Last night Mr Beloved measured the noise from our back yard at 10:15 pm at 74.1dB – to give you an idea, lawnmowers are only allowed to be 75 dB.  Calling the “hotline” is pointless since it is – SURPRISE!  managed by the event.  As Mr Beloved has noted, it’s like calling the fox to report a disturbance in your henhouse.  Calling the council is just as useless: they measure the sounds levels AT THE PARK where the event is being held, not HERE where the noise is a problem!!!

Add to that the noise from Drunketta & Sullenteena’s stereo next door and I literally CANNOT HEAR MYSELF THINK. And Little Djuana Belting ‘s SCREAMING on top of that  – not that they can hear him over the stereo…

…I can’t do uni work, I can’t read, I can’t sleep (since our bedroom is less than 3 metres from Drunketta’s house.) There’s no point calling the police (since they take hours to come, there’s no guarantee the noise will still be happening when they do get here…) so I just have to suck it up.  And take my special p1lls that stop me from having a complete and utter meltdown EVEN THOUGH THAT’S WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM SO FUCKING OVER THIS NOISE.

And before you ask – no, we can’t go away for Easter -we have no money and we have animals to look after, And why should we be driven out of our home by the stupid Easterpesters?  ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!  There’s more arguments to be made there but I just can’t do it right now – I am just DONE.

That many of you?  Huh.

I am jealous of my time.  I need a  lot of sleep.  I am finding it difficult to manage how much time the course requires.  So having to spend both the lecture AND the tute time last week in what I considered to be a complete waste of my time was really, REALLY annoying.

The lecture was spent going over the first assignment in laborious detail.  With the lecturer pointing out that we probably needed to PRINT OUT the guide to the assignment as well as the assignment, even if we were going to submit the assignment electronically.  ARRRRRRRRGH!   Then the tute went over the same thing. AGAIN.  Except this time in the library.  Which we can all access from HOME because that’s the way the university system is set up.  So that was a waste of time, really, too.

And guess what? This week the lecture is on… MORE stuff for the first assignment!  Which, I should point out is worth 15% of the the course, but is only a library exercise to prove you can look up stuff and reference it properly. Yes, essential for a uni student but honestly – not worth TWO WEEKS when we’re struggling with identifying ontological metaphors in the newspaper article on which we’re meant to conduct a “textual analysis” and THAT’S worth 40%  of the course.

GET ON WITH IT!

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Oh, and did I mention there was a lovely situation last Tuesday night out the front of our place where a very violent young man assaulting a young woman… we called 000, it took forever for the police to come, and then the police just left them there (because there was nothing the police could do since the young woman wouldn’t press charges…)Eventually they moved on but it was fraught and took several cups of sweet tea before I calmed down.  I started working on some of my past trauma in therapy this week.  Yep.  Much fun.

And now I’m going to finish this !@*^&% assignment and get back into finding examples of ontological metaphors so I’m very sure I understand them.

Mr Beloved pointed out that we can’t go out in sheets in public – one set is on the bed, one set is wet on the line (and now will have that awful manky smell from being wet for days, ugh) and one set is in the cupboard – but there’s only one flat sheet per set.  So only ONE of us can wear the sheet.  Hmmm.

Poor Old Cat had another indoors accident last night – she was sent out to go to the loo, but we suspect that in the driving wind and rain she sat on the top step and decided NOT TO GO and then was caught short.  Oh dear.  (Please don’t suggest a litter box – she misses those too.  Her mind is going, not just her aim.)

Still, the forecast is for “Drizzle clearing” so we can hope that if we put another load of wash through the machine it might have some chance of drying this week…

ACTUAL SIZE! They breed BIG mozzies up here.... (well, they felt this big...)

The cheap and nasty banana lounges went back to the big chain hardware store – they STANK!  They were unbearable.  Glad we got our money back on those.

Yesterday arvo I spent lying on the floor of the lounge wrapped in a wet towel with the fans blowing on me… I am really finding this heat difficult, and I think I have to attribute it to the change in med1cat10ns – I don’t remember struggling with it this much in previous heatwaves.

Today we did some more tie dyeing – a friend’s daughter is having a “hippy” birthday party so I offered to make her a t-shirt – and Mr Beloved needed a few too.  The shirts are baking in plastic bags in the sun and are too hot to touch – a good sign, because it helps the colours batch and become really intense. Photos to follow.

I have picked up ANOTHER damn head cold – this time it’s gone straight to my ears.  Every time I blow my nose my ears block up even more.  MISERY!!!

