We, like most in Brisbane, have a family of possums living around the house. At night they rampage across the tin roof and they sound like a herd of elephants.
In the evenings, Mr Pickle and I (or daddy) go on possum patrol down the road. It is very exciting for a three year old and it gives him a bit of exercise before bed. The last few patrols have not been very successful so we have taken matters into our own hands.
Mr Pickle likes to eat apples and pears and we have started chopping the cores into pieces and saving them in one if my many Tupperware tubs in the fridge. Tonight we placed the fruit leftovers out on the fence and we had a little visitor for our viewing pleasure.
I have pics to share but I can't work out how to suck them off the iPad onto the blog.
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Monday, 10 October 2011
The female of the species is more deadly than the male......
I sincerely hope that mum doesn't see this before she boards the plane.
Today Mr Pickle and I decided to play with a box of toys that had previously been put away in the storage area under the house. We pulled the box from under the chair in the lounge and onto the rug. Mr pickle was very excited as he pulled the lid off and started to rummage around.
We both saw the furry body and many eyes looking at us at the same time. At the bottom of the box was the biggest and hairiest spider I have ever been in the same room as. Mr Pickle looked at me expectantly and then reacted to the look of horror on my face. He grabbed his plastic bubble sword from the floor, pushed it into my hands and whilst running away shouted "hit it mummy, with my sword, my sword, hit it". So I did and it continued to stare at me.
I ran into the kitchen for the insect spray and and squirted it at point blank range. This time I swear I could hear an evil laugh echo around the toy box. Mr Pickle is now in the middle of the king size bed shouting "is it dead yet". At this point I am shouting to him to get his grabber and he refused to move from his safe haven.
I ran to his bedroom and was thankful that I knew exactly where the grabber was. Luckily the spider was so brazen by now that it felt it could mince about in the toy box and not try and escape somewhere. I caught it in the nippers of the grabber and it was waggling it's legs around madly. I took it out on the deck and whacked it with the barbecue tongs.
The spider's body was about an inch long from head to tail and four inches from toe to toe. I sent a picture if the splatted beastie to Jeremy and the gang in his office identified it as a huntsman and judging from the size, a female. I may have overeacted slightly as it turns out they are mostly just scary big and bites hurt but aren't deadly!
Today Mr Pickle and I decided to play with a box of toys that had previously been put away in the storage area under the house. We pulled the box from under the chair in the lounge and onto the rug. Mr pickle was very excited as he pulled the lid off and started to rummage around.
We both saw the furry body and many eyes looking at us at the same time. At the bottom of the box was the biggest and hairiest spider I have ever been in the same room as. Mr Pickle looked at me expectantly and then reacted to the look of horror on my face. He grabbed his plastic bubble sword from the floor, pushed it into my hands and whilst running away shouted "hit it mummy, with my sword, my sword, hit it". So I did and it continued to stare at me.
I ran into the kitchen for the insect spray and and squirted it at point blank range. This time I swear I could hear an evil laugh echo around the toy box. Mr Pickle is now in the middle of the king size bed shouting "is it dead yet". At this point I am shouting to him to get his grabber and he refused to move from his safe haven.
I ran to his bedroom and was thankful that I knew exactly where the grabber was. Luckily the spider was so brazen by now that it felt it could mince about in the toy box and not try and escape somewhere. I caught it in the nippers of the grabber and it was waggling it's legs around madly. I took it out on the deck and whacked it with the barbecue tongs.
The spider's body was about an inch long from head to tail and four inches from toe to toe. I sent a picture if the splatted beastie to Jeremy and the gang in his office identified it as a huntsman and judging from the size, a female. I may have overeacted slightly as it turns out they are mostly just scary big and bites hurt but aren't deadly!
Friday, 2 September 2011
Where Are My Shipping Boxes 3 - The Box Room
Having been very concerned about the fact that the ship carrying our cargo from the UK to Australia (according to the tracking pages on the shipping company's website) was bouncing between Egypt and Italy, I needn't have been worried because they were actually aboard a completely different ship and arrived safely in Brisbane port last week.
