Elsja Down Under

Why are my feet so tasty? April 25, 2009

Seriously…

Why must my feet and legs taste so delicious. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been attacked by mosquitoes (Aussie translation: mozzies) on my feet. What is it that attracts them to that one particular area of my body? Sure I’ll get one on my arm or back from time to time, but 90% of the bites I get are located from my calves down. I just did a little Google research and discovered that mosquitoes are attracted to stinky, smelly feet. Hmm… I didn’t think my feet stunk that bad!! And really, that doesn’t explain why I still get bites after taking baths at night.

While I’m on the topic of these foul creatures, I have a few other questions.

Why must they always bite in the exact area where my flip flops (Aussie translation: thongs) rub against as I walk?

How do mosquitos even find my legs and feet when they are curled up under my butt when I’m on the couch completely covered by a blanket?

Since when do mosquito bites hurt? One of the latest from last night bit me on the bottom of my right foot, right in the middle of the arch. I couldn’t even walk for awhile without pain. It was stinging and burning and hot. Whatever happened to the simple itch?

What is a mosquito’s purpose in life? No really, I’m serious. I know spiders are ugly but they kill other unwanted bugs. Bees sting but they help pollinate. What the hell do mosquitoes do other cause agony and spread disease?

While doing my Google research, I founds some really helpful tips for repelling mosquitos on THIS SITE. Some of them were pretty funny so I thought I’d share in case any of you have a problem with these feet biting demon bugs like I do!

 

Eat garlic. Mosquitoes (and vampires) dislike the natural skin secretion caused by garlic. If you don’t mind like smelling like a Pizza Hut bread stick, a daily dose of 1,500 mg of fresh garlic or a 15 mg capsule will do the trick.

Attract bats. Some say that one small, brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes per hour. Build or buy yourself a bat house.

Drink tonic water, with or without gin, vodka or other choices of spirits.

Vinegar. If you don’t mind smelling like a pickle, rub vinegar on yourself.

 

Hmm… eating garlic breadsticks and drinking vodka tonics doesn’t sound so bad!

The Great Outdoors October 11, 2008

So my internet took a dump this week. Australia has these awful download limits on their internet plans. Well, we (I) reached ours by downloading a few too many episodes of grey’s anatomy and gossip girl, so our internet was useless for awhile. Today starts the new month and it’s back to being remotely quick. I feel like I’ve been freed from internet jail hell. It’s a good day.

But I’ll tell you what isn’t good…

Spiders.

I finally saw my first one of these the other day:

And yes, it was that big. Now, in all honesty- I DID see one of these before. But I was warned ahead of time that there was one on the house and we all went out to take a look and it wasn’t that big.

THIS occurence was a surprise… and of all places to see one, I saw one in the very place that freaks me out the most. On the car!! Why does the car scare me the most? Well, because many times, these are found INSIDE the car and they scurry across the windshield (again, on the INSIDE). Now, this one was on the outside… THANK GOD, but it was dark and late and it made me want to vomit when I saw it’s furry giant legs crawling up the passenger window. I am very thankful that I was driving on this particular night, so it wasn’t MY face that was inches away from the creature. If I would have been in the passenger seat, I just might have shed a tear. Andrew actually opened the door to flick it off. However, you can’t exactly “flick” these spiders off the car. It was more like a shove, and when it hit the ground, Andrew heard a big THUD. GROSS. I really don’t like the fact that Andrew has no light in his car so every night when I get inside there could be creepy crawlies all over and I would never know! UGH.

So while spiders are not part of the Great Outdoors (they are part of the creepy, gross, ugly outdoors), we do have two GOOD outdoors things to mention.

1. Our patio. I finally took pictures of the patio with the table. This isn’t that exciting- and it’s pretty small, but my mom wanted to see pictures- so here you go:

2. We went kayaking yesterday. There were 7 of us, I was clearly the most useless when it came to my kayaking abilities, but I still had fun. I haven’t kayaked since we did it in our high school pool 11 years ago. I didn’t take pictures because I completely forgot my brand new waterproof camera that would have been PERFECT to bring. Oh well, next time. And today, I am sore. Kayaking is rough on the muscles! But it’s not my arms that hurt, it’s my left calf. Yes, evidently kayaking is REALLY hard on the calves (particularly the left one). Who knew??

Oh and also this takes care of #40 on my 101 list (go kayaking) woohoo!

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Where do Babies Come from? September 20, 2008

No not those babies… A different baby species all together.  Let me tell you a little story about nature… get your barf bags ready.

Today I learned where maggots come from. Ok ok I already knew… they come from flies. Easy enough. People always get disgusted when flies land on food and stuff and while yes, it does gross me out… I don’t ever really freak out. Well now, I will be freaking.

I took a frozen chicken breast out of the freezer earlier today to defrost. It was wrapped up in it’s individual plastic bag and I set it in the sink as we always do. So 10 minutes ago I go into the kitchen to start chopping some veggies for dinner. I glance down in the sink at the chicken and see a fly on it. Eh, no biggy- it’s wrapped in plastic, the fly can do no harm. But then I saw something underneath the bag. Hmm I thought… is that nasty defrosted chicken juice oozing out of the bag? Could a fly actually eat through a plastic bag in order to get to the chicken? There was definitely something under there. And then it hit me…

That’s not chicken juice.

