Monday, November 13, 2017

Thunder on the Right

The night before last we had the most amazing thunderstorm.  It lasted for over three hours and I had a panoramic view over the river, followed by a short burst of torrential rain directly from the south which washed my windows.  They had been so dirty that, at night when the light shines in I, could hardly see through the dust and dirt.  Usually the management sends around a team of window cleaners a couple of times per year but so far there has been no sign of them.  They have to abseil down from the roof and negotiate an overhang.  A very bad design fault and I am not surprised that it is hard to find anyone to do it and must cost a fortune.

The cats are moulting and I am being swamped in black fur.  The fact that they are brushed morning and night has not stopped them from getting fur balls and vomiting all over the carpets.  They prefer the carpets  -  softer on their paws while they get down to the business of ridding themselves of their dinner.  I am very practised at cleaning up cat barf  but it is a bit hard to do before I have had my morning coffee.  I have been feeding them Catlax but it took Poppy five days for it to work.  One of the joys of keeping indoor cats but I wouldn't do without them.

I have bought myself a little carpet shampooer.  It is a Bissell which is the only one of its kind to be recommended by Choice Magazine.  It doesn't have a very big capacity which is exactly what I needed and it is very effective.  Yesterday I finally summoned up my courage to use it  -  it arrived just before the 'flu and when I started to recover I  had a panic about where I had put the accessories and instructions.

The most urgent bit of carpet was the strip where I groom the cats, outside their bathroom, and although vacuumed regularly it looked pretty grotty.  So yesterday I gave the area a thorough vacuuming and them washed the carpet.  It needs doing again but the amount of dirt and cat hair which was sucked up was staggering and the carpet now feels nice to walk on  -  it has lifted the pile and released the embedded cat fur.

Now I just have to vacuum and mop the huge acreage of off-white tiles which cover most of the floor area, right in the middle of the apartment and which are firmly resistant to detergent and mop and show every footmark when wet.  I have evolved the habit of doing the job over two days so that I can get from one end of the apartment to the other without stepping into the newly washed area until it has a chance to dry.  There has to be an easier way.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Digging up the Past

Since meeting my two distant cousins I have set myself the task of tracing all of our mutual relatives and it has not been as easy as I imagined.

I assumed that it would simply be a matter of contacting my fairly close cousins and asking them.  I have found that it is not so simple; I first have to convince them that I would not be broadcasting their most intimate affairs to the wide world.  And one of my second cousins has flown so low under the radar that he is almost impossible to trace.  He has a name which should stand out in any search and certainly others with the same name appear with alarming regularity  -  but not him.

Knowing his name and the first given name of his wife I have been searching through the social and family entries in the main South Australian newspapers which are progressively being archived, scanned (badly) and posted on-line.  People are encouraged go to the site and correct the rather garbled print which is correctable in a sidebar with the actual scanned copy to refer to.  It is fun to do and I have tended to correct the entries pertaining to my own family when I do a search.

Anyway, I found an engagement notice among the BMDs which gave me the name of his wife and his wife's father which enabled me to search further to the wife's death notice which has given me the children and the one grandchild, along with the spouses of the children and the date and two places where the wedding took place.  I am not sure which one is correct.  They were both on the Social Page (Very Adelaide). 

One was a report of a pre-wedding party which gave one location and the other was a report of the wedding itself along with a photograph which placed the ceremony in a different church.  I have listed both and maybe one day I will find out which one it was.  I could purchase a copy of the marriage certificate but he is a second cousin and it doesn't really matter much in the total scheme of things.  And it is a hassle to prove who you are and that you have a right to buy a copy of the certificate.

I have recovered from the 'flu just in time for the hot weather.  Two days ago the temperature suddenly shot up to 36 degrees centigrade after a series of very cold, wet days and it was a bit of a shock to the system.  But nice not to have to rug up any more.

However, my cats are now  moulting their winter coats, there is black fur everywhere and the little girl is vomiting on my best Persian carpet.  Always a thorn amongst the roses.