Right – time to get showered, do an inventory of what’s left in the fridge, and head to the greengrocer – another baking session when it cools down tonight (zucchini slice again) should see us through the next few hot days.  Just as well we don’t mind eating the same thing for a week at a time!

The bottom of our street, January 10, 2011

North Street bridge over Gowrie Creek, January 10, 2010

February: Clean-up from floods, plus:

Yarrow, 3 Feb, 2011 - a cheeky baby

And we found termite damage. Which meant that: (with HUGE thanks to Mum and Dad for their generous help)

March:

The house, midway through stump replacement

And April:

New roof

Also new gutters, new water tank, repairs to the solar hot water, new ceilings in two rooms…

May:

Before and after(ish - it's ongoing...)

Painted.

June:

New CPAP machine (with very cool glyph to RTFM)

July:

We were all sick and sooky

August:

We sacked the Bad Psychiatrist

September:

The bandicoot loves cat food

October:

And we had the red bellied black snake near the house *shudder*

November:

We have a new stove - and a working oven!

Mr Beloved tangled with some of the local wildlife.

December:

More local wildlife

I also did some online art classes; caught some variety of cold or flu every time we went to the doctors, went to the psychologist and psychiatrist and group therapy, had facet joint injections in my spine but then found out I have neuropathic pain (which needs different treatment), and read 174 books (not counting most of the cookbooks and picture books I read and a few that weren’t already in the Shelfari system that I couldn’t be bothered adding.)

Our region turned off the analogue TV signal at the start of December.  We bought a new DVD player somewhere around May but haven’t plugged it in yet (!) so I haven’t watched any DVDs for most of the year.  I didn’t go to the movies at all.  I didn’t sew anything.

Plans for 2012: get the sewing room and front room cleared out and operational; more therapy; walking as much as I can; eating less processed food (and cutting out bought sweets altogether – far better to bake things and know exactly what’s gone into them); and possibly – maybe – enrolling in a uni course (major in creative writing with a minor in history, or possible the other way around.)

Whew!

(Note: though we see these around often, this is the first time one has come inside the shed… I don’t think we want to add one to the menagerie!)

My simple pizza

So the new stove got its first run last night – not with anything super-special, but with lazy pizzas.  We don’t even make the dough – just use a round of Lebanese  (pita) bread, slap something appropriately tomatoey on (last night, as we often do, we used tomato paste) then the toppings – I had some ham, pepperoni and black olives and cheese.

Mr Beloved likes his pizzas slightly taller and more elaborate:

Mr Beloved's pizza

He added pineapple, bocconcini, a lot more tomato paste and sundried tomatoes in oil.

Mr B's pizza, cooking

The oven performed well above expectations – we set it at 170 C (well below the approx 220 C the old stove needed for pizza.) It heats up quickly and the “intensive cook” setting (fan forced with both top and bottom element on) worked brilliantly for pizzas – they crisped up quickly on the bottom and everything melted on top.

Don't forget the puppy, Dad!

It will be interesting to try the smaller, top oven – but that’s not happening today because I’m STILL fighting the Dreaded Lurgey  – today with added gastro symptoms!  YAY!  *headdesk*.

Mr B made his usual post-prandial coffee in his sputtery old Bialetti-style espresso maker

We have a *copy* of this beastie

and when it leaked onto the new stove top, it wasn’t a problem!  The hob has a little red light that warns that the hob might still be hot (useful!) and when it was a cool, a quick swipe with some damp paper towel got rid of the drips.  SUCH a difference from having to dismantle the whole top of the stove to clean a spill!

The electricians were very good, made the stove connection LONG enough that we can move the stove out by a over a metre so we can clean the wall behind it (and eventually install a splashback.  Yep, our kitchen is somewhat primitive – when Mr B bought the place 15 years ago there was an old wood stove and that was ALL.)  So no rangehood or exhaust fan (yet) and because the last stove was connected to gas (until it developed the death leak) it couldn’t be moved out from the wall – so the gunk built up.  Ugh.  I’ve attacked some of it with bicarb, vinegar and lots of elbow grease – but getting that sort of baked on grease off paintwork pretty much takes the paint with it.

AAAAAND the electrician let us know there was no point trying to get a circuit breaker to fit our old fuse box – “You can’t get the parts, love!”  -  So we have more fuse wire but will eventually have to upgrade.  Oh, and fix the !@&!^(*^ earth stake thingummy that the builders did wrong (they put it in concrete – not earth – *headdesk*) and replace the last bit of cotton covered wiring to one light switch (WHICH I THOUGHT HAD BEEN ALREADY DONE!!!) Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!  In short, with labour, about another $1000 worth of work.  Which will just bloody well have to wait, because we don’t have the money. Apaprently none of it is super urgent, just ANNOYING.

