Thursday 13th May

I’ve got the definitive book title finally. Anyone who looks at the header in here will see it.

I spent a frantic hour this morning trying to find one of my hearing aids, the left one which gives me nearly 90% hearing. I have suspicions one of the pet rats has taken umbrage at my removing any food items from the benchtop, making sure the cupboard doors are securely shut, and putting more poison out for them, by removing one of my hearing aids. To say I am annoyed is possibly a bit mild. I’ve got 60% / 80% hearing in my right ear with hearing aids, depending on background noise, without the left one I have huge problems understanding anyone. Plus it affects my balance as well for some reason, it could be from the different noise levels I hear, or whatever. So I’m back to 40% hearing for a while. The neighbours will have to get used to LOUD music coming from my place for a while.

Emailed Steve to see if the insurance will cover it, once he stopped laughing he said it should do, unless I was deliberately feeding the rats with them because I’d run out of other food.

Then later in the day, adjusting the throttle cable on one of the grasscutters, I dropped my glasses case, no worry, I had my reading glasses on to see what I was doing, then once finished I stepped back to look for the case and promptly stood on my normal glasses that had fallen out of the case. The frames are not too badly bent, but the screws holding them together had popped out, in amongst the grass and leaf litter. Did I mention that I was already a bit annoyed? I managed to find some screws at home tonight, one of the things I had actually stocked up on prior to coming, so I have distance/driving glasses again.

Thank whoever tomorrow is Friday, another day like today would be a bit too much.

Did I mention my usual disagreement with Solomon Telekom and their version of Broadband? And how the local gateway and DNS keep failing? And how it takes 30 – 90 minutes to open hotmail? White pages appearing with DONE in the bottom corner?

I’m not in a pleasant mood at the moment. You have to laugh at it all, if I ever took any of this seriously I’d be a prime candidate for those jackets with the buckles and sleeves that do up at the back.

Rose is talking of putting Mum into a care home for a week, from what she said I gather Mum isn’t all that happy about it, which is understandable. It isn’t as if Mum is senile or helpless. She’s in the last stages of cancer, can’t eat, is losing strength all the time rapidly, but I think she’d rather die in her own home, than anywhere else. The Hospice still have people calling in, it’s one of those situations where Rose is right there, I’m a long way away, so I can’t say what is right or wrong about it. If it was me, I’d be fighting tooth and nail to stay home, so what if I fell, died or whatever, in the same situation as Mum, where I’d be dying anyway, I’d rather it was where I felt comfortable, not somewhere different.

I finally found Andrew this morning, he has another week to go before he sees the surgeon again. The bone in his thumb has started to knit, but only at the bottom. There are still the 2 stainless wires holding it together, but there is no infection and his thumb apparently looks normal on the outside. It is still heavily bandaged. He has had his head shaved, so he looks about 10 years old now, or younger, I’ll get a photo next time. He is coming into work next week to go over the nursery plans with me, so he will understand what and why we are doing when we start building.

I’ve just spent an hour going through the house trying to find my hearing aid, all I’ve found so far is a rat nest in the bottom of the stove, another in the bottom of the fridge, both of which I had cleaned out when I got back from New Zealand. And still can’t find any entry points for the bloody things. I know there is still one at least in here, but I haven’t found it yet tonight. I haven’t found any more pieces of the missing aid yet, I may have to pull the 2 nests apart and check.

I was talking to Tiff about my pets today, and said they are similar to the Kiorie in New Zealand, and she mentioned that was the old name for them on Bellona, which is understandable given that Rennel/Bellona were settled by Polynesians several hundred years ago. They still speak Polynesian there, almost the same dialect as the Cook Islands, and Maori, a group from New Zealand that came here a couple of years ago looking for ancestors were able to be understood fairly easily. There are some words that have become altered with Melanesian over time, but it is still predominately Polynesian language. We have some strange conversations at times, over a wide range of subjects. Even the myths and legends on Bellona are the same as Cook Island and Maori, up to Maui, they have similar fire stealing stories, there are enough volcanoes here to work out where they come from, the migration stories, and they know the general direction of Hawaiikii from the arrival legends when they came here.

I couldn’t wait. Found some gloves and pulled one of the nests apart, from under the stove, and found the battery from the hearing aid, and the soft plastic insert, which has been chewed. No sign of the rest of it though. I have no idea what a rat would want with a hearing aid, unless it was partially deaf?

The little truck. I really shouldn’t mention it anymore, it has gone past the ludicrous stage and is reaching total farce now. Having spent nearly 12 months now being more in the garage than out of it, it still won’t start in the morning, despite having new glow plugs, a new alternator, a new battery, new fuel filters, a reconditioned fuel pump, reconditioned injectors. And the brakes still don’t, even with new shoes, new slave cylinders, new master cylinder, reconditioned power cylinder. I’m beginning to have doubts about the mechanic.

It’s due for a road worthy certificate next month, which is why we took it in originally last year. After 12 months it still isn’t road worthy. Did I mention I am having doubts about the mechanic?

All the irrigation system will be on its way shortly, the payment should be going through tomorrow, to make the May container coming up from Brisbane. Then it will be all go for a while setting everything up, another reason to have Andrew with me, even if he can’t do anything for a while. I’m going to mark out the area on Monday with him, so he can get an idea of the scale and size, and where everything will be fitting in. Our other stuff is only a week away, the planter bags, propagation trays and tubes, weedmat, but it will be the irrigation lines we need initially. It’s just taken a while to get it all sourced and sent.

I still have a few things to pick up in New Zealand that I haven’t found in Australia, well, not easily available from the people I’ve been dealing with. Tying gun and tape, elastrator handpiece for clipping the plant stakes together, all small stuff that I know where to obtain in New Zealand.