I’m only back in the game at this point is because I am literally waiting for paint to dry. There have been small pockets of spare time now and again for me to stare into oblivion or catch up on The Bachelor and other equally pointless activities which is now considered a luxury. This has been a harrowing past few weeks for me, paint spraying everywhere and me staggering into the post office to ship my dolls off to various parts of the world, only to go back home and do it all over again. I am now on first name basis with the postal employees.

I feel a need to write about this weekend. It was a blessing and a curse that I have taken on an emergency babushka job. Yes, of course there are such things as a babushka emergency in my world now. I’ve done so many of these that the only thing I need is fortification and time…which I was told won’t be allotted to me due to the arrival of some despised house guests. They’re no friends of mine, but of Anthony’s, whose garage space he uses whenever he does one of his expeditions so we have no choice but to host them whenever they wend their way downward, as such is the case on this pivotal weekend. I have been so traumatized by their previous visits that I flat out told Anthony that he has to play Martha Stewart this weekend to them, and not me, as an effort not to upset the precarious balance we have established when it comes to socializing during my busy time. He acquiesced with some misgivings. But we both know that if we want to continue have electricity running through our house (which it does at an astonishing rate), I have to be given time to churn out these dolls.

With Anthony being a guy and all and have relied on me in the past to organize any sort of events not restricted to our usual oceanfront social with the neighbors, I figured I should just check and see what he’s got planned. I transferred some money into our joint account and told him that it would be his spending money for the weekend.

“What do we need money for?” He asked, looking alarmingly blank.

I laughed, thinking this was the start of some sort of Anthony-esque joke. But as it was certainly not a joke, I had to point out that, as we have no farm in our back yard for us to forage for items such as eggs from under a hen or harvest fresh vegetables, we would need money to buy food. “From a store,” I added, just in case.

“Oh…” Anthony looked, and this was the only word I could find to fully comprehend his facial expression, gobsmacked. “We have to feed them, won’t we?”

“Three times a day,” I pointed out cheerfully.

He said nothing as he bumped blindly back into his room, fully aware now of the onus he has taken by asking these people to stay with us. I was in a bit of a shock myself, knowing now until this moment, Anthony had probably thought meals appear magically on the table when we have company.

“So what have you got planned for them to do?” I asked happily as I took out my paint box and looking over my orders. I had to ask because, if one does not issue activities for these people (and only these people), they would stand around and watch us perform such mundane tasks as dish washing, clothes laundering, and toast buttering with something like complete absorption. In their previous visits, they have stood by my work table for so long as I was painting that I almost demanded a small fee from their pockets as I felt I was providing them with some form of entertainment.

“I’m taking them out for a paddle on Sunday morning,” Anthony said definitively.

“And?” I asked when nothing else was fourth coming.

He went blank.

I sighed and figured out a way to barricade my workspace to prevent them from standing next to me and watching me paint. Then I made a list of groceries for Anthony and rearranged my schedule so I could go with him to the store. If I don’t keep an eye on him, we would all be having air for tea.

It’s a new thing. I’ve noticed it on Good Reads, an app I’d downloaded for the sole purpose of keeping track of books I’ve read because I have a tendency to forget which title I’ve chosen and then get it again. Then, to my chagrin, Kristy mentioned one time we were hanging out that she saw which books I was currently reading and asking me about it. It’s really not such a big deal if I’m all about reading deep literature such as “Atlas Shrugged” or the Dickens classics. But the fact that I’m deeply addicted to the Monk books ever since the show was canceled and that I did track down a free copy of “Sweet Valley Confidential” because I was too cheap to pay for the e-serial did not need to be broadcasted far and wide. What my former students think? True, they probably have no idea what the Sweet Valley deal was, but still. THEY DO NOT NEED TO KNOW WHAT I’M READING.

Oversharing can be addicting. Ever since Cousin Lucas’ popped out a kid, she’d been posting picture after picture of the baby sleeping. It’s true that the kid is unbelievably cute for a newborn, but do we need to see all 86 sleeping poses in one day? I’ve been taking pictures of Anthony sleeping because he doesn’t believe me when I describe the poses he made while unconscious. By posting those pictures online could very well be grounds for divorce, I’d imagine.

