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All God’s creatures

18 April, 2013 by Vicki 2 Comments

I’m sure none of my (few, remaining) esteemed readers will be particularly surprised that it is so long since I last wrote. In fact, it’s been uncommonly fast when compared to my last couple of efforts. While I’d like to say that the delay is because I have been super busy and having a fantastic time, the reality is that life has been plodding along pretty slowly for the most part.

Still, it’s been an eventful few months in its way. Getting used to our new house has been both wonderful and… not so wonderful. Take our first night in the place, for example.

We were fortunate, given that most of our belongings were on the other side of the country, that the house was sold to us furnished. While there was a fair bit that was destined for the rubbish dump, it did at least mean we had a bed in which to sleep. Therefore, two days after settlement, there we were on our big adventure, moving into a beautiful new home.

A new house always feels strange at first and this one was so different to any in which I’ve previously lived, that it was very strange indeed. It looked strange, especially with the unfamiliar furniture. It sounded strange and even smelled strange. (Substitute “musty” for “strange” and you’ll begin to get an idea.) One thing for sure, though — we were very happy to be there, in our OWN HOME.

At some point, around about the time we were thinking of retiring to our strange, new, second-hand bed, I turned on the light at the top of the stairs. (Another strange thing about a new house was learning the locations of the light switches and, furthermore, remembering them for future use.) I was about to head down to the kitchen when something, yes, strange, glimpsed from the corner of my eye caused me to stop and look twice.

“Darling,” I called, casually. “We have a snake.”

Dohn emerged from the bedroom, resplendent in his shining knight’s armour (ok, so, not really) and together we surveyed the strange, thin, curvy, writhing black creature on the floorboards near the (unhinged) doors to the boiler room.

The snake surveyed us back, flicked his strangely snake-like forked tongue at us a few times, decided he didn’t want to be friends, and retreated into the boiler room through a gap in the doors. Fascinated, we watched him disappear from sight, smoothly and silently.

Dohn peered through the glass in the doors but by the time I was game enough to peek too, there was no sign of him. There were, however, a great many shed snake skins left behind at which we could marvel to our hearts’ content.

In due course (which wasn’t very long really as there was very little choice) I made an executive decision. I decreed that, for tonight at least, we would peacefully coexist with our house guest. He didn’t seem to want to be around us any more than we wanted to be around him, and if he kept out of our way then all would surely be good.

The following morning, Dohn opened his emails and found a friendly missive from the previous owners of the house. It was full of the most helpful advice. One of the pearls of wisdom on offer involved the torches they had kindly left for us on the bedside tables. “Do not,” they advised, “open those double doors off the upstairs passageway. An Eastern Small-Eyed Snake dwells within. We used the torches beside the bed if we needed to go to the bathroom in the night.”

Thanks for letting us know before we bought the house! But I’m afraid the reason for the bedside torches had already become painfully obvious.

(There have, as you can imagine, been other occasions but you will be pleased to know that on at least one we were able to courteously escort our undesirable guest through the front door. “I’m sorry, but you’ve outstayed your welcome,” Dohn firmly but respectfully explained. We then barricaded the door with all the downstairs furniture. But that’s another story.)

And so we settled into our strange, new, shared accommodation.

Don’t go outside when it’s wet (which is all the time)

Snakes are by no means the only creatures to cause concern in the rainforest. I had my first encounter with a leech on the day we took possession of the house. We’d met with the previous owners for a kind of handover, and they showed us where our weir (which is our water supply) was located, near the top of our 1km long driveway. We talked for about fifteen minutes there in the rainforest before they headed off on the long, long road trip to their home in Victoria. Dohn and I headed into Millaa Millaa to see our real estate agent, Pat, and pick up the full set of house keys. (Yay!)

