Arrived home safely! Well, actually, we arrived home safely yesterday, getting in the house at about 3:30pm Thursday. The flights were much better; in all three planes we had the third seat to ourselves, so we had space to move about and put stuff, the planes were cooler, and I was actually able to get some sleep. All our baggage came through without much issue, just the usual charges for being overweight (you're only allowed 23kg of baggage total, and each bag we had was near or well over that limit; tis just a fact of moving house). I have more of my clothing now, my precious belongings, various cosmetics and, best yet, my jewelry! I can be blingin' once more. :D
First thing upon entering home that I notice is how skanky the house smells. I know we've been gone for three weeks, but that particular smell is one I associate closely with rotting vegetation. Sure enough, not one but TWO of the squashes I had stored in the kitchen cabinet had decided to liquify. The sheer audacity of them! :P I spent my first hour home cleaning up a huge mess, because they had liquified, and the watery stuff resulting of that had seeped underneath the bag of rice (thankfully it missed the paper flour and sugar bags), all along the front of the cabinet under the drinking glasses and mugs and plastic storage containers, and dripped out onto the floor. Good times! (A good excuse to look into buying flour and sugar canisters, instead of leaving them in their paper bags...)
I managed to stay awake long enough last night to eat and watch a show, and went to bed promptly at 8pm. I was asleep before hubs even made it to bed. So, this morning I get up first thing at 7am (the sky is so bright now at that time!) and go for a shower. I'm nude, standing in the cold morning air, in the shower cubicle, and I literally think "It'll be so nice to have a shower... WTF is wrong with the shower head?"
The washers had apparently dried out and shrunk enough over the last three weeks that they no longer were holding the shower head in the right position, so it just drooped sadly. I had to jury rig it (still naked, lol) so that me and hubs could shower without incident, lol. So, I went into town this morning to Charles St Hardware, bought a Fix-a-Tap universal shower washers kit, and fixed it. My name is Mrs. Plumber.
While in town I hit the library, and found several books in the returns section that appealed, and learned my library card had expired. :P That was an easy enough fix, at least. I got books on growing fruit, raising goats, first aid for horses, growing herbs in Australia and a cook and freeze recipe book. Which leads to the next piece of delightful news: We now have a stand alone mini freezer, which is going in right next to the washing machine, and will be the home of extra home grown produce, and any extra meat the fridge/freezer can't hold. It'll be especially useful if I decide to buy a 1/4 lamb carcass again, or help Zara cut up another steer. :P
Last but not least in this series of unfortunate and yet hilarious events (you can tell I'm in a damn good mood, lol), before we left for California, our washing machine stopped working. We just thought it was a loose connection somewhere, but we didn't have time to worry about it, so we had left it, and the full load of washing, until we got back. Well, we just got around to investigating it's issues, and have decided that our faithful old washing machine has croaked. Ian is doing our laundry at FILs house, and we'll go shopping for another machine tomorrow. Not bad for a machine that was already second hand (third hand?) when hubs got a hold of it.
So, that's my update for now, letting everyone know that we're well and safe, and settling back in at home. :)
First thing upon entering home that I notice is how skanky the house smells. I know we've been gone for three weeks, but that particular smell is one I associate closely with rotting vegetation. Sure enough, not one but TWO of the squashes I had stored in the kitchen cabinet had decided to liquify. The sheer audacity of them! :P I spent my first hour home cleaning up a huge mess, because they had liquified, and the watery stuff resulting of that had seeped underneath the bag of rice (thankfully it missed the paper flour and sugar bags), all along the front of the cabinet under the drinking glasses and mugs and plastic storage containers, and dripped out onto the floor. Good times! (A good excuse to look into buying flour and sugar canisters, instead of leaving them in their paper bags...)
I managed to stay awake long enough last night to eat and watch a show, and went to bed promptly at 8pm. I was asleep before hubs even made it to bed. So, this morning I get up first thing at 7am (the sky is so bright now at that time!) and go for a shower. I'm nude, standing in the cold morning air, in the shower cubicle, and I literally think "It'll be so nice to have a shower... WTF is wrong with the shower head?"
The washers had apparently dried out and shrunk enough over the last three weeks that they no longer were holding the shower head in the right position, so it just drooped sadly. I had to jury rig it (still naked, lol) so that me and hubs could shower without incident, lol. So, I went into town this morning to Charles St Hardware, bought a Fix-a-Tap universal shower washers kit, and fixed it. My name is Mrs. Plumber.
While in town I hit the library, and found several books in the returns section that appealed, and learned my library card had expired. :P That was an easy enough fix, at least. I got books on growing fruit, raising goats, first aid for horses, growing herbs in Australia and a cook and freeze recipe book. Which leads to the next piece of delightful news: We now have a stand alone mini freezer, which is going in right next to the washing machine, and will be the home of extra home grown produce, and any extra meat the fridge/freezer can't hold. It'll be especially useful if I decide to buy a 1/4 lamb carcass again, or help Zara cut up another steer. :P
Last but not least in this series of unfortunate and yet hilarious events (you can tell I'm in a damn good mood, lol), before we left for California, our washing machine stopped working. We just thought it was a loose connection somewhere, but we didn't have time to worry about it, so we had left it, and the full load of washing, until we got back. Well, we just got around to investigating it's issues, and have decided that our faithful old washing machine has croaked. Ian is doing our laundry at FILs house, and we'll go shopping for another machine tomorrow. Not bad for a machine that was already second hand (third hand?) when hubs got a hold of it.
So, that's my update for now, letting everyone know that we're well and safe, and settling back in at home. :)
