Thursday, November 26, 2009

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night - and, would you believe it, ended up waking up at 10:40am this morning.  I couldn't believe it when I called out to Mike to ask him the time (there is no clock in our bedroom) and he told me how late it was.  He had woken up about 90 minutes before me and went on the computer while he waited for me to wake up.  I put on a load of laundry as soon as I got up as I had to do two loads today and they had to get up asap on the line.  After that, I needed to get something to eat and since it was so late, we ended up having brunch instead of breakfast and lunch. 

While we were eating, Christine (our landlady) called her dog, Josie, but I thought she said 'Sue', so I answered her.  She told me to be really quiet as there was a snake in the yard and she was going to kill it.  My heart sank into my feet, I think.  I hate snakes with a passion - I once walked ten feet around a DEAD snake.  Mike and I continued to eat our brunch, and a little while later, Christine yelled to us that the snake was on our patio.  I freaked some more.  I quickly held tight to the screen door which was closed, but doesn't latch.  Then, I closed the glass door to the patio and stood staring at the snake (and was really scared).  Mike told me he would watch it while I finished my breakfast, although I was no longer hungry by this time.  Mike said he was amazed at how still the snake was and I was amazed at how fat it was since it was so short. 

Christine was talking with her neighbour who was in her yard and I couldn't understand why she wasn't coming back to try and kill the snake.  I wanted to yell at her to hurry, but she had told me to be quiet so I thought that I wasn't allowed to make any noise in case it frightened the snake away and she wouldn't know where it was to kill it.  Mike turned around from looking at the snake and was talking to me and when he turned back to look at the snake, it was gone.  We were both a little worried at this point.  I heard noise and Mike looked out the window and Christine was talking with the missionaries and she had the snake in her hand.  All of a sudden, I realized that the snake was fake - I told Mike that I was going to have to hurt Christine. :-)

It turned out that she had seen in the snake somewhere on her property and had called her neighbour over to help her kill it (shhh, they're not supposed to kill them so we're not telling anybody here that she was going to do that :-)   Anyway,  she and the neighbour have a system where the neighbour uses a rake to hold the snake still and Christine then uses a shovel to cut it in half.  When she tried to cut this snake, a 'bunch of eggs' fell out (stuffing).  She thought that we had put it there, so she thought she would throw it on our patio and see how we would react.  She figured that if we had put it there, we would laugh and she would know that it had been us.  I told her then that I was going to kill her. :-)  We all got a good laugh about it afterwards, but even thinking about it now gives me the heebie jeebies.

After we all settled down from that 'adventure', the missionaries came inside and chatted with us for about an hour.  Elder Coy is from Adelaide, Australia and Elder Hurst is from Provo, Utah.  They have been assigned to be our home teachers (they will come to visit us once a month and leave a spiritual message with us) and so today was a 'get to know you' day.  We talked a lot about ourselves and our family and they shared a lot about themselves and their families.  The message they left with us is how we need to keep spiritually strong by nurturing ourselves (praying, reading the scriptures, going to church).  They likened us to a tree - if a tree is not nurtured (nourished) by water, sun and good soil, it will eventually weaken and die.  So it is with us - we need to make sure that we continue to do all the right things so we stay strong.

We spent the rest of the afternoon writing emails, playing card games and chatting.  At about 5pm, we went for our daily walk.  We have decided that this is the perfect time to go for a walk since the heat of the sun has cooled and there is still a lovely breeze and it's still light.  What I am finding is that when we are inside and being a bit lazy in a day, it's hard to get motivated to get out and walk.  Today was one of those kind of days, so I had to just tell myself to get a move on and get outside.  Once we were walking, it felt good to be out in the fresh air and to be getting some exercise.  When we got home, we fixed dinner and then we watched two tv shows.  The first was 'Glee' - it is such a cute show about a high school glee club.  The second was called 'Rush' and it's an Australian cop show - it turned out to be a pretty good show, actually - you almost felt like you were there at times.

I still had some minutes left on my phone and it was going to expire tomorrow, so I called my mom.  It was nice to talk with her (and not have to leave home to do it).  I am bugging her to get Skype downloaded onto her computer and for her to get a webcam so that we can talk with each other and see each other at the same time when we come back to Australia after our seven week visit in December/January.  It will likely take Mike to sort it out and get it done - my mom is not a fan of computers! :-)  I have to say that I am impressed that she is actually reading my blog each day AND answering my emails (and not with short emails back, I might add!) :-)