Smokey the Magnificent

Peanut butter at one house, bread at the other, plates packed in a box… this is all very disturbing. I was at the new place today packing and shivering with cold, and it took a good twenty minutes for me to think of unpacking a sweatshirt from a box and putting it on. It felt faintly illicit, as if the new house should not be used for such profane purposes as dressing.

I also had a horrid experience last night while unpacking a box of kitchen iems. There was an enormous cockroach chilling in my brand-new mini-ramekins. It was probably from the house. That’s probably the reason the previous tenants moved out, you know. Every night, millions of tiny feet marching, marching, until the sounds of the roaches softly moving hammered themselves into their brains and caused them to gibber. Super.

Also, it is prayer meeting here tonight. I am trying to psych myself up not to apologise to people for providing only one type of homebaked cookie. Normally I would do lemon muffins as well or die in the attempt, but we’re out of sugar and flour and most of my baking stuff is elsewhither. And we have no microwave, so if anyone needs butter melted or a wheatie bag heated up or a hamster inhumanely killed they’ll just have to lump it. The situation, not the hamster. Or both; whatever.

Is there an internationally-recognised protocol on the correct place to keep the fly spray? And would you rather move into a house with roaches, or one in which the previous owner had offed herself in the laundry?

Well, yesterday was the end of an era. As the snortlepig looked on in silent outrage a slightly creepy vanful of homeschoolers loaded up Bridget and Saffron into cardboard boxes and drove them away. Farewell, useless chickens. I miss you very, very slightly.

Yesterday was also the day we got the key to the new house. We walked a box of sewing fabric over in the pram and inspected the house, rather nervously as we’d only seen the place once. The paint was a little bit skungier than we remembered and the bedrooms a somewhat more awkward shape, but we also discovered a couple of arty features we hadn’t noticed - namely a sloped ceiling in the spare bedroom and storage under the window seats. So it was OK. The snortlepig loved it, mostly because there was plenty of room for playing dead frogs on the floor.

Inspired by this I planned to spend today trundling back and forth with the pram, unpacking things. Unfortunately today was also the heaviest rainstorm since the deluge. Fortunately the Internet conked out, so I was forced to be productive and ended up packing half a dozen more boxes. Can anyone explain how we had 7 ice cream containers in storage but 15 lids, when we hardly ever buy ice cream in any case? Very odd. Anyway my dear friend Eva is coming around this evening to help me take a carload of boxes to the new place… a somewhat mixed blessing, as Eva has formidable housekeeping skills which force me into de-smegging the house before she gets here. I hate it when people are tidier than me. Thing is, they usually are…

During a break in the rain showers the pig and I went outside to scrape weeds out from the cracks of the path. I ended up amazing myself by emptying out two metal buckets, making drain holes in the bott0ms with a hammer and nail, and planting capsicums. Somehow picking up a hammer still seems immensely empowered and transgressive - pathetic really, as I sprang from the loins of a woman for whom knocking down walls and upholstering furniture is all in a day’s work. But my usefulness has traditionally been strictly limited to the kitchen, so there you go.

Or is it Auntie? Aunty Smokey. Auntie Smokey. Aunt Smokering. Hmm. Anyhoo. Helpdesk Man’s sister was induced sometime yesterday, and gave birth to a nine-pounder at 9AM today. Horrific really, fancy being in labour all night. She must be dead to the world. Anyway, we don’t know the name of the dudeling yet, which is odd because they apparently decided on it months ago. Maybe it just didn’t look like one of whatever they chose. Or perhaps they plan to beat the recession by allowing visitors to each submit a name and a bribe, with the honour going to the highest bidder. In which case, kudos. I wonder if our budget would allow me to spring for “Calvin”, just to shake things up? But these are unworthy thoughts. Mazel tov, sister-in-law-person-and-small-nameless-snortlepig.

