Entry Seven

We have some devastating news, this is probably the final ever entry for The Housemate Diaries. KB is currently crying on the other end of phone, you see, we have had to write this entry by correspondence due to a lack of time last night as we made final preparations for the return of Priscilla and Pedro.

Here is a quick recapitulation about our Christmas:

- Christmas eve: we woke the children up at 6am for Proverbial reflections, before making a video for JackieL's birthday. We then made very bad pancakes and headed down to 408 (the place we have church) to put up some Chrissy decs in preparation for our Christmas day celebrations. We then made the pilgrimage to our respective homes to have some quality family time.

- Christmas day: we reunited at 408 for our Christmas luncheon extravaganza where we enjoyed good food, good company and the accompanying fanfare. 408 was packed full of strange and wonderful people. After this, both KB & CY headed to the MH (for those not aquianted with the South West- Mandurah) separately with their families for more quality family time.

- Boxing day: boxing day saw both KB & CY awake at their separate homes. However, CY awoke at 6.50am whilst KB showed a poor effort in our endeavour to become morning people with a shocking and horrid awakel time of 1pm. CY returned to Agnes and began the cleaning task. KB & CY reconvened at South Beach at around 4pm. At Agnes we began to cook lasange but were too impatient as we extracted the dish from the oven too prematurely, resulting in slightly undercooked pasta. We then embarked on our inaugural Boxing Day pub crawl. We engaged in some risk taking activity by walking from Agnes into Fremantle town. On our merry way, a stranger asked KB for her belt as his pants were sadly falling down. CY was adamant that KB should not give up her clothing to the strange man, however KB felt guilty about this as our friend Eelee had previously shared a story in which she had given an intoxicated girl her footwear in an act of true grace and love. However, CY convinced KB that giving up her belt in grace and love was slightly inappropriate. That was our only risk taking activity of the night. We attended a trio of pubs; the Norfolk, the Sail & Anchor and Little Creatures. We had had high hopes of attending Clancy's Fish Pub for a delectable mango beer, but alas, we were too exhausted from our Christmas raves to make the journey to the other side of Fremantle. We met up with our dear friend Gryffindor at Little Creatures and engaged him in some witty and in depth banter. We then journeyed to the taxi rank where a kind taxi man took us home. We have received much animosity for partaking in a pub crawl so soon after our church crawl. However, we are sure that this is no evil deed as we did not consume too much wine nor did we gain any needless bruises or bloodshot eyes. In good spirits and in moderation we enjoyed Gryffindor's and each others company.

- Sunday: we awoke at our usual time of 6amish for our final episode of Proverbial Reflections before doing several thousand loads of washing. KB departed for her engagements of the work kind while CY enjoyed some time with her friends Sue & Ross at X-Wray cafe. She then also departed for work. We came together again at the gathering of churchfreo where we had an extremely crazy night, which deserves its own blog. There was many an interested explorer and other distinctive people (for example, a man who invited everyone he spoke to to go to the movies with him). We went back to Agnes and were joined by Harry Hoedown (who was our number 1 visitor and was amazing in helping us make beds and clean up). Harry was knighted by KB with a match stick. Captain Charlie Noble & Captain Monkey Jacket joined us as they were to pick Pedro and Priscilla from the docks that night and so they left with the keys to Agnes and filled with the delight of our undercooked lasange, for which Captain Charlie Noble gave us much hassle.

We have many more anecdotes about our time together, however we have little time now. You will have to ask us in real life (RL). Thank you to all our readers, and especially our followers. You have been amazing and brought us much joy. Our time together would not have been the same without you.

Furthermore,

K/Caitlyn wish you peace

Meet the Chickens

Ok, so we know that you all have been waiting for this moment for a long time...you are finally meeting the chickens!! Now, Pris has informed us of the chicken's names. We are proud to present to you peep, scramble and the bergsma chicken.

The Night Before The Night Before Christmas

Entry Six ft. Lawrence and little LB

As the clock ticks on the second minute in the eighth hour of our eleventh day of housesitting, we embark on the sixth daily update on our lives as housemates.
On this glorious day, we have two guest bloggers. This is a never to be repeated event.
Our lovely guest bloggers are Lawrence and little LB, as I'm sure you would've been able to determine from the title.

Six pm Wednesday saw us head off to Charlie Chuckster and Joey-Lee's family home, for a truly amazing Christmas dinner. Of course, Lawrence, Ernie, Roland and Coopstar were there. The food was simply divine, as were the accompanying Christmas Carols. Unsurprisingly, the company was also amazing. After our brilliant Christmas dinner of turkey, green beans, corn, mash & cranberry sauce we departed that abode for our own, taking Lawrence with us.

