A Most Productive Term
Jul. 14th, 2024 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeOne day Pye was heading down to her Year 8 class when a chicken walked past going in the opposite direction. This isn't too far from usual in Drysdale, but this one gave her an unusually smug look. Thinking no more of it, Pye got to the classroom to find that the Year 8s were losing their tiny minds because when they'd walked in, there had been two chooks in their classroom, calmly checking the place out (while shitting all over the place). There's not even an external door, these bitches made a special effort to come in and raise the general standard of behaviour for the class! This set the tone for the rest of the term.
In other Year 8 news, one of the other Indonesian teachers brought in some tropical fruit for the students to sample. Pye had first crack and was delighted to discover the durian was a particularly strong one. She left it where the other guy could find it for his classes, and carefully left the window open. Then it turns out that, over recess, the risk and compliance manager with the maintenance guys in tow were spotted running around madly trying to find the gas leak. Whoopsies!
Some mistakes are funny – like when you give yourself a little cannibalism (as a treat).
At least this Year 7 lad doesn’t just restrict himself to Nazis, he’s open to other species.
So out of an eleven-week term (a time frame both cruel and unusual), chook shit, cannibalism and rancid fruit were the working highlights. Fortunately, life’s not all about work! Moose turned 26 – a milestone which we celebrated by cooking moose-shaped pasta as an attempted dominance display.
He does so love the attention, and look, Jenski made him a new backpack to replace the one that we have managed to lose (in the house, during lockdown, having literally not gone anywhere – WHERE IS IT?).
This one is much sexier than the old one, look, it has fairy bread on it!
Moose got wind that Sovereign Hill was doing a harvest festival weekend and decided that was a good time to let Jenski give it to him, while also getting to rub his bum on all sorts of things. He arranged some absolutely glorious winter weather, and had a great time! He invaded people’s homes and judged their piss pots!
He pretended he was able to do poos and messed up an outhouse!
He scampered under velvet ropes to crawl on things that humans aren’t allowed on!
He interfered with the proper function of an ornamental sundial!
He ruined this poor family’s stew!
He assumed all signs were directed at him personally! But it’s okay, because he says he didn’t want to go into the church anyway!
He kicked kids out of the play area so he could pretend to run the town!
He thought he was getting away with it all!
Until he got nicked and had to have a time out to think about what he’d done!
It’s been ages since he’s been let off the chain (so to speak), he was all tuckered out by the end, bless him.
Then one weekend the Powder Monkey came to visit! The rest of the family was going to be off having adventures, and the time had finally come for him to assess the new loft. Now, what’s fun to do in G-Town, eh? Well, there’s going to the Mill Market and trying to find the most cursed object…
… and accidentally finding the most wonderfully awful object for a neglected corner (appropriately regal for the throne room)…
…then impulsively stopping in at a cemetery to say hi to the Lady Squatter Gal Pals.
… and wandering around trying to find graves with your name on it (the Powder Monkey definitely needs to change his name to Michael). We enjoyed ourselves, but if one were to retell it objectively, we walked around a shop full of other people’s rubbish, ate KFC in a cemetery car park and made our own fun in a graveyard…
Determined to do better, we thought it would be fun to compare Winchelsea’s Barwon Park Mansion with our own lil Coolart, so got up early the next day to fang it out to the only town in the region people from Colac are allowed to look down on. We arrived spot on opening time – or so we thought! Having carefully looked up the opening times, we failed to correlate that information with the fact it was now June and winter hours had kicked in. Oh no!! Insult to injury, the problem with Winchelsea is that you can’t just go, “Oh well, let’s do XYZ instead!” because there is literally no XYZ.
I mean, you can look at an Olde Bridge and watch the corellas being arseholes, and there was the saddest market we’ve ever seen going on (with the biggest dog shit we’ve ever seen in the car park), but those don’t really count.
We had to go back to G-town and drown our sorrows with cheese!
There was a Vegemite cheesecake that was very helpful when dealing with our grief.
Speaking of Vegemite, how about these 2 Minute Noodles? Why not put them in a toastie, eh?
That was a lovely weekend, and so was the King's Birthday one (ew that still sounds so wrong). Unlike Barwon Park Mansion, Coolart was open, and it wasn’t too cold or gross outside to go and enjoy it!
It was so still that the creek took the opportunity to reflect…
And the ducks also had a good hard think about their lives and choices.
