Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

The Hush Button …

Part of the ‘control tower’

Up in the upper left. Ever met one of these? First time for me too.

I had so much to learn, move, stack, shift and unpack that I just looked it for the whole first seven days I was here, while I learned the other three.

Me saying ‘learned’ up there instead of ‘learnt’ will tell you the learning is ongoing. My control over the downlight switches needs fine tuning.

The fan, which is great, is controlled contrarily. 3 = 1 and 1 = 3 if that makes any sense. Thankfully, all three fans in the house work the same.

The left hand light ‘switch’ works the far four downlights in the living area. The right hand switch operates the nearer downlights.

The kitchen has its own array of controls.

The HUSH button?

I asked Deb from Admin when she came yesterday to talk me through my first monthly EEVI check. Which is a whole other kettle of fish.

The HUSH button will calm the fire alarm, say you set it off accidentally burning your toast, or something.

WiFi Connected …

Snail eating dead fish … even a snail like me can get connected back into the web of life …

So yeah, I’m back online, I’m happy to say. Hotspotting is great if WiFi is impossible due to your geographical position, but it is limiting. For instance anytime I tried to share a post from WordPress to a FaceBook page or to any other platform, for example, I got the We-Are-Having-Trouble-Finding-This-Site screen.

The provider is Connected Australia (www.connectedoz.com.au) and the connection was all done by email and someone talking me through the process on the mobile. The quickest and easiest of the organizational processes I still have to achieve.

Next are a few changes of my address. That should also be as easy as eating pie. Yesterday I was an hour at it trying to convince the MyGov website that yes, I’ve moved house. The good thing about that effort is that my details for Medicare, the ATO and Centrelink were also automatically updated.

I could ask why not the rest of the government institutions connected to the MyGov site. Have to do them by hand, apparently. There’s no logic in that.

One thing AI could be used for is to ferret out such stupidities and correct them. I’d love the government to outlay a few dollars to do a content-defrag in their bureaucracy.

Getting Back Online …

Is a puzzle. The complex comes with an embedded network. Not all providers accept them among their customers. Nor does the embedded network accept ‘others’.

And some of the acceptable providers seem not to be in existence any longer since they were listed.

Luckily I can hot-spot my laptop to my mobile phone, but not ideal. Laptop on footstool in front with a cord to power outlet to my right. Another cord from laptop to hub on the left. Mobile/cell on the couch beside me with a cord to the hub.

No sudden moves recommended. Trippy enough to trip over.

Today I might rustle through the spare cords for one to hotspot the TV to my mobile. Another kind of trippy!

Jury-Rigged Curtains …

Make-believe curtains are the go for the moment, until I decide curtains or blinds.

What kind of ceiling is this?

The carpenters clamps, rope and bed sheets curtains to the side installed by my son, and the highly unusual ceiling detail overhead.

There are four pristine white levels with only two of them faced with painted-over timber for curtain rails and/or blinds to be fixed overhead …

To be fixed overhead on two levels, neither of them ‘regular’ lengths. Which will make it hard to buy off-the-shelf products.

This morning I was distracted while researching indoor necessities by a pageful of Temu growlights, followed by discovering specialist products are not needed to help my plants survive.

It’s too long to wait for plants until the depth of winter to get a decent day of sunlight. So that’s another ongoing search for solutions. Love a good problem to get my teeth into!

The New Place …

Where to start?

The improvements on the previous place are numerous though I’m too tired now to do little more than describe the excellent light … in the lounge room, one whole wall is ceiling to floor glass, fixed panes and sliding doors, about two and a three quarter meters tall.

Where I’m sitting on the couch typing this blog post, what I see opposite is Rainer Hartlieb’s work of timber art … the shelf units he made for me in 2014 or thereabouts, when I lived in my Mullumbimby house … put back together and adapted for the space by my son.

This version of the shelf unit is approximately 75 centimeters shorter than the original which had a window seat included. The uprights and top length are of Queensland kauri. The short side shelves might be white pine, though I don’t recall that for certain. They made up three large handrails salvaged from a building site. The broad lower shelves are cypress pine, a width of timber that will never be seen again. These were my discovery. A $30 score from a secondhand store, they’d been used in a paint store, their undersides a thick coating of spilled paint.