I absolutely love living in Melbourne. Unlike the Northern States, we still get to
light a fire in Winter, see the beautiful array of fallen leaves in Autumn,
watch the birth of new growth in Spring and get a real Summer… but I don’t
really cope with the extremes!
I am happy when winter arrives. I like to be able to rug up, to sit in front
of a crackling fire with a glass of wine, to lay in bed on the weekends and
hear the sound of rain on the roof whilst I’m snuggled up inside. I love soups and crusty bread and comfort
food. I love sitting near the window
with a book, a blanket around my shoulders, my hands clutching a hot cup of
tea. The trees are bare and the sky is a
beautiful hue of grey and it all makes me happy to be alive. I don’t mind that it spits on me when I go on
my daily walk, I welcome the change of season.
Moisture and my hair are not a good mix so drizzling rain and fog is starting to piss me off. I have just spent an hour tediously straightening my hair so it looks smooth and glossy but just the trip from the house to the garage completely fucks my whole do over. Even with an umbrella, the wind whips up and blows the rain under the brolly, turning the umbrella inside out so I not only get rained on but flapped half to death by the umbrella as I try in vain to turn the fucker back the right way, almost losing an eye on a broken spoke. By the time I get into the car I’m screaming expletives, punching the steering wheel and calling Mother Nature a surly bitch. I fucking HATE the rain!
Fog flies right under the radar and I don’t even notice how moist the air is until reach the car, congratulating myself on getting to the car with my locks unaffected only to look into the mirror and note a pubic mass of frizz that now frames my face. I grit my teeth so hard they make a gnashing sound and I squeeze the steering wheel screaming “Son of a BITCH” on top of my lungs. I have hail belting my face on my afternoon walk and I cannot escape the icy wind, which keeps blowing my cap off. A car goes zooming past and drives through a giant puddle which sprays muddy water over me in a wave of filth. By the time I make it home, my t-shirt is wet and plastered to my skin, my hair hangs dripping about my face and my mouth is tight and pinched like a cats arse. I am sick of winter, winter is pissing me off. I’m sick of being hunched up and cold. I’m sick of the sound of rain on the roof. I don’t want to wear bulky coats and tights and multiple layers anymore. If one more person regales me with tales of their fucking trip to the ski fields I am going to kick them in the throat! The cat rises from the comfort of the duct she has been draped over and stands and the door. She needs to go out to pee but she doesn’t want to get her paws wet and she hates the rain. She tentatively places a paw outside the door; her ears twitch and she starts to back up, back inside the door indecisively. I help her make the decision with the nudge of my foot against her backside. She looks back at me and regards me with glacial loathing, flicking water off a back paw. She is sick of winter too. I am counting down the days until spring arrives and I’m so fucking over winter that I cannot even think of Mother Nature without clenching my fists. I wonder as I sit on the heating duct, which is blowing hot air up my arse, if I’ll ever feel completely warm again.
Moisture and my hair are not a good mix so drizzling rain and fog is starting to piss me off. I have just spent an hour tediously straightening my hair so it looks smooth and glossy but just the trip from the house to the garage completely fucks my whole do over. Even with an umbrella, the wind whips up and blows the rain under the brolly, turning the umbrella inside out so I not only get rained on but flapped half to death by the umbrella as I try in vain to turn the fucker back the right way, almost losing an eye on a broken spoke. By the time I get into the car I’m screaming expletives, punching the steering wheel and calling Mother Nature a surly bitch. I fucking HATE the rain!