The winter drought had nonetheless provided enough moisture to make for artistic fungi and clouds enough for an atmospheric ferry trip…
… but not enough to keep us happy in our new hobby of watching grass grow. If we wanted this hobby to really go off, we had some work to do! It is a truth that must be acknowledged that during the extension project, the driveway suffered more than Jesus.
Coupled with at least three places subsiding where the lazy original paver hadn’t bothered to remove tree stumps, it was a sad and grotty contrast to the shininess of the new build, and even power washing couldn’t bring it up to standard. We found a non-lazy paver, and looked forward to the pile of bricks waiting in the garage to come in handy…
We expected heaps of the bricks to have been pulverised by the building traffic, but they actually held up okay! And then the paver salvaged a lot more than we expected, too! Normal people would think this is good, but we were disappointed that more of a dent wasn’t made in our spare bricks stash.
For the middle bit, we were going to just smash up the cement bits left down the middle and pick out the chunks, but ol’ mate Byron pointed out that was both stupid and lazy, and lazy had gone out of fashion when it comes to driveways. And he had just the solution – behold, the most wonderfully simple, vintage mini-tiller from his grandfather’s shop on Pako that went out of business in the 80s!
Despite getting used only once a decade, it started first try, and you’ve never seen Pye have more fun – well, until the grass started to grow, that is.
Then we had to get the front part sorted - no grass for that bit, that’s where a car will sit! It waited patiently and uglily all term until the holidays arrived and we had the emotional and physical energy to have a bunch of Tuscan topping delivered for us to spread out. Whee!
Look, we even got the utilities side of the house looking like it belongs there!
Before:
After:
(The bit at the front that has to stay low because nobody thought through access to the under-deck tank until we asked how we were supposed to get to it for maintenance.)
The problem with the driveway bit is that the car tyres compressed one edge only. So it looked like we needed to hire a compactor! With supreme confidence that it couldn’t possibly be that hard , we rang around Bunnings until we found a small one available for an hour. Pye lined up Byron to help, and then Bunnings called back and said the small one was broken, would the big one be okay? Pye agreed (as long as we were still paying the price of the smaller one), having been assured it’s not really that much bigger. Maybe not, but 64kg vs 84kg turns out to make all the difference in the world when you’re just a lil Pye who stands chest height to the back of a 4WD. Some helpful Islander chaps helped get the beastie in the boot - meanwhile, back at the Flying Waratah, Stinky was unearthing the old front door to use as a ramp to get the bastard out again!
We thanked goodness for Byron again when it came to starting the compactor (of course there are no instructions, and what do we know about these machines?), and he made it look super easy. It’s not so easy for all - here we see the compactor taking Pye for a non-consensual walk:
After having a giggle, Byron took over again.
Stinky wouldn’t have a go at all, on account of not having a sports bra on and didn’t want her boobies to jiggle clean off (a missed opportunity - Byron suggested we keep it for the full four hours, and get the footage on the internet for a profit).
All week long we’ve had tradies hanging out with the neighbours, as well as our tall helpful neighbour Tim being around, so we were pretty sure we’d have some help to get the compactor back in the car. But would you believe it, when push came to shove (literally heh heh) the whole street stayed empty of anyone under 80. In the end, Stinky’s friend showed up to go to lunch just in time and the four of us managed it, whoo, we did it!
Anyway, this is what the backyard looked like in 2007 (before our time):
And here’s what it looks like now.
This is what the front yard looked like in 2007:
For a while it didn’t get much better, especially when we shoved all the pots into the front yard while the build was happening and then it just kinda sat there and didn’t bother us for ages. But now that we had (most) of our house in order, it was time to smack the front yard into shape.
First in danger were the roses, which have been getting less and less attractive as the years have gone by. We carefully picked up each and every garden pebble (amid 15 years' worth of gum nuts), dug the roses out and popped them on the nature strip just in case someone wanted their busted arses (spoilers: someone did! They were gone the next day!).
Two dwarf apricot trees and a mandarin later, the pebbles went back down, and baby tears and dichondra in the middle for our grass-watching needs. Will they get enough sunlight and or water? Place bets now!
This felt like an achievement in itself, but even more magically, one day we actually finally finished finding places for all the leftover brick pavers to live! This is a feat we never thought possible and we couldn’t quite believe it when the last one settled into place. Byron was excited to cut up the pallets to fuel his pizza oven, and we were excited to let him!
