echidna and man return

Still raining, raining, raining.

‘I wish we would get flooded in’, says F thismorning. 

‘Me, too’ I say.

We did get flooded in for a day earlier this year. At the place where the water covered the road there was a cheerful impromptu early morning  gathering of stranded neighbours. Stopped in our tracks by the water across our road, we stood around by our vehicles, chatting with eachother in the drizzle, as if we had all the time in the world. Most of us are usually  Much Too Busy for such leisurely socialising. Swamp hens hooted. Ducks swam between fenceposts and  on the newly-formed lake where cars usually zoom up and down. Children in gumboots paddled around the edges.

But it’s not raining  hard enough to flood this time. 

A big dark wallaby bounded across the driveway just as we were leaving for school thismorning. Then went boing boing-ing off up the hill. An auspicious start to the day.

‘It’s good that the echidna came back’ says F, sitting next to me in the car. The wallaby had reminded him of the echidna, who we saw several times a few weeks ago by the crumbling  back stairs - before the stairs were re-vamped. 

We worried that the new steps  down to the laundry (and all the noise during their construction) would scare away  the echidna. We haven’t actually seen it again - just the mess it makes, burrowing its way in the same old place, scattering all the new white pebbles that looked so pleasingly neat. Oh well. I guess a bit of mess is a small  price to pay for the privelege of having native animals on your back door step. 

D comes back from Melbourne tonight. I look forward to our cosy little family being reunited. I also know it will be a bit of an adjustment. F and I have been in a comfortable groove together these last few weeks. There is a certain simplicity about being a single parent - one less relationships to maintain and, strangely, much less washing up. 

Than again, I am looking forward to not having to plan dinner every single night and not having to drive to the bus stop every single morning. And to having my buddy back to chat with at the end of the day.