When we reached Agnes we undertook KBs inaugural Sound of Music viewing. The Sound of Music is CYs favouritist movie of all time. Every time she watches it, it just makes her so happy and surprised. It was a joy to be able to share this experience with her favourite housemate, KB. KBs favourite movie is Mamma Mia. Unfortunately it is much inferior to the Sound of Music and CY hates it. Half way through the viewing, there was an emergency detour to Thornlie. Lawrence was unaware of the upcoming events of the evening. So it took her by great surprise (but not dismay) that the three of us picked little LB on our way to view the amazing sight that is the Christmas lights of Thornlie. We went as bogans and we came back as tired champions, who had conquered the well-lit cul-de-sac. We ran down the street, with our shoes off (except CY), merrily singing Christmas songs and Frank Sinatra ("I'm dreaming of a white Christmas"...we are actually singing now). We drove further through the labyrinth of Thornlie and saw a myriad of beautiful santa claus' climbing down chimneys, a dancing snowman, reindeers, stars and squishly animals (no animals were harmed in making this blog, except perhaps the chickens). We lay on the ground of a certain cul-de-sac and watched the lights dance on top of us. However, all this excitement and merriment was nothing compared to the utter joy, surprise and astonishment we felt when we stumbled upon THE TREE GUY OF GOSNELLS (go to http://gosnellsnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/tree-man-ready-for-christmas-day-vigil.html).
If you are not from Perth or if you live under a rock/don't watch the news everyday, you may be unaware that a man in Gosnells has been living in a tall tree for the last 17 days in an effort to stop the City of Gosnells council decapitating his beloved flora. As we passed him by, little LB and CY screamed with delight. We proceeded to park the car and visit him, where we signed a petition to save the tree. We wished that this had happened on Tuesday, which was Hippy Day.

After this, we made our way back to Agnes, where watched more of the amazing Sound of Music, feat JulesAndyDog, before hitting the sack. We awakened at 6am for our Proverbial Reflections, joined by Lawrence and little LB. We then emabarked on cooking bad pancakes (CY's bad skills) and we are now heading off to decorate 408 for our AMAZING CHRISTMAS DAY festivities. Merry Christmas Eve!

K/Caitlyn wish you peace, as well as our little friends; Lawrence and little LB

Entry Five ft. LC

Today is day twelve. This is an emergency update for all you avid readers, because we know there are so many of you.
Yesterday was hippy Tuesday, the most long awaited day in our housemate history. We dressed as hippies which was an intense experience. KB danced down the street in true hippy style, adding to the overall authenticity of the occasion. However, CY was a piker, using the excuse of her broken collarbone to escape true hippie-dom, even though she still drives, works and hangs up her clothing on the washing line. Also of note is that we have a guest blogger for the first time ever, she is LC, a linguistics chief [see photo].

The star of hippy-day was Mazzakelly, KBs true hippy friend. She arrived decked out in such amazing finery that she put us to shame. CY went kebabbing with our dear friends Charlie Chuckster, Joey-Lee, Eelee and Moth "I don't believe in blogging" Dawesville. T-Dog in the dish was also there, she had earlier joined CY & KB for lunch at Eggplants. During the kebabbing experience, Charlie Chuckster, who makes friends with everyone, spotted a true hippy, and of course made friends with him.

We have thus far neglected to mention the Providential experience of 'Proverbial Reflections' which we undertake each morning at the crack of dawn. It involves reading a Proverb from the book called Proverbs and reflecting on its wisdom in a proverbial manner, and putting that into action during our days.

On Monday night our good buddy Harry Hoedown swaggered into our saloon for some fire-side ramblings and ale swigging. During her stay, KB lassoed and slew three giant wildebeasts (cockroaches). Harry Hoedown joined us the following day in minding the young'ns; Roland, Ernie and Coopstar. Lawrence was also there but didn't need minding, she shall be joining us this evening. [See pictures above]

Yesterday, CY went shopping with her old pal Marzipan. She spent ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS on three items of clothing + a singlet. Which clearly is not allowed. How appalling.

K/Caitlyn wish you peace, and we would like to thank our friend LC for her creative input.

Word of the day; colander; a bowl-shaped kitchen utensil with perforations for draining off liquids and rinsing food; "When draining my pasta yesterday, I unfortunately missed the colander and it all fell in the sink and was ruined. But I ate it anyway."

[Props to LC for the word of the day & its artistic expression.]

Visual Evidence of Life

Some household photos of us in the kitchen, for all of those eager for a glimpse into the life of our household. Note the scrap bin for the chickens contains egg, and also sometimes chicken, which I am sure leads to better laying results from our chickens.

