Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 20, 2019

Sometimes all you need to do to win is to participate.

My sister and I found ourselves back at the old Maguire Manor on Friday morning, after spending a wild Valentine’s Day night playing cards with Mum and Grandma while listening to Wings at a moderate volume.

I was doing my morning scroll through Facebook when I saw a post from the Clifton Show Society informing me (well, not just me specifically, but it did feel somewhat targeted at me in a cosmic kind of way) that pavilion entries closed at midday.

My work roster meant I wasn’t able to trot on down to the rec grounds for the big day on Saturday and a friend’s engagement party (well, more specifically, the pig on the spit being served at said engagement party) kept me from my favourite spot within the fenced off area outside the Wattles clubhouse* that night.

* For the uninitiated, this refers to the outdoor area where you’re legally allowed to smash tinnies. It’s the happiest place on earth. 

But I still wanted to feel involved, somehow.

And while I haven’t got the ability to grow a tomato, don’t have the technique required to craft a sufficiently scandalous example of adult needlework* and my hat looks far too pristine to compete in the Old Battered Hat section, I do know how to turn flour, eggs and butter into biscuits.

* By next year, I hope to have mastered the needle and thread so I will finally be able to fulfil my five-year-long dream of entering tastefully pornographic needlework in the show. 

I could enter the cookery section.

It was about 9am; that left me with a three-hour window to claim culinary victory. It cutting it close, but it was doable.

I made a comment to my sister that we still had time to enter and two minutes later, thought turned into scrambled, frantic action.

Perhaps it was the extra honey in our morning cups of tea or a hangover from our intergenerational card battle the night before, but we suddenly had a burning desire to compete – an urge that usually lies dormant within me.

We’ve never been particularly competitive girls.

I mean, we play special rules of Monopoly where you didn’t need to buy a whole street of properties before buying hotels and we let heavily indebted players take interest-free loans from the bank. We never, ever actually finished a game – we generally kept playing out our sisterly socialist alternative to the capitalist system until we got sick of sitting around and started packing up*. The first time I played the ruthless, by-the-book Monopoly, I was horrified.

* I mean, I’m not saying I should be in charge for the whole economy, but I would be interested to see how this played out in real life. 

And, hey, I’m not saying that winning isn’t great.

I mean, I had a prize-winning scratchie that I cashed in to cover our entry costs. I won a whole $2 and joyfully accepted each of the four 50 cent pieces the honourable newsagent ceremoniously counted into my hand. Without those winnings, we would have had to raid Mum’s spare coin collection.

Yes, winning is fun and there are practical advantages to it.

But, I will say this; the thrill of entering a plate of baked goods in the Show far exceeded my elation over my scratchie winnings.

The vibe in the kitchen was electric. We are always excited about food, but that morning we kicked it up a notch.

I took pride each individual ball of gingerbread I carefully placed on the baking tray. My sister, in a moment of inspiration, added a “secret ingredient” to half her scone dough. Flour was actually sifted. Standard measures were mostly respected. The timer was methodically set. We even went up to the op shop to source fancy plates to give our baked offerings a competitive edge (of course, we now know that the stewards level the playing field by putting all entries on generic paper plates).

Rolling into the pavilion, we were practically buzzing. Sure, a certificate with our names on it would have been fantastic. Being able to call my ginger bickies “blue ribbon gingerbread” would have been a thrill. And the prize money would have been a welcome addition to our wallets.

But we were all ready winners. We had ourselves an incredibly wholesome natural high and we rode it out for the rest of the day.

I didn’t care about the result; I’d got what I wanted. A sense of satisfaction and belonging. Kitchen banter. Spare gingerbread bickies to eat as breakfast dessert. What else could you want?

As long as you have a go, you don’t need a prize, because you’ve already won. Winning doesn’t matter in the end, as long as you had fun participating. Accolades and certificates be damned, I say.

(You might think that I’m only saying this because my sister won a prize and I did not, but you’d be way out of line…)

Originally published by The Clifton Courier February 13, 2019

How do you know if the universe is sending you a message or if you’re just overthinking?

