Welcome to Australia

Hello everyone!!! 

I know, I know it’s been ages, since the time that we last met.  WE MOVED – across the world – to Australia.  Ah, moving 10,000 miles across the ocean to the other side of the planet – not for the faint of heart.  Shout out to all those that have done anything like this before we did….in your 40’s.

Now – I’ve got tons of material from both sides of the Pacific – I better get a move on.

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The first two weeks we were in Australia we were welcomed by all kinds of things.  Notably Spiders.  I bet you didn’t know spiders were playful creatures?  So nice of them to be waiting to welcome us, in quantity, at our new home. 

And apparently they are very hygienic.  The photo above was not taken by me, I borrowed it, from someone who obviously knows to look before they brush. 

I – did not.

Some glassy eyed morning, in an unfamiliar dark bathroom, in an unfamiliar country, at an unfamiliar body clock time – I woke up.   Then I lumbered off into the bathroom for a face wash and a tooth scrub.  Put toothpaste on the brush, stuck it in my mouth and brushed away – all the while thinking, this feels odd.  It feels softer than normal or something?

Then I spit.

And what came out were all kinds of black spider legs and bits in the white foam of the toothpaste.  Ah yes, I just brushed my teeth with a spider, fantastic – Welcome to Australia!!

And do you know what else they do?  They hang.  Just hang.  Randomly from the ceiling.  On a single string.   To fuck with ya.  

Don’t sit up in bed before you look, because there is a dangler – right above your forehead.   And his ten buddies are hanging in the living room, so be prepared to do a little active brain wave – maze work before you head into the kitchen for coffee.  Keep those eyes focused – or they will be on your cheek, noggin, in your hair, eyeball, up your nose - Welcome to Australia!

And please – don’t take the dog out for her morning piddle before you investigate your bathrobe thoroughly.  What a lovely soft place for them to rest up.  Ah, ah, ah – don’t you dare put that shoe on.  Don’t do it.  Clack them together twice before you put them on.  I know the dog is singing the ‘I gotta pee song’ but diligence is key here -  Welcome to Australia. 

And when you take that morning shower, do not wrap yourself in that lovely big bath sheet immediately upon exit.  Stand there – wet and dripping – and shake that thing.  Shake it hard.  Watch em’ fall.  Then give it a quick glance before you wrap it on.  It’s whole new morning routine.  Takes a bit of getting used to -  Welcome to Australia.

They say, small is bad.  The poisonous ones here are small (they of course are not all poisonous, still figuring out which is which though).  So I guess the spider that was the size of a mouse in the dogs basket was a good thing then?  Not only was he the size of a mouse, but he moved like one also – the basket went flying out the balcony door – but I can’t say for sure if the spider was still in it- welcome to Australia! 

They might be a good thing, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to a spider that’s big enough to cook up on a grill.  We had another one in the house before the dog basket incident – we took her outside in a long handled dust pan, but not before my father in law offered to vacuum her off the ceiling for me.  If she is harmless, then she should go out in the world and eat some of those damn flies.  Stupid flies.  But that is a whole other story… Welcome to Australia!

Glad to be back and Merry Christmas!!!

Toilet Training

Hi folks, sorry I’ve been away – it’s nothing personal – I have just been very, very busy.  That’s probably not going to stop anytime soon (we are changing continents) but I am hoping to post once a week – I have such a backlog of photos to share with you!!!  So lets go…(pun not intended).

Oh, where do I start?  So the other day hubby and I were in an airport, we find ourselves flying over oceans quite often lately – Pacific, Atlantic, we aren’t picky.

Anyway, we bought day passes to an airport lounge, because it’s far more comfortable waiting out a 5 hour layover in a lounge with cushy chairs, food and drink, than in black airport chairs, with metal arms and food crumbs from the last three years collected in the seams.   Delightful – really.

I walk into the bathroom in the lounge and there is this sign facing the toilet.  So I study it, because whatever is being pictured doesn’t click with me when I glance at it.  Still doesn’t.  What I see here is a man standing on a toilet in the women’s bathroom.  Is this a problem?

