If it’s not the insects, it’s the offspring (i.e. almost adult children, aka AAC) coming and going at all hours in the middle of the night. Door opens, door slams, dog barks. With friends or alone, it’s all the same bloody annoying racket to me. For God’s sake what is it about universities? Three month holidays? I reflect about a time way back when I worked in such an esteemed place and moaned like everyone else there about the workload. What a joke! Face to face teaching never exceeding 24 weeks a year! Get real, public sector!
I’m not whingeing about the burning smell which wafted into the house last night, causing one AAC to cough most violently and noisily and another to creep around in the small hours, worrying, not wanting to wake me up, but “Mum I think the house is on fire!”
I’m even rethinking my rant about the furious non-stop pings when new emails drop into the inbox. Wish I could gloat that I’m popular, but no. It’s that damn spam, boiling my blood and leaving me in an exhausted tizz. I'm muttering and cursing like a mad woman. Despite the family fortune blown on a wallet-fleecing computer clean up service, the geek who robbed me blind cannot stop them. He cannot explain the appallingly obscene run I’m having, right here on this bedeviled beast. Man enhancement pills (“You Can Enjoy Bigger, Harder, More Intense …”), Olga the Russian princess looking for a man, pharmaceutical bargains galore, Nigerians with schemes to burn, Matthew in Madrid with the stolen wallet, Viagra support subscription service, or the lotto I can’t seem to stop winning (15 million quid last email…”just click on this….”)
How is it I can wallow for months in cyberspace serenity whilst those darned emails hibernate like snoring bears in a polar forest (don’t mention cool climes: I’m sweating like a hog here) then Pow! The temperature gauge and inbox rage hit the heights together. Ping, ping, ping.
At least I am online here, unlike the poor loves in FNQ (Far North Queensland), many of whom are likely to lose more than an internet connection in the next few hours. I’m not going to wail, gnash my teeth or bleat about anything anymore because as I write, Miss Mich, blogger extraordinaire (follow the prompts on my blog straight to hers) is crouching in her best (and only) Max Mara trench in the hallway of a house in Cairns, clutching her grandmother’s yellow crystal rosary beads and cuddling her baby AAC. Luckily those pretty beads were blessed for her by the Archbishop of the Northern Rivers. Time to call in the big guns! Those poor souls are going to need all the help they can get.
As Queenslanders once again feel the terrifying force of nature, I’m starting the Miss Mich novena. Cyclone Yasi, home wrecker and category 5 disaster in waiting is right on course, poised to flatten. As the eye of the storm pops out into the treetops above Miss Mich and the AAC, say a little prayer they will rise up through the chaos to see another shiny new tropical morning.
That dark little tale of how to escape the AACs will have to wait a little longer…
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