On Top of the World

As I mentioned yesterday, today was spent cleaning. By the time we got ready, bought the rest of the stuff we needed and had breakfast, it was after 11:30. I got straight to work on the kitchen, and worked solidly until 4:00. It really was gross, and even after all that time it’s still not completely finished. I still have to do the benchtops and clean the floor. That cloth I bought yesterday (the one where you only need water to clean) was quite good, but the bad thing about it is that you don’t get that nice just-cleaned smell that you do when you use cleaning products. I used it a bit, but then switched back to the old, familiar method.

While I was in the kitchen, M was cleaning up outside. While we were cleaning, one of the tenants turned up. The purpose of his visit was that he needed access to the property later in the week when the electricity was disconnected. I didn’t think there was much chance of access being granted, and we told him we’d had the locks changed. Anyway, there were a few arguments, resulting in him threatening us with his lawyers. Pfft - if they were the same ones who told him that he had a right to his bond, then I think he needs to change lawyers. He also spun some ‘poor me’ tale of being in on work cover and having no money. There was some more arguing and then I figured that there was no point discussing it any more, so I asked M if we were done and we just walked off. Stupid trash.

Although the kitchen looks a lot better, there’s still a lot to do on the rest of the house, so I’ll go back again tomorrow to try to make it look as nice as I can before the inspection on Wednesday.

M and I were sitting on the couch watching TV a little while ago, and Jack was sniffing around, trying to find something interesting to do. I heard a faint tap on the window next to our front door, and Jack trotted over to have a look. He was gazing intently at something, and M went to have a look what it was. M called me over to have a look, and this is what Jack was looking at (click on the pictures for a larger version):

Ohhh, look at that! A little mothy-wothy!

Ummm, no.

This is a HUGE MOFO OF A MOTHY-WOTHY!

For those who don’t like doing conversions, here is another photo.

And here is one that M took of me with my hand next to it. No I don’t have man hands - it really is a jumbo moth. And considering how much I hate moths of normal size, let alone mutant ones, I really hope you appreciate the lengths to which I went in order to bring this last photo to you.

All of you moth-haters who are thinking of coming to Australia, beware - that one is just a baby. When fully grown, their wingspan is over a metre wide. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Lately we have had a severe millipede invasion at our house. I’m not talking about a few annoying ones, I’m talking about M scraping 100 millipedes a day off the wall outside the front door. They’ve come inside as well, with them all over our floors. Ugh. You take a few absent-minded steps, then… crunch.

Until recently, I’d never seen millipede poo, or seen millipedes have sex. But now I’ve seen so much of it, I’m thoroughly grossed out. Not so much by the poo as by the sex. I’m certainly no prude, and I never thought that seeing millipedes mating would have any sort of effect on me, but watching these little black worms writhing all over each other, and so many of them doing it at once, I mean geez! Horny little bastards.

And the other day I was watching a millipede edging slowly towards another one and I thought, “I know what you’re doing there, buddy” and watched. Yep, before long he’d crawled on top of the other one and they were fornicating, and right in front of my very eyes, no less! Have some decency! I guess I’m no better, being the millipede voyeur that I am. Until I decided that enough was enough, and broke up the party. Heh.

During the period where our cats were using the laundry floor as their toilet, things didn’t seem to be improving so I followed Mandy’s suggestion and put the litter box in the corner where they were going, and it seemed to solve the problem. Bingo! I was thinking yesterday that it had worked quite well, because there hadn’t been any other incidents in almost a month. That’ll teach me for not controlling my thoughts a little better.

Last night I was upstairs websurfing, and M was downstairs watching tv. He buzzed me on the phone upstairs, and said that the cats had found a new place to go to the toilet. I tentatively asked where, and he said “the toilet”. Wow! I was really impressed that they actually used the toilet for its intended purpose (although that generally doesn’t include use by animals), until he clarified that he actually meant the toilet area, and not the toilet itself. We have a toilet adjoining the laundry, and since their usual corner in the laundry was now unavailable, they decided that they’d use the corresponding corner in the toilet.