No. I’m keeping my activities to myself unless it’s completely whacky. The fact that I recently had to file a complaint to council for the very first time since living in Oz is worth a mention on my timeline, I should think. Or the fact that my leg looked as though it’d been gang raped by a swarm of insects…just so people would understand why I’m so neurotic about keeping my screen doors shut.

Oh, family members and friends have attempted to make the day special, of course, more often than not on days that were not my actual birthday. After a while I preferred to simply spend it on my own with a slew of horror movies at my disposal and something spicy and sweet to stuff my face with.

But things have changed dramatically ever since I met Anthony. He didn’t overwhelm me with birthday nonsense, but he always made it a point to take me out on excursions or meals and allowed transgressions to pass with a simple sigh on my special day. I’m starting to take advantage of that now since I seem to be terrific at doing the sort of things that makes him lose it now and again. Birthdays are free passes for my stupidity. Today, for instance, I have left my wallet at home even though we both knew that I needed it to buy a new vacuum cleaner. Normally that would’ve elicited a series of tirades, but I quickly pointed out that it’s my birthday today and he simply turned the car around, drove me home, and waited with seething patience as I dashed up the stairs to retrieve my wallet. I zipped around Big W in a zigzag formation as I went down the list of items I need for the house and he followed me dutifully and without complaint. We decided on a Dyson vacuum cleaner and he pretended not to know who I was as I did a little dance around the display instead of sharply admonishing me like he would’ve on any other day. But he did draw the line at cleaning the toilet even though I repeatedly pointed out that yes, today’s my birthday so now I know I didn’t possess the all access free pass after all.

Tonight should be a test. Instead of a traditional birthday cake, I will be baking myself a rainbow pink brownie—a visual confectionery nightmare (it’s probably not going to be as bad as the wobbly three-tier red velvet cake I made myself one year with the most unappealing-looking meringue frosting). It’s the sort of thing that little girls like Charlie might be impressed by but not a 50+ year old man.

]]> https://bullywump.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/a-birthday-pass/feed/ 0 bullywump https://bullywump.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/let-there-be-light/ https://bullywump.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/let-there-be-light/#respond Mon, 19 Aug 2013 06:41:04 +0000 http://bullywump.wordpress.com/?p=3074 Continue reading →]]> After two years of praying and hoping and scheming and cajoling, we finally finagled our way up the stairs of 7 Jasmine. I can’t credit Anthony’s machiavellian ways for this move. The economy has a hand in it, of course. But the power of positive thinking might’ve been one of the chief factors in this whole thing. In a way, it’s a good thing that we did spend two years in the gloomy sun-less downstairs unit because it gave us time to grow into what we are now and therefore were able to fully plan out our own individual spaces. For instance, I was able to realize just how small and ineffectual my work table is and am able to upgrade to a rather large one. It’s big enough to install a hutch onto it. For the first time in my life I am able to get myself some sweet sweet matching furniture. In the years before I always cobbled together an unpleasant visual nightmare of a room by using cast off furniture. Nothing ever matched and my place always looked a bit like a rummage sale gone awry. Bits of hobbies and belongings were always exploding out of places where it shouldn’t be. Most hoarders have better organizational skills than me. This time, I got to carefully plan out where and how everything should be stored with proper furniture.

Anthony and I spent several days moving things up and around before hunkering down in the last two days to do some serious scrubbing and polishing. In New York I never have to worry about getting my deposits back after renting a place. Usually we only get charged if we break something important like a low bearing wall or put a hole in the floor. But here people are a bit more persnickety. Anthony and I armed ourselves with a bottle of my specialty bleach concoction, scrubbers, scour pads, and the secret weapon: the magic sponge that my mother practically have fused to her hand. We went over every corner, every nook and cranny, and polished that unit into a high shine. Everything looked brand new by the time we were through. We even found time out to head over to Ikea to pick up one of the most important pieces of furniture in our unit: A bar set for our balcony. I got the idea from remembering the kids near our old place in Miami who’d put up a bar on their front lawn.

