Other people's houses

As a homeless vagrant, I spend a lot of time in other people's houses.  Most of the time it's my mother's house, but I've been doing a bit of house-sitting of late, so I'm getting to experience the joy that is "The Homes of Others".

One of the joys of staying in other people's houses is the fact that other people put their stuff in weird places.  This is not usually a problem, unless you find you need it and then you can't find it.  There was one place I recently house-sat on two separate occasions.  The first time I spent days trying to find the matches before I gave up.  The second time I spent days trying to find batteries before giving up - but I managed to find the matches in the process.

At the moment I'm staying at my aunt's house with her two youngest "children" (both in their early 20s), in which she has kindly offered me shelter while I'm on prac in Brisbane and she's away at a conference.

Whenever I stay with family I'm always amazed by how different their homes are.  My mother's home and my grandmother's home were always very similar in things like the basic location of bits-and-bobs.  Yet, when I visit places belonging to my aunts and uncles, they have their bits and bobs in entirely different places.  I spend vast periods of time opening and closing draws thinking "surely, these people were raised by my grandmother, so it must be here somewhere?"

And things that are hardest to find are always the things you need in a hurry.

When you cut your finger on the edge of a jagged can, a few thoughts go through your head at the same time:  "Well, that seemed entirely unnecessary", "hey, I'm bleeding" and "when was my last tetanus shot" for example.  Very quickly, though, one thought takes prominence:  "I should probably clean this with disinfectant and put a dressing on it."

I'm sure my aunt must have disinfectant in the house somewhere.  I can't imagine her not having it.  She had three children and a large succession of pets, so I'm pretty sure infection control was something that would be on her radar.  Couldn't find it though.  I asked my cousin if he new where it was.  He searched for approximately 5 seconds and then declared they probably never had any.

I swear that man is going to die if he ever leaves home.  He lives in this house, so I occasionally ask him questions about things that are worth knowing (mostly to do with food preparation, sanitation or simply "where is the...").  Nine times out of ten he doesn't know - something I've chalked up to the fact that he's a "boy" who lives in a cave attached to the house and only comes out to eat food which has been prepared for him or take-away.  However, not knowing anything about the location of the first-aid stuff was a bit alarming.

As was the fact that he suggested I wouldn't need disinfectant anyway, as the human body is good at taking care of that sort of thing and I cut myself on a sterile can...

Really?  That's you're understanding of reality?  You think the human body just happily processes infections and tin-cans that have shopping-center detritus on the outside and food on the inside are sterile?  Forget dying in a motorcycling accident, my man; you are going to get gangrene.