Country Snoskred

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The Awesomeness Continues

3 Comments Posted on August 4, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

We had heard that there were roos around these parts and a month ago we first met our new Kangaroo friend. I mentioned him previously here on the blog in this post – Coffee In A Plastic Cup.

Unfortunately the cameras were all at the old house, plus the batteries were all flat anyway, and I couldn’t get a pic on the Iphone. This roo was so enormous that I thought nobody would ever believe me – he is one of the largest roos I have ever seen, and extremely muscly. He would be about 2 metres tall

Tonight we sneaked out to steal borrow some bin space for our recycling as I have become quite the recycler recently after finding out a lot more about what can and cannot be recycled here.

Our recycling bin was full – the other garbage bin half empty, and I did not want to undo all the good work of recycling by just putting it in the other bin. I am sure nobody will mind me stealing borrowing a little space for my extra recycling, there was plenty of room.

As I walked up to the bins, I noticed my roo friend was back! So with batteries charged, we took these – only one with the flash, we don’t like using it with animals, all the others were long exposure times and we just had to hope he stayed still. I have several where he did not – he was very busy eating the grass. In this one you can see his head stayed still but his ears were moving –
roofriend
And in this one with the flash you can see some.. roo poop!

roofriend1

country life, Moving House

Broken..

3 Comments Posted on July 19, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Well, I am really ready for the moving house to be finished at this point. It is 9:30pm, I have had no dinner, we’ve done two loads in the fast car from the old house of random shyte, plus I did a load earlier in the ute. I have steam mopped the floors, most of the cleaning seems to be done..

The shelf I could not get clean, we flipped it over after spending too much time trying to get whatever the last tenants spilled all over the shelf off. I’m not touching the oven and I have emails to prove it was filthy when we moved in.

I have been rarely on the internet for about a week now, and I dread to think how many unread posts sit in my feed reader. Forgive me if I hit mark all read. I’m just so tired right now.

I seem to have hurt my shoulder, too. It has been a week and two days of pain and I am getting worried, it should have healed up by now. My big fall was nothing compared to my shoulder and I am not even certain what I did to it.

I will like to sleep for a week, and then maybe eat something, once we hand the keys back in a couple of days.

On the good news side, it is so peaceful and wonderful at the new place. I am looking forward to spending a lot more time here once we’re done with the old place. I will also like to take some more photos to share with ya’all!

Moving House, moving on

The Awesomeness Is Overwhelming

3 Comments Posted on July 12, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

So, I mentioned a while back that our new place had something awesome about it. We’re almost all moved in now, and today we took a little time off to enjoy the awesomeness. What is it?

one

It backs onto a gorgeous body of water, and we have our own private boat ramp. How awesome is that?

So this morning instead of putting the kayak on the car and driving it 10kms or so, we pulled it out of the garage and walked a very short distance. We were not out for too long, but long enough to absorb the awesomeness before heading off to the old house to pack up the last stuff.

This week I will get stuck into cleaning the old place before we hand the keys back, and then we can relax, and unpack. :)

We are planning a summer of kayaking, exploring the local waterways, and having way too much fun. Yay!

kayak, Moving House

Coffee In A Plastic Cup

1 Comment Posted on July 8, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

So here I sit in our new home, internet finally working, Austar on and cranking out the Michael Jackson, able to use my laptop, drinking coffee from a plastic cup because I have not unpacked the mugs yet..

If you take away all the weirdness and the changing appearance, Michael truly was an amazing singer and dancer. I have been enjoying his music the way I used to when I was a kid growing up dancing to his Off The Wall album in the lounge room. I suppose I am not alone in saying I know all the dances. It is just such a shame that all the strange and controversial stuff got in the way of his enormous talent.

The move went well – it is not quite over yet but most of our stuff is over here now. There’s still a few bits and pieces at the old house.

There was one bad thing that happened – I had a big fall a few days ago. I was carrying a box and I tripped over another box. I fell down hard, banging up my right leg and knee as well as the toes on the right foot, bruising a lot of my right side and putting a massive bruise on my right arm. I guess I was lucky not to break anything (must have been drinking all that milk when I was growing up!) but I also skinned my right palm.

The palm turned out to be the most annoying injury the day before the truck arrived to pick up all out stuff. Bandaids wouldn’t stick to it long enough to move a box, and I ended up needing to bandage it up so I was still able to do things. That of course got in the way of my obsessive compulsive handwashing. I had to build a bridge and get over it. ;)

Today is the first chance I have had to take it easy since the fall and I think I will try to do exactly that – I certainly can’t wash dishes in the sink or get heavily into cleaning at the old house at this stage, the injury is right where the palm creases and I have only managed to get it to heal reasonably by doing very little with it yesterday, so I do not want to undo all that good work today.

