Rising Chaos

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. There's an unknown number of guests arriving at unknown intervals. It's predicted to hit 30c. The shed is still not fully insulated.

The house is in a certain amount of chaos, which isn't anything new. But we have a houseguest: the inimitable Girlie Jones from Western Australia. That's a fine thing, and the Mau-Mau is, as always, entranced to have a female visitor. (She likes male visitors too, but she tends to flirt at them, and that's just unnerving for everyone.)

I've still got all kinds of preparations to do. Too much to list. But the crowning glory occurred not twenty minutes ago: Natalie decided that the Younger Son was itching too much for her liking, so she went through his hair.

And voila! What should she discover but an infestation of goddam head-lice. Not nearly as bad as the infestation she herself brought home much earlier this year -- but irritating, nevertheless. She stuck around long enough to confirm her findings, and then she laughed at me, and went to work.

Great.

The boys are now wandering around with complicated, loopy, Manga-esque hairstyles provided by latherings of insecticidal hair-foam. Their bedding is in the laundry, awaiting The Treatment. I'll have to go past the chemist today (in between wineries and salmon farms, for Girlie Jones' sake) to pick up the rest of the arsenal, and put in a big effort tonight to clear everything for tomorrow, when there will be at least eight to ten other children on the patch.

Farkin' great. I love this shit.

Best of all, poor Girlie Jones is still blissfully asleep upstairs, doubtless operating on Westralian time still. In another hour or two, I shall have to break it to her that she's come to visit a plague house... she'll never forgive me!