Living in the country is nice and peaceful...

Things in the house are kind of falling apart at the moment. Here is a list:

1) The dryer. A couple of months ago, the dryer started doing this neat trick of turning on, and blowing hot air through the clothes, but not actually spinning them. So, one side of the clothes would get really hot, to the point of burning, and the rest would stay wet and cold. I got around this problem by turning on the dryer, and then giving it a little push in the right direction, a little encouragement, to remind it what it needed to do. This worked up until a couple of weeks ago, when the dryer decided that it would start to spin when I pushed it, but then would stop anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes after it had started. To make things worse, it would then stop blowing hot air on to the clothes entirely, and would refuse to start again for another hour or so. So, now, to get a load of clothing dry, I have to run out to the dryer every 15 minutes, and push it round again before it stops blowing hot air and I can't use it for another hour. Essentially, the dryer has become another demanding child. Except, this is one that I have no qualms about screaming at the top of my lungs at and launching myself bodily at in frustration. Neither of which have worked to fix the problem, by the way.

2) The sink. The kitchen tap has stopped working, meaning we have to get a big pot of hot water from the bathroom and bring it to the kitchen to do the washing up. We sit the big pot in the kitchen sink, even though we really could put it anywhere we like: on the stove, on the kitchen floor, in front of the TV... but, old habits die hard. I always thought there was something romantic about 'fetching water from the well'. I now know this is not the case.

3) There is a bat colony living above my eldest charge's bedroom. That's right. We have a bat colony in our roof. And they're protected in Ireland, so we can't block up the hole when they've flown away at nighttime, or we'll all be arrested. Originally, we thought that there was a bird nest up there, which was much sweeter, but as the noises became louder, the smell became greater, and the tiny poopies began to fall through the roof cracks, we realised it was bats. We had to call the bat-man (sounds funnier when said out loud) from Macroom to find out what to do. We are still waiting for his reply. I am yet to see them fly away in the evening, which is meant to be quite spectacular, and there are apparently at least 28 of them.