Oh, and.. when we arrived here with the truck on Monday, after not being here for a couple of days, there was a little kangaroo poop right in front of the garage. A roo must have been feeding on our lawn and left us a little present!

As we turned into our street last night I said to the other half that I wondered when we would see one at our place – and he said “Maybe right now” and there was a massive male kangaroo feeding on the grass outside our place. The car did not scare him off, and neither did the garage door, and he stayed out there long enough for us to unload the car and put the bins away and go for a little walk to admire him a little more closely.

All our cameras were at the old place, of course. It is always the way. The iPhone camera didn’t have enough light, so now nobody will believe me when I say how huge he was and now the cameras are here he will never return! So I will just say.. that is the biggest roo I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of them. He was not just tall, but *solid*.

moving forward, Moving House, yay

Speaking of Books

4 Comments Posted on June 22, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

There is one book that I never pack when we move.

Back in 1998 or so, I first was introduced to Jane Austen. We were travelling to Sydney the next day and I happened to catch one of the early episodes of Pride and Prejudice – the miniseries with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy – on the ABC. The story drew me in.

The next day we were at the airport, both in Adelaide and in Sydney, and I looked for the book. No joy. Why airport bookstores do not stock the classics, I have no idea.

So that night I went to bed wanting to read the book Pride and Prejudice, but not having it.

The next day we ended up in the main street of Sydney where all the shops are. It was an alien world to me – I knew the city of Adelaide like the back of my hand, where all the shops were, where to go and find what I needed or wanted. So I was completely lost and it was raining and the streets seemed slightly scary.

I can’t remember where or how but I did find a bookstore, and I found this book – The Complete Novels Of Jane Austen. It does not contain Love and Friendship (which I have never read yet) but it does have the 7 other stories that I love and can read over and over again without getting bored.

This book has travelled all over Australia with me. It never leaves my bedside when I am at home, it is the one book that never gets put on the bookshelves. It always stays on my night stand.

On the day where the nightstand gets moved, it will be picked up and placed next to my handbag where it will wait for me/us to leave.

It will travel next to me in the car if I am the driver – on my lap, if I am the passenger.

It will wait be placed next to my handbag in the new house, and once the nightstand is in the new spot, it will be placed on the nightstand.

That night, as my books will not be unpacked yet, I will probably pick it up. If I am not already in the middle of one of the stories, I will allow it to fall open to where it feels like, and then the book will have chosen which of the stories I will read next. I will turn back to the first page of that story and begin to read until I get too sleepy to continue.

books, Jane Austen, Moving House, moving on

Alternatively..

4 Comments Posted on June 21, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

You might see more posts from me than you had been previously as moving raises some issues for me. :)

Yesterday, I began the task of packing up my office. My office has two huge bookshelves which quickly turned into 4 large boxes of books. I then packed up all my art stuff.

For some reason – even though I know I have to downsize because the new place is a little smaller and does not have storage space.. I am finding it difficult to let things go. I thought I was more than ready to de-clutter.

Earlier this year I chose to swap some of my books for new books. I used to be into true crime stories but these days seem to be switching to other kinds of books.

I had several Ann Rule books which are worth quite a bit when you take them in to swap as there is a big demand for them and I decided to let them go and swap them. I read them one final time, and then took them to the book swap. I still have a couple of her books which I wanted to keep, but some of them just no longer seemed relevant to me.

As I was packing my books I began to see a few others which I will want to read one last time and then let them go. And yet..

.. as I was packing up my art things, I found myself holding onto a small plastic container which arrived in this house packed full of cobalt blue beads which I have since transferred into a storage container. Thus the container was empty.

I found myself thinking.. I should keep this.

…

And I actually put it into my art box.

…
An empty plastic container.

…

It is at this point that I began to recognise, maybe I have a problem here. Maybe I am going to find this process of letting go of things – de-cluttering – saying goodbye to things I own – a lot more difficult than I expected.

So I took the empty plastic container out of the art box and put it into the recycling. Then I decided to get rid of some more plastic from that box – a couple of my art sets came encased in plastic – I de-encased, and recycled.

On the inside I want to let things go, but there is some part of me that wants to hang onto things.

life lessons, Moving House, moving on

The Slow Erosion Of My Sanity

3 Comments Posted on June 19, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Back in September of last year, some new tenants moved into the unit next door. Pretty much straight away we felt this was going to be an issue as they had several (two or three, we still are not certain on the exact number) children under the age of 7.

