Some days are better than others and today was not one of them.  We seem to be going from one disaster to another at the moment and the truth is, it is beginning to wear me down to touch.

I’m know I’m exhausted from all the work needed to get the house reasonable.  I knew it was coming, but not quite the extent of the problem.  I had accepted it as part of this house, I love the location and the house, but the previous tenants have not looked after the place and it is badly run down.  Plus there is the issue of the heating and lack of insulation.  All Australian houses  seem to lack insulation, that seems to be part of the course, but when your only heating is an open fire that does not want to actually give you any heat (the fireplace is too big and the chimney is not tall enough to draw properly, though it is better than it was now that the fine mesh has been removed).

The cold weather is also limiting how much cleaning I can get done.  I have to do the wet cleaning (stuff I need water for or need to rinse off with water such as the walls, doors, windows, doors/window frames, floors, wardrobes, cupboards etc.) when it is warm enough to get whatever I’m cleaning dry before it gets cold again.  We had another frost again last night and much as I love the cold, clear conditions, they don’t half make cleaning difficult.  So I have a policy, wet stuff in the morning and until about 2pm unless it is raining that day (it tends to rain all day when it rains and you know about it – that has been our experience so far at least!) and dry stuff from that point onwards.  So hoovering etc gets done in the afternoon, but I do like to get the fire laid first thing because it often means a trip to the wood pile and frequently means chopping of wood.  I only do the kindling, it’s simply too much for me to manage anything else, and I switch hands frequently so my bad side does not complain.  Done first thing in the morning, when I my back is not giving me too much grief, I can just about manage enough for the day’s fire.  The fire tends to need to be lit around now, that’s 4:45pm or so.  Today seems a touch warmer, so I’ll leave it a touch more yet.  Gradually the house seems to be drying out.

Does any of this sound familiar?  It does to me.

Perhaps I need a day off?  We did consider the cinema and even established what was needed to get the wheelchair there.  We chose a film and worked out that we needed a 4pm viewing of something because it would take an hour to drive home again afterwards and any 2 hour film would need about 3 hours in total with parking the car, watching trailers, and getting out again afterwards, so that would give us an 8pm home time.  But it messes up evening meal times which are usually 6pm.  The conclusion was that we would try next weekend.

So what has made this weekend such fun?

They are not meant to do that.  They are not meant to float.  In fact, they are meant to stay in the ground.  They are meant to have been refilled with water after a clean out, so that this does not happen and so that they work correctly.

The ground anchors have been pulled out and as you can see the in pipe is no longer connected, the outlet is being ripped out of the ground… and well we no longer have sewage and Stuart is back to scent marking trees.

No 1’s are not a problem.

No 2’s pose more of an issue because there is very little top soil here, in fact if you are lucky there is around 2-3cm of top soil.  That’s about an inch.  If you go downhill there is more, but then you have the issue of getting too close to the creek.  The only field that is really good for digging in, which has a real ‘potental’ for being able to dig a deep enough hole, is out beccause it’s where our bore water comes from and, well enough said.  It’s out.  Stay away from the creek and you can’t dig a deep enough hole.  The downside of a big tree seems to be the best option.  We can get around 8 inches there.  Some are more, but they are a good walk from the house.

We added some water to the system, to try to get it to stop pulling the outlet pipe out of the ground.  But there comes a point where you have to decide that really have no experience of septic tanks try to escape from the ground and you don’t know what you are doing.  We stopped adding water when things looked better and called it a day.  It was time to top up the bore water that we had been using to refill the septic tank.

We do have a number to ring for emergencies, so Stuart rang it.  He only delivers fresh water, but knew our landlord and agreed to contact him for us because Stuart explained it was bad.  And as things go a septic tank trying to float away is not actually a good thing.  Our landlord is away, but his wife asked the guy to call round and have a look.  He did and agreed that it was a problem, it was bad, and well, on the bright side it would only take a couple of days to actually fix.  Well, one day to fix, but the first day would require a tanker to come and completely empty the septic tank, so that it could be lifted out and a digger come in and re-dig the hole, and dig a drainage channel.

So, we wait to see what tomorrow will bring.  We have emailed the agents.  Stuart will ring them the moment they open and we will take it from there.

In the meantime, the washing has not been done, Stuart is going to shower at work, I had one yesterday so can wait a little (I can always shower outside during the day), and any grey water can easily be dealt with without going down the drain.

And at least it was another really nice day.  It started off overcast and frozen, but cleared within the first hour after dawn, and has been completely clear skies, sunny and warm all day.  There wasn’t much of a sunset, but that was because there were no clouds.  But there was a coloration (yellow) of the sky in the west.  It is due to rain tomorrow, so I guess at some point it is going to cloud over, but we should be able to see the stars again tonight early on and it is great to look at them and see meteorites burn up in the atmosphere.