In this brave, new magical world, we have a garage again! Stinky immediately decided to fulfil a decade-long dream of having a garage fridge - to the appliance store, we stampeded! In we went, shouting, “Sirs and madams, please show us to your dumbest appliances!” This was an important request, on account of how nowdays most fridges are smarter than your average Year 8 and want to do your taxes for you and shit. We just want things kept cold and not have our fridge narc on us to ASIO! Mind you, if you show us a touch screen that encourages drawing, I think we all know what’s going to happen…
One of the many benefits of being on holidays is that we were able to have it delivered the very next day - meanwhile, one of the many benefits of it going in the garage was an easy installation process. Just get your new roommate out of its box, plug it in, add your best magnets and voila! Dream fulfilled!
Multiple pickles and chutneys that we didn’t trust in the cupboard immediately moved outside (looking at you, beetroot and preserved lemons), and now we can keep cold all the beer, champagne and wine we could possibly want! Seems like the perfect crime!
But anyway, it wasn’t all puttering around outside and buying appliances, we did some sitting down inside, too. For instance, we went to the Pivotonian to watch The Emu War, a movie we hoped was going to be so bad that it was good (it wasn’t though lol), only to find that the writer/director and a couple of the actors were there to do a Q&A!
The giant mullets on the blokes waiting to go in should have been a giveaway that they were part of the movie’s team, but not enough of a giveaway to stop Stinky loudly assuring another guest that the movie was going to be terrible, but fun, where they could clearly hear her. Pack it up lads, we’ve made a social blunder!
In less faux pas-sy news, Stinky had decided to make hay while her eyesight lasts and also take another run at the Geelong Show again, by making the tiniest lil Stitch she could. Look at her go!
A magnified light was entirely necessary, given the tininess of the hook and the thinness of the thread. One must be careful when making a wee Stitch - you look at him, and he looks back at you…
Actually, this one staring at your soul is the other Wee Stitch Stinky was making (she makes a small gift for her Year 12 students every year, and thought it would be ‘fun’ to make one on a 2.75mm hook and a 0.75mm hook at the same time, what an idiot). But anyway, LOOK HOW TEENY AND WEENY HE TURNED OUT! We thought the first one was wee, but this is like… wee wee!!
You can use it as a personality test - put him in someone’s hand and then gauge how badly they feel the urge to pop him in their mouth!
If this doesn’t win first prize, we’ll know for sure that the Geelong Show is corrupt beyond all measure. And Stitch is going to be pisssssssssed.
We took him to visit D’admiral and Chuckles, not least because it just wouldn’t be a real holiday if we didn’t head down the coast. All the cool people were hanging out!
Since the olive trees have gone into the ground we have harvested one crop, which we carefully and faithfully processed. We brought the crop down to share - check it out, this is the lot!
The winter-drought continued apace, so in the place of full water reservoirs, we had crispy cold weather. Provided one is appropriately dressed and there’s a warm room waiting later, this provides a pleasurable novelty, so we lined up a sociable morning walk. Oh no, fog!
The world went black and white! But the fog must have been just at the house, because when we walked down the beach it all went blue and bright!
It’s actually quite tough actually…
Oh hang no, no wait, no one should feel sorry for anyone pictured!
The eagle-eyed viewer will see that Stinky is not in the previous photos. Is it because she was, perhaps behind the camera? Or is there a more sad explanation? Is it because we should feel sorry for her? WHY IT MAY BE SO.
To explain…
We are enthusiastic participants in the Container Deposit Scheme (students who dare to throw an eligible vessel in the bin will hear the cry, “THAT’S TEN CENTS!!”), so since we were out and about in Hastings with D’admiral, we went to their depo to drop off a stash. In G-town it’s all automated, but this is one where staff have to hit a ‘go’ button for you. Serious business!
If we’d thought it through, we wouldn’t have gone on a Saturday (because everyone else goes on a Saturday), so while we were waiting our turn, one of the women working there bustled up to check if we knew what to do when our time came. Having been assured that we’d been there before, she made an attempt at small talk.
“Ooh, so mother and daughter, eh?” she beamed, looking at the pair of us.
Slack-jawed, we stared at her while D’admiral just about pissed his pants laughing.
“We’re… literally twins?” Pye said.
“... .. …” … … .. “... is… is it the hair…?” Stinky asked plaintively (and resentfully).
