Monthly Archives: March 2017

Drains

Paying someone to clear those drains

blocked sewer MelbourneHaving six kids means things often go wrong. We are late to pretty much everything, one of them is normally crying and something is always broken. Normally I ignore the broken thing unless it is one of the children directly or something that will end up very costly in the long run. When the older ones started complaining that the toilet was flushing slowly I ignored them. A lot of the time they make things up and I hadn’t noticed any problems with our drains or pipes recently. My husband is fairly useless when it comes to DIY so if something around the house does need seeing to I tend to call in licenced professionals.

A few months after the toilet blockage rumours I started noticing that the kitchen sink drained very slowly. Having so many mouths to feed equals a lot of washing up so for most of the day the kitchen sink is filled with soapy water, it is rare that I even get a minute to stand there while it drains. When I finally did I noticed it was taking a while and so I made the call to the plumber and said I think I have a blocked sewer. Melbourne is a very family friendly city so we spend a lot of time out of the house where they can’t break things that will cost me money. Of course the duty of dealing with the plumber and the blocked sewer fell on me so I arranged for first thing in the morning and my lord am I glad I did! Turns out we need a full on sewer replacement. Melbourne is apparently not used to dealing with quite so much flow through, six baths a night is a lot of pressure on our old system. After some high pressure jet blasting it seems our drains will make it until the replacement can be arranged.

Pest

Pest Controllers, Important People

rosebud pest controlAnd they say parking attendants are supposed to be a noble breed. Actually, I tell lie, sort of…the guy I was chatting up was only pretending to be a parking attendant because he wanted to sound important. Why do I always get suckered into that stuff??

Oh yeah. Because I do basically the same thing. I actually just work in a $2 shop, which is…embarrassing. For me. Alright, maybe it wouldn’t be so much if I didn’t run around parties and everywhere else telling people I do other things and thus having to hide it from the world, but that’s the thing: lying just comes to me naturally, like breathing or craving fast food.

The true art is when you make your job sound good, but not too implausible. My current favourite is that I do pest control. Pakenham is a relatively small town, but since I don’t know anyone from there, it works as my fictional place of employment. I actually know some people who do termite control and all that, so I can bluff my way through the job pretty well. And why does this work so well? Because it’s an off-kilter job that’s still a vital service to to the community. And thus I make myself sound important without having to tell people I’m the head of a multinational corporation. Tried that once in my foolish younger years. It worked…about as well as it sounded. And then the people at the party saw me being picked up in my Mum’s Toyota Corolla, and that just couldn’t be explained away.

Look, I could be a pest controller. I have it in me. I’m not afraid of bugs, and I actually had a wood-louse farm in my room when I was younger. I mean, termite inspection people deal with chemicals, so it’s got to have an education and training element to it like any job. But most people don’t know that. They know, like, Rosebud pest control people or whatever, and they know what they do. And I could be one of them. It’s plausible. And thus, I’m an interesting person.

-Cassia