And so far as I know – the electricians DID NOT BREAK ANYTHING!  This may well be a first for the tradesmen we have dealt with this year. Yay? They also turned up when they said they would and cost what they quoted.  Gotta be happy with that.

This is it – a Belling (from Britain) multifunction, double oven stove with ceramic cooktop.  SO EXCITING!!  The electrician will be here first thing in the morning to connect it and then LOOK OUT!

I’m NOT going to go berserk cooking cakes and desserts, because I’m trying very hard to eat better.  But on payday I’m hoping we can get a nice leg of lamb (oooh, roast meat, how I’ve missed you!) and before then I think we have enough veges on hand to make the notorious zucchini slice.

I am going to gradually replace my cake tins/cookie slides/ baking tins that have gone rusty and can’t be rejuvenated.   And we need a frying pan or wok for the top of the stove, that’s for sure – our benchspace is so limited that we need to put away the electric frypan we’ve been relying on as soon as we can.  Somehow I need to get all my art stuff out of the kitchen so we can use the kitchen table as benchspace…. yikes, we have some reorganising to do!

(I’ve still been sick with the Dreaded Lurgey this week – today was the first morning I haven’t woken up coughing.  YAY! )

Not much else to report – I’m happily reading cookbooks and looking forward to making a birthday cake in the next fortnight.

Awwww!

(Look at the pretty flower and the intensely interested dog!)

Group therapy… was better last week, but still scary.  I go again tomorrow.  It’s completely exhausting.  Last week was much better than the first week, but it’s still very intense  – partly because of just HOW LONG you’re sitting there, and partly because you just don’t know what’s going to come up – and I wasn’t ready to deal with some of the issues that were raised last week. Then on Friday I had another two hours of therapy on top of groups – arrrrrgh!  My brain hurts!

Nigella damascena seedpod

I’m also doing homework  – working through some of the “Infopax” that are available FREE online from the Centre for Clinical Intervention in Western Australia.  I’m currently working through the “What me, Worry?” modules.  Their approach is based in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is ok – I’ll take what works for me and let what doesn’t work go.   (The group therapy and one-on-one therapy I do is based on Acceptance Commitment Therapy which is a different way of looking at things and one I find works better for me generally.)

The new door curtain

We had a disappointment with the tie dyed shirts – the sizes were WRONG!  (See this post on Mr Beloved’s blog for details - essentially, the store short-changed us in the size by saying the size was the same as last year but making the shirt SMALLER!)

Our new stove!  It’s a British brand, Belling, which I hadn’t come across before (but Dad tells me that Nana had a “Baby Belling Stovette” in her kitchen in Leeton from 1940 something and it was still there and working when they sold the house 60 years later…)

I’m super excited.  We ordered it yesterday and it will take about a week to arrive.  The delivery charge of $54 includes removal and disposal of the old stove, so that’s one more thing taken care of. (I haven’t phoned the electrician yet to ask how much for his part of the installation – must do that.)

We haven’t had a completely working stove since May 2010 when the hotplates on our current stove stuffed up… and we were told “You can’t get the parts, love.”  Then at the start of August this year the oven stopped working.  Which means only the grill works. FRUSTRATING!

And I was really getting tired of not being able to cook simple meals – especially things like my beloved zucchini slice and the family recipe for tuna pie that is so good that once my sister phoned home from her holidays just to get the recipe.  Strangely, I need my oven more in Summer than in Winter – being able to have something already made in the fridge to just have a salad with is important.

And even though we don’t do a big fuss for Christmas, I do like to have some fruit cake. And be able to make birthday cakes for friends.  I enjoy that and I’ve missed being able to do it.  And PIZZA!  We don’t buy commercial pizzas because we prefer our own versions (lebanese pita bread as the base, good quality ingredients for the topping, and not too much cheese.)  The new oven even has a special setting for pizza!

The controls look complicated but after I read the instruction manual online they made sense – you can have fan or not, heat just the top element, just the bottom, or both, and you don’t need to heat up the larger (69 Litre) of the two ovens for a batch of scones or a simple cake – the smaller (39 Litre) oven (which also doubles as the grill with different control settings) is just as good, apparently.  We shall see.

So thanks, Mum and Dad – this is a super brilliant Christmas pressie!!