Our Gauche Friend Of Indeterminate Age suddenly got very busy and had to go somewhere else, but came back to try and explain that she thought we looked similar so that’s why she said it (cut to D’admiral shitting his pants with laughter) NOPE, YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE, JUST LEAVE, GO, MAYBE WALK INTO THE SEA (or at the very least promise you’ll wake up at 3am in a cold, embarrassed sweat once a year, for the next 20 years, MINIMUM).
However, there is another school of thought, that this is on Stinky for having the same haircut as D’admiral!
Negative people will say we didn’t stay too long at Somers after that because of the dire insult, but really, we had a list of yard and housework to get sorted before Nonna came to visit us - she had to see the place at its best! I mean, we do dust regularly - at least once every three years, whether it needs it or not - but to be honest, the place hasn’t been 100% at its best for a few years, now.
Worried about the number of stairs a 95-year-old can handle? You shouldn’t be, she scampered up with the best of them!
Stinky (seen here pictured)...
… made everyone who was looking around the loo look out the window of the loft toilet for proof!
#WhenShallWeThreeMeetAgain?
Nonna approved of the garden and gave a bunch of useful advice, but that was after D’admiral wielded a skilful set of secateurs on a desperately needy bunch of stonefruit that we’d shamefully neglected.
Nonna also marvelled at Stinky’s crochetty-witchcraft (even though Chuckles had a task on her hands to explain the plot of Lilo & Stitch in Italian)...
Now, something that you have to know about Nonna is that she loves handing people $100 notes (or ‘Melbas’ as we think they should be called). This is a habit we find very charming and would never wish to discourage. In fact, we would like to encourage everybody to start handing us Melbas whenever they meet with us (or bank transfers…or send them in the mail… we’re not fussy). Anyway, she very generously gave us a housewarming present of a Melba each - this was perfect timing, as just the day before we’d had to replace the microwave.
“How much was it?” asked Nonna.
“About $300,” we replied.
“Ah,” she said.
Next thing we knew, she had reached into her wallet and was handing over another Melba! Too, too generous (...but maybe we should have first mentioned that we also just bought a fridge ah ha ha ha).
We had a lovely lunch together - none of which needed to be heated up in a microwave.
Nonna may have provided the (metaphorical) fuel for the new microwave, but Byron had, as has previously been mentioned, been very proactive in gathering the literal fuel for his pizza oven.
Look at those nails adding extra iron to our diets! The final products were quite delicious and served as a wake for the end of the holidays…
Now we have to go watch some grass grow and fuel ourselves up for the upcoming joys of Term Three, including the miraculous return of school Indo trips!
In other Year 8 news, one of the other Indonesian teachers brought in some tropical fruit for the students to sample. Pye had first crack and was delighted to discover the durian was a particularly strong one. She left it where the other guy could find it for his classes, and carefully left the window open. Then it turns out that, over recess, the risk and compliance manager with the maintenance guys in tow were spotted running around madly trying to find the gas leak. Whoopsies!
Some mistakes are funny – like when you give yourself a little cannibalism (as a treat).
At least this Year 7 lad doesn’t just restrict himself to Nazis, he’s open to other species.
So out of an eleven-week term (a time frame both cruel and unusual), chook shit, cannibalism and rancid fruit were the working highlights. Fortunately, life’s not all about work! Moose turned 26 – a milestone which we celebrated by cooking moose-shaped pasta as an attempted dominance display.
He does so love the attention, and look, Jenski made him a new backpack to replace the one that we have managed to lose (in the house, during lockdown, having literally not gone anywhere – WHERE IS IT?).
This one is much sexier than the old one, look, it has fairy bread on it!
Moose got wind that Sovereign Hill was doing a harvest festival weekend and decided that was a good time to let Jenski give it to him, while also getting to rub his bum on all sorts of things. He arranged some absolutely glorious winter weather, and had a great time! He invaded people’s homes and judged their piss pots!
He pretended he was able to do poos and messed up an outhouse!
He scampered under velvet ropes to crawl on things that humans aren’t allowed on!
He interfered with the proper function of an ornamental sundial!
He ruined this poor family’s stew!
He assumed all signs were directed at him personally! But it’s okay, because he says he didn’t want to go into the church anyway!
He kicked kids out of the play area so he could pretend to run the town!
He thought he was getting away with it all!
Until he got nicked and had to have a time out to think about what he’d done!
It’s been ages since he’s been let off the chain (so to speak), he was all tuckered out by the end, bless him.
