Rain and other events

The wind was so crazy yesterday when the storm came that when I ran outside to rescue my laundry on the clothesline, I had to put my foot in the laundry basket to prevent it from blowing away :) I love storms though. Apparently a number of shops locally were flooded out and some had roofs collapse as well. Excitement.

The rain unfortunately washed away most traces of the childish behaviour from the other night of neighbour Theo and I, when we went and wrote in the gravel of the car park next door. Giant initials and love hearts and things. That was after we went and lay on the soccer oval and watched cloud pictures in the sky.

This carpark is the same one that had me hiding from people going past my kitchen window in tractors and had me appearing in the local paper with another neighbour to apparently vent my frustration at the lack of community consultation. Oh, hey, I'll let you see the article:

I seem to be a public figure lately (not really). I also won some money through a local shopping centre competition the other week and was notified by a telephone call broadcast on local radio. I could barely understand some of my hysterical ramblings when I listened to it later :).

Last night I babysat for my little bro and sis, which in a roundabout way involved a La Porchetta birthday dinner and Theo was roped in to watch a Star Wars video (that was obviously serious boy business).

I'm off to do some cooking now, will report back later with my achievements.

who are the people in your neighbourhood....

I have new neighbours. It must be official, they must actually be 'in', because now there's a dog and a caravan as well. They have been moving in for maybe a couple of months now, I keep getting glimpses of them, sometimes there's a car there, furniture goes in and out (??). I have never actually spoken to them, so it has gotten to the ridiculous stage where I feel like I'm rude and like I'm avoiding them deliberately & am very self conscious about the whole thing. For goodness sakes.

In the past 6 months, we have had I think 4 of the 6 houses (or is it 5 of the 7?) in our little section of the street, go up for sale. One by one. I was starting to get paranoid :). At least people are moving back in now :). It was getting a bit deserted.

I just realised the other day that after years of living in a number of rental houses, not only is this the house I've lived in the longest since I was a teenager, but I actually know every person who has lived in this house before me? (And this is not a new house. It must be at least 60, 70 I don't know how many years old!). Well, it wasn't that many people. A family built this house, room by room, the children all grew up (I know who a lot of them are), the old lady sold it & moved out, my sister moved in here, she part-inherited the lady's cat, my sister moved out, I moved in. So I sort of feel like there's this big history thing there. It's nice :)

I can still hear the new neighbours moving stuff around......

Bathrobe Adventures

Amongst other things, I have an almost daily habit of running around outside in my bathrobe in the early morning, or sometimes not so early. And sometimes it’s after dinner as well, which is also broad daylight during daylight savings.

Picking grass, hunching over and creeping around my mostly dead- weed lawn, poring over it even, searching for prime bunches or even individual pieces of grass and a stray stalk of dandelion or milk-thistle, going in and out my back door with handfuls of grass. Sometimes armfuls. In my dressing gown. Carrying and taking inside what are obviously bunches of grass or weeds.

At least I try to avoid the front yard. Although it sort of is the front yard, as the side of the house is angled towards the street and doesn’t have a separate fence. If I hear people or a car, I just make sure I’m facing the other way and pretend to be perfectly normally absorbed with my bunches of grass, hunched over the ground. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to be near the hot water heater, so I can just sort of well, hide behind it, in a purposeful kind of way.

So I’m not ashamed of my behaviour, I just don’t like to advertise it. I realise that it could be construed as kind of odd.

I am very fond of my rabbit, and it is spoilt. If you are one of my neighbours, I’m not hoarding that grass in my fridge. I do buy groceries.