Conveniently, M was about to leave to go to play badminton, so I was left with the happy task of cleaning it up. I came downstairs to survey the damage. It trickled from the corner of the toilet area, out the door and halfway across the laundry floor. I started wiping it all up, and then looked behind the toilet door (which is near a corner) to check there wasn’t any there, only to find a huge pool accumulated. Ugh.

So now the toilet door is permanently shut, as is the door to the bathroom nearby, just in case they get any ideas.

I had my last Auslan assessment for the year last night. I didn’t think we were going to be having the assessment since we started off the class doing something entirely different, but after the coffee break the teacher said we were going to do it. The assessment involved us getting up in front of the class and signing a funny story or a joke. We didn’t have time for everyone to do theirs before the end of class, so she suggested 4 people get up and do it. Two people volunteered, and then I figured I may as well do it, to get it over and done with. Noone else volunteered, so it was just the 3 of us.

I ended up doing a search for jokes on the net and found one that I thought wouldn’t be too difficult to sign with my limited skills. I really hate getting up in front of people and having everyone look at me, and even though I’ve known all the people in my class for nearly 2 years, I still got really nervous, and I could feel my heart racing in my chest while I was waiting for my turn. My turn came and it was ok, but I think I could do so much better if I could find a way to calm down and not get so stressed. Anyway, the assessment is done and that’s it for the year. In a couple of weeks we’re going to one of the student training restaurants as and end of year thing, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve seen the menu and it actually looks quite good. It seems to be a bit hit or miss with the training restaurants here - the one at Regency TAFE is good, the one at some other TAFE (can’t remember which one) isn’t very good, so we’ll see.

*****

Our cats have taken to weeing on the laundry floor, in the vicinity of their litter tray, instead of actually in it. They started doing it in the last week or so that we were away on holiday, and my mum (who was coming every day to check on them) thought it might have been a stress-related thing because they were alone most of the time, and are used to having people around at night time at least. When we got back just over 2 weeks ago they stopped doing it, but in the last few days they’ve started again.

I think we’ve cleaned the floor 4 or 5 times this week because of them peeing on it. They position themselves in the corner of the laundry, do their business, and we come home to find a path of wee running from the corner of the room, under the litter tray to the drain. And when I pick up the tray to clean under it, it’s often pooled there and starts running to the drain. Eeeww. I cleaned the floor last night when I got home from TAFE, and had to clean it again this morning before we went to work. Not impressed.

And it’s not as if the tray is really dirty or anything - the litter in it isn’t that old. We clean it out at least twice every day and it’s been perfectly fine for them up until now. I think we’ll just have to dump what’s in there, give the tray a good clean, and hopefully that will fix it. For today, I’ve left the lid off (the lid has a little flap, like a cat door, for them to get in), to hopefully encourage them to take the extra step over the edge of the tray rather than using the floor. I suspect that we’ll get home to find that they’ve done it on the floor again, so the giant litter tray cleanout will have to occur. Damn cats, they have us wrapped around their little claw.

I’ve suggested to M that we put one of our surveillance cameras in the laundry to see which one is the culprit, but also to see if they go straight to the corner to pee, without even going near the tray, or if they start going to the tray, but then reject it for some reason.

I think it’s really weird (and stupid) that whenever I drive through a speed camera that I didn’t know was there until I see the little speed camera sign (see left), I immediately put on the brakes and drive on the dot of 60 km/hr for about 5 minutes afterwards. I know I’m not the only one who does this, either. It’s as if the camera guy/girl will see how well I’m driving, and if I was going slightly too fast before, they’ll let me off because see how I’m sticking to the speed limit like a good girl now? And that’s how fast I drive all the time, officer, really it is. I don’t think I was going too fast - I didn’t see the camera flash anyway. I guess I’ll find out in a few weeks.

One of my cats has decided that the litter tray is not good enough for him/her (although I secretly suspect that it’s her), and has taken to peeing on the floor right in front of it instead of inside it. I’ve blogged before about my cats peeing in various places around the house, including the heel part of one of M’s thongs (that’s “flip-flops”, not underwear!). I actually thought the thong thing was quite funny, since it was so perfectly aimed! In those cases, though, the tray did need changing, but the last couple of times the tray has been clean, with no reason for them not to use it! It’s quite gross - I came home to the smell of pee, which I thought was weird since the litter usually soaks it (and the odour) up, but I guess it can’t if it’s on the floor, with a nice trail of it running to the drain. Ewww.

