A Week of Weirdness

My life is always pretty weird but this week in particular has been extra strange, or extra interesting depending on the point of view. Spring has sprung and we have been having some lovely walks in the countryside in the sunshine. Most things are looking green now or starting to come into bud. The sun even has a little warmth in it now. That's not to say that the British weather is behaving itself though, oh no. Just when you think it's heading towards shorts and tshirt weather BAM. Snow....

Seriously this happened. Middle of April and I wake up to snow. The day before had been lovely and sunny. It wasn't just a little powder that melted before the sun rose either, it was a couple of inches that hung around until mid morning. I thought it was great of course, I don't see snow very often so I like to take pictures of it at any opportunity. I made sure to put some extra seed on the bird tables too since the local birds looked as confused as I was.

 

 This was also a week for projects, the main one being that I had a go at making my own shampoo. Not because I'm a health freak mind you, or one of those people that won't use anything unless it's organic, but simply because I can't find a supermarket shampoo that doesn't make my scalp bleed. 
That's a bit dramatic actually but the point is most supermarket shampoos don't seem to react well with my skin and I end up scratching until I bleed. I have tried the medicated shampoos, organic shampoos, sensitive skin, dandruff, healthy healing etc etc but no luck so far.
So, in desperation really, I decided to have a go at my own version using all natural products. I'd love to say that it's the most fantastic thing I've ever used etc but so far it's a bit of a nightmare really. My hair is pretty disgusting atm, greasy but somehow dry, stiff and generally not pleasant. I have been led to believe that it may take a couple of weeks for my hair to adjust though and since I've only been using the stuff for three days I'll give it a bit longer before I discount it. After all, the main reason I want a natural shampoo is to ease the itches and the last few days have been the best I've had for awhile so I'll have to take the good with the bad I guess and hope for the best.
   

 

My second project was to get feathers for this bottle that my sister got for me (from an undisclosed location as she may have borrowed it long term XD)

I was set on wanting pheasant feathers, don't ask me why, I don't have reasons for how my mind works. So the only way I could think of getting feathers from a pheasant, without shooting one or chasing one aimlessly around a paddock for a few weeks, was to find one that was already dead. Road kill to be precise. The less smooshed the better.

Sooo, it took awhile, to be honest I have been scoping out the local roadkill (and some not so local) for a couple of months now. You don't realise how inaccessible most road kill is until you want to start a collection of dead animal parts. I mean you can't just stop in the middle of motorway to go and poke at a dead fox without possibly killing yourself too or at least getting some stern words from a policeman. Eventually though we had success in the form of a recently dead pheasant that was in an area where it was possible to stop and I was able to scrape it off the tarmack and pluck it's tail without getting hit by a car myself.

 So was it all worth it? I'll let you decide what you think but personally I really like it but I'm just set that way.

Just to finish up this post I thought this photo was pretty good. If you don't follow me on instagram you wouldn't be aware that I carry a soft toy rabbit called Chester around with me everywhere I go and take photos of him. He has his own account actually @travellingchester if you're interested. 

Here he is with my sister's dog (who also has his own instagram account @one_dollar_please) when we went for a walk two nights ago. 

I think Dollar's expression speaks volumes in this picture. You know you're a true weirdo when a dog looks thinks you're odd. Poor boy. He does get subjected to many photos being taken of him and he is usually a good sport about it. Something about having to pose with gorse and a stuffed rabbit though seemed perhaps a bit much even for him. Although thinking about it I can't really blame him XD

I have no idea whats going on with the photo size and orientation in this post by the way. Or why the text it centered. I'm too lazy to change it so I'm just going to say that it's intentionally weird to round out a weird post about weird things on a blog called Today Was Weird! Did you have any weird moments this week. I'd love to know what kind of odd things you get up to so let me know in the comments.

Until next time, Stay Weird.

 

 

 

Introduction To My Life

Back Story

Well I guess before I start I better tell you a few basic facts so that you have a little perspective. I'm female, 25 and I live with my mother who owns a lawn and garden business. The reason I still live at home? Mum has more work than she can handle alone but not enough to afford a full time employee. A lot of the day is spent travelling from job to job and that would all be wasted money if she had to pay someone to sit in the truck. That's where I come in. I literally get paid only the hours I work which can sometimes be as little as 4 in an 8 hour day but the incentive is that I live rent and bill free. It's a win win for us both really as I get to keep my entire pay cheque and she has to pay less to have a helper.

We live in a little village called Fordell which is 14km out of the nearest town called Wanganui which is in New Zealand. We have a quarter acre but my Mother is very sociable and persuasive and has managed to convince half the neighbours to allow us to use their land for grazing which is how we are able to maintain a flock of 10 sheep. We also have a pig pen which we rear porkers in. That means that every 4months or so we get a new pair of pigs.

As a side earner I do housesitting/petsitting. Which isn't always as fun as it sounds but it's a nice money earner.

I tend to spend a lot of time in town with my friends and boyfriend because as much as I love my Mum when you work and live together you need space.

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a blog for awhile now mainly because almost every time I write my diary I start with 'Today was weird/odd/strange/interesting' and it got me thinking that maybe other people might find my accounts of an 'average' day worth a read. Of course my diary is out of bounds for all human eyes except my own as all my dirty dark secrets are written there. Telling my stories to people I know isn't an option as I seem to become a babbling idiot as soon as I have to speak face to face with someone and besides, the people I know are too old/young/cool/busy/judgemental and/or idiotic to appreciate the subtleties of the things that fascinate me.