We were given a timeslot of between 9 am and 10 am for delivery and I thought I was safe showering at 8.30. Wrong! I got out of the shower to be greeted by Mr Pickle saying "Mummy, your phone was making a lot of noises". The delivery man was early and was trying to get hold of me? Unheard of! I rang the number that had been left on the voicemail and heard a ringtone outside of the house. I looked up and saw a face in the window of the front door. Thankfully, I wasn't in the nip!
So, the boxes were delivered and filled one end of the lounge. A return to box city. You might think that this is why I have named the sequel to the sequel The Box Room. No, duh, duh duh....suspence music....all will be revealed.
These boxes contained (past tense, as I have single handedly emptied them with a little interference from Mr Pickle) our kitchen gadgets, crockery, cutlery, Mr Pickles's toys amongst other treasured items. In our house back in the UK, we had lots of cupboards in our kitchen and utility room. This proved just the right amount of space to hide a multitude of items we seldom use but would be desperate for if you didn't have it, i.e. the egg slicer. We didn't think we had lots of cupboards in the UK until we saw what the average Australian kitchen cupboard quota is. We also have a cupboard/bad boy room (that would be for Jeremy, not Mr Pickle) which is labelled as a Butler room. Hmmm, not sure how much butling you can do in a space that is about 10 cm wider than a shipping box (see where I am leading you in my story) and as long as three. It is actually meant to have the washing machine in there with a wall mounted dryer but the door isn't wide enough to get one through. There are even mounting brackets on the wall for the dryer to hang on.
Jeremy has been in the outback for the last two weeks. It is a dangerous thing to leave me to my own devices with lots of empty cardboard boxes and a space that was just crying out for some makeshift cupboarding. This house has now been improved by the addition of an actual 'box room'. There is one cardboard box cupboard hanging on the wall brackets (that took some measuring for the hanging holes on the back) one below it with a piece of flooring as a a worktop (the bread making station) and on the opposite side of the glory hole there is a tall cupboard (two boxes, stacked one on top of the other) containing Mr Pickle's craft supplies and the Hoover.
It was just like being six again, when I used to make Sindy houses and furniture out of shoe and tissue boxes. I think I may have stumbled on to the next big thing! You heard it here first ladies and gentlemen. Forget Ikea kitchens. PikeaTM kitchens are so the thing of next Tuesday.
We were given a timeslot of between 9 am and 10 am for delivery and I thought I was safe showering at 8.30. Wrong! I got out of the shower to be greeted by Mr Pickle saying "Mummy, your phone was making a lot of noises". The delivery man was early and was trying to get hold of me? Unheard of! I rang the number that had been left on the voicemail and heard a ringtone outside of the house. I looked up and saw a face in the window of the front door. Thankfully, I wasn't in the nip!
So, the boxes were delivered and filled one end of the lounge. A return to box city. You might think that this is why I have named the sequel to the sequel The Box Room. No, duh, duh duh....suspence music....all will be revealed.
These boxes contained (past tense, as I have single handedly emptied them with a little interference from Mr Pickle) our kitchen gadgets, crockery, cutlery, Mr Pickles's toys amongst other treasured items. In our house back in the UK, we had lots of cupboards in our kitchen and utility room. This proved just the right amount of space to hide a multitude of items we seldom use but would be desperate for if you didn't have it, i.e. the egg slicer. We didn't think we had lots of cupboards in the UK until we saw what the average Australian kitchen cupboard quota is. We also have a cupboard/bad boy room (that would be for Jeremy, not Mr Pickle) which is labelled as a Butler room. Hmmm, not sure how much butling you can do in a space that is about 10 cm wider than a shipping box (see where I am leading you in my story) and as long as three. It is actually meant to have the washing machine in there with a wall mounted dryer but the door isn't wide enough to get one through. There are even mounting brackets on the wall for the dryer to hang on.
