Nigella …

I am excited. Uncle Wayne is still here and still working on making the Mummies’ deck the best it could possibly be – and the Mummies are extremely grateful he is being so painstaking with it. I think M Kaz is enjoying working with him as a Trade’s Assistant and she certainly is learning lots about using power tools – she’s been using an impact driver with the rivet adaptor and even I can see that’s a way better option than the hand-operated rivet gun … that’s fun too but very slow and given they have so many rivets to do, they don’t have time for mucking around.

There was good progress today with the deck ends getting filled in with shade cloth … it looks great. I’ve only seen it through the windows or the screen doors because, despite assurances a couple of days ago that it won’t be long now until I can go out on the deck – I still haven’t set any of my feet out there, and it’s not for want of trying – I don’t know how I could be urging them on any faster. It’s taking so much effort that I have to keep my strength up by having lots of naps – and spending the rest of the time looking as cute as I can – I’d like to say that I’ve been being as cute as I can, but we all know that’s not right.

Uncle Wayne has given me a new box – although I have to take his empty six-pack holders out to be able to fit in there. And I do!

Uncle Wayne is still visiting us … and even though he does let me sleep on his bed during the day and when he isn’t on there, he still insists on putting me out of the room at night.  I have seen something like this on television – Fred Flintstone putting his cat out for the night – but I can’t sneak back in through the window before Wayne gets back “inside”. I don’t really mind sitting outside his door, waiting to get back inside, because sometimes he opens the door enough for me to slip back in … alas, sometimes it doesn’t.  But I am nothing if not patient.

So the Mummies still have Uncle Wayne working on little “jobs” around the house – now that the naughty screen door in the living room has been taken care of, he has fixed M Sooz’s shower screen – which has been working but which Uncle Wayne fixed so it is better.  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, since M Kaz and Uncle Wayne have been watching Netflix movies in their “down time”, M Kaz has been increasingly unhappy with the sound from the television – I think anyone would have been given that even with the volume at 100% – with some considerable tweaking of the various audio settings – it was very hard to hear.  The problem was solved fairly easily though – luckily Uncle Wayne had researched televisions for replacing M Kaz’s mother’s (let’s call her Old Nan) set – so it was fairly easy to select a suitable replacement for the Mummies.  They now have a 50″ set.  Hmmmm, I overheard M Kaz speaking with Uncle Wayne the other day about measurements – why is it that even though Australia changed from the imperial to metric measurement system in 1966 – here it is 2022 and they are still using the old system for lots of things.

While Uncle Wayne is busy doing stuff around the house – and yard – and waiting, waiting, waiting for the deck building materials to be delivered – I have been keeping myself busy around the place as well – sleeping on the bed, sleeping in my Christmas box on the table, sleeping in the hanging thing on the cat tree (the Mummies keep calling it “kitten in a basket” when I do that).

What’s not to like about Uncle Wayne? Okay, he has taken over my bedroom but he does let me in it most of the time, except for when he’s sleeping … and he’s said I’m not allowed to sleep on his pillow, but everywhere else is fair game, even on his jeans when he’s got them on the bed – just not when he’s wearing them.

The Mummies have been keeping him very busy. There was a list of jobs they were talking about before he arrived and slowly but surely they are telling him which ones they want done, and he’s doing them. Some are very quick jobs – some are very involved and intricate, but probably the biggest job of all is him enclosing the back deck – and we are all going to love that because when it’s done I’m going to be able to go out there by myself. I’m hoping M Kaz will even consider putting my litter tray out there because I am a little shy and I don’t like people walking in on me while I am in my tray. M Kaz is so bad some times that even before I’m done covering “stuff” up, she has me out of the tray and is cleaning it out for me – beats me why she thinks it doesn’t take a good couple of minutes of scratching in the tray and on the side of the bathtub and on the bathroom floor to get the job done.

While Uncle Wayne has been doing his “jobs” I have been watching him as best I can – I want to learn about doing building stuff as well. It’s hard though when I have to watch it from the bathroom window — it’s hard to be able to see enough – but I was able to have a Nigey-eye view of him finishing off the cementing on the back deck the other night. He must have been determined to finish because it was dark and he was lighting up what he was doing with a torch … ON HIS HEAD! He had his head torch back on again this evening when he was fixing up the very bad job someone had done on the screen door in the living room – you can see this has never worked properly he said as he continued to try to fix it – which meant he first had to get the door off and that seemed to be a massive job. He hasn’t quite finished it tonight – he thinks he will do another half-hour or so on it tomorrow to “drop it 10mm and make it schmick”. I have a lot to learn about building!

Okay, why did M Kaz have to be in a declutter frenzy? If she hadn’t been she would NEVER have found the tiny broom that goes with the Zen Garden and then she wouldn’t have been compelled to put it in the Zen Garden and then she wouldn’t have found the Nigey paw prints in said Zen Garden. She’s still trying to work out how I put them there without knocking it off the shelf. I am amazing!

I was helping M Kaz sort through a bag full of papers this morning – working out what to keep, what to send off for shredding (read: burning in the fire pit in Toowoomba) and what was safe enough to put into the recycling bin. All I had to do was sit in the bag while she was trying to get papers out of it – especially when it looked like she needed a bit of a break.

It’s been fun playing with things around here – the rubber bands on Aunty M’s mail on Thursday and the feral hat and M Kaz’s notebook today. I think they’re trying to make it up to me for leaving me with Aunty Rosemary last weekend – or hoping that I will forget I heard M Kaz booking me in for a nail treatment on Monday.