Fog flies right under the radar and I don’t even notice how moist the air is until reach the car, congratulating myself on getting to the car with my locks unaffected only to look into the mirror and note a pubic mass of frizz that now frames my face. I grit my teeth so hard they make a gnashing sound and I squeeze the steering wheel screaming “Son of a BITCH” on top of my lungs. I have hail belting my face on my afternoon walk and I cannot escape the icy wind, which keeps blowing my cap off. A car goes zooming past and drives through a giant puddle which sprays muddy water over me in a wave of filth. By the time I make it home, my t-shirt is wet and plastered to my skin, my hair hangs dripping about my face and my mouth is tight and pinched like a cats arse. I am sick of winter, winter is pissing me off. I’m sick of being hunched up and cold. I’m sick of the sound of rain on the roof. I don’t want to wear bulky coats and tights and multiple layers anymore. If one more person regales me with tales of their fucking trip to the ski fields I am going to kick them in the throat! The cat rises from the comfort of the duct she has been draped over and stands and the door. She needs to go out to pee but she doesn’t want to get her paws wet and she hates the rain. She tentatively places a paw outside the door; her ears twitch and she starts to back up, back inside the door indecisively. I help her make the decision with the nudge of my foot against her backside. She looks back at me and regards me with glacial loathing, flicking water off a back paw. She is sick of winter too. I am counting down the days until spring arrives and I’m so fucking over winter that I cannot even think of Mother Nature without clenching my fists. I wonder as I sit on the heating duct, which is blowing hot air up my arse, if I’ll ever feel completely warm again.
Spring turns up and I feel relief. It’s only three months until summer
arrives. I feel buoyed by the thought of
long lazy days and the sound of crickets in the evenings. The first two weeks of spring yields a higher
rainfall than the entire winter season.
The garden is finally green again, all the plants and trees are sporting
new buds and I want to feel happy but I’m so sick of a house full of drying
washing and having water constantly flick up my calves as I pick you way
through the puddles in the constant unrelenting fucking RAIN. Then, amazingly, we are blessed with two days
of 24°C and I could almost
skip I’m so happy. I am beaming my full
volume mega-watt smile; finally the rain has stopped. The next day we are punished with torrential
rain that pours down at the EXACT moment I step out of the car. Don’t mind the umbrella; I’ve just ruined a
beautiful pair of heels as water rushes down the path over my ankles. Now I’ve not only got wet shoes and legs but
the downpour and resulting river it created in suburbia has put sand and dirt in
my shoes making them rub painfully and it’s all just FUCKED UP!. Mother Nature has elevated from a surly bitch
to a Bi-polar whore and she’s off her medication. I return home to see that the water rushing
down my street has been too much and running too fast to go down the storm
water drains so it has, instead, run down my sloping block taking with it my
garden beds and top soil, which it has deposited in front of my garage
doors. Fucking MARVELLOUS. Mother Nature needs to be impaled on a sharp
instrument. I have given up the moisture
fight and wear my hair every day in a frizzy pony. Someone at the office asks what the hell’s
going on with my hair. I fight the urge
to comment on his thinning pate and mention instead my battle with
moisture. I am completely aware that I
look like a native Fijian but choose to shelve my frustration. I’m so over it, my ire has been reduced to a
seething hot mess bubbling below the surface.
Two weeks after the deluge I am still cleaning up the carnage left by the freak storm but Mother Nature has found her medication and she is beaming beautiful sunshine down on me. I feel a little forgiving towards her and venture out into the garden to note the snails and aphids are feasting on the new growth on my plants and the weeds have sprouted with steroid-esque fury. I spray chemicals all over my garden and hope for the death of the pests.
Two weeks after the deluge I am still cleaning up the carnage left by the freak storm but Mother Nature has found her medication and she is beaming beautiful sunshine down on me. I feel a little forgiving towards her and venture out into the garden to note the snails and aphids are feasting on the new growth on my plants and the weeds have sprouted with steroid-esque fury. I spray chemicals all over my garden and hope for the death of the pests.
Summer finally arrives on the back of another week of
rain. I have embraced my Afro. The temperature climbs steadily over the
first weeks, cheering me inside as I plan Christmas and our Annual Holiday to
the Alpine region in Victoria. I pray
for great weather for the big day and the following two weeks when we’re
holidaying in Bright. Mother Nature
delivers in spades; our friendship rekindles and I hug myself, loving the
Australian summer as I sit in an icy river with my family and friends, sipping
a glass of Chardonnay. The birds are
singing, the sun is warm on my back and I am completely relaxed and happy. The two week break has done wonders for my
equilibrium and life balance.
