Okay so my grandma is not exactly winding down in her old age. If anything she’s gearing up. Her husband (and my grandfather) was always extremely stringent in the ways they spent their money, never doing anything much to excess and always saving as much as they could. When he died a few years ago, I think something clicked in her brain. I guess it’s probably a bit of that clichéd ‘life is short’ mentality, but she realised that she’d never really had the chance to travel much, and that that was something she would like to do. So she did. She found one of her friends who had two good hips and left with her to travel the world, asking me, her beloved granddaughter, to house sit while she was away.
Yeah, living on my own for a change is pretty awesome, but there are things about staying in an old lady’s house that are occasionally very off-putting. For example, my newest mystery/pet peeve is that there is something up with her air conditioning. Sydney has a lot of older houses in this area, but even the old age of the house doesn’t explain the strange smell that comes out of the heating system. I have half a feeling that something’s died down there, but that feels like it would be a) difficult, since the ducts are all sealed off; and b) a lot of hassle for me to go through. More than that, I know that grandma would find the whole event of having air con repairs done in Sydney while she’s overseas extremely upsetting (she can be very protective of her house) and she might even get some crazy notion into her head of coming home. Which would be ridiculous. So I think I’m just going to have to ignore the smell, and the various other old-house quirks, at least for the time being.