Comforts of Home

I feel I should preface this with a *whinge alert*.

Last time I was home on R&R, back when it was still July, we were having a pizza picnic in the park when we saw a mate of Hayden’s from work who said by way of small talk: “Well, I hope you enjoyed winter,” and I said “What? Is it over already?” and the smile dropped from his face and he said “Yes”. Summer around here, as I already mentioned numerous times all the way through November – March (see archives), is a long hot form of torture. I did not want to believe that the pleasantness of winter was over. I went back out to the mine where it is far too far west for the change of seasons to have arrived yet.

When I arrived home again yesterday, I found that the worst was true. The evidence is that our home has been re-infested by ants and geckos, who are making themselves comfortable in preparation for the duration of summer. The geckos we still find very cute. The ants less so. Last summer when we first arrived in Townsville, the ants seemed but a small price to pay because our new modern (OK 1990’s) apartment was free from all the hassles of our graciously decaying place in Melbourne (to recap: paint blistering from water seeping down whenever the people upstairs watered their plants; power lost to half the flat due to ancient 1930’s wiring embedded in the plaster; residual anxiety due to the safety risk caused by those two problems together; a bathroom too small to turn around in and a kitchen not much bigger..).

To turn this whinge into something positive, I’m trying to think of some way to learn from the ants. Not that I am going to sacrifice myself for the colony by crawling down into a glass of ribena to drown in the sweet sweet liquid, or crawling up into the honey jar to die an even stickier death. But I do want to do something, so I’m going to get busy. I’m going to be as busy as an ant from now on until the heat comes to town.