Then one weekend the Powder Monkey came to visit! The rest of the family was going to be off having adventures, and the time had finally come for him to assess the new loft. Now, what’s fun to do in G-Town, eh? Well, there’s going to the Mill Market and trying to find the most cursed object…
… and accidentally finding the most wonderfully awful object for a neglected corner (appropriately regal for the throne room)…
…then impulsively stopping in at a cemetery to say hi to the Lady Squatter Gal Pals.
… and wandering around trying to find graves with your name on it (the Powder Monkey definitely needs to change his name to Michael). We enjoyed ourselves, but if one were to retell it objectively, we walked around a shop full of other people’s rubbish, ate KFC in a cemetery car park and made our own fun in a graveyard…
Determined to do better, we thought it would be fun to compare Winchelsea’s Barwon Park Mansion with our own lil Coolart, so got up early the next day to fang it out to the only town in the region people from Colac are allowed to look down on. We arrived spot on opening time – or so we thought! Having carefully looked up the opening times, we failed to correlate that information with the fact it was now June and winter hours had kicked in. Oh no!! Insult to injury, the problem with Winchelsea is that you can’t just go, “Oh well, let’s do XYZ instead!” because there is literally no XYZ.
I mean, you can look at an Olde Bridge and watch the corellas being arseholes, and there was the saddest market we’ve ever seen going on (with the biggest dog shit we’ve ever seen in the car park), but those don’t really count.
We had to go back to G-town and drown our sorrows with cheese!
There was a Vegemite cheesecake that was very helpful when dealing with our grief.
Speaking of Vegemite, how about these 2 Minute Noodles? Why not put them in a toastie, eh?
That was a lovely weekend, and so was the King's Birthday one (ew that still sounds so wrong). Unlike Barwon Park Mansion, Coolart was open, and it wasn’t too cold or gross outside to go and enjoy it!
It was so still that the creek took the opportunity to reflect…
And the ducks also had a good hard think about their lives and choices.
The winter drought had nonetheless provided enough moisture to make for artistic fungi and clouds enough for an atmospheric ferry trip…
… but not enough to keep us happy in our new hobby of watching grass grow. If we wanted this hobby to really go off, we had some work to do! It is a truth that must be acknowledged that during the extension project, the driveway suffered more than Jesus.
Coupled with at least three places subsiding where the lazy original paver hadn’t bothered to remove tree stumps, it was a sad and grotty contrast to the shininess of the new build, and even power washing couldn’t bring it up to standard. We found a non-lazy paver, and looked forward to the pile of bricks waiting in the garage to come in handy…
We expected heaps of the bricks to have been pulverised by the building traffic, but they actually held up okay! And then the paver salvaged a lot more than we expected, too! Normal people would think this is good, but we were disappointed that more of a dent wasn’t made in our spare bricks stash.
For the middle bit, we were going to just smash up the cement bits left down the middle and pick out the chunks, but ol’ mate Byron pointed out that was both stupid and lazy, and lazy had gone out of fashion when it comes to driveways. And he had just the solution – behold, the most wonderfully simple, vintage mini-tiller from his grandfather’s shop on Pako that went out of business in the 80s!
Despite getting used only once a decade, it started first try, and you’ve never seen Pye have more fun – well, until the grass started to grow, that is.
Then we had to get the front part sorted - no grass for that bit, that’s where a car will sit! It waited patiently and uglily all term until the holidays arrived and we had the emotional and physical energy to have a bunch of Tuscan topping delivered for us to spread out. Whee!
Look, we even got the utilities side of the house looking like it belongs there!
Before:
After:
(The bit at the front that has to stay low because nobody thought through access to the under-deck tank until we asked how we were supposed to get to it for maintenance.)
The problem with the driveway bit is that the car tyres compressed one edge only. So it looked like we needed to hire a compactor! With supreme confidence that it couldn’t possibly be that hard , we rang around Bunnings until we found a small one available for an hour. Pye lined up Byron to help, and then Bunnings called back and said the small one was broken, would the big one be okay? Pye agreed (as long as we were still paying the price of the smaller one), having been assured it’s not really that much bigger. Maybe not, but 64kg vs 84kg turns out to make all the difference in the world when you’re just a lil Pye who stands chest height to the back of a 4WD. Some helpful Islander chaps helped get the beastie in the boot - meanwhile, back at the Flying Waratah, Stinky was unearthing the old front door to use as a ramp to get the bastard out again!