The weather starts hotting up and now it’s actually getting a little uncomfortable; I no longer have a river to dive into when I overheat. I return from the holiday to find my carefully cared for garden is burnt to a crisp and every plant is nearly dead. This is despite having my father turn up every few days to spend a couple of hours watering it. This occurs every year but it never gets easy to witness. I want to throw a tantrum but it’s too hot so I conserve my energy. I ponder on how extreme Mother Nature’s mood swings are. I go and get the garden hose to give the poor plants a little drink but the water that pours out all over my feet is hot enough to boil pasta and I’ve scolded the top of my foot with liquid fire. I have to run the hose for a good five minutes until the cool water comes out and pours onto my scolded foot. I note that it has burned my foot exactly where my thongs sit and it’s going to hurt like a bitch for a good week. I stand in the garden pouring life into it for hours as clouds of mosquitoes and midges surround me. The cicadas are deafening and make my head ache with their pulsing cacophony. I return to the house which feels about 150°C inside. I switch on the air conditioner to make the house habitable. The angry buzz and thwack of a blowfly bouncing off the picture window makes me want to splatter it, but I don’t have the energy. I am sick of sweeping up clumps of cat fur from the furniture and floor as the cat tries to rid herself of the insulation hugging her tiny body. She is vomiting fur balls almost daily and I am tired of cleaning it up. I give her fish oil hoping it will help with the digestion of the said balls…she vomits it back up with the fur so I am faced with a slimy fishy fur ball on my floor. Fuck!
It’s been hot for six weeks now and I’m starting to get a rash under my breasts and I’m not sleeping because it’s so fucking hot and the bastard snoring beside me is giving off the kind of heat that could roast a fucking leg of lamb and I’m so tired and frustrated there is going to be a ‘psycho’ moment with a knife in this bedroom if I don’t get the fuck out. I get up and stomp to the living room and star fish on the couch with the air conditioner pointed at my crotch and wait for my core temperature to drop.
The hot weather turns into a heatwave of over 40°C for seven days straight and I start to get REALLY intolerant. I am inventing swear words because the current ones in my vocabulary are not filthy enough to describe my ire. The cat walks three paces and drops like a sack of shit to the floor. She is too hot to meow and only manages a soft “Meh”. She looks at me with those big exhausted eyes, imploring me to shoot her, NOW. I squat to pat her and she gives me a death stare and flicks her tail. She has heat induced Tourette’s too and is swearing at me with every flick of her tail. I risk being clawed to death as I scoop her up and deposit her down stairs on the cool tiles of the bathroom. She flops on the tiles and closes her eyes. I am her angel.
The heatwave is so hot and goes on for so long that half of the air conditioning systems in Melbourne have given up and died. This happens in the office and instead of 40°C; the unit is blowing hot air so it feels more like 67°C. I sit at my desk with my hair frizzed from the steam my hot head is creating and it’s stuck to my neck and back. My whole body is shiny in a gleam of sweat and I have rivulets of it running between my breasts, down my back, over my stomach and onto my knickers, which are wet from sweating. I am sick of the sour smell of sweat on my body and I shower obsessively but cannot feel completely clean. I sit boiling in the office thinking “fuck it’s hot” but I am too hot to actually utter the words. I am drinking water constantly but cannot quench my thirst. I forget to put the car in the garage and almost completely remove all of the skin on the back of my legs when I sit on the hot leather seats, which sear my poor legs and leave the car smelling like roasted pork. The steering wheel is so hot I can barely grip it as I sit in the car, waiting for the air conditioner to take the temperature below 70°C. I want to scream but I’m so tired from lack of sleep that I just sit there; the epitome of patience.