Although we haven’t finished installing ourselves in our new home, we are absolutely loving the fact that there’s so much natural light in this place, that we can stand in the back room and look down on the crabby old man next door and wave to Phil and Di’s dog on the other side. For the first time ever I actually had to draw the shades down so I could reduce the glare on my computer. But I’m not complaining. Two years living downstairs made me appreciate the great things in life, which is how it should always be.

We couldn’t avoid her, not when we had to go upstairs to measure up spaces and windows and what have you. Each time we see her she’d fill us in about the trials and tribulations of packing to move. She seemed convinced that she’s the first and only person who ever had to do it. She’d even convinced her daughter to come all the way up from Melbourne to help her pack and drive to Nowhereville. In the meanwhile, she kept telling us how much more work she still had to do and how tired she was. But for someone who had so much to do she certainly found ample amount of time to sprawl out on her balcony for most of the afternoon and evenings, gabbing on the phone and chugging on a bottle or two of wine. When her daughter arrived the two of them engaged in loud, screaming fights that lasted for hours on the balcony—Pauline getting drunker and the daughter chain smoking while berating her mother. Pauline was apparently already a few sheets to the wind since that morning. She’d been trying to invite whoever that passed by the house to go inside to have a drink…this was in the morning. Anthony and I had every right to be concerned. Knowing Pauline, she’d probably change her mind about moving and stay another day…or week.

“Send me a text when she’s gone,” Anthony told me the next day as he was leaving for work. He’d planned on leaving from work early and begin putting some of our stuff in the garage.

I nodded and waited. And waited. And waited. Usually, when I was moving, I’d have everything clear and gone by noon. But Pauline and her daughter didn’t leave until 5:30 in the afternoon. She’d come knocking on my door a few times, each time more distraught than the next. But it didn’t stop her from already planning on coming to see us and “see what you’ve done to my place,” she had said.

When silence and peace finally fell over Jasmine Avenue, I ventured upstairs to have a look. While Pauline’s left her place relatively clean, the carpets were a different story. She’d had dogs up there all the time, and they’ve all had various accidents. During her final week there she’d been babysitting a cockatoo, who apparently was a free range bird because she was allowed to wander around the apartment, dropping poop wherever she went.

Luckily a professional carpet cleaner had been arranged and hopefully undo some of the damage that’s been done.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me since we have gone to Ikea several times in the past and we usually came out unscathed. To prepare for this trip, I have familiarized with the products we were to procure to further beautify our new apartment two weeks before. I have studied the components needed for each piece of furniture, wrote down the item location, and made a detailed checklist in addition to the one provided by the Ikea phone app. All I needed to do was to shepherd Anthony through the maze, double check the aisle and shelf location for each piece of furniture after indulging in a sumptuous Swedish breakfast (for $4.95 not including coffee), and we’re laughing all the way home.

We were unfazed by the maze-like set up of the showroom and we located each piece easily. Trouble began to brew, however, when we reached the home office section. Since I am currently working full time as a doll painter, we have agreed that I should upgrade my work station. My new table will have a hutch and a drawer unit to store all the extra tubes of paint that’s been lying in a plastic bag on the floor next to me for so long now. The unit I have decided to get is a complicated affair, so I wanted Anthony to have a look at the display model before we go down to the warehouse to pick up all the necessary brackets and legs for it. He got distracted by a row of office chairs and went about trying each one out in the same manner as Goldilocks with the bears’ seats before dragging me off to the next display room.

“But…but…but…” I stuttered, running after him, “you haven’t seen my table—“

Anthony employed his superpower then, the ability to not hear me, and forged on. I sighed. Well, at least I knew what sort of brackets to pick up from the bracket corner.

There were about half a dozen brackets on the display wall. I stood before it, trying to locate the one noted in my iphone app.

