I must be on a roll. Two blogs in two days. That or I need a life (netball is over, got my nights back).
It is a beautiful day today, the sun is shinning, the birds are singing, there are calves and lambs running around everywhere, the ducks have disappeared presumably sitting on a clutch of eggs and the F*&king blowflies are hatching. We live in paradise. We do however have share the place with some of God’s dirtiest little creatures.
So while I sit here, quietly doing some computer work, while my youngest 2 munchkins have their afternoon nap, I am being serenaded by the distant (and occasionally not to distant) buzz of flies. Why are they in my house you ask? Good freaking question. The Screen Man is supposed to be redoing my screens (because there isn’t a lot of point left in the old ones). April just gone. Now it is August. The second last day of August to be exact. And I still don’t have my screens.
To his credit, I know he has been. He came back to measure the same doorway about 4 times. I mean it is possible it could have grown. It’s winter, we have had a lot of rain. And it is a wooden doorway. But where I come from wood does tend to stop growing when you chop it down and turn it into chunks of house. 25 years ago…
I rang him this morning. Blank silence when I told him who I was for a few minutes (you know, that lady with all those kids who kept screaming when you would suddenly appeared at her backdoor to measure it for the second/third/four time in as many weeks without letting her know you were there). Then it dawns on him (you could nearly hear the cogs turning over the phone)
‘You are ringing about your screen doors’
‘Yes I am. You were doing the windows too weren’t you??’
‘Oh yeah, yeah I am’
‘How long do you think they will be?’
‘Well, they are here’
‘And when can they be here instead’
‘Oh yeah, I’m really busy, maybe in the next couple of weeks I will try to get there’
Needless to say I am not filled with confidence. I am, however, determined to ring him every bloody week until they are in. I am about to become like that niggling prickle in your favourite pair of socks that doesn’t rear its ugly head until after you have left the house and there is nothing you can do about it for the rest of the day. Translation: I am going to annoy him until he puts the dam things in or leaves the island in frustration.
I know what you are thinking. ‘For a girl from Western Queensland, traditional home of the fly, you are getting mighty upset about having a few flies in your house’. But until you have experienced the King Island Blow Fly, you really haven’t experienced flies. They are prolific maggot layers. And while they do a great job of cleaning up the roadkill* – the maggots knock those suckers right over so you don’t even usually have to smell them – I do object to maggots in my house. For example:
- Opened a glass cabinet that is fly proof and hadn’t been opened in weeks and there is a maggot squirming in the bottom of a glass
- Bait rats in ceiling, rats die, maggots drop through down lights…. it is so gross
- DO NOT even consider defrosting on the bench
- Too tired to wash the roasting pan before you go to bed? Well by morning it will be crawling even if you get up at 6 to do it.
- Having your evening meal in summer inside? Don’t leave your meal unattended if you think there is a stray fly insight. By the time you return with that glass of water they WILL have laid live maggots on your food.**
On another note, I know he had to order our screen doors from away, so I assume he had to pay for them. And he certainly won’t be getting paid until they are actually installed here so why wouldn’t you be putting them in ASAP? I know I much prefer other people to be holding onto money they owe me…
*King Island also has an amazing amount of suicidal Possums and Wallabies
** In two and a half years, this has all happened to us
Number of unfinished blog posts – still 10. I must be doing something right.
Beth in her Bubble 