Badger Galore
Staying ‘Up Over’ for a while.
"Chirrup" said the cricket.
So...tonight as I lay in bed trying to get to sleep....A cricket starts ' chirruping' somewhere in the house. Will is oblivious and fast asleep. After a while it stops and I close my eyes and try to nod off but up it starts again from somewhere else. Finally after about 30 minutes I can't stand it any longer and get up to find it. The noise seems to be coming from the kitchen....I get a torch...it goes quiet......I wait...it 'chirrups' again. I home in and spot a bug sitting on the kitchen shelf.'Aha!' I grab a glass and cover it and slip a postcard under it and carry it out into the night and send it on it's way in the darkness. I return indoors triumphant to discover....whatever I took outside was not the cricket because the damn thing is still ' chirruping' away!I listen carefully and it seems to be coming from under the shelves. Quietly, so as not to wake Will, and carefully, I remove everything from under the shelf, except a dustpan and can't see anything and of course the ' churruping' stops so I head back to bed.No sooner am I comfortable upon my pillow than the noise starts again.It is no good. I can't stand it so I get up again and return to the kitchen. It is now 'chirruping' hesitantly as at each 'chirrup' I get closer to my prey. It is still under the shelf......but where?!I lift up the dustpan and there it is startled by my torch. It's tiny, not even an inch long and yet it makes such a loud sound. I grab a glass and cover it....it jumps. This is a more cricket like bug. I think I have it this time. I slip the postcard under it and carry it out into the night to continue to sing with the rest of the 'outdoor' nocturnal chorus.I return inside...Peace and quiet!Perhaps now I can get to sleep.
Out of sorts...
So...I am feeling out of sorts at the moment.I don't know why. Perhaps it is down to all the uncertainty in the World at the moment. Everywhere you look the lunatics are taking over the asylum.We have our own lunatics here and Senator Pauline Hanson has been diving on the Great Barrier Reef to show that all the fuss about coral bleaching is nonsense....except that she went to the part that has not been affected by bleaching. Further north it was announced that the reef has suffered the worst bleaching ever.Summer has begun and we are heading into a heatwave with temperatures up to 35 degrees predicted next week....and this is up here, imagine what it will be like in Brisbane. Unfortunately we are heading down there this weekend.All the water we had in the last few months has dried up and the dam is almost back down to it's normal level. Foxwater has dried up, the grass is turning brown and the garden is withering under the heat. Watching everything shrivel does get you down.I had an email from the secretary at the small school I was at a few weeks ago. She said that another school was looking for someone to take a Year 4/5 class on a 0.4 contract next year. I thanked her for thinking of me but I don't want to take a Year 4/5 class. The next day I had a phonecall from the Principal at the big school in town I normally work at. She wondered if I would be interested in a 0.4 contract for a Year 3/4 class. I was honest and said that I was happiest and most experienced in Prep to Year 2."Would you be interested in a Semester in Prep then?" She asked."What does that mean?" I asked. "Do you mean a full term?""A Semester is two terms."That would have meant twenty weeks full time. I was honest with her and said that it was too much. I would be interested in perhaps two days a week but I told her that I enjoy my life now where work does not take over. I really don't want to go back to full time but the money would have been great. I know I made the right decision but I don't feel good about it weirdly.I have discovered that I have to do 20 hours of Professional Development in order to keep teaching supply next year....How thrilling is that?I woke up Will the other night by crying out in my sleep due to a horrible nightmare...usually it is he who has the nightmares.Doumu hatched eight chicks but we are now down to only three left. They seem to disappear daily and we don't know how. That is partly why I have been building a new 'chook' pen this week. ( I will post the pictures of it when it is finished.) I am building it further up the hill away from the garden so that the 'chooks' can be more free range...but it has to be fox proof so they will have to fly up into the coop at night. The surrounding pen will be covered over with netting to stop whatever it is from stealing the chicks. The 'chooks' will be free to leave the pen daily and wander about the front of the house but will have to fly in and out to do so.They have completely laid waste to the two pens that they have access to now and so are in dire need of further foraging space.It has been hard work building it on my own and very frustrating at times... today was 'Day 3' and Will was home early so lent a hand. We were adding hinges to the nesting boxes and the screws kept snapping and it was very wearing.All of these things add up to my feeling very out of sorts at the moment.....but there has been some good news....Will and I applied for a Low Income Health Care Card last week. It took us six hours to complete all the forms and collect all the evidence they required from us and I ended up taking half a forest of paperwork into the local Centrelink office. We were both pretty certain it was all for nothing....but lo and behold....we got it!It just means we can get cheaper prescriptions and don't have to pay for dental work. It was necessary to jump through all those hoops because we really can't afford to pay Dentist fees here.
Doh!
(From the BBC News Website).A concerned man submitted a "bagged and tagged circular object" to officers in Maroochydore, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast late last week.He feared it might have been a breast implant indicating a drowning or possibly a murder.The police station said in a statement that they had soon confirmed the find was not sinister."Officers at Maroochydore Station were all hands on deck when, much to their initial alarm, a concerned citizen attended the counter to report a possible homicide," said the statement."Investigations revealed what police suspected… the item was indeed a jellyfish."Colin Sparkes, from Surf Life Saving Queensland, said the discovery was most likely a blubber jellyfish.He said the species was commonly found in Queensland waters and its sting was irritating, but not dangerous."[The] tentacles have been knocked off by wave action or eaten by fish," he said of the one handed to police.