So lets just jump right in and I'll tell you about today March 5^th 2015

Today was weird..... XD

My alarm actually woke me this morning which was the first oddity as usually I am awake before it and just pretend to be asleep until it goes off and forces me into reality. I padded through to the bathroom and Kit Kat the resident cat (the owner forgot to tell me her name so I've christened her Kit Kat) must have heard me and she started up her morning cry which is terrible racket for an old cat to make and amazingly loud. I gave her breakfast and she was happy for all of about 3 seconds but then she started her war cry again and paced by the front door. Turns out she had brought me a present, a cute little baby bunny nice and stiff on the doormat, dead. How the hell she caught the thing I don't know. She's so old she's all skin and bone, moves around slow and deliberate, can't seem to see or hear me unless I move around in front of her face and yet the old biddy can still catch rabbits. You can't trust cats aye?!

After telling her what a girl she was and playing with her prize for a few minutes I got myself organised and headed out to Fordell to pick up Mum. She was booked in for a surgery today, I won't go into details but it was a minor procedure and she's ok. It was expected to take about 3 hours from arrival to departure so I decided I would do a little work in my boyfriends garden while I waited for her.

Now to say that Troy (my boyfriend) isn't interested in gardening is the understatement of the century. The house he owns actually has a pretty small backyard that is almost all brick with a few bushes and a box hedge which should be pretty easy to maintain. That of course would require someone to actually look at it every now and then. To be honest I'm not one of those girls that try to better a person when I'm with them and I wouldn't even care that his garden is a shit tip if wasn't for Rush, his dog, who we share custody of. Sort of. It's complicated. Anyway long story short is that anything I can do to better that dogs life you can bet I'll have a crack at. Which is how I found myself in his backyard at 9am avoiding the dog poo and trying to shift a few years worth of weeds and debris.

I'm not going to say that it was most pleasant experience of my life and I'm also not going to say that I turned it into a perfect garden. I was there for 3 hours and I got a truck load of weeds and tree trimmings out of there but I'm far from happy. The down side to being a gardener as your day job is that you have high standards, you have to, people are paying you to take care of the details and do a good job. The problem arises when you do a job like Troy's yard which is all unpaid and has no clear objective. Where to start? How much to remove at once? Do you focus on one area or do a bit of everything?

The best part for me about doing Troy's yard though is that he literally doesn't know and/or care what's out there. So for example, I hate roses. Oh sure the flowers are pretty enough when they are safely in a vase and dethorned and at a distance but working in a garden full of rose bushes is a nightmare. The thorns grab your clothes, hair, gloves and skin and any cuts or grazes sting for a day or more after. The roses in Troy's yard haven't been tended for probably half a decade and I swear the thorns are bigger than the flowers. Whenever I have to work with roses I wish that I could just cut them at the base and at Troy's I get to do what I like. So those poor ancient rose bushes? I'm sorry but it's death row for you.

After taking the green waste to the dump I went and collected Mum from the hospital and took her home. She was pretty sore so I sent her off to bed with some painkillers and told her I would be back around 5 to check on her. I returned to the Waites (the places I'm housesitting) and let the chooks out the pens then, mostly to entertain myself I decided to do something fancy for lunch. It didn't quite go to plan though as I had been shopping the day before and had a fridge full of delicacies that were all asking to be eaten. I ended up with a tasting plate which had a little of , well I can't say everything because I really did go over board with my shopping, but it had a good selection.

After playing with my food the sunshine called to me so I wandered outside to laze in the sun reading for a couple of hours until I got a txt from Mum around 4.30 telling me to go to my cousins to collect a fish. He had been out on a boat that day and caught a nice haul of snapper and had one gutted and descaled for us. I've put it in the freezer for when Dad arrives when we will bake it whole.

I helped Mum to feed out to the sheep, saw her back to bed and arranged a time to go back tomorrow before returning to the Waites again.

I stopped on the drive to collect pine cones and then decided to give some apples to Mother cow in the paddock. I picked a broccoli from the garden and fed her all the leaves too. All the chooks were hovering around trying to get in on the action but Mother cow wasn't keen to share. At 6.30 on the dot the chooks decided they weren't going to get much from the paddock and all made a mad dash for the coop so I wandered over to feed them. The bloody cheeky rooster though decided to have a go at me for some reason, he's been fine with me all week. I was only wearing jandals though and had visions of a toe massacre so when he came at me the second time I whacked him with grain bucket and that seemed to cool him off a bit. I went into the shed where the grain is kept and managed to spill half a can over my toes and the floor which got the hens all excited and again my poor toes were in danger of being pecked. Luckily for me the hens are rather more friendly than the rooster and they were very polite about clearing up the grain. This did mean though that I was stuck in the shed for 5 minutes standing awkwardly whilst anxiously watching my feet... I'm telling you my life is not normal.

After all the excitement of the day I couldn't even be bothered to make myself dinner so I sat in front of the tv watching Top Gear and ate crisps, crackers, lollies and a small cheesecake. Not the healthiest or most satisfying of dinner but it filled a hole.

The last odd thing of the day? Finally making myself sit down and start writing and pushing through to write this much. Although perhaps it should have been shorter!