Jeremy has been in the outback for the last two weeks. It is a dangerous thing to leave me to my own devices with lots of empty cardboard boxes and a space that was just crying out for some makeshift cupboarding. This house has now been improved by the addition of an actual 'box room'. There is one cardboard box cupboard hanging on the wall brackets (that took some measuring for the hanging holes on the back) one below it with a piece of flooring as a a worktop (the bread making station) and on the opposite side of the glory hole there is a tall cupboard (two boxes, stacked one on top of the other) containing Mr Pickle's craft supplies and the Hoover.
It was just like being six again, when I used to make Sindy houses and furniture out of shoe and tissue boxes. I think I may have stumbled on to the next big thing! You heard it here first ladies and gentlemen. Forget Ikea kitchens. PikeaTM kitchens are so the thing of next Tuesday.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Happy Birthday to me
It was my first Australian birthday today. I have decided that you need to take a year off each birthday on this side of the world, not add one on. One of my ancestors did a very similar thing in relation to the Antipodes! If it was good enough for her, it's good enough for me and she got away with it.
Jeremy took over Pickle duty for the morning and left me lounging in my bed awaiting my birthday phonecall from mum and dad. We have no Internet at the moment and you know what that means. No skype, no facebook and no emails. So I didn't get to see them but it was nice to talk.
I am developing twitches and tics. I keep going to look things up on the Internet and getting as far as loading the browser before I remember. I am like a sniffer dog when it comes to wifi hotspots, I can smell them from 20 paces and I am there armed and ready with my iPad at all times! It is the only way to get through the withdrawal symptoms. I am having to write my blogs offline and then upload it when I find a hotspot. I am an Internet Nomad. No fixed Internet abode.
Anyway, back to my birthday shenanigans. Jeremy made us breakfast on the barbecue and we ate it on the deck. How Australian was that? Even better because it is actually winter here.
Then we went out into Brisbane CBD. Jeremy was going to buy me something shiny in Tiffany but the shop assistants did not Even acknowledge that we were in the shop so we stomped out in high dudgeon, pretty woman stylee. We stomped all the way around the corner to the Pandora shop where I had to take over the shiny shopping for two reasons. 1) Mr Pickle does not like to shop and he had reach critical mass and 2) Jeremy was taking work phone calls (on my birthday of all days and it was a Saturday). So I chose some locking beads and a peridot (birthstone) charm from Jeremy and a tiny Babooshka charm from Gran.
I was then rushed out of the shop and frogmarched to the other side of the river, my attempts to pop into the library thwarted! All the while Jeremy is taking what I thought were work calls (some were) and I am fuming thinking that this is pants on my birthday.
Little did I know that Jeremy had planned a surprise picnic for me in the Southbank parklands with Heidi, Nigel, Nicky, baby Sophie and Ewa. As we were marching to the playground I noticed a baby on the ground and thought, why is Sophie lying on the grass?All of the grownups had looked away so I wouldn't see them and then they all turned and shouted surprise. it was completely unexpected and a lovely surprise that was very well organized by Jeremy and kept secret by Mr Pickle, who for the previous two days had kept telling me that he and daddy had bought me two birthday cards and a small triangle.
Jeremy took over Pickle duty for the morning and left me lounging in my bed awaiting my birthday phonecall from mum and dad. We have no Internet at the moment and you know what that means. No skype, no facebook and no emails. So I didn't get to see them but it was nice to talk.
I am developing twitches and tics. I keep going to look things up on the Internet and getting as far as loading the browser before I remember. I am like a sniffer dog when it comes to wifi hotspots, I can smell them from 20 paces and I am there armed and ready with my iPad at all times! It is the only way to get through the withdrawal symptoms. I am having to write my blogs offline and then upload it when I find a hotspot. I am an Internet Nomad. No fixed Internet abode.
Anyway, back to my birthday shenanigans. Jeremy made us breakfast on the barbecue and we ate it on the deck. How Australian was that? Even better because it is actually winter here.