The first thing we found was a need to move bedrooms. We were not using the master bedroom in this house because we preferred the slightly smaller second bedroom without the ensuite – it tends to wake us up when the other person is in the bathroom and it is the only bathroom in the house other than a small toilet downstairs in the garage.

The reason we had to move bedrooms was because the younger child’s cot was placed up against our bedroom wall, and he was able to bang on our wall until his parents went to get him. They usually left him in there for half an hour or so, from 7am to 7:30am. Not the kind of wake up call we wanted. So, we bit the bullet and moved bedrooms after a couple of weeks.

After they take the children out of that room around 7:30am, they seem to allow them to just run riot. Doors are slammed, there is yelling and screaming, chairs are dragged across the floor, things are dropped onto the floor – and all of this we enjoy because there does not seem to be much furniture in their house soaking up the noise, and the walls are fairly thin.

This is not a problem when you have two adult couples living in the units – we’d managed nicely with the previous tenants. I guess that was because we were not trying to tear the place to pieces without any supervision from our parents.

After a month or so we talked to the real estate agents who told us it would not be a problem as it was a short term lease for 3 months only.

9 months later, one noise complaint from us which achieved nothing, and a complete run around across three months from the real estate people on the installation of an air conditioner.. we are so ready to be out of here. We found a place we liked the look of, and went to see it last weekend. We heard today that our application was accepted, so we will be moving in over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I am done being nice. The music is up, loud, in every room of the house while I pack. We have tolerated their noise for many, many months. I am extremely hopeful that our noise is as much fun for them as theirs has been for us.

With that said, you won’t see me much for a bit while we’re moving. ;) There is something awesome about the new place but I will save that for once we’re in there. ;)

Moving House, moving on, yay

Reverse

1 Comment Posted on May 11, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

wool1

I’ve seen this so many times now and it never fails to completely stop me – and everyone else who happens to be around – in their tracks. We were actually packing our shopping away in Aldi when the truck arrived, and knowing how amusing this can be, I grabbed the I-phone and got a couple of shots.

wool2

The drivers of these trucks have to be extremely talented to get into this loading bay. There are always cars parked on both sides of the road and the drivers have to get very close to them! There is a very tight squeeze to get into the loading bay – probably less than a metre on either side of the truck if it were parked exactly in the middle of the bay..

country life, driving

Weeds – Watch Your Plants.

1 Comment Posted on August 14, 2008May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

In one of the local reserves here someone has planted a Maiden Hair Fern. I know this plant fairly well. My Mother tried to grow many of them in our bathroom as I was growing up but no matter what she tried they always died. I think they are gorgeous and beautiful plants but these plants have no place in a local reserve. They are actually weeds there, and some of us are going to have to spend some valuable time pulling them out.

It may have started as just one maiden hair fern, but it has spread out over large areas now. This is not a garden escapee, this is a case where someone has deliberately put them there. However plants which might be good in your garden can escape and be a weed in the local environment. We all need to be careful what we are planting and check to make sure it isn’t a plant which can cause issues for local wildlife if it does manage to escape our own garden.

Please, don’t ever put your garden waste in a local reserve. It does not belong there, and it may cause serious havoc for our native animals, not to mention the people who take care of the reserves..

garden, wrong world

In Which I Panic

4 Comments Posted on March 26, 2008May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

Today being the first sunny day since last Thursday, we decided to go snorkelling in our favourite place Honeymoon Bay.

I find when you’re going snorkelling it is easiest to put your wetsuit on before you even leave home. That way you don’t end up with sand in places sand does not belong. However on a warm day this can be a hot way to travel. Today by the time we got in the car even my knees were sweating.

The Navy happen to bomb the land adjacent to Honeymoon Bay from time to time and as such they can just up and close the entire place anytime they like. There is a sign on the way there that tells you whether the park is closed or not. And today, it was closed. :(

We decided to try another place in Jervis Bay that we had heard of. Unfortunately there is a bit of red algae near the shore at the moment, which made the water murky. It was scary for me. Plus the water was icy cold – the kind of cold that makes you gasp – the water is usually warm in Honeymoon Bay. The murkiness and the coldness made me freak out. It is clear to me that I still have a fear of sea water. I lasted about two minutes before I desperately wanted to get out of the water.

It was not a complete loss though – we got some pics with our new underwater camera. Which incidentally is bright pink in case one drops it. Why did we buy an underwater camera? We wanted something waterproof to take with us on the Kayak – which we hope to pick up tomorrow. Here’s some of the fish we saw.

You can see it was pretty murky. The water in Honeymoon Bay is usually crystal clear other than the sand you kick up with your flippers.

The following image is a panorama which the camera is supposed to sew together – it didn’t seem to work so well but it was low on battery. Click for a larger view..

New South Wales, snorkelling