I like packing books. With the exception of the theology books I keep mine uncategorised, so stacking them in boxes reveals a delightful cross-section of personality that would probably intrigue posterity if I became a sculptor or blew up a bus or something. The Silence of the Lambs nestling next to Winnie-the-Pooh, for instance; Reader, I Married Him cheek-by-jowl with a misshelved copy of a tome boldly entitled PREDESTINATION.

Kitchen items are less fun to pack. They are asymmetrical, breakable and require much thought. How many baking dishes can I live without for the next two weeks? Will I suddenly burn with the desire for a lemon yoghurt cake if I pack my bundt tin? (I chanced it.) What about my mini-muffin tins? No, too risky, I’ll want to use up a lot of lemons before we leave, so I might make lemon muffins. Should I get rid of my dodgy-bottomed springform cake tins, even though I used the bottoms several times this month to shape pizza and pavlovas on?

Worst of all are the contents of the bathroom cupboard, which I have started packing in self-defense as the snortlepig likes to unhaul them from the cupboard anyway. I was on a skincare kick for awhile, exacerbated by a free-samples kick, which left me with dozens of sample bottles and wax strips currently made obsolete by my anti-chemical/eco/natural kick. Part of me cynically wishes to keep them for when I backslide, but the other half views them as cancer in a tube… so you see the dilemma. Had fun seeing if I could make one half of my lips bigger than the other using Sally Hansen’s Lip Inflating Cream, though. I couldn’t. They just went tingly. With the tingles of cancer.

Last night’s dinner with Helpdesk Man’s family was a success, incidentally. I made a huge basket of flatbreads and grissini which we had for starters with dukkah, pesto and olives and such foibles. Then dinner was creamy sundried tomato chicken strips on a bed of corn risotto, with roasted carrot and kumara spears cooked in brown sugar. Sister-in-law made milktart for dessert and I added pecan tartlets and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. During dessert the snortlepig disappeared and was discovered in the living room with the remains of the bread basket, diligently and enthusiastically dipping all the breads and licking them. She is a sweetcheeks.

1. The landlord informs us he would rather our chickens didn’t grace his premises with their presence. I cannot in fairness blame him, as things that have been graced with the chickens’ presence tend to require a lot of hot water afterwards. And it wouldn’t have been a problem, as my chicken-loving and benevolent mother had agreed to take them on. Unfortunately, the master of the house vetoed them. He has a Thing about chickens; attacked by one in ‘Nam, possibly. So. Anyone want two decorative but highly useless chickens and a none-too-resplendent hutch? They have started laying again, but only at a rather pitiful freelance rate.

2. Still enjoying the X-Files, but now we’ve cut back on night-time sci-fi watching a flaw in the show becomes apparent. Not written for dinnertime viewing. Every night I tenderly construct a nutritious, tasty meal… well, OK, last night we had wedges, but they were homemade and fried in chicken fat, so it wasn’t a dead loss… anyway, a meal of some description… and just as I am lifting a pleasing forkful to my lips I see Scully flashing a torch about and saying “Mulder” in a very calm voice. And sure enough, I chomp down on the sight of somebody’s severed head. Or a being which could be an alien-human hybrid, a genetic mutation or a being of supernatural origin - we don’t know, but we do know it has suppurating flesh and is eating its own forearm. Or a goat that has decomposed with preternatural rapidity after being exposed to John Travolta. Whatever. Nasty stuff. If this keeps up I shall become immensely slender. And yes, the episode with the chicken processing plant and the ritual cannibalism has so far been the worst, but we’re only on Season 4.

3. We have no money. Which is a bit of a pesk.

4. Last time I hennaed my hair I missed a patch of roots nor- nor- west on my crown, so now when I wear certain hairstyles it looks like I have been afflicted with some sort of localised fungus. ‘Spose I could go with it and call it funguspunk, though. I might do that. Hennaing is a pain.

5. I cannot for the life of me work out how old Dana Scully is meant to be. Anyone know? Season 4? She could be anywhere from 25 to 50.

It is dis one. (Drat. Classified just expired.)

