Life on the Farm

I am currently residing in a shed in the country.  Also living in the shed are my boyfriend, my boyfriend’s mum, my little sister and Jack the dog.  How did this novel arrangement arise, you ask?  Through sheer, unabated laziness.  That’s how.

You see, a few months ago, Tom and I decided abruptly that we would like to own a house.  Like most of our decisions, there had been no forward planning, and certainly no scrimping and saving for years beforehand.  Lol.  Instead of doing that, we had been lazing around, hardly working, and making sweeping proclamations such as ‘We don’t need material possessions to be happy!  We’re just fine with smelling the breeze.  The very inexpensive breeze.’  After a while the breeze lost its sheen, and we realized we wanted a house, after all.  No biggie.

We told Tom’s mum and she sighed and looked exasperated.  Then she said why don’t you come live with me and help me do up my property in the country.  We said thankyou and yes and were bailed out yet again.

The property is a beautiful heritage shop on the Murray.  But we can’t reside there while we renovate it, so we are packed into the little dairy in Wangaratta where Val so frugally exists.  To complete the motley crew, I’ve brought my sister along.  She was bored with living with mum and dad so I suggested she take a leaf out of our freeloading book and come to the country!  So here we are, neatly packed into eachother’s pockets in a converted sheep house.

Life in the sheep house looks something like this:  My alarm goes off at eight.  I begrudgingly roll out of bed, then stumble around in the dark like a zombie for a while, piling on whatever clothes I can find to ward off the bitter cold.  Tom tells me to be quiet.  I curse him loudly and complain for a while about his choice to sleep in.  He says go away and I say FINE and indignantly pace the two meters between our bed and the makeshift kitchen.  Desperately, I down some coffee.  As it kicks in, my grumpiness subsides and I feel a bit bad about pestering Tom.

I fire up the computer and try to write.  My brain is blank, so instead of writing I stare at the flashing curser.  I HATE the flashing curser.  Val walks in and says ‘Good morning!’  I grumble something back and return to the screen, but now I can’t write because Val is annoying me with her tea making noises.  I would go somewhere else but there’s only one big sheep room.  Finally, an idea begins to take shape.  Fervently, I transcribe my imagination onto the page.  But I keep getting distracted by the guilt that has welled up inside me over grumbling at Val.

To atone, I trudge out to the billabong and join her for tea.  As we sip and talk, Anna and Tom emerge.  Anna has lost her shoe.  We find the shoe.  Now it is time to go the property to renovate, and as usual I haven’t got nearly enough writing done.  I finish that night, glass of wine in hand, surrounded by the hum of chatter and cooking and joking in the little dairy.

Tom and I have a tendency of finding ourselves in odd arrangements.  If we were better at planning ahead, we could be quaffing scotch in an opulent city apartment by now.  But the sheep house, I think, is more fun.