It gets too much in the hot office and the boss comes out of his office, his face shiny with sweat and his hair plastered to his head. He states matter-of-factly that it’s too hot he’s going home to hop into the pool and that I should go home too. In my head, I think “Oh lucky you” but it’s too hot and I am tipped over the edge as I glare at him and yell “It’s so fucking hot! You can’t imagine what it’s like to have boobs in heat like this. It’s fucking KILLING me!” His eyes bulge slightly and he says solemnly, “Nope, can’t imagine what that’s like”. I realise that I am having a Tourette’s moment but I cannot stop my rant “I’ve got sweat running down between my tits and I can’t cool off”. His mouth is a grim line as he stands there, uncomfortable in my rant. The anger saps what little energy I have left and I fight the urge to cry like a child. I apologise for my outburst and tell him I have to go home too. Jesus, where did that come from? I am mortified by my outburst and worry that I have finally become completely unhinged.
The weather starts hotting up and now it’s actually getting a little uncomfortable; I no longer have a river to dive into when I overheat. I return from the holiday to find my carefully cared for garden is burnt to a crisp and every plant is nearly dead. This is despite having my father turn up every few days to spend a couple of hours watering it. This occurs every year but it never gets easy to witness. I want to throw a tantrum but it’s too hot so I conserve my energy. I ponder on how extreme Mother Nature’s mood swings are. I go and get the garden hose to give the poor plants a little drink but the water that pours out all over my feet is hot enough to boil pasta and I’ve scolded the top of my foot with liquid fire. I have to run the hose for a good five minutes until the cool water comes out and pours onto my scolded foot. I note that it has burned my foot exactly where my thongs sit and it’s going to hurt like a bitch for a good week. I stand in the garden pouring life into it for hours as clouds of mosquitoes and midges surround me. The cicadas are deafening and make my head ache with their pulsing cacophony. I return to the house which feels about 150°C inside. I switch on the air conditioner to make the house habitable. The angry buzz and thwack of a blowfly bouncing off the picture window makes me want to splatter it, but I don’t have the energy. I am sick of sweeping up clumps of cat fur from the furniture and floor as the cat tries to rid herself of the insulation hugging her tiny body. She is vomiting fur balls almost daily and I am tired of cleaning it up. I give her fish oil hoping it will help with the digestion of the said balls…she vomits it back up with the fur so I am faced with a slimy fishy fur ball on my floor. Fuck!
It’s been hot for six weeks now and I’m starting to get a rash under my breasts and I’m not sleeping because it’s so fucking hot and the bastard snoring beside me is giving off the kind of heat that could roast a fucking leg of lamb and I’m so tired and frustrated there is going to be a ‘psycho’ moment with a knife in this bedroom if I don’t get the fuck out. I get up and stomp to the living room and star fish on the couch with the air conditioner pointed at my crotch and wait for my core temperature to drop.
The hot weather turns into a heatwave of over 40°C for seven days straight and I start to get REALLY intolerant. I am inventing swear words because the current ones in my vocabulary are not filthy enough to describe my ire. The cat walks three paces and drops like a sack of shit to the floor. She is too hot to meow and only manages a soft “Meh”. She looks at me with those big exhausted eyes, imploring me to shoot her, NOW. I squat to pat her and she gives me a death stare and flicks her tail. She has heat induced Tourette’s too and is swearing at me with every flick of her tail. I risk being clawed to death as I scoop her up and deposit her down stairs on the cool tiles of the bathroom. She flops on the tiles and closes her eyes. I am her angel.
The heatwave is so hot and goes on for so long that half of the air conditioning systems in Melbourne have given up and died. This happens in the office and instead of 40°C; the unit is blowing hot air so it feels more like 67°C. I sit at my desk with my hair frizzed from the steam my hot head is creating and it’s stuck to my neck and back. My whole body is shiny in a gleam of sweat and I have rivulets of it running between my breasts, down my back, over my stomach and onto my knickers, which are wet from sweating. I am sick of the sour smell of sweat on my body and I shower obsessively but cannot feel completely clean. I sit boiling in the office thinking “fuck it’s hot” but I am too hot to actually utter the words. I am drinking water constantly but cannot quench my thirst. I forget to put the car in the garage and almost completely remove all of the skin on the back of my legs when I sit on the hot leather seats, which sear my poor legs and leave the car smelling like roasted pork. The steering wheel is so hot I can barely grip it as I sit in the car, waiting for the air conditioner to take the temperature below 70°C. I want to scream but I’m so tired from lack of sleep that I just sit there; the epitome of patience.