Now we just have to…

• try to coerce some poor homestay student into staying with us
• break the news to our current landlords, who were hoping we wouldn’t need to move until nearly November
• switch over Internet
• redirect our mail
• pack up all our belongings, decluttering as needed
• buy (preferably through bartering loaves of bread or Helpdesk Man’s soul or summat, being a bit strapped for cash) a mattress, some bookshelves, a desk lamp, two desks, three chests of drawers and a drier in order to accomodate our new arrangements and the homestay student
• come up with the dosh for 3 week’s bond plus 1 week’s rent (see above and cash-strappedness)
• clean the house
• scrape paint off various windows and floors from dodgy paint jobs
• get someone in to clean the carpet to erase the presence of the snortlepig
• find someone to babysit the chickens, as Mother (who kindly agreed to adopt them if the landlord didn’t fancy the idea, which he doesn’t) is away for moving week
• empty the garage, oh my

and… am I missing anything? All before October 2.

But still. A house. Yay. Better than a dose of swine flu, I always say… with conviction and fervor these days, as it happens.

Alert readers will notice I have been absent for this blog for some days. No, I did not leave it for a huskier, more masculine blog: nor did I rush away to commit seppuku after failing to complete my Challenge. It was worse than that.

Whether the swine flu finally caught up with me or I inadvertently consumed a gallon of ebola-infested suppurating roadkill, I do not know. Maybe I was just plain smote. At any rate I have spent the past three days in hellish misery - the likes of which, save for childbirth, I have never endured before. The kind of sickness where you lie in bed uncontrollably shivering and wanting to cry tears of weakness and despair, except a small desolate part of you can’t summon the oomph. The kind of sickness where even as your lips crack and bleed with dehydration, the thought of a sip of water makes your stomach revolt. The kind of sickness where about two hours in you start to think “Enough already! I get the point!” but it doesn’t stop, and you start to look longingly back on your healthy days wondering why you did not sacrifice goats every morning in gratitude for a watertight digestive system and bones that didn’t vibrate. The kind that makes you curl into a hollow ball of nihilism when your snortlepig (having just learned to climb onto the bed unaided) rouses you from a feverish sleep  in order to have the milks for the eighteenth time that hour, and in the process sits on your head. The kind, I might add, that makes you wish to sue for divorce when your husband decides to leave the baby with you all evening in order to attend an extra-long practice with his marvy young vocal collective, may their larynxes swell to the size of gophers.

Speak to me not of thumbscrews and boilings in hot oil: few have suffered as I have. And I am known for my staunchness, truly. (No, really. Ask my midwife. According to her I didn’t scream at all, just made “a few slight groans”. That’s not how I remember it, but I attribute it to the whole forgetting-the-pains-of-childbirth gene mutating in myself to a forgetting-one’s-own-staunchness gene. Must be it. Did I bring up childbirth again? Sorry. I’ve spent the last three days in company of a hot wheatie bag, and the smell brings back memories. I hope my sister-in-law doesn’t read this blog, incidentally: she’s 40+5 as we speak. Sister-in-law, if you are reading this blog, pay no heed. Labour is like a fun-filled walk in a magical forest where the trees grow caramels. K? But don’t have the baby for a few days yet, I’m probably still infectious.)

I might also be a tad delirious. Anyhoo. To be strictly accurate, I didn’t spend today in hellish misery. Today I mostly lay in bed reading the end of a Terry Pratchett and an entire Maeve Binchy, which was well-written but depressing. Yesterday was the hellish-misery day, and even then, the morning wasn’t too bad. See, Mum had been planning to take me to a craft fair, and such is my devotion to Fibre Arts that I struggled out of bed and went. It was good, even if the fabrics seemed more psychedelic to me than to the average viewer. I spent a hefty chunk of my Points money on cream, pink and green dusky vintage-type cottons and flannels to make quilts for the snortlepig - better yet, I still liked them when I looked at them this morning with less bleary eyes.

Anyway. I’m looking up cheerleading stunts on YouTube. I’m not sure why, but it’s impressive.