“What do you need the brackets for?” Anthony asked impatiently even though I have already shown him the table I wanted several times in the last two weeks.

“It’s for the hutch,” I said patiently, carefully studying each one. “It has to be here somewhere.”

“Those aren’t it,” he said dismissively, ready to move on.

“But this is where I’m supposed to pick them up from,” I said, showing him the list. The Ikea app, in addition to telling you how many items are in stock, which components are needed for each furniture, also showed you where to find it. The brackets would not be included in the furniture box. I had to physically grab them from the brackets section.

“It’s not there,” Anthony pointed out.

“I realize that. Which is why we need to expand our search,” I said, noticing there are several shelves full of brackets behind me.

“It’s included in the box,” he said.

“No it’s not,” I said, showing him my app, which clearly befuddled him because he told me I was not making sense. We started to argue in earnest with him explaining to me with mock patience that the brackets on the wall wouldn’t support my hutch while I, feeling as though I was going to have to smack him upside the head, tried to explain that it could be placed on a shelf of brackets that did not make it to the display rack.

Finally, I had to take a deep breath and be the bigger person and admit I’m wrong, knowing full well that once we get down to the warehouse, I would be able to point out his mistake and do a little “Haha I’m right and you’re wrong” dance (it’s a bit like a jig but with more glee).

We went down to the warehouse and promptly began to pile flat boxes of furniture that would bring us oh so much joy for the next few years on the trolly. Finally, when we reached the section where my new table parts were stored, I secured an employee and have him explain to Anthony that the brackets were indeed, at the bracket corner. He, of course, have already forgotten about the brackets situation 20 minutes earlier and sent me back to procure it, but not before I did my little dance and pointed out repeatedly how off he had been.

We were, naturally, not the only ones at Ikea that day who argued. While we were securing all the bits and pieces into Phil Next Door’s ute, we were audience to the loud temper tantrum of a woman who spent 20 minutes loading up her car and screaming at her partner.

“Draaaa-ma!” Anthony and I screeched while waving our hands around in the air as we were prone to do after every Pauline encounter, but this situation seemed to call for it as well.

Never mind. In 10 days time I won’t have to listen to him anymore. Sure, I’ll hear him howl from time to time, but it won’t be right next to my windows. The new tenants will have to put up with him. Let’s just hope the new people will not be as polite as we are when it comes to telling the old man next door off.

It’s true! We are definitely moving upstairs! Pauline finally got her act together and is packing up her stuff and talking about how she’s “Out of here by Monday.” The realtor’s worked fast on listing our unit because the day after Pauline alerted them of her decision to move, Anthony overheard the General next door telling his friend on the phone about the unit’s availability. “Yeah,” he said, “I can just pass things to you over the fence.” This is all well and good, except, after living next door to Evil Incarnate, I doubt that anyone would be willing to be friends with him. Since Pauline’s unit is not listed and that she’s so slow about clearing out her things, it’s probably safe to say that the General is assuming we’re the one who’s moving out. He’s not wrong, of course. Except we’re just going up one floor and Anthony relished the idea of glaring down at him from his sweat shop.

The upstairs set up is a bit weird. It reminds me a bit of the railway apartments I lived in in Brooklyn. If you want to get into one room, you have to go through several. After some heated debates, we’ve decided to use that ridiculous front room as our bedroom and close the valor doors for good. Anthony promised to use headphones if he wanted to watch TV in the mornings while I’m still asleep. The middle room, which had no door but a decent sized wardrobe, would be my sweat shop, and Anthony would use the sunny backroom as his office. Everyone is quite surprised by this decision since the back room is a perfect studio for an artist. Normally I would agree, but I sincerely do not want my view to be that of the General scratching what skin he’s got left on his chrome dome and listening to the damn dog whine his head off. In the middle room I can be ensconced in a cone of silence and also not have to suffer the stifling summer heat, as the backroom is more or less a bit of a greenhouse.

