Fat Bunny

  • Oh that’s why…

    Tiny moments of awareness sometimes sneak up on you. This morning while making a coffee for the second born, I was thinking about how calm it made me to be carefully making coffee for them even when I am exhausted or sick. It’s because I miss making coffee for my father.

    My fathers visits were always a two coffee affair, one on arrival and another about an hour later, but only after he theatrically checked his watch to make sure he had time. He always had time.

    Now I make coffee for my child, and although we don’t spend hours chatting as we drink it still makes me feel connected to them as they do that adulting thing to be the person they are becoming. I miss making coffee for my father, and one day I will miss making coffee for my child.

    The last time you will do something is often a surprise, so I hope I am still making coffee for someone for a while yet, because I make a damn good cup.

    , ,

  • Occasional…

    Last night I went the Sydney Opera House to see Passenger with the younger child. Which has become a bit of a tradition, such a tradition that I have now lost count of how many of his concerts we have seen together. This however was the first time I have had a drinking age child at an event with me, since the elder child doesn’t drink at all.

    I don’t consider myself a drinker anymore but a cocktail on the harbour with snacks before the concert is definitely an occasion, so I guess I am now an “occasional drinker”. I suspect I have been to more concerts than I have had drinks in the past few years. The occasional cocktail also makes me confident that I can have a drink every few years without having to have a 2nd one. To be clear I was never an inverted commas alcoholic, but I did use it as a crutch for my anxiety. I also had a relationship with someone that was not a great person when drinking, and had no interest in addressing it, so my relationship with drinking is a bit complicated.

    I’m not sure an espresso martini counts as drinking anyway, it’s more of dessert.

  • Lace on the Gloves…

    Some days you just have to do the things.

    Ignore the obstacles and push forward.

    Today that thing that I needed to do was finally disposing of my father’s motorcycle bits and pieces. Bikes were a big part of my father’s life, he trained as a mechanic, he raced bikes, he rode them his entire life. He even used to photograph me on them, or maybe it was just an excuse to take more bike pictures.

    All the valuable ones went years ago, and it was mostly just bits and pieces and a few frames left. I was caught in the trap of placing sentimental and financial value on what was left, but to move forward they had to go.

    And the only way to do that without help to lift them is with a reciprocating saw. I’m not going to pretend that it was cathartic or depressing, it was just a job that I was putting off.

  • High Days and Holy Days…

    It was a good day, not for any particular reason just a busy day that kept my hands busy and my head empty. The closer I get to that last load of “hoarder” rubbish finally going to the tip the more motivated I am to get it done. Even if that includes struggling to solo a big old fridge into the back of ute because I can’t wait a few weeks for help.

    I could easily write a list of what needs to go now. A few people could do it all in one day, or I can do it by myself over a month. Three people can load a caravan roof onto a trailer in a few minutes, one person needs to spend hours cutting it into manageable chunks to even be able to move it. But now I know even if I have to do everything myself it can and will be done soon.

    I should be clear I am only talking about the clear up the junk stage being done. The property is now almost at a stage where I can start to do the regular work like pruning, clearing paths and repairing things. Which is hard work but at least it’s a different type of work.

    I might even get away with only wearing out one more pair of gloves on the clean up stage.

    ,
    , ,

  • Blaming Nonexistent Tools…

    Small jobs that I don’t have the correct tools for are the worst, because I know I could do the damn job in 5 minutes with the right doohickey. However when I turn up at the hardware store asking for a doohickey they just laugh at me.

    I’m two weeks behind on building a bathroom wall because I needed to borrow a multitool to cut away floor from around a wall and joist. I had to borrow it because I am tired of spending money on tools that get used once.

    I’m now not sure it was the right tool and I think a sharp chisel and some patience would have gotten the job done. I decided to make my life difficult by not just cutting out a square around the rotten floor. Instead I decided to make myself suffer through an unforgiving game of wood Tetris.

    If I wasn’t seeking personal growth I would be out there tomorrow cutting out a whole new square section, but I am trying to just get the job done. I am reminding myself that this entire patch will be underneath a wall and it is more than strong enough to support that. I am also pretty sure most people would not have bothered removing the section in the first place as it wasn’t that bad and structurally it wasn’t going to do anything.

    Another upside of doing such an ugly patch is that I now have to build a wall over it as soon as possible so I can’t see it anymore.

    ,

  • Cutting a Rug…

    I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t far more difficult than just doing it the old fashioned way.

