Pet and Home Maintenance

Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses.  I'm learning more about mine as the days go by - especially when faced with unpleasantries. I can set a good mood amongst family and friends. I can lift spirits. I can encourage and comfort. I can communicate well and enable others to communicate as they should.  But... I cannot face the distress and helplessness of sick people and animals.

The Machinist, on the other hand, is excellent at caring for the sick and frail, as he did with our beloved Bucko here and here. I admire this quality in him so much.  He checks his Bob every hour, waters him, via a syringe, changes his soiled bedding, washes his butt with Dettol and dries him down.  Then he washes all Bob's soiled towels in water with bleach and eucalyptus oil.  It's been three days and each day, the Machinist has administered vitamin C by injection and orally by syringe.  All this from a man who couldn't change his own baby's nappies without dry renching. 

And talking about dry renching, I think the Machinist's stomach for 'smells' is getting tougher.  Today, he and I had to clear the blocked septic pipes.  I check that things are working smoothly, going where they should go, into the septic tank, while the Machinist rams hoses down the septic pipes, via the breathing hole. It's a nasty business, but someone's gotta do it. Unfortunately, our pipework is old and consists of ceramic pipe, narrowing to polypipe.  Each time we get a blockage, the Machinist declares that soon, real soon, he's going to '....rip all these odd pipes out and put plastic ones in...'.

Fun fun fun.

And with all that stinky trauma, on a hot and sticky day, we decided to claim some R and R for ourselves. 

I need to work on rustling up a decent Christmas spirit...