While I was going through the rooms, gauging the size and trying to figure out a few things so I can make up my shopping list for our impending trip to Ikea, Pauline trailed behind and complained abut everything. For every positive thing I pointed out, she would have two negative things to say. “Look at the laundry area! It’s so roomy!” I crowed, mentally picturing all our crap being carted in there, including a deluxe drying rack that I’ve had my eyes on for a while. No more draping wet laundry over chairs and tables on rainy days!

“Oh, it’s decent sized all right, but those damn stairs!” Pauline sighed dramatically.

Well, if she wanted to play that game…”When I was living in Brooklyn, I lived on a third floor walk up with no laundry in the building. If I wanted to get anything washed, I had to basically throw the laundry bag down three flights of stairs, then go back up to get the shopping cart and then walk two blocks to the nearest laundromat.” I didn’t disclose the fact that after several attempts, my brother figured it’s just easier to drive our dirty clothes home to be washed by my mom over the weekend before driving it back. That was also a production onto itself since he could never find parking anywhere near our domicile and we’d have to coordinate my arrival at the car where he’d slow to a crawl and I’d hurriedly open the door to grab the bag before the person behind him leans on the horn. We should be so lucky to have our very own laundromat!

“Look how big your bathroom is!” I said happily, doing spins in there. Our present bathroom is so small that if Anthony and I happened to be brushing our teeth at the same time, one of us would have to stand halfway out the door.

“My new place has an awful set up!” She said, depressed. “The shower is right above the bath tub!”

I looked at her, uncomprehending. “So?” In the States, unless you’re living high on the hog, it’s rare that you have a separate shower stall in addition to the tub. We wash away our filth in the same spot, thanks very much. I said as much to her, also adding that toilets are also in the same room as the tub. Gosh, she wouldn’t last a day in Taiwan! You basically shower all over the bathroom, including the toilet. I’ve never left a Taiwanese bathroom without getting water absolutely everywhere.

She bitched about this and that, but I was determined to be optimistic about her situation. “Look,” I finally said. “You wanted this. You wanted to be with a man, you don’t want to have to worry about rent. You got both. So what if the paint at your rent free house is chipping? Shove a couch against it! Put a decal on it!” Shut up and quit complaining because ain’t no man out there wants to come home to that!

I surveyed the place. Apart from the old lady smell that very nearly overwhelmed the place, it’s in a great condition. Pauline is obsessively neat. There’s very little scrubbing to be done, if any. I do have to scrub hard at our place, of course, but she’s saved me from having to clean two places quite as hard.

I suppose I’m too excited to sleep. That, and the combination of coffee and caffeine pills I’ve been downing all day might’ve done it. But I’m using this sleepless time to organize the Ikea shopping list. I believe I’ve come up with a cheaper solution to our wardrobe problem. I can’t wait for Anthony to wake up so I can tell him all about it!

I’ve been expecting Pauline upstairs to pop in today. She’s handed us her car key, her house key, a Tupperware with a head of lettuce in it, and an assortment of fruits and vegetables about two-and-a-half weeks ago before heading to the airport. She rang Anthony just yesterday to inform him that she’s coming home today and that she’s made up her mind to move in with her boyfriend. She would come home, give in her two weeks’ notice, pack up, and leave.

While Anthony and I are dying to do the dance of joy, as he’s been coveting her apartment even before we moved in, we decided to hold off on it, as Pauline has proven time and again that she’s quite capable of changing her mind at the last minute. She’s done this before, telling us she’s moving to NSW, telling us she’s moving in with her daughter. She has no filter that ran from her head to her mouth, which causes her to blather whatever thought that pops into her head. Why else would she suggest that we open up a restaurant, or inform Anthony that his trailer was in her way even after she’s offered the extra space in her garage for him to stow it. In any case, we simply squealed a few times but told each other not to get too excited until the lease to her unit has been successfully transferred into Anthony’s name and that we’re waving her off.

