Slump

11 February, 2010

We had some serious rain last week. Well really, the whole time we were at the Gold Coast up through a couple of days ago, it rained every day. I love rain, usually. It is so fresh and cleansing. I love the smell. I love the grey, especially with a backdrop of green. It's beautiful. What can I say, I'm a native Oregonian. Here's the "but" you could probably sense was coming. When you don't have access to a clothes dryer, life gets a little bit tricky in torrential rain. We either have a leaky window or it was left open a bit (I hope the latter) and had heavy rainfall of the flash flood variety. Said window is located in what we euphamistically refer to as "upstairs" - the bed above the cabin. It got wet. I didn't realise the full extent of the wetness for a couple of days which was long enough for the smell to set in on the bottom of the mattress. Ugh. With the rain, we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do about it. Alas, we were blessed with a dry day and were able to put the mattress outside in the full Australian sun (which is quite different from the full Oregon sun if you don't know - this is the type that bleaches your whites as they dry on the line). I used my favourite eucalyptus oil spray for its natural disinfectant properties and which I will use at any opportunity because it smells so good I could almost drink it, and that, paired with the equally detoxifying sun treatment, cured our foamy mattress of its waterlog. Yay.

Another "but". During those days of having damp clothes draped throughout our motorhome, we also began to encounter more mosquitoes. It's one of those tropical things, and we are moving more and more north towards the tropics. We were at a caravan park's camp kitchen eating dinner, and dusk snuck up on us. You'd think I'd be more on the ball with the whole dusk thing since I have been attacked by mosquitoes, mostly at dusk, since I was a little kid. I somehow only manage to notice when I'm being eaten alive. Plus I'm lazy. It's just so depressing, and annoying, and too much like hard work. To be safe I have to dress myself (and Maya) in long-sleeved and long-legged clothes and spray all of our exposed areas with mosquito repellant. Every single evening come dusk, no matter what we're in the middle of, unless we're safely tucked away inside. Even then though, the stray mozzie (or four) manages to find a way in, so we have to go on a hunt to mercilessly slaughter them, every night. Tonight I wore a cardigan even though I was far too warm for one, and discovered a mosquito biting me on the arm, through the sleeve, in the closed up motorhome. Sigh. Double sigh. I'm really thankful that this is a malaria-free country.

So what's my point with all of this mosquito rambling? I'm not sure really, except that it has brought up conversations about possibly changing our course and avoiding far north Queensland for a few months. It's unfortunate, because FNQ is the top of my list of things to see in Australia. Poor Nick is over me whinging about mosquitoes, and possibly all of you are too. My plan is to buy a big bottle of citronella oil and make my own mosquito spray to replace the lovely Miessence one I just ran out of, which I will wear like perfume. It will be my signature scent. I'll try to cope. I want to see a cassowary in the wild.

Rain + mosquitoes = homesickness. Not for our former home necessarily, although our clothes line was under the pergola for all-weather drying, and that pergola was an excellent place to enjoy a cup of coffee while the rain poured down all around. Just A home really. A functioning home, no matter what's happening outside. A bit of space. A bedroom that's always ready to sleep in and doesn't require a nightly moving of stuff from the bed to the front seat to make room. Ooooh, I am realising I shouldn't be writing all of this unless I want to dwell in the homesickness which I really don't. I want to see FNQ. Honestly though, I'm suspecting we aren't going to make it a whole lot farther than that. Well Uluru, we have to make it to Uluru. And shit, I told the kids that they would be able to swim with the dolphins at Monkey Mia. And I have long wanted to travel around Tasmania. Oh and Valley of the Giants in southwest WA is another thing I have told the kids about and looked forward to seeing again. Hmmm. Maybe we just need to adjust our pace a bit so we are doing more and seeing more and not stopping for more than a night or two at most in any one place.