    Scratch that, I am absolutely sure that cutting through a roll of musty old carpet with a reciprocating saw is much harder than just getting a couple of fresh blades in the utility knife. But it’s of those “I have started so I will finish” things. The 5m wide roll is now two 2.5m rolls which should make moving it to tip on Wednesday easier.

    As long as it doesn’t rain between now and then, because you would be amazed how heavy a wet carpet is.

    ,
    , , , ,

  • It’s more of a hobby…

    The giant Hell-Thorn tree that was threatening to engulf the house and curse the land two years ago, has been slowly dissected when the mood takes me. It took weeks of effort just to get it back to the stage where it was just huge and spiky.

    I can’t find a picture of when it was almost blocking the entrance to the house and covering a large section of the roof, so this photo is from a few months ago. Photos of the point in time where I first started work are a bit sparse, due to the whole trauma and grief thing making it all a bit of a blur.

    Obviously I haven’t been working on removing the tree that much as there is so much else to do, but I like to give it a wack as I go past. Well maybe more than an occasional wack.

    I have set fire to it, dug out almost a meter of soil filled with roots and rocks. I have poisoned it with various chemicals and old farmers magic potions. I have attacked it with chainsaws, reciprocating saws, axes and I have pee’d on it repeatedly… and yet it is still hanging in there.

    Some people take a smoko, I go and take a few wacks of the hell-thorn. It’s strange what can become a cathartic little ritual.

    , , ,

  • Big Ticks…

    There are some jobs that seem like bigger milestones than others. Yesterdays removal of the batteries from the old solar system felt like one of the big ones.

    The house was originally 100% off grid and then converted to mains electric much later. Which means the house had two completely separate wiring systems, both of which I have to remove, a process that is 90% done. I think I was dragging my feet on removing the batteries because they are really heavy and under a spider infested house, both of which are very good reasons to avoid something.

    I mean 600kilos of heavy, that’s 1300 pounds for the non metric readers. You will be glad to hear my back is surprisingly okay after loading and unloading these yesterday, other than a little muscle soreness I am largely unscathed. I of course was unaware exactly how much they weighed when I was loading them aft to the rear axel in the back of my ute for the 30 min drive on winding country roads to the recycling center.

    I’m no engineer but that load definitely altered the sports car like handling of an old hilux, which I assume had Lotus like 50/50 weight distribution beforehand. I traveled at 20k per hour under the speed limit with steering that felt like it was now attached by rubber bands to make a car that handled like the house from UP. I did however arrive at the scrap metal dealer largely unscathed but with noticeably worse fuel efficiency than usual. Upon arrival I was pleasantly surprised to shock the dealer with how many batteries I had precariously packed into a single work utility, I was less pleasantly surprised that I had to unload most of them myself.

    A pallet and a bit of batteries comes to 593 kilos plus a box of copper wire took the load up to over 600. It was nice to get $350 back instead of paying to get rid of things with tip fees, though technically I could have dropped these off for free at the tip because they are recyclables. But I will happily take the cash to spend on the next item at the farm so I can tick something else off the list.

  • Well there’s your problem…

    Why? That was the only question I had as I uncovered the incredibly heavy electric train door that was being used as a roof brace in the goat house.

    Other questions that came to mind shortly afterwards were:

    Where the hell did he get this from?

    How did he lift a 60-70kilo door up there?

    And importantly:

    What the hell am I going to do with it?

    Obviously I am tempted to keep it and use it as a door for one of the outbuildings, but it is so heavy it will require serious engineering to mount it safely. Also I am aware that hanging onto things without a specific need for them is how the farm got in this mess in the first place.

    My solution is to write a use by date on it. One year to be precise, so if I open the garage on the 1st of October next year and see this door labeled BEST BEFORE 30 SEP I know to throw it away like out of date milk.

  • Chilly Down…

    A day of nothing but playing with fire, and by playing I mean being a responsible adult and taking all necessary precautions.

    So after pouring a bunch of kerosene into a stack of timber and hitting it with a blow torch, I spent the day throwing things in the fire.

    It’s two days before fire restrictions kick in, so I was feeling very motivated to incinerate anything flammable that stood still. In a few days it’s back to hauling things to landfill the way the environment protection agency likes, because I’m pretty sure they are against throwing slightly damp leaves in a bonfire, and rightly so.

    Try to think of it less as environmental vandalism and more as a really big smudge stick. Because I definitely smoked out a few demons this afternoon, and had a pretty relaxing afternoon enjoying the view.