I was chatting away with Dohn and Pat when I became aware of a sensation of wetness on my right calf. I looked down to discover that the inside of my trouser leg had soaked through with blood. To say I was alarmed would be a considerable understatement. Trying to disguise my urgency (after all, I was clearly haemorrhaging or miscarrying or something equally traumatic and life-threatening), I asked Pat if I could avail myself of the Ladies room. Closer inspection revealed a small round sore on the inside of my knee, and a lot of blood. Which kept flowing. And flowing. Knowing that leeches, when they bite, release an anticoagulant in their saliva, it was now that I started to think “Aha! Leech…”

I’m unsure exactly how successful I was in my attempt to avoid drawing attention to what would have looked, to the casual observer, as if my heavily pregnant waters had broken in a vicious and bloody gush. (Of course, I am not pregnant, and it was hardly gushing — but never let the truth get in the way of a good story.) My trousers were undeniably stained with the fresh blood running down the inside of my leg.

Back in the car, I informed Dohn of my findings and when we got out again at the Post Office just around the corner, I duly tipped the fat, bloody little slug I found on the floor mat onto the hot concrete. Call it cruelty to one of God’s living creatures if you will. I harboured a secret desire for it to die, die, DIE! When we emerged from the Post Office a few minutes later, however, it was nowhere to be seen so it may actually have lived to tell the tale. There are, after all, two sides to every story.

We continued on our way and an hour or so after that, I stopped bleeding.

Later, after I had recounted an abridged version of this story to Chris, a visiting geologist at the mine, he merely remarked, “And it’s not even the Wet, yet.”

Sigh.

If you want to get really freaked out, do a Google Images search on leeches. Otherwise, just take my word for it that they are some of the least fun things about living in this part of the world — nevertheless they are not so much of an inconvenience as to stop it from being very, very worth it.

Speaking of which, I suppose this is a good opportunity to mention all the wondrous things we see every day, along the driveway and from the balcony. Along with the natural beauty there is amazing wildlife — cassowaries, birds, frogs, tree kangaroos, pademelons, bandicoots, quolls. As I type, a pademelon (the rainforest’s only wallaby) stares up at me from below the balcony. It’s a true wonderland, and the sights and sounds are nothing short of magical.

What? You don’t believe me? Why on earth not? ;-)

Filed Under: Life, Vapour Tagged With: FNQ, Frogmore, leeches, Queensland, snakes, Wet Tropics, Wet Tropics World Heritage Area

Oops! Where did the year go?

30 July, 2010 by Vicki 3 Comments

I can barely believe how long it is since I’ve posted here — almost a year! — but it’s All Good™. Life is good! I’m (obviously) a year or so older, and frankly, that’s the main difference. Really, a year is not such a long time when you’re my age — the poor, doddering old thing that I am. I mean, my daughter has just turned 21. That makes me ancient by definition, right?

Gemma spent her 21st birthday in the snow at the top of a mountain in Switzerland. I’m guessing there are worse ways to spend your 21st. (It was certainly a darned sight different to my own.) I picked Gem and her dad up from the airport last night when they returned from their 3 or 4 weeks of holidaying in Europe. Despite the plane being delayed 3 hours and arriving at 1:45am (which added up to a total of 39 hours in transit for them, so was a far worse thing for them than for me) Gem was happy and excited and that’s a rather satisfactory thing for a doting old mum to see.

As we were heading back to the car and I was rummaging in my handbag for the parking ticket, my ears beeped. Oops! I’d accidentally pressed a button on the remote control which — uh — controls — my speech processors. This remote control lives in the deep, dark recesses of my handbag. I fished it out (eventually) and reset it.

Wow! Loud noise! Much, much more sound coming from all directions. Double oops, then. I recall the many times recently I’ve missed hearing softer noises that I normally would hear, such as the “ding” of my iPhone when a text message arrives when it’s in my handbag or in another room of the house. I’m guessing that the last time I was in a noisy situation and switched the program over to the one that dulls down background noise so it’s easier to focus on speech (probably a week or two previously) I forgot to switch it back again. Sadly, I’d even considered the possibility that this had happened at the times I was actually aware that some sounds seemed a bit muted (or totally absent) and thought that “next time” I was near my handbag I’d check the remote. Then forgot. Oops oops oops oops oops.

Unsurprisingly, I was really struck by the difference in how well I could hear everything after the reset. (Rather handy, given that I had to drive home with an excited chatterbox in the car that I now didn’t have to strain to hear.) Duh. Oh well, live and learn!

