A Looooong Weekend

I am forever meaning to sit down and do a blog entry but something else always seems to distract me. No excuses now though. I am here and doing it!

It is the Queens Birthday Long Weekend here this weekend. Our little town of paradise by the sea has been over run with visitors towing flashy boats and driving cars with a family's worth of bikes on the bike rack on the back. The out of towners are easy to spot because whilst the locals are wearing warm jackets, jumpers and pants, the visitors are stoically ignoring the bit of the calendar that says WINTER (and the weather reports!) and trying to will it to be warm by wearing sarongs, singlets and board shorts. Seriously! The local supermarket was predictably crowded on Friday. I knew it would be but at the moment I decided that I need something I temporarily forgot that it was a long weekend and would be over run with Terry Tourists. I won't be making that mistake again in a hurry.

Yesterday was a quiet day. Ninky had a sleep over at her friend P's house on Friday night. So that meant that Roo slept in my bed with me. We had a lovely snuggle yesterday morning before getting up to potter around (me) and play Xbox (Roo). I had to pick Ninky up at 1000 and then we stopped in a the hardware shop to buy a puncture repair kit. Ninky somehow got a flat tyre on her bike. Well, more acurately, Roo got a puncture on Ninky's bike because they have taken to swapping bikes lately. I am not sure why. So sometime between now and Tuesday morning I am going to have to dig the memories of how to fix a flat tyre out of my brain (could do it with my eyes shut when I was 12 years old!) and fix that tyre. I am sure there will be a lot of swearing which will probably be followed by a lot of Googling and You Tubing as I search for idiot proof instructions.

Yesterday I finally got my Tumbleweed Compost Maker assembled. I have very very sore fingers tips today because that thing took no less than 16 screws and nuts to put together. Of course I could not work out how to use the nut-tightening-thingamabob joey whatsy that I found in Peter's tools, so I had to finger tighten all of them. Hopefully it will hold together until I either get Lovely Step Father Jon to look at it or Peter comes home - whichever comes first. The Tumbleweed was an absolute bargain at the local rural supply place. I have been researching them for a few months and they had them on sale for $180 which was about $40 cheaper than the cheapest I had been able to find them on line. Bargain!

Anyway, the whole reason that I HAD to put the Tumbleweed together was because I had decided that I HAD to clean out the chooks. The poor things were swimming in their own filth and it was positively disgusting. I don't have anywhere in this environmentally backward shire that I can dispose of used hay and chook poo so it seemed that the only option is to compost it. That really is going to be the best thing because our soil is very poor and sandy here so compost will improve it greatly. So I spent about two hours clean out the chook yard and chook house. I also had to dust the chooks and the duck with powder because they have some sort of mite or lice. Probably from all the wild birds that feed on the excess grain on the ground in their yard I would think. The end result of my hard work is that the chook yard now looks and smells a lot better and I like to think that the chooks are a bit happier too. At least I should be able to get some eggs that are not covered in poo now. Not that the girls are giving many eggs at the moment. There has been a marked decline in egg production now that the cold weather is here.

Yesterday I discovered that the @%$&^% cats (most definately Barry or Ginge) peed on Peter's couch. Specifically they peed on Peter's seat on Peter's couch. (Calm down My Love - it's taken care of). I screamed when I found it, I abused the cats, I threw things and I rang the vet to enquire about the cost of euthenasia - would I get a discount for multiple cats?? Then I knucked down a got cleaning. It certainly doesn't smell anymore. When it is dry I will spray it with a special spary to ensure that the smell is gone to discourage any other furry bastards from using it as a toilet. I am thoroughly fed up with all these cats. I am sick of the mess, the filth, the smell, the noise and the work it creates. I am going to pull my finger out and get that bloody our door cat area made. That is of course if I retain my self control and refrain from having the bastards put to sleep.

Poor little Roo has woken up this morning with a terrible cold. Streaming nose, red eyes and a sore throat. Poor little man is miserable. I was planning on taking them for a bush walk and to a park today but I will wait a little while to see how he is. I have plugged him full of cold medication so hopefully he will perk up a bit soon.

My mother came through her lumpectomy with flying colours. It is definately cancer but there is no evidence of it in her lymph nodes. Great news! So that means that she only (only? easy for me to say) has to have 6 weeks of 5 days a week radiation treatment. Then that should be the end of that. I am glad. Selfishly of course. I am just not ready to not have a mother yet - I am not finished with her!

That's it from me for today. Nothing terribly exciting happens in this part of the world. Actually, I have to say that I like it like that.

Over and out.