We thanked goodness for Byron again when it came to starting the compactor (of course there are no instructions, and what do we know about these machines?), and he made it look super easy. It’s not so easy for all - here we see the compactor taking Pye for a non-consensual walk:
After having a giggle, Byron took over again.
Stinky wouldn’t have a go at all, on account of not having a sports bra on and didn’t want her boobies to jiggle clean off (a missed opportunity - Byron suggested we keep it for the full four hours, and get the footage on the internet for a profit).
All week long we’ve had tradies hanging out with the neighbours, as well as our tall helpful neighbour Tim being around, so we were pretty sure we’d have some help to get the compactor back in the car. But would you believe it, when push came to shove (literally heh heh) the whole street stayed empty of anyone under 80. In the end, Stinky’s friend showed up to go to lunch just in time and the four of us managed it, whoo, we did it!
Anyway, this is what the backyard looked like in 2007 (before our time):
And here’s what it looks like now.
This is what the front yard looked like in 2007:
For a while it didn’t get much better, especially when we shoved all the pots into the front yard while the build was happening and then it just kinda sat there and didn’t bother us for ages. But now that we had (most) of our house in order, it was time to smack the front yard into shape.
First in danger were the roses, which have been getting less and less attractive as the years have gone by. We carefully picked up each and every garden pebble (amid 15 years' worth of gum nuts), dug the roses out and popped them on the nature strip just in case someone wanted their busted arses (spoilers: someone did! They were gone the next day!).
Two dwarf apricot trees and a mandarin later, the pebbles went back down, and baby tears and dichondra in the middle for our grass-watching needs. Will they get enough sunlight and or water? Place bets now!
This felt like an achievement in itself, but even more magically, one day we actually finally finished finding places for all the leftover brick pavers to live! This is a feat we never thought possible and we couldn’t quite believe it when the last one settled into place. Byron was excited to cut up the pallets to fuel his pizza oven, and we were excited to let him!
In this brave, new magical world, we have a garage again! Stinky immediately decided to fulfil a decade-long dream of having a garage fridge - to the appliance store, we stampeded! In we went, shouting, “Sirs and madams, please show us to your dumbest appliances!” This was an important request, on account of how nowdays most fridges are smarter than your average Year 8 and want to do your taxes for you and shit. We just want things kept cold and not have our fridge narc on us to ASIO! Mind you, if you show us a touch screen that encourages drawing, I think we all know what’s going to happen…
One of the many benefits of being on holidays is that we were able to have it delivered the very next day - meanwhile, one of the many benefits of it going in the garage was an easy installation process. Just get your new roommate out of its box, plug it in, add your best magnets and voila! Dream fulfilled!
Multiple pickles and chutneys that we didn’t trust in the cupboard immediately moved outside (looking at you, beetroot and preserved lemons), and now we can keep cold all the beer, champagne and wine we could possibly want! Seems like the perfect crime!
But anyway, it wasn’t all puttering around outside and buying appliances, we did some sitting down inside, too. For instance, we went to the Pivotonian to watch The Emu War, a movie we hoped was going to be so bad that it was good (it wasn’t though lol), only to find that the writer/director and a couple of the actors were there to do a Q&A!
The giant mullets on the blokes waiting to go in should have been a giveaway that they were part of the movie’s team, but not enough of a giveaway to stop Stinky loudly assuring another guest that the movie was going to be terrible, but fun, where they could clearly hear her. Pack it up lads, we’ve made a social blunder!
In less faux pas-sy news, Stinky had decided to make hay while her eyesight lasts and also take another run at the Geelong Show again, by making the tiniest lil Stitch she could. Look at her go!
A magnified light was entirely necessary, given the tininess of the hook and the thinness of the thread. One must be careful when making a wee Stitch - you look at him, and he looks back at you…
Actually, this one staring at your soul is the other Wee Stitch Stinky was making (she makes a small gift for her Year 12 students every year, and thought it would be ‘fun’ to make one on a 2.75mm hook and a 0.75mm hook at the same time, what an idiot). But anyway, LOOK HOW TEENY AND WEENY HE TURNED OUT! We thought the first one was wee, but this is like… wee wee!!
You can use it as a personality test - put him in someone’s hand and then gauge how badly they feel the urge to pop him in their mouth!
If this doesn’t win first prize, we’ll know for sure that the Geelong Show is corrupt beyond all measure. And Stitch is going to be pisssssssssed.