Gemma and her dad were duly deposited at their home and, after inspecting Gemma’s important new acquisitions of a rather gorgeous soft leather jacket from Paris, and some stunning Gucci heels from Milan (while all the time making suitably approving noises as expected of a mother under such circumstances, but as quietly as possible so as to not wake my sleeping son) I returned to my own modest little haven for a wicked, wanton and wondrous BBBB before finally turning out the light around 4:30am.

Ahhhhhhhh. Despite the fact that my kids being older is a poignant reminder that I’m not the spring chicken I once was, there’s rather a lot to be said for not having wee bairns underfoot anymore. Besides which, all three kids are really wonderful young people. I wouldn’t go back for anything! And in spite of my (rather numerous) “Oops!” moments, I can’t help thinking that they, too, ultimately just lead to better things.

Filed Under: Cochlear Implants, Life, Vapour Tagged With: cochlear implants

Drivers licences, revisited

10 May, 2009 by Vicki 3 Comments

Well, I finally did get my motorbike licence, but not without its share of dramas.

A kick in the gut

A couple of weeks after the previously mentioned incident, my brother came over to talk about the Perth City Legal website I was developing for his partner Denise, who is a lawyer. While he was there, I opened a letter from the DPI and was totally gobsmacked. I started to read it out loud to Neil and Graeme but couldn’t finish more than a sentence or two as I was too upset.

It basically said that unless I had a medical within 30 days, to ascertain that I was fit to drive, my drivers licence (car and all!) would be revoked. Even if I got the medical certificate, they could still at their pleasure revoke the licence. This was because — get this — I “suffer from cochlear implants”.

Graeme took the letter off me and huffed and puffed about it. He is a hearing aid wearer, and realised that the implications were far and wide for all hearing impaired people across Australia. He took it home with him to give to Denise. Denise is a personal injury lawyer but nevertheless has a lot of experience in advocacy.

No standards

I explained the situation to a cochlear implant email list to which I belong, and someone (thanks Naomi!) sent me a PDF of the standards adopted by traffic licencing centres Australia-wide.

There is no standard for hearing.

That’s right. You can be deaf as a doorpost and (unless you’re a commercial driver) according to the national standards, it doesn’t matter a jot.

However, the DPI required me to get a doctor to assess me against non-existent standards to determine whether or not I was fit to drive.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

My audiologist and surgeon both said there were no issues with deaf people driving. Quite the opposite — studies my audiologist has done demonstrate that deaf people are more visually aware, and being visually aware is the important thing when driving.

Denise said I had a good case, even though the “discretionary powers of the Director General [of the DPI] are wide”, and she wrote to them.

But that’s not all…

In the meantime, I went for my motorbike test and failed. (Those wretched figure-Os!)

I was unable to re-book the test for some obscure reason, and was told to phone on the next working day. (It was Friday, so that meant Monday.) Neil phoned for me as I still avoid the phone like the plague, and they told him I couldn’t re-book until I’d had a medical to prove I was ok to drive.

What???? I still had time for that…

Neil was most unhappy and let them know. He’s a great person to have on your side. :-D No one he spoke to had a clue what cochlear implants were. In their infinite wisdom, they apparently had decided it was some kind of disease.

They told him that if I was deaf, I could get a licence — no problem. But because I suffer from cochlear implants, I can’t.

Neil told them that in that case, his advice to me was to go to the licensing centre and take out my speech processors, and say, “I’m deaf!” (Which I am — totally — without the speech processors on.)

Sheesh.

He spent quite some time trying to get some sense out of these people. At one point, the woman he was talking to said, ok she’d remove the requirement for a medical certificate, but leave a condition on my licence that I must wear a hearing aid when driving.

Neil said, “No you will not. She doesn’t wear a hearing aid. She can’t wear a hearing aid!” Around and around.

Until he said he would sue for discrimination and other stuff, and right away they backed off.

How pathetic is that? They knew they didn’t know what they were talking about, didn’t have a leg to stand on, but were sticking to their guns anyway for the sake of petty bureaucracy. But, because they knew they were in the wrong, they backed down at the first threat of legal trouble.

Boo, DPI. Boo.

It’s all good — kinda!

Still, I have my motorbike licence now, and next step is to get myself the Vespa of my dreams!

Filed Under: Cochlear Implants, Vapour Tagged With: cochlear implants, dpi, drivers licence, western australia

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