Quick Egg Update

For all of those dying to know how the egg collection went, I brought in a whopping SIX eggs today. One was still HOT! I thought I would let you know before KB gets home as, strangely, she does not share the egg obsession, bless her heart.

Peace

Entry Four

Entry Three (Day TEN)

Welcome back loyal followers of our magnificent blog. The most amazing thing happened. That's correct, we got our first comment ever. Props to ShannieJ.
Yesterday was of course Sunday. It began by WAKING UP LATE once again. At 8:30. Once again our lives descended into chaos. Upon waking CY fed the chickens but was astonished to see A CHICKEN SITTING ON THE EGGS. So we are looking forward to a large collection today as we were unable to collect any yesterday. At the same time I embarked on making pancakes, we only had half an hour as we had to be at church (to pick up guys) at 9am. There was not time to shower.

We went to a local Church in the community. We'll level with you, it wasn't really to pick up guys, but it was part one of our epic Church-Crawl in which we visited three churches in one day. After our first service at 9am we rushed to the bathroom and quickly realized just how disheveled we looked. We made a hasty exit, avoiding the hundreds of potential suitors. On the way home we had to make an emergency garage sale stop, as we were enticed by the lure of shopping. The result was disappointing so we headed home to wash our hair before rushing off for a 10:45am service in a distant land (suburb). An interesting experience ensued, with unexpected results. The service went for quite a while, we were not bored but had to leave early due to work commitments.

Following an afternoon of work commitments and chores, CY and KB reunited at churchfreo at 5:30pm, where we had the best church service of the crawl. There we ran into our good pastor Charlie Chuckster whom we chatted to about our epic, and I mean epic, church crawl. We also saw his lovely wife Joey-Lee whom we entertained with our banter, along with Eelee. Charlie Chuckster and Joey-Lee have five children their names are; Jackie L, Lawrence, Roland, Ernie and Coopstar. (All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved).

After the lovely service, during which there was an amazing sunset at the beach, CY went to Little Creatures & KB came home to entertain friends. Of course, before she left CY was given a strict warning that she had better not get home late as we had to get up early this morning.

At this point, we would just like to explain that we actually did our church crawl to learn from different churches.

K/Caitlyn wish you peace.

Word of the day: Sluggard; an idle slothful person.
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." (Proverbs 6:6)

Sunday's word of the day: calamity; an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
"the whole city was affected by the irremediable calamity"
*Note to reader: yesterday, calamity was also used as our "code word" to make an early exit from a church. Fortunately, the code word did not need to be used over the course of our church crawl.

Missed Word of the Day

As I (CY) was reading KBs last entry, it occurred to me that we forgot to inform all our readers of Friday's word of the day, so here goes:

Friday, 18 December 2009
Word of the day: Elf-Esteem; The feeling of being overworked, underappreciated and like you don't exist to others during the holidays while in actuality the season's success depends on you.
"I think Hermey is having some elf-esteem issues. He's pulling the stuffing out of all the teddy bears."

Also, I have some very exciting news which KB neglected to mention in the last post. This is probably because I am slightly obsessed with our chickens and she is not. Today, they laid four eggs. That's right, FOUR!!! Now, I spoke to our dear friend Priscilla today and she made the good point that one chicken probably just laid an egg after we collected them yesterday, which would account for the curious event of one chicken laying two eggs in one day. As I was talking to Priscilla I told her that we only collected one egg yesterday, which would account for the extra egg today. However, after reviewing The Housemate Diaries I know remember that we in fact had THREE eggs yesterday, meaning that one of our chickens did in fact create and lay TWO eggs in the last 24 hours! Do you follow? HOW AMAZING IS THAT!!! Chickens really do help us to remember how amazing life is. Hence, I recommend you all go out and buy a chicken. Then you will have endless material for deep reflection.

Peace

Entry Three

So today we embarked on the delightful adventure that is... DAY EIGHT. Yep, I know you're all out there being excited riiight now. We have recently learned that there are, in actual fact people that have read our blog. Or at least said that they have read it. Which I suppose is pretty bangin'.
Anyhow, CY has gone to have lunch at Xwray Cafe, because that's the kind of cool kid she is, which means it's my turn to update y'all on our lives.