Then we went out into Brisbane CBD. Jeremy was going to buy me something shiny in Tiffany but the shop assistants did not Even acknowledge that we were in the shop so we stomped out in high dudgeon, pretty woman stylee. We stomped all the way around the corner to the Pandora shop where I had to take over the shiny shopping for two reasons. 1) Mr Pickle does not like to shop and he had reach critical mass and 2) Jeremy was taking work phone calls (on my birthday of all days and it was a Saturday). So I chose some locking beads and a peridot (birthstone) charm from Jeremy and a tiny Babooshka charm from Gran.
I was then rushed out of the shop and frogmarched to the other side of the river, my attempts to pop into the library thwarted! All the while Jeremy is taking what I thought were work calls (some were) and I am fuming thinking that this is pants on my birthday.
Little did I know that Jeremy had planned a surprise picnic for me in the Southbank parklands with Heidi, Nigel, Nicky, baby Sophie and Ewa. As we were marching to the playground I noticed a baby on the ground and thought, why is Sophie lying on the grass?All of the grownups had looked away so I wouldn't see them and then they all turned and shouted surprise. it was completely unexpected and a lovely surprise that was very well organized by Jeremy and kept secret by Mr Pickle, who for the previous two days had kept telling me that he and daddy had bought me two birthday cards and a small triangle.
Monday, 1 August 2011
The longer you animals bark, the colder your lunch gets....
Yesterday, Jeremy and I escaped for the evening!
Our friend Heidi kindly offered to babysit Mr Pickle so that we could go and watch The Goonies at the cinema.
We sneaked off at five o'clock and caught the train from behind the house. Having the train station two doors up is very handy. We travelled to Roma Street Station and walked to the cinema from there.
After grabbing a subway sandwich each we got to the cinema about 10 minutes before the film was about to start. We bought tickets and went into Screen 1. We were the only people in there.
Sadly, there was no balcony for Jeremy to climb up to and make fake puking noises from! Three minutes before the film was about to start two more people came in, they were very shocked to see us sat there.
At six o'clock the projectionist walked up the stairs to start the film rolling, the lights dimmed and the film began without trailers or adverts. We were very excited as the giant skull was projected onto the screen. It was at that point that we were expecting the flood of late comers, as is the norm in Indonesia. We weren't disappointed. A stream of four people rushed in, doubling the number of the audience!
We sat back and enjoyed the classic that is The Goonies. The truffle shuffle is a sight to behold on the big screen! Jeremy took some sneaky photos of the classic scenes for posterity and my blog. I will post them up when we have found the camera cable.
Our friend Heidi kindly offered to babysit Mr Pickle so that we could go and watch The Goonies at the cinema.
We sneaked off at five o'clock and caught the train from behind the house. Having the train station two doors up is very handy. We travelled to Roma Street Station and walked to the cinema from there.
After grabbing a subway sandwich each we got to the cinema about 10 minutes before the film was about to start. We bought tickets and went into Screen 1. We were the only people in there.
Sadly, there was no balcony for Jeremy to climb up to and make fake puking noises from! Three minutes before the film was about to start two more people came in, they were very shocked to see us sat there.
At six o'clock the projectionist walked up the stairs to start the film rolling, the lights dimmed and the film began without trailers or adverts. We were very excited as the giant skull was projected onto the screen. It was at that point that we were expecting the flood of late comers, as is the norm in Indonesia. We weren't disappointed. A stream of four people rushed in, doubling the number of the audience!
We sat back and enjoyed the classic that is The Goonies. The truffle shuffle is a sight to behold on the big screen! Jeremy took some sneaky photos of the classic scenes for posterity and my blog. I will post them up when we have found the camera cable.
Monday, 25 July 2011
Where are my shipping boxes 2, the return of cardboardiness
They're here!
Update: Jeremy has posted pics of the new house on his blog.
Boxes arrived today as promised in a massive container at the arranged time! I was late as the truck I was driving got stuck in reverse gear!! Jeremy thought that I had driven over to the house. My name is not Mater and I am not the world's best backwards driver. I managed to fix it somehow.
Anyway, Mr Pickle and I arrived and we set to work pointing in directions for the boxes to be taken. It got to the 3 seated sofa coming off the van and there was much concern about it's size and the fact that it would not go through the two turns needed to get it inside.