Do a lot of men come into the women’s bathroom and stand on the toilets?  Especially in bathrooms that are singles.  This bathroom was a one seater with a door, not a group collection with stalls. 

I wipe the seat off every time I go into a bathroom and I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve seen foot prints on a toilet seat.  That does say something, I have seen shoeprints on a toilet seat, but I’ve used a lot of public bathrooms in my life and the odds seem really, really low that anyone is going to stand on a toilet seat on a regular basis, especially so much that it requires a sign.  In a lounge we paid to get into, no less.

But hey, thanks for the helpful pointers about how to sit and where the toilet paper goes, ummm, again – is a sign needed for this?

This brings me to the next sign we saw.

Here we have yet another man, throwing blocks into the toilet??   

I think they are blocks – I don’t really know what they are.  But there are three of them.  What is it that someone would carry around that there are three of that would get thrown into the toilet?  Sonny misbehaved and pops took the Lego’s away and pitched them in the toilet?

Again, I am lost on this.  Do people throw enough blocks into public toilets that it required a sign?  Are they blocks?  Is it something foreign we don’t have in America that gets thrown into toilets? I can’t think this would ever be a problem – ever!

But again, thanks – it certainly gave me something to ponder for the 16 hour flight home.

Dining What?

OK, this is a section in a little news paper that comes out monthly in our area.  It’s a good little news paper – with local interest stories, school successes and then some stuff that is from another distant community that never makes sense is in there – but that’s just part of its quirkiness.

But, when I looked at the dining section in the last paper I was greeted by this – or what I thought I saw, which was “Dining Gout”.  

Umm, I don’t want to dine with gout.  Quite sure when you have gout, dining is almost the last thing on your mind – as your drink your fifth glass of tart cherry juice that day and are ready to float back off to the familiar chair with the foot stool in front of it.

Of course it says Dining Out, but when you spell everything in caps there is no differentiation between the words and it all flows together to read DINING GOUT.  Or at least that’s how my synapses processed it.   

Just a suggestion, use caps at the beginning of the word to, you know, make them readable.

Or is this little paper just jumping on the so called upcoming Presidential election band wagon and yelling at us, like the two main candidates do?  Can’t anyone who is running for president this election speak in a normal voice anymore, why are they always yelling at us??

Should we post her picture on a milk carton?

You may be thinking, oh my God – where did she go?  Has she been hiding under a rock?   

Basically yes.  See, I’m working now and it’s been busy.  Also it has been rolling up to the end of good days outside – which officially is today.  Tonight we have a frost warning, so yeah it’s in the low 30’s.  Bleh.

Work will get less busy soon – it’s a case piece kinda business and the Judges are getting ready for the holidays and won’t want to work.  VERY SOON!  So yeah, I think I may be gearing up to write again. 

Also my camera broke.  I know, I know – woman, just use your damn iPhone.  But you see my memory is full and it no longer just pops the photos onto my computer automatically and it’s a HUGE pain in the ass to load them otherwise.  Not a fan of the second to last upgrade they did – you know the one where they high jacked all your music, that you loaded yourself or bought from them?  Yeah, well it makes picture loading screwy too.  But I’ll get over it.

I suppose a two month vacation wasn’t the best thing for readership and I do have years and years of back stories I could have reposted – but really, I just took a powder*.

So, I have a great photo in mind, ready to go for a new blog!  I just have to send it to myself and get re-motivated.  I never stopped taking pictures (yes on the iPhone), so there is fodder.  Suppose I have to buck up and pay the  iPeople more money to get more memory…because really, cleaning out my phone to get more space would simply be a ridiculous suggestion!!

See you soon!!  I promise…

*Take a powder-Make a speedy departure, run away.  This slangy idiom may be derived from the British dialect sense of powder as "a sudden hurry," a usage dating from about 1600. It may also allude to the explosive quality of gunpowder. 

Oooh - the 1600's - how Piratey of me!!