It gets too much in the hot office and the boss comes out of his office, his face shiny with sweat and his hair plastered to his head. He states matter-of-factly that it’s too hot he’s going home to hop into the pool and that I should go home too. In my head, I think “Oh lucky you” but it’s too hot and I am tipped over the edge as I glare at him and yell “It’s so fucking hot! You can’t imagine what it’s like to have boobs in heat like this. It’s fucking KILLING me!” His eyes bulge slightly and he says solemnly, “Nope, can’t imagine what that’s like”. I realise that I am having a Tourette’s moment but I cannot stop my rant “I’ve got sweat running down between my tits and I can’t cool off”. His mouth is a grim line as he stands there, uncomfortable in my rant. The anger saps what little energy I have left and I fight the urge to cry like a child. I apologise for my outburst and tell him I have to go home too. Jesus, where did that come from? I am mortified by my outburst and worry that I have finally become completely unhinged.
Autumn arrives and brings with her another heatwave which
makes me think Mother Nature is a psychopath and she is enjoying fucking with
us. We are puppets and she has a
sinister smile of her face as she pulls our strings. I am so completely over the heat that I find
myself praying for a snowstorm. I’m sick
of salads and drinking litres of water.
I’m sick of hearing the hum of the air conditioner, sick of the sticky
flies and the sound of the fucking cricket on the God damned television, sick of
the burnt leaves and the smell of sun-baked earth. My garden is a portrait painted in six different
shades of shit and I take stock of the death toll as I carefully read the
garden beds. My speech is peppered with
expletives and intolerance is an understatement.
Easter arrives and with the snap of her fingers, Mother Nature is bored with
her puppets. She plunges us into the
chilled air and the icy winds that are the prequel to our Winter. I am grateful for the respite but I think she
is a little harsh and wonder if she is looking for a place to hide her
medication. During the cooler weather I
watch the leaves change colour and flutter to the ground to paint the exquisite
portrait of Melbourne in Autumn. Order
has been restored to my world, which gently turns on its axis and the
Tourette’s beast is quiet. I imagine
Mother Nature sitting in a wing chair knitting a scarf. She is back on her medication.
We are two months into Autumn and I am sick of the leaves. I wish they would all just plunge to the ground in a single muted rustle and let me sweep them up once and for all. Every time I open the door they blow inside and scatter all over the floor. I am constantly removing leaves that have become skewered to my heels. The garden is covered in a thick carpet of wet mulch that stinks of damp and possum piss. I can’t see my garden for the piles of leaves and the car floor is covered in them. They stick under my windscreen wipers and smear possum shit all over my fucking windscreen. The wind is relentless and blows my carefully swept leaf piles back over the path again. Autumn is giving me the SHITS. Mother Nature is sitting up with smile playing about her lips. She is a fucking bitch! I start counting the days until Winter arrives and the trees are all bare and the fucking leaves have stopped falling and I can finally stop sweeping and raking.
We are two months into Autumn and I am sick of the leaves. I wish they would all just plunge to the ground in a single muted rustle and let me sweep them up once and for all. Every time I open the door they blow inside and scatter all over the floor. I am constantly removing leaves that have become skewered to my heels. The garden is covered in a thick carpet of wet mulch that stinks of damp and possum piss. I can’t see my garden for the piles of leaves and the car floor is covered in them. They stick under my windscreen wipers and smear possum shit all over my fucking windscreen. The wind is relentless and blows my carefully swept leaf piles back over the path again. Autumn is giving me the SHITS. Mother Nature is sitting up with smile playing about her lips. She is a fucking bitch! I start counting the days until Winter arrives and the trees are all bare and the fucking leaves have stopped falling and I can finally stop sweeping and raking.
(Sigh) Doona
Moolands
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