I remembered the words of a friend’s parent who had chuckled over dinner one night up in Queensland when we told them we were moving to Victoria. “At least you know what to expect in Brisbane — hot and humid — period. But it’s reliable!”

Those words were dancing around in my head as I talked to my husband on Saturday night. “You need to know before you get home that there isn’t any air conditioning and the air is barely breathable. I don’t know how we’re going to sleep because by the time you get here, it’s supposed to be up to well over 40 degrees celcius (over 100 fahrenheit) again tomorrow.”

He listened quietly on the phone from Sydney as he prepared for a final dinner out with his colleagues after a week long seminar. Then he exhaled loudly and said simply, “I see.”

The temperatures had climbed a little higher every single day throughout the week that Mark was away until they were sizzling by the end of the week. I had been cool and comfortable whilst sitting in the livingroom working at the laptop when a terrible burning-electrical smell wafted into the room.

Racing up to the panel on the air-conditioner, I pleaded with it, “No, no, no! Don’t DO this!” Then I turned off the power and waited for it to cool down. Perhaps it was simply overheated since the outside air was oven-like. That could be it — right?

No such luck! An hour later I nervously turned it back on and air blew from the panels — just plain air — not cold air — and the compressor was no longer coming on. I am not exaggerating one bit — a sense of doom poured through me. I spent the next 2 days and nights drinking litres of water with lemon wedges and trying in vain to sleep with dampened sarongs on my body, a spray mister filled with water by my bedside, and fans blasting air on the highest setting on the bed.

Mark returned on Sunday and agreed that it was not the best of homecomings but he was still floating from his week long intensive getting his Tai Chi instructor certificate and I don’t think he fully noticed how dreadful it was that first night back.

Monday dawned and we made the trek into the next larger town to purchase a new air conditioner and some other supplies. The sidewalks felt like they were melting as we walked to a cafe while the tyre dealer put new ones on the back of the van. It was 44.5C/112F and I was simply nauseous from the heat by that point. But there was no time to get it installed that day and we were forced to sleep in a house that only went down by a few degrees that night. We were not alone in our misery. All over Victoria — people were sweltering.

Day 4 and the Tuesday morning temperatures were just as harsh as the previous morning. I mentioned to Mark that I hadn’t seen a bird in days. They had gone into hiding to survive the blast-furnace conditions apparently.

We are lucky that Mark owns his own business and he could move his schedule around to install the air conditioning that afternoon and everything worked perfectly. But the strangest trick of fate was waiting for us later that day.

Just as he got the unit in place and the remote control working — the temperatures plummeted within one hour to 17C/62.5F — and suddenly my overheated skin was freezing! That night, a mere 24 hours after I had been lying sleepless in sheets that were so hot and damp that they felt like a steam iron against my skin, I was tucked up in bed in long pajamas with a blanket on top to stay warm.

Another thing to tick off on the list of if-I-could-find-a-perfect-environment would be CONSISTENT seasonal weather. (sigh!)

Now– where’s that scalding hot cup of tea when I need it?

The expression on the face of Baby Ginger aka ‘Bouf Boy’ said it all. It was suddenly quite hot and, oddly for Victoria, quite sticky-humid.

Baby was still heavily furry — his winter coat hanging on a bit longer than usual since we were still having night time temps down to 8C (48F) up until a few days ago — so I spent a half an hour last night briskly brushing and brushing. The amount of fur that came off in wads was enough to spin into yarn and knit a kitten-sized sweater.

Time to lighten up in several other ways, too — need to get inside some of the those boxes that have been stored in the studio ever since we moved to the country from Melbourne 3 years ago. If I haven’t seen those things in all of these years — do I really need them?

Paperwork, artwork and clothing notwithstanding — looks like it’s time to lighten up via a big purge in the coming weeks.

And I’ll need to do it when Sweetie is off at work. I used to think I had an issue with keeping things that were long past their use-by date due to sentimental attachment, but my ‘issues with stuff’ are minor league compared to him!

So, is it ebay singing to me? A well-advertised garage sale perhaps? Donations galore to the charity shops?

Keep you posted — and I may get brave and document the process in photos!

Two days ago it was so hot that the act of exiting the air-conditioned house was akin to opening the door of a blast furnace and feeling all the pores in your body expand in unison. Some odd combination of heat and summer strangeness brought a cloud of frenzied flies through our area and these larger-than-a gnat yet smaller-than-a-housefly creatures plastered the exterior walls of every building in the village and zoomed into the house at lightening speed every time you opened the door. And as cat owners, there’s a lot of door opening around here.

The sheer amount of aforementioned flies dancing about on the ceiling and swinging from the light fixtures that night was quite offputting and resulted in a toxic spray-down followed by a floorscape of hundreds of tiny carcasses to sweep up. Yuck!

The very next day the temperatures plummeted and I had to do the wardrobe shuffle and move from the thin linen attire of the previous day back into track pants and a turtleneck. No one could accuse the Weather Gods of Central Victoria of not having a sense of humour!

With that cool change came the 1 AM arrival of Peter (or is it Penelope?) Possum for a spot of roof dancing. This was a completely surprising event since, unlike our last tree-embraced residence, there are no trees anywhere near this newly constructed cottage except for the saplings out front that are easily 3 metres or more from the house itself. So how did PP get up there?

I was working late, just as I am now, and heard the banging, scraping, and scrambling sound as PP clumped across the tin roof. What the — (expletive deleted!)???

It may be a mere week until Christmas, but I was not the least bit inclined to think that Santa’s reindeer had arrived 7 days early for a quick Aussie holiday prior to braving the icy northern hemisphere. And I recognised that sound from previous adventures at our former house.

Grabbing a small torch (translation – flashlight for the North American folks), I ventured out to the new room addition and banged on the edge of the window sill. Slowly — OH so slowly — the possum came back down the drainpipe and began to lope in slow motion across the grass. I opened the back door, heart racing the entire time, and hissed, “Shoo!” at it. But it completely ignored me and the expression on it’s smug little unconcerned possum face never changed. It simply turned and began to amble at a possum-ish pace towards the horse barn in the back paddock.

It’s been peaceful tonight thus far — but wait — I spoke too soon! The donkey in the neighbour’s field began his hee-haw routine just now at 2 AM. Why he feels the need to vocalise in the middle of the night I shall never know since he’s completely silent throughout the daylight hours. But perhaps he noticed one of our slithery-snakey critters. Let’s just leave that thought unexamined so I WILL be able to sleep tonight — shall we?!