sheets. I didn’t take a photo. You should thank me.  As you can see, while I was up a ladder Pudding was doing important work with secateurs and pliers. Not dangerous at all.

Beefcake about to attack the frame. It was at this point that we became most relieved that neither of us had tried to climb on the roof. You see, the roof timbers were each held to the uprights with a single nail. When you add to that the fact that the upright posts were rotten and simply fell over with a slight push when freed from the structure you have one very unsound structure. It was actually the sheets of corrugated iron that were providing the structural integrity. Without them it began to fall down of it’s own accord straight away. Made us rather glad we had decided to bash it apart.

In honour of Katyboo, here I am “ittin’ it wiv an’ ‘ammer”.

And finally. The tongue and groove wall will be painted, we will attach the new clothesline to it. I have planted herbs in the old laundry trough. It has opened up the whole yard but you know what? Even if it hadn’t looked good once we were finished – I still would have happily done the days work. The satisfaction you get from knocking something like that down is second to none! My pelvis doesn’t think so  but I’ve given up caring.

Friday evening Pudding got a new and very manly haircut. It is still kind of longish and wild actually but we like it like that. He was so very proud of himself for sitting still (on Beefcake’s lap) while his locks were chopped. He ran  out of the shop afterwards saying

“Did you see how still I satted Mummy??” &  “Did I do a  good job?”

Awwwww. Heart-melty. He well and truly earned his choccie frog.

There was a belated birthday celebration for Poss with her friends. This meant the her room had to be primped and prepared with new cushions and curtains and things. Of course we like to cram a lot in so we had new insulation installed throughout the ceiling Friday and we had shifted all the attic storage into her room. Cue long tedious cleaning and prepping. Still it looked lovely and she was very pleased with her new room.We made cupcakes and decorated them. It was sugar-laden and fantastic. The girls stayed up very, very, very late and Poss has spent the day today at less than her best, slightly snippy with us all.

I have firmly established that no glucose-based products may be stored in the house, whilst I am in this frame of mind. I am unable to restrain myself. It is not safe to be a cake or a lolly in the vicinity of Ali. It is particularly annoying as I had been doing a fantastic job of not eating anything sinful. Today I ate a cupcake and a handfu of m&ms for lunch. Perhaps I should go now to the kitchen and eradicate all sweet treats, that way I won’t be able to indulge tomorrow, I’ll be starting with a clean slate. Okay, I’m obviously deranged. I have asked Rhubarb to hide the from me. Far better idea.

This morning we went to the fabulous Adelaide Showground Farmers Market, which is seriously never disappointing. We have been members for about a year, which affords us a small discount, but even without it it is the most fabulous, fresh produce and it is not expensive. It has such a lovely buzzing energy to it and it always makes me feel really upbeat and filled with energy when we do our weekly fresh food shopping there. I lurve it.

Filled with markety type vigour, I mentioned to Beefcake that I would like him to build the washing machine/dryer cupboard that will allow us to demolish the snakehaveny laundry shed. Earlier in the week I drove past a local salvage yard that had put out some of their less desirable timber etc as “free firewood” on the curb. I sent Beefcake down today and he managed to pick up enough structural pine to build the frame for the cupboard and a door to use for one of the sides. I’m pretty impressed actually at our cheapskate ecostylee laundry cupboard. It cost us about $25 for dynabolts and screws but the rest was completely free. It needs a nice coat of paint (and a roof and a door) to prevent it from looking like a dodgy nightmare DIY monster on the back wall of the house but all in all I am very pleased. Tomorrow we will be able to finish it enough to move the appliances in and start the shed demolition. I heart demolishing stuff and will post a blow by blow. You’ll love it.

A snake I tell you!

Yesterday was Pudding’s party. It was good. There was a scary castle cake, which one friend (who happens to have been to all of our children’s parties for the last 8 years pretty much) said was the best I had ever done – quite an accomplishment, which I will post pictures of later.

I digress. The party was lovely. Everyone ate and drank and made merry.

It was a little chilly, slightly disappointing as on Saturday we had unseasonably warm weather of 27 °C. It would have been nice if it had continued but as it is still winter officially I shouldn’t complain. Anyhoo, I decided that Grub was getting cold and sent Poss inside to grab her a hoodie. Well, the hoodie, I noticed after I put it on her, was missing part of the zip.  I decided to pop into the laundry to check if it was caught in part of the machine or on the floor or something but as I entered our very glamourous outdoor galvanised iron shed laundry I stopped dead in my tracks. There, sunning itself in a shaft of sunlight coming through the sole window was something black and long and slithery.

Now, peoples, it is NOT snake season yet. Not only is it NOT snake season, we live in a very inner city suburb of Adelaide, it is not semi-rural. It is not what I would have pitctured as prime snake country. NOT AT ALL.

