Let's Catch Up Before We Melt

Yes, I know, shameful that I have not blogged in a month. It isn't that I have been very busy. In fact, I've been in a semi-permanent hide-in-the-air-con-couch-coma. It has been 35C and above for months now, with several weeks hitting the 40C and above, and this past week, 38C and above, 40C this afternoon. Want to know how that feels? Too fucking hot. That's how. I am OVER the heat. It started back in September and it hasn't let up for more than a day or two a couple of times. Last summer was not this hot, by far. I don't even know if we cracked 40C more than once or twice. All I know is I am so tired of being sweaty. It's not too bad at the office as the air con in the office I share with two other workers is the best in the building, and I have my desk shoved right under the vent (any surprise??). In my car isn't too bad once you get past the boiling hot feeling of everything in the car, and the air con gets going, however it is barely started to cool by the time I reach my destination as Alice Springs just isn't that big. One must be careful in the car after it's been sitting out for hours in the boiling hot sun. Things to be careful of - the buckle on the seat belt, you know, that silver bit - touching it is like being branded by a cattle iron. I have a purple furry cover on my steering wheel, but in the work cars, it's bare molten lead. You also want to be careful of how short your skirt is when you jump into the car on a black seat cover. BURNS.

Where I really struggle is in my house. I have air conditioning, and as long as I don't move much, I can manage to stay cool, but the moment I get up to do anything like wash dishes, laundry, vacuum, I am soaked in sweat and have to keep mopping my face off as the sweat stings my eyes. I haven't had to have the air con on much at night to sleep, as the temperatures, despite being furnacelike in the daytime, always drop a significant amount here in the desert at night. Like today it was 40C but tonight the forecast for the wee hours of the morning is 18C. So I sleep with a fan blowing directly on me in bed. If I happen to want to sleep in on the weekends though, I have to get up and turn on the air con early in the morning as it can be about 35C by 9am and boiling in the house. Or if I fall asleep on the sofa on the weekend, even with the air con on, I wake up covered in sweat because the sofa holds so much heat.

So I've spent most of the last several months inside the house, panting in the heat. It's too hot to sit out, too hot to go hiking, even too hot to go swimming. I was at a friend's house a few weeks back and there was a pool that looked oh so inviting, but it was 40C outside and there was no shade over the pool. It was a somewhat cloudy day, so when the sun was behind the clouds, it was bearable and I had my legs in while we drank and chatted, but as soon as the sun appeared, it was like being under a heat lamp - we all ran for the shade again. Lucky enough I always have been able to entertain myself indoors. Between reading books, watching downloaded tv shows and movies, knitting, sewing, playing the Wii, or spending hours on the internet playing games or reading articles, etc I am never bored. But I am beginning to feel like I'm suffering from cabin fever. It isn't much different than when I lived in the frozen north where it was winter 9 months of the year, and friggin cold for 8.5 of those months.

I may have mentioned it before, but I am looking at cooler pastures to spend the next year or two in Australia. I've applied for jobs in Western Australia, namely Mandurah, Perth, and Fremantle. There are lots of jobs in WA, most of them remote, but I've decided I don't want to be remote any longer, and look forward to some city time. The money is so much more than I make right now, being government wages like I had when I first came and worked in child protection. They also pay moving expenses which is key for me - I don't want to sell all of my furniture here at a loss only to have to buy more over there. I've heard from the one in Fremantle and they want to know if I have had my credentials assessed. When you have a degree from outside the country, they require you to have it assessed to determine if it is equal to the Australian social work degree. I didn't have to do that for my NT job that I came here for, as they have an exemption, but all other states require it, so I had to bundle up a truckload of paper and send it off to the AASW (Australian Association of Social Workers). They wanted a certified copy of my degree, passport, CV (very detailed resume), all of my course outlines, and $935 of my hard earned dollars, among other things. I thought the course outlines might be a challenge since I lost all mine in the fire, and it has been nearly 11 years since I graduated, but I contacted Renison College and they were able to pull them all from their files and email them to me, which was very nice of them. Each outline is 3-5 pages long, so by the time I was done, I had a bundle of paper over an inch thick to send off. Now I have to wait for them to process it, which can take several weeks.

Fremantle Beach

In the meantime, I've heard from one of the jobs, the Fremantle one, and they are asking for my assessment, so hopefully it won't be much longer for the assessment to be completed and I can still interview for the job. Fremantle is just south of Perth, almost like a suburb, and is right on the ocean, with a gorgeous beach running alongside the town. I stayed there last April with my sister while visiting with a friend of a friend who was gracious enough to let us come and go from his house. He has since returned to America where he is from, but since then two other friends have moved to the Perth area, so I will at least know someone when I get there. One is from here in Alice Springs, and the other is an Aussie I met in 2001 in Ireland, and we've kept in touch ever since. She came to see me in Victoria a few years ago.

So that's the scoop. My timeline is this - my lease is up at the end of May, so if all works out, I could be living and working in WA by June. Until then, life will be busy enough. On Sunday I am off to South Australia to pick up my 4 women and head with the convoy to Western Australia to go bush camping with over 100 Aboriginal women from APY lands. It is the AGM for NPY Women's Council and most all workers go along with the members. It should be rather amazing, as there will be inma at night, which means singing and dancing in language. It is quite a privilege to be invited to participate in this, and only women are permitted to be at the camp at night. I'll be able to write about it when I get back, but photos will be limited as they are very strict about that.

Once I get back from bush camp on Friday, the following Tuesday I head out on my festival journey to Byron Bay with some friends. Five days of music and friends with a stellar line-up should be quite a blast. It's quite a journey to get there, but then again, that is all part of the experience. Me and another friend leave here on Tuesday and fly to Melbourne where we stay overnight with another friend, and then four of us fly out to Gold Coast from Melbourne. Then we all catch a shuttle to Byron Bay and stay at a hostel that night. The following day we will grab a shuttle bus to the festival site and the music begins! These are a few of my must-see musicians - Paul Simon, Carlos Santana, Robert Plant, Steve Miller Band, Wilco, Xavier Rudd, Bonnie Raitt, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Roger Hodgson, Iggy and the Stooges, Counting Crows and Matt Anderson.

Chamber's Pillar

After I return from there, hopefully it will have cooled enough to go bush camping with my friends here again. We have been itching to go to Chamber's Pillar, but with temperatures so hot, it just isn't possible. The track there is 4-wheel drive only and rather rough, and neither of us want to get bogged or a flat in such heat.

Now it's time to crawl into bed with a good book...I'm reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. I still want to see the Jack Reacher movie, even if it does have Tom Cruise playing Jack, which in my opinion is stupid. Jack Reacher's character is about 6'5" and 250 lbs. He could life wee Tom with one hand. Tom is only 5'7" and likely only about 175lbs if that. However, I shall go into it with an open mind...