We’ve all heard the saying “everything happens for a reason”. It’s advice most often dealt out in the fallout of the heavy, but not devastating, blows that come with life. Breakups. Failed job hunts. An adorable illegitimate child turning up on your doorstep unexpectedly.

Of course, I’m speaking through the prism of movies and television. Because in the world of film, literally everything happens for a reason. Besides the occasional extra accidentally breaking continuity with a changing pony tail or dangling boom mic, pretty much everything is meticulously planned. The emotionally-charged misplaced letter doesn’t fall out of a forgotten book until the right moment. A bus that speeds by at the exact moment someone steps on to a road without looking. A certain song that comes on the radio during a cab ride to the airport.

Everything happens for a reason.

Whether it’s a signal something dark is coming or an opportunity for an emotionally-stunted hero to grow as a person, neither the occurrences of events and the symbolism surrounding them are accidental.

And when you nourish yourself on a diet of Hollywood sap like me, it’s easy to believe the same laws apply to life. You begin to a see a pattern in the universe*.

* And you see mundane, innocuous events as signs that you should do something. It can be as big as leaving your old life behind and taking on a new career, or something equally as big as deciding what kind of takeaway will best satisfy your incredibly complex needs.

Which is why, when my teacup devastatingly cracked all the way through the other day, I was extremely concerned.

Not just because this meant the soup-bowl-sized mug I’d loved was now useless, but because such a dramatic event clearly meant something more.

I mean, the cup didn’t just crack, it split. The once-full mug was empty in two seconds, with tea spilling everywhere. And the noise was more than the fracturing of mass-produced ceramics; it was the unmistakable splintering of earthbound objects touched by mysterious forces transcending the realms*.

* For whatever reason, these mysterious forces don’t seem to have voices. And that’s great, because a creepy voice telling my not to drink a cup of tea would leave my on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Nope, it’s better that they deal out vague signs instead. Although, you could argue that these mysterious forces might actually have a way to clearly communicate exactly the message they’re trying to get through, but like to mess with us. I mean, it would keep things interesting. I don’t know if mysterious forces have Netflix subscriptions, so they have to do something for entertainment. 

Of course, my mind went straight to an interventionist cosmic power or a spirit who might be trying to tell me something by splitting that cup.

I considered whether it was a sign from the universe that I should not drink that cup of tea and instead drink water. Or perhaps it meant that I wasn’t supposed to drink anything at all because I could get stuck in a lift for an hour and really, really need to wee. Like, the universe could have been acting on my behalf, telling me not to fill my bladder so that I don’t have to substitute a water bottle for a toilet or emerge from a high-profile rescue situation dripping with my own urine.

Or it could have been warning me to take caution that day. Perhaps it was an omen telling me that bigger, more disturbing cracks were in my future.

I couldn’t tell.*

* I mean, you can never tell exactly what these special cosmic messages mean. It’s always open to interpretation. It’s never a direct “oi, you’re going to spill spaghetti on yourself today, take preventative measures”. It’s more cryptic.  Like, instead of coming out and warning you, it might force a fleck of toothpaste to fall on your pyjama shirt as a minty omen of things to come. 

Of course, another thought crossed my mind. It was the thought echoing an old, wry woman who always has a martini in her hand and rattles off the cutting insults you need to hear (she’s wearing a Channel suit, because if I’m going to have an imaginary sassy grandma, she’s going to be well dressed and look like Jane Fonda).

That thought: are you really that special?

And Grandma Jane has a point: the idea that the universe is taking a vested interest in me, just me, when there’s millions of other people on the planet is a little egocentric. And the whole notion that whatever all-knowing force responsible for everything around us would have time in its busy schedule of keeping the planet spinning and coaxing seedlings out of the dirt and sprinkling enough drama into the lives of the women of the Real Housewives – you know, keeping the world in order for the greater good – to meddle with my meaningless existence is, admittedly, mildly deluded. The existence of a helpful spirit who cares enough to leave guiding hints to keep me on the path of comfortable middle-classness is probably wishful thinking.