Nevertheless, it was most definitely a snake. There is a little gecko who lives happily in our laundry, I see him all of the time and this was not my friend the gecko. This was a long and slithery thing. Alright, it WAS a baby snake. Only as long as my forearm, if that, but it had no fucking legs people. It had no contours of body, it WAS A SNAKE!

Our best guess is that the overly warm weather on Saturday got the snakey all confused. We spent the morning cleaning out the laundry. Beefcake was planning to flush it out and “deal with it”. I’m not really sure what he was planning but I made it clear there would be no snake killing on my watch. This is despite my 77-year-old country-dwelling Nana telling me yesterday to just make sure I wear shoes when I put a load of washing  on so that I could stomp on it!

The laundry was empty, we checked all possible hidey holes (such as in near the motor of the chest freezer) but it had definetely left the building. It was funny because as Beefcake began to clear out the room he was telling me there was no way a snake could have gotten out via the back wall, “sealed and solid” he declared. This was until we moved the trunk, which is where the dryer sits. The snake had slithered behind that trunk as it beat it’s hasty exit and right in that corner we found a good sized snake door.

We have done our best to block up the gaps and large hole with timber and cement. We’re not convinced that it is snake proof but we’ve done all we could. The neighbours fence, which runs alongside the laundry, has a large jasmine climbing up it and a big bed of ferns, both of which have been home to rats (Rhubarb and Beefcake have seen them) so we are going to ask them to significantly trim or remove the plants so that the rats aren’t able to live in them.

I’m pretty sure that if I see the snake again I will be removing the bloody laundry building and putting something newer and less wildlife friendly in it’s place. At least it’s a good excuse to get Beefcake to do ALL the washing!

Anyway, until I do find it. Here are some interesting bullet points related to things:

• We put up the very lovely acrylic splash back that looks exactly like glass but is not. We did it ourselves, we did. It looks good. The kitchen is nearly finished now and just needs a coat of paint. Most importantly a coat of lovely black paint to the frame of the very special and important  most favourite window. I will post spectacular unveiling of the kitchen photos when we get around to it.
• Slightly related to the above point is the fact that the rangehood is up. It is not connected to electricity yet and it does not have a flue going into the ceiling and is therefore non-operational in every way meaning I must open the windows every time I cook but it is up.
• Also slightly related, the oven is being connected to electricity tomorrow, slightly later than expected. I shall season the oven and then I shall bake and bake and bake until we are wallowing in cake. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Wallowing in a room full of assorted cakes? I thought so too.
• I’m not sure if I have mentioned this but I can’t be bothered to check so: There is not enough electricity. What I mean is, we have an ancient electricity connection. It has never been upgraded so there is literally not enough electricity coming into the house. Not enough, that is, to run the oven and any other major appliance at the same time. Not enough. The old meter is very quaint and cute. The very colourful previous owners of the house considered it the guardian of the house and as an artist, the female of the couple had even painted it’s portrait, yes they were totally normal. It is going to cost us thousands of dollars unless an electrician will agree to be paid in cake, which I may have some trouble providing if the electricity is not upgraded. Hmmm.
• Pudding threw a coaster at Grub. It hit her cheek just below her eye. It split the flesh open and she has  a bloody scab on her face. I am very glad it did not hit a fraction higher. She really would have lost an eye. He was so distressed by our displeasure that he became hysterical and claimed that the dog had thrown the coaster. This is despite the fact that I was in the room and witnessed the whole thing. He is not good with taking responsibility for his actions.
• We took Grub and Pudding to the museum today as the older two are with their father. Pudding was chasing pidgeons in the grounds, being actively encouraged by Beefcake. I was very tut-tutty, as is my way, and Beefcake was all disagreey, as is his. This went on until I saw a young girl, no older than Pudding and dressed in a very pretty pinafore, race past and kick out at the pidgeons yelling at top volume fucking pidgeons, fuck. I decided Pudding could do worse than run at the pidgeons and left him to it.
• Beefcake has fallen asleep on the couch and I am now going to wake him up by flicking water at him because that’s just the kind of wife I am.

The end.

*Not sure if I have mentioned this before but, hah! It is not, in the strictest sense of the word a traditional kind of laundry. That is to say, it is a laundry. It is the original laundry for the house, which was built in 1895 (not sure when the laundry was built, probably not then but not long after either). It is a corrugated iron outbuilding, which the previous owners disconnected from the water supply and sewer. The plumber has connected a cold water supply for my washing machine but there is still no sewer so the washing machine drains into a large plastic tub, which we then empty with buckets. Good for arm strength. Arses for my pelvis. Also full of Beefcakes tools and a chest freezer (and redback spiders).