We took him to visit D’admiral and Chuckles, not least because it just wouldn’t be a real holiday if we didn’t head down the coast. All the cool people were hanging out!
Since the olive trees have gone into the ground we have harvested one crop, which we carefully and faithfully processed. We brought the crop down to share - check it out, this is the lot!
The winter-drought continued apace, so in the place of full water reservoirs, we had crispy cold weather. Provided one is appropriately dressed and there’s a warm room waiting later, this provides a pleasurable novelty, so we lined up a sociable morning walk. Oh no, fog!
The world went black and white! But the fog must have been just at the house, because when we walked down the beach it all went blue and bright!
It’s actually quite tough actually…
Oh hang no, no wait, no one should feel sorry for anyone pictured!
The eagle-eyed viewer will see that Stinky is not in the previous photos. Is it because she was, perhaps behind the camera? Or is there a more sad explanation? Is it because we should feel sorry for her? WHY IT MAY BE SO.
To explain…
We are enthusiastic participants in the Container Deposit Scheme (students who dare to throw an eligible vessel in the bin will hear the cry, “THAT’S TEN CENTS!!”), so since we were out and about in Hastings with D’admiral, we went to their depo to drop off a stash. In G-town it’s all automated, but this is one where staff have to hit a ‘go’ button for you. Serious business!
If we’d thought it through, we wouldn’t have gone on a Saturday (because everyone else goes on a Saturday), so while we were waiting our turn, one of the women working there bustled up to check if we knew what to do when our time came. Having been assured that we’d been there before, she made an attempt at small talk.
“Ooh, so mother and daughter, eh?” she beamed, looking at the pair of us.
Slack-jawed, we stared at her while D’admiral just about pissed his pants laughing.
“We’re… literally twins?” Pye said.
“... .. …” … … .. “... is… is it the hair…?” Stinky asked plaintively (and resentfully).
Our Gauche Friend Of Indeterminate Age suddenly got very busy and had to go somewhere else, but came back to try and explain that she thought we looked similar so that’s why she said it (cut to D’admiral shitting his pants with laughter) NOPE, YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE, JUST LEAVE, GO, MAYBE WALK INTO THE SEA (or at the very least promise you’ll wake up at 3am in a cold, embarrassed sweat once a year, for the next 20 years, MINIMUM).
However, there is another school of thought, that this is on Stinky for having the same haircut as D’admiral!
Negative people will say we didn’t stay too long at Somers after that because of the dire insult, but really, we had a list of yard and housework to get sorted before Nonna came to visit us - she had to see the place at its best! I mean, we do dust regularly - at least once every three years, whether it needs it or not - but to be honest, the place hasn’t been 100% at its best for a few years, now.
Worried about the number of stairs a 95-year-old can handle? You shouldn’t be, she scampered up with the best of them!
Stinky (seen here pictured)...
… made everyone who was looking around the loo look out the window of the loft toilet for proof!
#WhenShallWeThreeMeetAgain?
Nonna approved of the garden and gave a bunch of useful advice, but that was after D’admiral wielded a skilful set of secateurs on a desperately needy bunch of stonefruit that we’d shamefully neglected.
Nonna also marvelled at Stinky’s crochetty-witchcraft (even though Chuckles had a task on her hands to explain the plot of Lilo & Stitch in Italian)...
Now, something that you have to know about Nonna is that she loves handing people $100 notes (or ‘Melbas’ as we think they should be called). This is a habit we find very charming and would never wish to discourage. In fact, we would like to encourage everybody to start handing us Melbas whenever they meet with us (or bank transfers…or send them in the mail… we’re not fussy). Anyway, she very generously gave us a housewarming present of a Melba each - this was perfect timing, as just the day before we’d had to replace the microwave.
“How much was it?” asked Nonna.
“About $300,” we replied.
“Ah,” she said.
Next thing we knew, she had reached into her wallet and was handing over another Melba! Too, too generous (...but maybe we should have first mentioned that we also just bought a fridge ah ha ha ha).
We had a lovely lunch together - none of which needed to be heated up in a microwave.
Nonna may have provided the (metaphorical) fuel for the new microwave, but Byron had, as has previously been mentioned, been very proactive in gathering the literal fuel for his pizza oven.
Look at those nails adding extra iron to our diets! The final products were quite delicious and served as a wake for the end of the holidays…
Now we have to go watch some grass grow and fuel ourselves up for the upcoming joys of Term Three, including the miraculous return of school Indo trips!