We watched the Iron Chef episode that we taped over the weekend. That is such a funny and gross show. For those of you who may not have seen it before, each week they have a theme ingredient, and a challenger competes with an ‘Iron Chef’ to make the best meal, as judged by a panel of tasters. Just after they announce the theme ingredient, they have a little segment about it, with a guy (although not the same guy that used to do it, unfortunately) saying a bit about how it’s used, and they always have a little ’saying’ to go along with the ingredient.

Usually these sayings are pretty weird. In this episode, the theme ingredient was quail, and the ’saying’ was, “Quail is the virgin; duck is the mature woman.” What the…? It was in reference to chefs needing experience to prepare duck meat properly, and that a lot of them start out with quail first, and then move on to duck. But really - how do they come up with this stuff?

So they were making their dishes, and they showed the Iron Chef cutting off the quail heads and putting them aside. I jokingly said to M that he could stew them later… and later on, the IC deep fries them! Eeewww. They looked like little Freddy Kruegger heads when they came out of the frier. The delightful presentation of the quail heads involved cutting them lengthways in half so that the tasters could eat the brains. Now that may sound normal to some of you, but I don’t think that there is ANY way in which the presentation of halved, deep-fried quail heads can be made attractive. It just looked awful. I know that Japanese food is all about the presentation, but I really could not get into this one! Give me the pagoda carved out of a carrot any day.

After not being able to have lunch in the hotel we wanted to eat in the last 3 times we went to Hahndorf because it was booked out (you’d think we’d have learnt after the first time wouldn’t you?), we finally booked for lunch today. And after making the special effort to remember to book, I’m not in any hurry to go back.

The food was ok, but the table we were seated at afforded us a lovely view of the men’s toilets. From the position I was sitting in, a glance to the right when someone entered or exited the toilet meant that I could see all the way into the loo. Mmmm urinal fresh. There were quite a lot of tables near the men’s and women’s toilets, and I’m very surprised that they didn’t have some sort of enclosed section near the doors so that you couldn’t see people come in and out. Or at the least, a divider when you open the door so that you can’t see all the way in! I just think it’s a bit gross to place people near the toilets in the first place when they are trying to eat their meal - I thought toilets should be at the back, out of the way? Ah well, cram those sardines into the restaurant I guess.

I really hate it when people just sit there sniffing. I want to say to them, ‘Get a $@!!#$@ tissue!’ Today I was one of those people sitting there sniffing My nose was completely blocked, and I couldn’t breathe through it at all. I was dying to have an enormous sniiiiiffff (yes I know that sounds disgusting), since blowing my nose didn’t seem to do any good, but I was at work, and it would not have been pleasant for the people around me (not that that puts other people off doing disgusting things).

So I was surreptitiously trying to have little sniffs here and there, hoping that I’d be able to breathe properly again. It didn’t work, and so I was counting down the minutes until I could leave, and finally be in the cocoon of my car where noone would hear me in my full, unattractive glory.

And how sweet it was.

I’ve got my boy back - yay! He was only gone for a day, but I miss him when he’s not around to say hello to.

The cats gave us a hint that we need to buy more cat litter. We got home to find that the tray had been used, and since there wasn’t much litter in there, it didn’t quite absorb much. This was evidently distasteful to them (and to me, being one of the litter monitors in the house), because as I was cleaning it up, and putting what little we had left in the box, I heard a scrabbling in another part of the house.

We don’t have two litter trays.

Then I thought, ‘oh bugger, the stones from the aquarium!’ M used to have stones in the bottom of his tank, but replaced them with sand, so the stones have been sitting in two buckets next to the tank for quite a while now.

I went over there, and couldn’t tell straight away whether she’d actually gone in the bucket, or was just scrabbling around. There was, however, moisture on the floor around and under the buckets :/ While we were cleaning it up, we saw a wet patch in one of the buckets, so she did take a wizz in there. Lovely.

On the one hand it’s annoying because taking a pee in aquarium stones is just not on, but on the other, I sort of admire her for finding something that was similar (to her at least) to her cat litter to pee in!