As you should know by now, we have set ourselves some challenges for our time as housesitters. Becoming morning people is one such challenge, but today it didn't go all that well. My buddy CY woke up at 7:30 which I suppose isn't a poor effort for a Saturday but it is a far cry from the usual 6/6:30 wake up time. In reality though it was I, KB, who let the team down with a dismal effort of 8:30am. That's right you heard. 8:30. I attribute this to a lot of late nights (one of which is definitely CYs fault due to her rowdy partying). As you can imagine, today has been rather chaotic due to the time we missed in the morning. No beach time. No washing the dishes together whilst listening to Aretha. We didn't even choose the word of the day until 12:30pm!!!!!!
But never fear, all is not lost. All is never lost. I'm about to embark on the task of grocery shopping which should be super enjoyable, and CY is having happy fun times cafe-ing it up.

CY did forget to mention that yesterday was hobo friday. It all started at 6:30 beach time, where we both chose to wear our flannos and CY wore her pj pants. Unfortunately, we quickly forgot about the special day we were having when I went off to work and CY did whatever crazy things she did. Rather disappointing really. Slang day didn't go too well either, with CY forgetting and me being at work. I did try to incorporate some slang into my chats with customers though, with a few hilarious results. Tuesday will be hippy tuesday and I have a feeling that will work out well.

Phew what a long post. Cheers for reading.

K/Caitlyn wish you peace.

Word of the day: Folly; a lack of good sense, understanding, or foresight; "you there! you are acting with such folly!".

Entry Two

Unfortunately I (CY) am left to update you on day 7 of CY & KB's housesitting adventures. KB has left me home alone. The events that are most worthy of an update include:
- The chickens laid 3 eggs today, which was a great improvement on yesterdays poor effort of one. Alas, they will live at least another day.
- We just endured the traumatic experience of seeing two unusually large cockroaches in the house. As KB is the "man of the house" (I am the wife who always has dinner on the table and is up to date on her ironing), it was her job to capture and dispose of the pests. Unfortunately, neither cockroach was captured and after a great deal of screaming (sorry KB, it was funny) one is now running around the house decapitated. At least it is now smaller.
- We both worked tonight (location undisclosed) and KB was kind enough to visit me at my place of employment and help me do some tidying which I otherwise could not do, due to my broken clavicle.

Now, final business must include the fact that KB's parents just visited and affirmed some of my greatest fears...KB and I are acting a little like a married couple. This was noted after KB ran out the door with her parents (who were taking her out) and asked me "so, what time are you going to bed????"... thanks KB for your concern, I think I'll go to bed soon.

K/Caitlyns wish you peace

Quick Update from CY

KB is awesome. But for some reason she is reading a wine book introduction out loud. She even received a phone call from our friend TP but had to tell him she would call him back, which she did after she finished reading the chapter. She is hilarious.

Quick Update

Quick Update (Day Six)
As we were washing the dishes we had an amazing brainwave. So this is an announcement that every Thursday from now on shall be 'Slang Day Thursday'. We have to use all those groovy slang words that generally miss out in everyday conversations.

We also had to update you as to our AMAZING LOTTO WIN! Well actually it was KB. It occurred on Saturday night. It was pretty cool, winning the lottery. Even though, realistically, we only won $35.20. But that paid for dinner Mon night & breakfast (at 6:30 might I add!) on Tuesday.

K/Caitlyn wish you peace.

Entry One

Recap (Day Six)

Today we embarked on day six of our arduous journey. Our housemate relationship has developed to such an extent that we must share it with others. As housemates we like to sit down in the morning and plan our days together. We will now let you into the inner realms of our household. For our own safety, we will leave out the very specific details of our days, for instance where we work, our shifts and our chicken feeding schedules.

For future reference, we are Caitlyn (AKA CY) and Kaitlyn (AKA KB) and we are housesitting for our dear friends Pedro & Priscilla (*names have been changed*) for the next two weeks.

For a quick recap of our time so far:
- We have decided to be morning people, so we wake at around 6.30am, which is new for both of us.
- We have three chickens. We don't know their names. The amazing thing about chickens is that they lay eggs every day, can you imagine??? They create an egg, EVERY DAY!!!!
- The chickens got out once. Our friend TP had to come and wrangle them up.
- CY broke her collar bone on Saturday (the first full day of housesitting) while stalking a certain famous Australian celebrity who lives nearby, on her skateboard (what an idiot). It was very embarrassing.
- It was TPs 21st birthday last night and we had a lovely at X-Wray Cafe.
- On Monday morning we found a piece of chicken on top of the fridge which had been sitting there since Saturday when CY broke her collar bone and fished through the freezer for ice. It was rank. The flies were swarming (almost).
- On the first day we baked bread and found that on Wednesday it had already gone mouldy.

K/Caitlyn's wish you peace

Word of the Day: winnow; the act of separating grain from chaff; "the winnowing was done by women".