• Going into town for a cafe lunch, watching a movie with a large popcorn combo, and taking a taxi home
• Having a semi-luxurious massage
• Visiting the circus with one’s family
• Buying a couple of seasons of Buffy on DVD and watching some of the special features

Ways In Which I  Spent Three Hours and Eighty Dollars Today

• Obtaining an X-ray of a nail chillin’ in the snortlepig’s small intestine

Today we took the snortlepig to the zoo. She enjoyed it, although not (as one might expect) because of the animals. She pretty much ignored the monkeys, gave the reptiles a funny look and was only vaguely interested in the ostriches. She did, however, light up when we came to the tapirs. “DU-CKEE!” she cried, and sure enough, there was some exotic kind of goose. Never mind that it was camouflaged in the grass in middle distance and two tapirs the size of buses were lying at her feet in full view - the snortlepig has only mastered the word “DU-CKEE” in the last few days, and apparently intends to make full use of it. So she strode around the zoo searching for duckies, and in between amused herself with the other great highlight of the trip: gravel paths.

That’s my mother-in-law. I cropped her head out not because of malice, but for privacy reasons. (She’s wanted for arson in several burroughs. No, not really. At least, not to my knowledge. It hasn’t come up.)

I tried to get an arty snortlepig-with-kune-kune-pigs shot, but it was tricky; she wanted to climb in with the pigs and had to be restrained. So this is the best we got:

Not tooooo bad yesterday. I got inspired by the thought of our imminent chucking-out and cleaned under the bed. Many were the dead hankies that I unearthed, and their countenances grimy. I also took the snortlepig on a long and rambling walk around our area in the hopes of finding “For Rent” signs, but nothing appealed.

And Helpdesk Man isn’t dead keen on 10 Fzzzfphht St (or more accurately, what of 10 Fzzzfphht St he could see through its windows). We’re being shown around again on Friday, but Helpdesk Man thinks we could do better - and knowing that I tend to panic and settle and leap at the first place I see, I feel I should heed his warning. It would be a slight downgrade in niceness for more money, and that’s always depressing.

So having thunk it over for a bit, here are our options, bearing in mind we want to start saving for a house as renting is a Piffle and a Scam:

1. Downgrade in size. The snortlepig doesn’t need her own bedroom just yet, as we’re still cosleeping; so Helpdesk Man could use the other bedroom or the living space, if it was decent-sized, for his study. Thus, we could (hopefully) get a house all to ourselves and still maintain the Style of Living to Which we are Accustomed.

2. Downgrade in quality, ie. rent a smeggy three-bedroom home on the cheap, infested with roaches and with the corpses of rodents decomposing in the hot water cupboard. Then save like mad to scrape together a down payment, spurred on by the fungus on the fridge. Not a v. appealing option, as the quality in homes tends to decline first and most dramatically in the kitchen.

3. Upgrade in quality, renting a nice attractive place, and take on a homestay student to pay the extra rent. This may be the way to go. Neither of us is uber-keen on the idea of sharing a house with a stranger, but it would probably be good for our characters. And the extra income would be more than the difference in rent (assuming we didn’t go for an incredibly fancy place), so we could put it towards Teh Deposit and thus get out from under the thumb of Teh Man sooner. Or something. Plus, the pig likes having people round. And it would force me to become a more organised housewife, which as this blog so amply demonstrates would be no bad thing.

The only trouble with that is if we moved within the next few months, I’m not sure it’s a good season for homestayers. They probably migrate North for the summer once Uni finishes, and I doubt we could afford to pay fancy-house rent for months while waiting for them to return. Although I suppose there’s summer school. But still.

4. Upgrade in quality but find some other way of making extra money to pay for it. Which doesn’t really appeal. Any not-at-home job I could get would be hugely disruptive to the family, and I don’t really fancy in-home childcare. Or drug trafficking. Besides, if we did have extra money I’d want to put it towards the down payment, not the rent.

Any other options I’m missing?