Beefcake was the first to be struck down a couple of weeks ago and we have been dropping like flies ever since. Actually, now that I think about it, all three boys seem to have been hit very badly. Rhubarb required more than a week off of school, and just returned today. Pudding only really became ill yesterday and is now a shivery, coughing, feverish, dripping mess of snot and watery eyes. It is awful. My poor baby. I have just come off a shift of holding him and giving him sips of his drink while he lays on me, not sleeping, just resting. He says he can’t even move. I am actually a bit worried about him but I will keep an eye on him overnight and make sure he doesn’t worsen.

Poss has had a touch of it, as has Grub and I feel pretty ordinary today but all in all it is the male members of the household who have suffered most. Weird.

Not only is it weird that the boys have all been affected, it is a touch annoying. My boys take their man-flu seriously. Now pudding is too young to really have a case of the man-flu but Beefcake and Rhubarb can certainly milk it for all that it’s worth. From Rhubarb’s need for the sugar-coated pain/fever medication so that it went down his poor widdle gag-prone throat easily* to Beefcake’s conviction that he had pneumonia despite the absence of any pneumonia-like symptoms.

Amidst all of the pestilence, we have continued to work on the kitchen, adding another pantry and a lovely built-in bench height table that Beefcake built. We are all very impressed that he has built something so lovely. Not to mention quite a bit surprised. Even he didn’t really think it would come out quite so well. I spent the afternoon doing some plastering in the kitchen in preparation for the  new acrylic splashback, which should be all made and cut by the end of the week.

One thing I didn’t do today was enjoy the fruits of the large internet shop that we had home delivered to us. The reason I did not is that the delivery truck had a bad crash on it’s way to us the other day. The driver was unharmed, you’ll be pleased to hear. Our shopping, however, was not. They couldn’t salvage it, they tell me. They cancelled our order and I was left to try and schedule another delivery slot. They gave us a small credit to our account to make up for it so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  I could not get another slot until tomorrow morning  though so I will be waiting excitedly for my shop and hoping that nothing terrible happens to it.

It is rather vital that we receive our shopping soon. I have been resisting the urge to go out and buy things that we need as that will be “doubling up” and we are quite strictly budgeted at the moment. This means that we are close to having to make use of the garden foliage for bum wiping and will be shortly reduced to brushing our teeth with salt. If it doesn’t work out tomorrow I will be forced to admit defeat and go to the supermarket. I don’t really want to do this as I have taken a rather bold step and purchased the entire month’s worth of food. I have planned a month’s meals and drawn up a chart on the wall. I purchased the meat in person so we have all that in the freezer already but I don’t know how many trolleys the rest of it would take. A few, I think. Even with my love of shopping I think I may find buying a month’s worth of food for a family of six a bit tedious. It is just serve me right really that I try to be all organisey and good and end up with it backfiring all over me. The shiny and organised and super-duper housewifeyness was not meant for the likes of me.

*Easily that is, after a fifteen minute coaching and gentle persuasion session about taking tablets (with whimpering, bribery and moaning), despite it not being the first time he has taken them. He was feeling a touch fragile.

This is the before picture. As you can see, it was a well-equipped, luxury kitchen. Note the sleek lines of the stylish appliances and the quality cabinet-making that have been used to create this prince among kitchens. You are all wondering why we needed to replace it, aren’t you? Only a fussy and demanding shrew would not be satisfied with cooking in such a kitchen.

Now, I just want to preface the photos of the kitchen that we have put in with a note that it is not finished. We must tile and there will be  a rangehood (currently in box in Rhubarb’s room), wall cupboards and another large pantry thingemy and a table that Beefcake and I are planning to create that will mould around the fireplace. I will try to update as we get stuff done. This is only the first bit. The bit we absolutely had to have to function as a family in this house. The rest will come bit by bit as we can afford it etc.

So, drumroll please…………………..

The new kitchen.

Oops, it is covered in mess from Grub’s party today. Nevermind, you get the idea.

I love it.

I especially love the dishwasher – and my oven. The oven love is a sort of a muted joy because it is still not wired in. The gas stovetop works but the electrician must come and assist us with the oven part. I had to do the baking for Grub’s party at my sister Patchouli!’s place. Can’t bring myself to be too sad about that though because I have a kitchen! The electrician might want to move his arse though because I imagine I will not be as cheery about it in a couple of weeks time.

I will post about Grub’s party tomorrow as I am knackered.

Must sleep now.

Byee.

There has been a fair bit of swearing and frustration and bickering about which way something is supposed to go. My hands are swollen and sore from having a screwdriver in them for the past four days straight (let’s not even talk about the pelvis), I haven’t been getting much sleep but I do have a few splinters .