I had to tell my eyes to behave because whenever I see her, I have this desire to roll my eyes. She’s been peppering every conversation with the subject of her boyfriend and Corfu, where was where they’d met when they were in their 20s. In the same breath she would complain about her appearance and the fact that he doesn’t drink and she can’t get through a day without at least a bottle or something that happens to displease her at the moment. There are a ton of stupid things that usually follows a Pauline encounter which is nothing short of alarming…at least until the lease is successfully transferred to us because I don’t see how anyone, desperate or not, can put up with someone like her in the long run.

There’s that school of thought there is someone for everyone. I have a cousin who apparently failed to show up when they are handing out common sense because he has, up to this point in his life, not exhibited any possession of it. Yet he managed to sucker someone into marrying him, and not just because she needed a green card. He also managed to breed with this woman and is calling himself a family man. So yes, there is someone for everyone out there. The attraction between Pauline and her boyfriend has baffled those of us who knows her. She’s constantly putting herself on diets that fails because of her inability to classify liquor as one of items on the no-no list. She gripes about her age and appearances and her back and everything that should be said to a therapist, not to random strangers that happens to pass by her balcony. She talks openly about her financial crisis and her bi-polar disorder and all the ills in her life. At every chance encounter, she’d open the conversation with a series of complaints and the trials and tribulations that is her life. I don’t know about her boyfriend, but after a long day at work, I would not want to go home to a litany of complaints. Now, he’s not a bad looking fella. He’s certainly holding on well in his years and is training for Tough Mudder. I am simply chalking this relationship up to something that can only be explained as a freak of nature.

I’m sorry I can’t be nicer about Pauline. But it’s not easy living in such close proximity to a bi-polar alcoholic who seems to think neighbors also doubles as psychiatrists. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to thumb through the Ikea catalogue and figure out a way to get upstairs with my tape measurer without being too obvious about it.

After everyone assembled with their kayaking gear on, we paddled out to a new destination: The Couran Cover Resort. It used to be one of those ultra private and exclusive places where day trippers were discouraged and urged to leave as soon as they pulled up in boats that did not cost as much as the annual export income of a small nation. Apparently Ramada took over the resort and opened its doors to anyone who was able to secure seagoing craft of any kind, including kayaks. We met up with Phil and Di next door, who came blazing in on their jetski. This piqued the interest of Charlie, who was apparently sick of the tedium of being paddled everywhere in a kayak. She insisted on being taken for a ride by boldly announced her intentions to Phil. Luckily Phil was used to small children and quickly acquiesced.

We had a lovely and sensibly priced lunch that went beyond our expectations. This was a bit troubling for me and me alone since I’m responsible for tonight’s dinner and all I made were picnic, barbecue friendly foods. It’s true that my burger has been stuffed with bacon, but it was a new recipe of mine I was trying out and last week’s experiment had resulted in me accidentally leaving bits of paper that came with the mince inside. Don’t worry, I made sure to remove all evidence of paper and cellophane wrap for this night’s meal, but still…There’s a reason I don’t have my own cooking show on Food TV.

To walk off our meal we toured around the island, which featured a tropical rain forest which was pretty much flooded at the moment and looked at all the heavily screened eco cabins in the woods which prompted us to believe visitors would be eaten alive by mosquitoes come nightfall. We tested Pete’s knowledge of leaves and grass since he holds a degree in horticulture, of which he passed with flying colors. Our tour led us to yet another section of pricier-looking cabins, which were all deserted at the moment, giving the impression of us walking through a nuclear test community. We almost expected to see a family of dummies sitting around the breakfast table and hearing air raid sirens going off at any given moment.

We got to our kayaks, having to believe that Phil and Di have departed, which almost brought out a full-blown meltdown courtesy of Charlie. All of us, including her parents, grimaced at the one hour paddle back to our house filled with Charlie’s loud complaints about how unfair life is. Luckily, Phil saved the day by coming up to us and scooted Charlie away, bundled in her life jacket. While they roared around, we could hear her scream orders to Phil. After they zoomed off, we were blessed with a silent if not a bit choppy paddle back, where we spotted a turtle but sadly no dolphins.

