Snoskred – Life in the Country

Today we went for a lovely drive. We visited Surf Beach which is near Batemans Bay.

Then we stopped at Kioloa on the way home. I’d heard it was beautiful and it was stunning. Then again we’re a bit spoilt for stunning beaches around here.

On the way home we stopped on my favourite road at one of the most fun bits to take a photo. You can click on the picture for a larger image.

Julie Pippert asks today – So tell me, what’s your ‘more’ that you wish was ‘less?’ What do you need, what would take that 50lb weight off your chest and shoulders?

I’m here all day, every day, unless The Other Half has a day off. His day offs are never the same day, one week out of four he has Saturday and Sunday but the rest of the time it is Monday/Tuesday, Tuesday/Wednesday, Wednesday/Thursday and then sometimes he just has the one day. If you want to go anywhere around here, especially in school holidays, weekends are times of busy traffic, of crowds, of screaming kids. That’s not something we enjoy.

The Other Half had Saturday and Sunday off, and on Saturday we went shopping in a place which is more populated than where we live. It was scary for me. Too many people. Too much movement. People walking where they want and not paying attention to others around them – bumping, pushing, like dodgem cars. We got in and out of there as fast as we could.

Personally, and no offense to those with kids who work a normal 9-5 week and have weekends off, we prefer the weekdays as days off. When we first moved here, I was working every single Saturday and it suited me just fine. I put a proposal to my parents which would have seen us never having a weekend off. Sales are better on the weekends most of the time, so that is when you want to be in the store. It never happened.

Being here alone much of the time would not be an issue at all if there was peace and quiet. I’ve mentioned before here on the blog that recently this has become a very noisy neighbourhood but the last week was the worst yet. There was not one day where the dog didn’t bark for at least 4 hours of it. As I sit here right now, that droning engine noise can just be heard over my music (coldplay) but I can also feel it through my feet – it is vibrating the very foundations of this house and consequently, going right into my soul. The dog was barking right outside my window about 10 minutes ago, prompting me to skype Sephy with the following -

Snoskred says: cam do ,e a l;ittle favour?
Sephy says: find you some new fingers?
Sephy says: what’s up?
Snoskred says: find out if theres anything i can do about a barking dog
Snoskred says: it wont shut up!@
Snoskred says: and its right outside my window now

Yes, as you can see, when I’m annoyed, disturbed, not at peace, my typing goes out the window.

When the droning engine noise stops, it will be time for kids to get home from school and the people across the road will be outside playing rugby. When you kick a rugby ball, it makes a heck of a racket. It’s enough to make you shudder. Yet that’s not all. They will be shouting, screaming, yelling at each other.

This constant noise is difficult for me to tolerate. By Fridays I am ready to SNAP. Saturdays and Sundays may be a little quieter but there’s still the dog, there’s still the people across the road. My noise thermometer has gone down slightly over the weekend but each week it climbs higher and higher. How much more can I take? I honestly don’t know.

I need to move. I want out of this noisy place. I want to go to the place I believe will be more peaceful. There are 17 properties available where I want to move to right now. 5 of those are townhouses and very close to each other. Having lived in townhouses before and knowing how noisy they can be if neighbours are inconsiderate, I’m holding out for something better. I can see this new lifestyle inside my head, beach walks, a summer of bbq’s, of The Other Half coming home and we go out to walk for an hour.

The real estate agents down there are fairly useless. I’ve left them info about what we want, and have not heard from any of them, once. It baffles me! If a tenant came in and gave notice that they’re moving out, and you had tenants who wanted exactly what they were moving out from, wouldn’t you say – this might be the easiest solution, let me call these people and ask them to come and see it. Then I don’t have to list it, I don’t have to deal with trying to find people to live there. But no. Properties have been listed that we would have considered, and they have not called.

What would break me completely would be to get there and find out it’s just as noisy as this place is. But I need to get there in order to find out. That’s what I need. A new home.

One of the major differences between city and country is petrol stations. That’s gas stations, for our US readers. We have two in the town itself, and another two near to it on the highway. Going to get petrol/gas is like a major ordeal. And here’s the reasons why.

1. Not enough pumps.
There are four at the one we go to most often. They have one pump each side, so you can have 8 cars filling up at once.

2. One pump is always broken.
The other half thinks it is on purpose to get people to use the more expensive fuel. But it doesn’t work and often that’s one space without a car in it.

3. People in the country never just fill up their cars.
They have jerry cans and containers and all kinds of fuel containers which they pull out of seemingly nowhere once they have finished filling up the car. So you’re sitting there thinking.. they’re done, yay – and they end up taking another 20 minutes filling things up.

4. The place where you pay is some kind of black hole.
People go in there, and they seem to vanish for a long time. There is only one person taking money and most people do not pay cash.

5. There is nowhere for people to put their cars while they pay.
So the cars stay right in front of the pumps, leaving everyone else to sit in their cars waiting for the black hole to open up and spit out the people in front of them.

6. The people at the back pumps have nowhere to go if the people at the front aren’t ready to go.
There’s no spare room for cars to get past, there’s always cars queuing behind the cars at the back pump and if the car in front isn’t done, nobody can go anywhere.

7. People in the country often tow things behind them.
This can include boats, caravans, trailers full of all kinds of odd things. Horse floats are another wonderful item you often find on the towbar of the car in front of you.

So in general, a trip to the petrol/gas station takes roughly 30 minutes from when you drive into their driveway. You sit there and watch the goings on, which are either amusing or horrifying. Usually this is when the in car mp3 player chooses to play the best songs available on its little memory card and these are the songs I wanted it to play when we were actually driving so I could sing along to them. Yesterday when we were at the petrol station, this is the song that was playing, a nice trip down memory lane for ya’all.

Gotta love that hair.. Though I am more a fan of his current do than the long, sweaty locks of old..

Some months ago I wrote about hairdresser hunting. Since moving here I have had some horrible haircuts, and the last one which was back in September was so terrible I had not been back to a hairdresser since. It’s taken 9 long months to grow out the layers put in by the last woman.

So I have been putting it off for as long as possible but now that it is winter and the hair was really long and taking ages to dry, I had to firmly pressure myself into going and finding a new place to get it cut. I’d seen this place in an alleyway off the main street of our local town which looked interesting. I went, I got my hair cut, and it feels a lot better. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.. a place that does everything. Haircuts, waxing of legs and eyebrows, all in one convenient location. That hairdresser does not do it. ;(

After getting hairs cut, the Other half and I went for a drive to get some night photos. The moon was almost full and we were hoping to get some kangaroos at night pictures. There were no roos out and about, but we did get these. Where the last shot was taken, as we stood there the water is so crystal clear even in the dark, that we saw a big stingray gliding through the shallows in the moonlight. Amazing. I want to spend more time beach walking around there. Both shots are long exposure and we were using a tripod. It was windy at the first photo location – and there were rabbits! The second location was much calmer, no wind really and no waves, but there were also rabbits. Sorry, I didn’t get any rabbit shots, they ran off before we had the camera set up. Rabbits but no roos. It’s full moon for a few days now, we might try again over the next few days.