My Life In Boxes

From the age of 18 I have not stopped moving around. Nearly every year since leaving high school I have been living and working in a different place. I get a job, unpack my belongings and at the end of the mustering season or a year or so later, I'm packing and moving on again.

This year, though, has taken it all to a new level. The beginning of the year saw me leaving my job and life in town to only a few months later leaving the station me and my former partner in crime were on and since then I haven't stopped moving being anywhere from three days to two months on a property before heading to the next place living off of whatever I need and whatever can fit in my Landcruiser.

Most of my belongings are in a rented storage shed. Everytime I lift the roller door into it, there it is: Reality in a box. His stuff on the right wall, my stuff on the left.

There's that old saying about keeping the home-fires burning. At Dad's this rings very true. My bedroom has barely changed since I was 10 years old. In fact, I've actually moved more stuff in much to Dad's annoyance.

"You're supposed to be moving out, not moving more stuff in," he reckons. Yeah, not going to happen till I have my own house on KI to move it all into.

At Mother's it is a different story. My boxes and stuff is moved around to new locations across the motel according to convenience and necessity. Everytime I go back I am sleeping in a different bed, in a different building.

But I don't really want to keep this nomadic life. I would love to settle down. I would love to hang my dresses in a wardrobe, put my clothes in drawers, put all my books on a shelf and display my stuffed toys beside my bed. I'd like to establish a garden that doesn't get eaten by poddy calves, have a carport to park my toyota under, have a yard so my dog doesn't have to be tied up all day. But all that I hope for seems so faraway. So for the time being, my life is in boxes.

Sump Oil and Spanners

It's so easy to go take a car to a mechanic. It's so easy to go out and buy filters and oil in an effort to service a vehicle by oneself. It's not so easy to go out and buy motivation though. In fact it's impossible. Even when I know that my car, poor, old Bruiser, hasn't been serviced since January 2011. I bought what I needed to get the job done over a month ago. It sat in a stack by the front door of the quarters since I took it off the back of the ute when I returned from town. I would walk past it numerous times a day but I still ignored it. But this weekend I finally decided to give procrastination the flick and after coming back from a water run I pulled the toolbox out from behind the seat, grabbed a plastic tub and slid a big piece of cardboard under the car and finally undid the sump plug.

I laid under the car for a while staring up at the oil filter and casually watching to oil pour out of the sump. 

'Can't stop now', I thought to myself as I realised that I had just committed myself to servicing old Bruiser.

Eventually I undid the oil filter. I took out the air filter and gave it a good blow out. It was in pretty good nick considering the roads I drive down and the length of time it's been since it was looked at last. I got the fancy filter-undoer-strappy-thing again and went to undo the fuel filter. A radiator hose, the cooling fan and fuel lines were all in my way making it a fickle task and be buggered if I could undo the stupid thing. I did, however, manage to put an impressive dent in it that will probably somehow, at some point, stuff something up and create bigger problems for me than when I first began. But the patience was tested and it failed. The damn thing can stay there.

I crawled back underneath the car with the new oil filter filled with new oil and put it in its place. I tightened it with the filter-doer-upper-strappy-thing and then laid there watching sump oil drip, drip, drip into the tub.

Then I woke up. I could feel the sun burning my legs. Not good. I don't know how long I had been asleep for but it was no surprise that I did because it seems that everytime I crawl under my car to work on it I nod off. The last time was when Dad and I were replacing the cooling fan and water pump (that had decided to fall out on the edge of the northern suburbs of Adelaide making the rest of the way in a very noisy and tedious journey) leaving Dad to do all the work himself while I had a little nanna nap.

After scolding myself I did up the sump plug and climbed up on the bullbar and filled the engine with new oil. Once the level was right I could finally lower the bonnet albeit still a little annoyed at myself that I couldn't do the fuel filter. I packed everything away and then slathered my hands and arms in heavy duty hand cleaner. The oil slick on my upper limbs all cleaned up, I drove back to the quarters to have forty winks on the cool tiles.

The evidence of my mechanical morning didn't wash off my legs though in the shower. I am sunburnt from where my shorts end to where my boots start and there are beautiful, artistic patches of black to compliment my pink, sun-stressed skin. But my car is serviced... only 9 months late and I'm sure the old boy will appreciate it so long as the oil filter doesn't fall off or anything.