Good News. Bad News.

Good News – I’m working this week. Bad News – it’s only two to four weeks worth of work.
Good News – I don’t need to pay someone to smash up my old septic system because it’s not a tank, it’s just a great big hole in the ground. Bad News – I found out because the health inspector paid a visit to the property and can’t believe the previous owner got away with this kind of crap (no pun intended) for more than 30 years.
Good News – the health inspector paid a visit to the property to sort out disposal of the asbestos in the cottage on the second block. Bad News – while he was here he discovered that someone’s been using the empty block to grow a sizeable crop of marijuana.
Good News – I found a use for all the canned Tuna from my food parcel…here pussy, pussy, pussy. Bad News – everything in the fridge, including the orange cake I am now eating, smells like Tuna. Bleurgh!
Good News – none of the Bad News matters. I’m really doing great and feeling good. Even got dishes done and some more boxes unpacked. The back yard is almost level and things are happening.

This is a funny town though.
It’s 10pm at night and someone on my street is playing the bagpipes.
Someone will grow a crop of pot in my backyard, but no one will steal from a people-less, appliance-full home for a year.
A pension-collecting handyman will brave snakes, spiders and electrocution to clear up my 2.5 acres of land of 60 dog kennels, three sheds, fill in a dozen dodgy waste holes, build me a chook shed for just the price of salvage, drop off firewood to little old ladies up and down my street for nothing – but the local IGA will wait for you to go home and bring back the 30c you don’t quite have for your weekly groceries.

It’s so different here – I’ve been living in the world of the young and obsessive for so long, I forgot there were farmers’ wives and senior citizens and dole-bludgers and people who fart in front of you in a queue and then look you in the eye and smile afterwards.

My 60-year-old handyman is on a disability pension, has almost single-handedly cleared my block over two months and refuses to discuss prices with me.
He is my liaison with council, health inspectors and sewerage pumpers.
He has been electrocuted removing a nail from dodgy wiring, menaced by six-foot snakes, bitten by redbacks and almost died of heatstroke in the couple of 45+ days we had here – but still he shows up every morning, calls me ‘love’ and is slowly making my world a better place to live in.
He is the Ghandi of garbage disposal and he is the new love of my life.

I think I have developed a ‘damsel in distress’ complex.
I’m just looking for a man to save me.
But whoever thought it would be a 60-year-old man with 14 children and testicular cancer?

My next project is to get my chook shed finished – I’m handy at pulling down wire (the kids conscientiously picking up the flung, rusty nails behind me) but I just don’t cut it when it comes to knocking down walls – another job for The Handyman tomorrow!
I’m turning the old stables-cum-dog hospital into a chook run, complete with little beds full of straw for laying boxes and an old sink for a water trough.
I can’t stand the idea of all the food we throw away – not only am I battling bloody ants all over the garbage bin every night, but it’s such a waste.
We really don’t need the eggs, but I can’t stand throwing away celery ends and half-eaten Weetbix when I could have some lovely Faverolles and Australorps to gobble them down.
And without the Dog here, I can truly have free range chooks (that’ll teach you bastard spiders and earwigs).

After that is cleaning out the shed, setting up the kids’ playroom in the front lean-to, painting up some furniture and the back room, and then…my most treasured plan of all…the new gardens.

Those things I can probably afford a little bit by bit.
In between, I have to get professionals to hook up my greywater system and unhook the powerlines to the second block.
Dad and his mate are going to, slowly, concrete under the old floors and set down new supports and later floorboards, as well as update my outside plumbing.
I need my trees chopped back and my septic pit filled – preferably with the 12 foot high pile of rocks in my driveway that were cleared out of the new septic hole. Thankfully, there will be some huge Stonehenge-sized sandstone boulders for me to use in a garden as a result – and I’m going to grow some you-beaut fruit trees over that shit pit.
Later on, after the floorboards, there’s the plastering of walls and updating of electrics, not to mention a general rebuild of all wet areas.
Outside I need to flatten and topdress the whole 1.8 acres on this block for lawns and gardens, as well as marking out garden beds and poisoning and laying out crusher dust anywhere I’m going to eventually put paving.

It’s HUGE!
But, as impossible as it seems, I can see little improvements every day and it’s lightening the weight on my chest bit by bit.

The world is just so different without the stress of a failing marriage and a booming business – it’s surreal.
I spent five hours in an office today where they had morning tea, a lunch break and a coffee break. I answered three phone calls, talked to three people at reception, had to read four newspapers and basically write a big list of stories that someone else would write…and they shooed me out the door at EXACTLY the time I said I had to leave with the parting words “such a busy day today”.
ARE YOU KIDDING?

The kids are being heralded as geniuses at school and the kittens are a regular furred-ring circus keeping the kids amused every hour they’re home and not sleeping.
And suddenly, they go to bed straight away.
They’ve got swimming lessons in the mornings and friends begging to come play, and they’re SO HAPPY!
Would I have had this if I’d come here with The Man the first time around?
Is this why he’s so angry, because I’m finally living the life he wanted me to choose and he’s not here?

Well, as I keep saying…just because I don’t have a husband, doesn’t mean I have to ignore all the lessons this last couple of years has been trying to teach me.
Surely, the only reason to go through that kind of emotional roller coaster ride is to come out in a better place, eventually, at the end.
The greatest tragedy would be if I didn’t learn from our mistakes, and grab hold NOW of the life I want for me and these gorgeous kids that I love…and that I now have the time to know better.