Luckily Jeremy chose that minute to come for a nosey. It took four grown men, one step ladder and a wheelie bin but it came through the front of the porch (one story up). Phew. At one point we thought we were going to have the most comfortable deck furniture in the world!
Mr Pickle is very pleased to have his Thomas Trains back, along with his building site and Lego. The beds are built and the mattresses were supposed to arrive today too. I was very excited and measured the holes for the mattresses to fit into as we weren't 100% sure they would. They will and I dug out the bedding in preparation. At lunch time I rang the bed company to get an idea of delivery time. It was a very sorry person on the other end of the line who discovered that there had been a mix up and there would be no delivery to us today. They will be with us in Thursday instead.
Everything made is through quarantine and customs, even the mankey seed pod and pine cone decoration that actually belonged to the Balikpapan house. Jeremy has already installed my hanging chair and my giant pod seat is under the deck waiting for us to move in and choose the perfect place for it in the garden.
Mr Pickle had a fabulous day reacquainting himself with his toys and Spongebob Squarepants on the telly. He is now tuckered out and we have had to return to the apartment to sleep following a very yummy barbecue, cooked by Jeremy, to say thank you to our helpers who ably assisted me while he was beavering away in work.
I wanted to take pictures of the grand moving in but the camera got covered up in the kitchen and never resurfaced. Will try and take some pics tomorrow when it is dug out of the Tupperware land slide!
Tomorrow Mr Pickle and I are heading down to Ikea. Smaland awaits the invasion.
Update: Jeremy has posted pics of the new house on his blog.
Boxes arrived today as promised in a massive container at the arranged time! I was late as the truck I was driving got stuck in reverse gear!! Jeremy thought that I had driven over to the house. My name is not Mater and I am not the world's best backwards driver. I managed to fix it somehow.
Anyway, Mr Pickle and I arrived and we set to work pointing in directions for the boxes to be taken. It got to the 3 seated sofa coming off the van and there was much concern about it's size and the fact that it would not go through the two turns needed to get it inside.
Luckily Jeremy chose that minute to come for a nosey. It took four grown men, one step ladder and a wheelie bin but it came through the front of the porch (one story up). Phew. At one point we thought we were going to have the most comfortable deck furniture in the world!
Mr Pickle is very pleased to have his Thomas Trains back, along with his building site and Lego. The beds are built and the mattresses were supposed to arrive today too. I was very excited and measured the holes for the mattresses to fit into as we weren't 100% sure they would. They will and I dug out the bedding in preparation. At lunch time I rang the bed company to get an idea of delivery time. It was a very sorry person on the other end of the line who discovered that there had been a mix up and there would be no delivery to us today. They will be with us in Thursday instead.
Everything made is through quarantine and customs, even the mankey seed pod and pine cone decoration that actually belonged to the Balikpapan house. Jeremy has already installed my hanging chair and my giant pod seat is under the deck waiting for us to move in and choose the perfect place for it in the garden.
Mr Pickle had a fabulous day reacquainting himself with his toys and Spongebob Squarepants on the telly. He is now tuckered out and we have had to return to the apartment to sleep following a very yummy barbecue, cooked by Jeremy, to say thank you to our helpers who ably assisted me while he was beavering away in work.
I wanted to take pictures of the grand moving in but the camera got covered up in the kitchen and never resurfaced. Will try and take some pics tomorrow when it is dug out of the Tupperware land slide!
Tomorrow Mr Pickle and I are heading down to Ikea. Smaland awaits the invasion.
Friday, 15 July 2011
We are special
Mr Pickle's classic quote of the day:
"I am very special mummy and so are you." I asked, "what about Daddy?" Mr Pickle's reply, "Daddy isn't special, he is all funny and silly with big eyes."
Ha ha.
We are off to the park again this afternoon. There will be scooting and pictures to follow.
"I am very special mummy and so are you." I asked, "what about Daddy?" Mr Pickle's reply, "Daddy isn't special, he is all funny and silly with big eyes."
Ha ha.
We are off to the park again this afternoon. There will be scooting and pictures to follow.
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