We have been hardcore kitchen building.

But I’m actually pretty impressed with us. For the most part we worked harmoniously as a team. We didn’t fuck anything major up. Beefcake only threw a few tantys and I remained hysterical calm and serene throughout the process.

We did a pretty good job and today I have finally unpacked most of the boxes that go into our kitchen. It is not completely finished. We must tile above the benches, we must finish off a couple of other things but we have a usable kitchen and dishwasher. I can feed my family something other than toast and I do not have to wash their dirty dishes. Such joy.

And it is beautiful. I will post pictures tomorrow hopefully but for now I am just totally exhausted. I deserve some internet time and a cup of tea, I think.

Beefcake’s keyboard has a dreadful action that I loathe and it is larger than mine in order to accomodate his dinner plate hands. I keep hitting the enter key by accident and it is making typing this a complete chore.

So.

Bullet points:

• Move went well, although I have never been more exhausted or sore or swollen pelvised in my life. We shall never move again.
• The new house is slightly more in need of renovation than we had deluded ourselves into believing but it is still lovely and more importantly, it is ours.
• The new house desperately needs a kitchen. The current kitchen consists of two cupboards, a sink and a manky old stove. No benches, no other cupboards. Nothing. We had the ultimate day of shopping high yesterday and purchased super special, very swanky oven, rangehood and dishwasher as well as new kitchen from large Swedish flat-pack icon. Much money was spent. This was quite scary but all in all we are very excited.
• We must now prepare the room and install the kitchen before Beefcake’s leave ends. He returns to work on Monday. We may have our heads up our arses.
• The plumber told us that he would come towards the end of the week to do the plumbing work that needs to be done before we can install the kitchen. We are now both paranoid that he meant next week, which would be an absolute disaster.
• We have no connection for the washing machine either, it really would be a disaster.
• We are okay with DIY. We have renovated two other houses. We do tend to fly by the seat of our pants though**. Pray to the gods of DIY and renovations.
• Pudding was so bored when we were very busy this afternoon that he decided to copy the dog and poo in the back yard. He ran the idea past Beefcake first but was not deterred by being told “no”. I was not best pleased.
• The dog was confused by her new doggy door for the first 24 hours and peed in the house as well as whimpering by our bedroom door that she was busting to go outside at 6am. I was not best pleased.

* Beefcake needed to “chase” channels into the walls to conceal electrical cabling. He did this with an angle grinder. He did not take appopriate steps to protect the contents of the back part of the house from brick dust. It took us four hours to clean up all the gritty red clay dust. Dish pan hands have a new poster girl.

** By fly by the seat of our pants I mean we laugh at the thought of stupid things like planning for prevention of billowing clouds of bright red dust filling the house.

There are teetering towers of boxes lined up against every available wall, shoved under tables and behind doors.

We have ebayed and organised and made a large pile to go to the tip and some for charity.

I have been cleaning. I clean a bit, some muscle group or other spasms, I rest for a bit and then try again.

We are our own worst enemies. We have confidently assured our landlord that he can have the keys back on Friday night. This means the house must be cleaned before we actually move the furniture out of it so that it requires only a cursory sweep and mop here and there once it is empty.

Now our house is not completely filthy, despite what certain dishwasher repairmen* might think. Messy sometimes, yes, but reasonably cleanish usually**,  nevertheless I am sure Friday will be hellish. I have plans within plans. I have it all neatly aligned in my mind. How each phase of the move will go. It will all go to shit on the day but what matters is that I feel serene and organised about the move now.

We drove past the new house today and it looks as though the current owners are nearly moved out. The “for sale” sign has come down. I am so extremely happy with this house. It felt like home from the moment we walked in at the first viewing. To be honest, we had discussed how much to offer before we even saw it in the flesh (should that be brick?). It was always meant to be ours.

The last of the money we had to put towards the purchase came out of our account today. It seems unlikely that it will go wrong now. We both keep grinning and elbowing one another in the ribs. It is a hilarious joke that we have been able to pull this off. We both feel that together we have a rare kind of luck.

Maybe our aspirations are more modest than some but we feel pretty extraordinarily lucky to have our wonderful family and now to have been able to buy a home that we just adore. I feel more calm and settled and right than I have in years.

I didn’t know that I was lacking that but it feels very nice to have found it.

* Dishwasher is completely shafted by the way. Apparently there is some sort of unfixable leak that shorts the machine out every time it runs and then dries out, hence his being able to get it to run yesterday. I almost forgave him his ‘tude, only making gestures and faces behind his back  once or twice (alright, possibly three five times).

**Could I possibly be more non-comittal about the cleanliness of my house than that – “reasonably cleanish usually”- go me!