Dinner was more or less successful. I’ve learned long ago that anything smothered in barbecue sauce or infused with bacon or bacon byproducts are usually a hit. Clogged arteries be damned.

The cake ended up being a bit lopsided since I ended up baking it in a souffle pot and forgot to turn it halfway through the cycle. It was fine once it’s been iced and decorated and had all who looked at it tilt their head to one side. Anthony scored a dart board in addition to the giant bag of treats, plus a Pantone mug and some magnets in the shape of the iphone apps…all of which would work wonderfully in the unit that we’re hoping to move into soon! Happy Birthday, Anthony!

Alice has found some pins I made for fun at the shop I consigned with. The shop was sort of my place to experiment with things other than nesting dolls. Over the years I found that anything that was related to sewing sold particularly well whereas the more artsy fartsy crafts I made would sit, untouched, for months on end. I wasn’t surprised when Alice professed to be in the sewing/craft profession—she was a lace maker and belonged to the Australian Lace Guild, Queensland division. For a while she was after me to produce ornamental quilting pins for sale, but as that was, like so many of my whims and flights of fancy, has flown away and I had to politely decline. But she was adamant about having me involved in her lace making world and offered me a chance to speak with the group.

Why not? I needed to brush up on my public speaking since I have a feeling this was the kind of thing that I might have to do in the future. I don’t really have an issue with it thanks to my parents’ insistence on music lessons that always leads to recitals and concerts as well as speaking at teacher’s conferences and in front of indifferent teenagers. I always figured that if I could motivate teenagers into sliding those headphones out of their ears and dip their hands into wallpaper paste, I could speak to any group of people. Also, Anthony volunteered to drive me to Brisbane so I didn’t have to ride the train.

Before we left, we went to an assortment of chemists, looking for the “right kind” of medical syringes. People are wary about syringe purchases so I left him to sort out his issues with the chemists and wandered around looking for a travel size flat iron for my hair. I have noticed an unusual amount of greys popping up on my head, which might be a sign to start dying my hair. But that seemed like a lifelong commitment so I want to put it off as long as I could. Lucky me! There’s a funky option of distracting people from my greys…hair chalk. That’s right. Chalk. For hair. I figured I could streak the parts of my hair prone to the greys with fun colors with this temporary option and change it up whenever I wanted. But I would need some sort of hair heating implement to seal in the colors for a few days at a time. A travel size iron was the perfect solution so I went to buy it while Anthony made the chemist take out every size syringe and examined each one closely. He had to explain to each chemist we visit that it’s not for shooting up—illegal or otherwise. He was using it to put glue down in a complicated area of his project. We finally had to settle for a horse syringe in a pet warehouse. I charged inside hoping to find some guinea pigs to play with, which they had none. So I settled for a pet on a cat who had situated herself in a spot and in such a position that everyone who passed by her had no choice but to pet her.

Even with our errands we got to South Bank in no time at all and we listened to the ends of the meeting of the lace guild. It seemed like such trouble just to belong to a club. It’s no wonder Anthony no longer attends the kayakers club meetings.

I was introduced to the group of retirees, most of them were busily knitting away, which I approved because I tend to do things like that myself when confronted with a situation where idle hands were indeed the devil. The lone man in the group immediately nodded off, which was fine because really, what man is interested in dolls? The ladies were quiet, quite possibly in shock because I was presenting them with something that had absolutely nothing to do with lace. Or knitting. Alice, who was in the know, chortled loudly at my lame jokes and gathered everyone around to look at a few samples. Then she veered off to talk to Anthony, educating him with the art of lacemaking after finding out that he does all the sewing in the house.

I had a nice chat with some of the women who lingered to look at my work. Most had wandered off to eat a sandwich or two. Alice presented me with a gift, which was unnecessary of her but much appreciated. I’ve been wanting a bowl for spreads with an accompanying spreader so I was thrilled with this gift. She made me promise to cough up a few pins in time for the giant Australia-wide convention next year, taking place in Victoria. We bid our farewells and hurried home to pick up where life left off.