This is about the time that I nearly upchucked my lunch.

According to some websites (that I now wish I hadn’t visited), fly eggs can hatch within 24 hours if laid in a warm, damp place. Or, about  5 minutes if laid in Elsja’s sink next to our future dinner. I’ll spare you the pictures (of course I took some to show Andrew), but you can only imagine what I saw when I lifted that bag of chicken from the sink. 24 hours to hatch??? Yeah ok. The chicken had only been sitting there a max of 3 hours! I mean come on, the fly was still sitting there with all her squirmy babies just chillin. Don’t flies usually dump those things and fly off to their next unsuspecting victim?

Dinner just doesn’t sound as good anymore. I’ve inspected the chicken… there were no actual traces of anything foul on the bag, just beneath it in the sink. But it still somehow doesn’t sound that appetizing.

I Won The Battle May 26, 2008

But I’m still not sure if I’ve won the ongoing war.

War on what you ask?

BUGS! Stupid shitty bugs that like to attack my poor innocent plants. My Cilantro (Coriander) plant was my only plant left that was free from bugs. After Hawaii, I got it back from the plant-sitter (aka Veronica) and it was perfect. I was so happy that it hadn’t been attacked. But then a few days ago, I went out and saw it covered with aphids and my heart sank. It went so long without being attacked, I thought I was safe. I just figured aphids don’t like Cilantro.

Well turns out they do. I almost gave up and just decided to let it die… but I refused to let these little shits win and crush any more of my gardening hopes and dreams! I’m sick of losing all my herbs to bugs! How can bugs beat me?? I did some research and discovered that if you just spray them with a strong hose, they fall right off without causing damage to the plant. Well, living in this apartment, I don’t have a hose. So I took my dear plant into the bathtub and held the plant sideways under the tap for 5 minutes. I watched the little suckers fall right off and swim down the drain to their miserable death. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of them. I took it back outside, dug out some of the dirt from the top that had a few little pests chillin’ and threw that dirt away. I then covered it with some new dirt, hopefully suffocating any of the aphids that I may have missed. Finally, based on the advice of a few websites, I sprayed the plant with a water/dish soap mixture. I will admit, I don’t have a spray bottle, so I used a squirt bottle and think I may have soaked the plant a bit too much because it became a bit wilty… but now, 3 days later… it looks healthier, happy and bug free!

I saved my plant! I will not be overtaken by bugs! Now, let’s hope the cilantro still tastes like cilantro… not like Dawn or Palmolive.

I’ve been Invaded March 7, 2008

Well, my basil plants have, that is. Invaded by bugs. UGH. The guy at the shop told me to buy mint and plant next to the basil and that would keep the bugs away. Well, it seemed to work for about 3 weeks. Now today I go out there to see that my basil plants (that were thriving and growing rapidly) are suddenly sparse and sickly looking due to CATERPILLARS. The little shits are eating all the leaves. I pulled off 2 average size ones, a little one, and 3 TINY ones that I just happened to see randomly. But, I’m afraid there are definitely more- must have some eggs in there for them to be all sizes. Stupid camoflauge bugs. GROSS! And there’s all these little fuzzy white things and little black things and on the back of the mint there are little green things. I counted 4 types of bugs. I’m really sad. I’m going to try to go to the shop up the street and buy some organic bug killer or something to get rid of them. I don’t want to sacrafice what’s left of my dear basil just because these little pests came to ruin my day.

Vehicles, Vocab & Vermin March 2, 2008

Driving:  Guess what I did yesterday? I drove for more than 5 minutes, on a freeway even! I drove out to Andrew’s dad’s house and I didn’t even crash or end up on the wrong side of the road. I don’t know what is hardest…

 

• Driving on the left side?  – Nah…I think I’m getting used to thatÂ

• Remembering that the blinker is on the right so that I don’t actually turn the windshield wipers on every time I turn… Yep I think I’ve got that one down! Didn’t screw up once yesterday!Â

• Looking at the speedometer to find I’m going 100??? Oh wait… that’s KPH… still feels fast though!Â

• Checking the speed every 10 seconds to make sure I’m not going over the speed limit?? Ummm… I do think this might take the cake. Usually I don’t worry too much about speeding a little, but here in Australia there are speed cameras EVERYWHERE and you really CAN’T speed or else you WILL get a ticket. Yup, this was the toughest for me on this long drive!Â

I did notice about 20-25 minutes into the drive that I hadn’t looked in my rearview mirror ONCE!! I only noticed when I FINALLY looked and realized I hadn’t adjusted it to where I could actually see. And I wondered why I couldn’t figure out if there were cars behind me. It’s just not natural yet to look up and left when I want to see the rear. 

 

Pronunciations:  I’m adding a new feature to my blog… Aussie pronunciation of the week (or day or whenever I see fit). I’ll start this week off with a few examples.

 

• Hyundai… here it is pronounced Heeunday
• Nissan… here it’s Nissin (like listen)

• Tortilla… tor till uh. I guess the Aussies just pronounce it how it is spelled, but it’s just SO funny to hear! (there’s really NO Mexican/Spanish influence in this country).