* And hey, you cold say that all this thinking that bad things happen purely to direct you to the right path takes away a lot of responsibility of life. Like, you can’t go blaming your burnt toast or totally-preventable infection on the universe, when it was your actions that lead to these things happening. I can’t imagine abandoning your own personal responsibility and letting the universe take the wheel is a good way to live life. It can’t end well. 

So I simply tossed the mug, whipped out another and poured myself a new cup of tea.

The only real effect of the cosmic crack was a distinctive mug-shaped hole in the kitchen cabinet.

But here’s the kicker: last weekend I was given a novelty teacup for FebMas, which would not have fit in the cupboard if the other mug were still there. Read into that what you will.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 7, 2019

If you were to venture into my parents’ house at the moment, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were a little bit slack.

Now, well and truly into February, the Christmas decorations are still up. All of them. The tinsel is still wrapped around the exercise bike that never gets used. The paper Nativity scene my oldest sister made more than 20 years ago sits on the fireplace. The overzealously bejewelled rocking horse ornament an extremely extra preschool-aged Dannielle still demands your attention from a prominent branch of our fake plastic tree.

It’s all still there.

My parents used to leave the decorations up until after my birthday in January, but this year they’ve been left up for an even bigger event (well, depends on who you’re asking, some would argue the anniversary of my birth is a pretty big deal).

They’ve been left up for our family Christmas, which is being held this weekend… just a smidgeon later than the actual Christmas.

We have many different names for it. FebMas. PretendMas. FakeMas. Basically just any word before the festive suffix “mas” that isn’t “Christ”*.

* I mean, not like “SatanMas” or anything like that. We’re slack, not devil worshippers. 

Because, in a time when you can celebrate the New Year with a hot cross bun (honestly, if a heavily-marketed bun being available for longer than a limited time of the year is the only thing that gets you fired up about the state of the consumerist-driven nation we live in, perhaps it’s time to re-examine a few things) and you can get Valentine’s Day cards for dogs*, why the heck can’t you have a second Christmas?

* I mean, I don’t know if these exist in the commercial world yet, but if they don’t, that’s a business idea you’re more than welcome to run with so long as you send me a scented candle every financial new year for gifting you with this gimmicky scheme. 

What’s stopping you from glazing a ham, baking some gingerbread and forcing the people you love to spend more than 24 hours under one roof? Does it really matter that date is on the calendar when the vibe – eating too much food, wearing stupid hats, regressing back to your younger self – is the same?

It’s not that we’re replacing Christmas; we’re just going in for a second round. I mean, we did do Christmas at the time in our own separate ways. I may have spent the day at work, but I was still wearing a T-Shirt with a Home Alone quote on it. One sister’s Christmas Dinner may have been a Thai curry, but she kept the Yuletide tradition of eating an unnecessarily large lunch alive. And Dad still had to pretend he knew what was inside the package marked “from Mum and Dad”, he just did so at a different time than he usually would.

We’re all getting older and our lives are pulling us in different directions. This means that, sometimes, we’re going to be in different places at times we wish we weren’t. We’re not always going to be able to wake each other up at 5am for “breakfast chockies”.

We have to face it; we’re not always going to be around. Things are going to change, and they already have. Significantly.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep a bit of the magic alive.

And if that means gathering under the same mutually accepted delusion, than that’s just the way it’s going to have to be.

So we’re going to give that Shrek The Halls CD another couple of spins. We’re going to wear festive pyjamas at the wrong time of year. And we’re going to treat gingerbread as a breakfast food* when it is completely devoid of the nutrients and fibre punch you need to kick your gut into gear.

* Well, actually, we ended up have hot cross buns instead. I added bacon to mine!

Because it’s more than eating prawns or trying to save wrapping paper so it can be used next year (although, if you can do that, you’re winning at life). It’s about time, not a date. In fact, the true meaning of Christmas might not even be about Christmas at all.

Merry FebMas, everyone.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, January 30, 2019

There’s a certain sting to sunburn that cannot be salved with aloe vera.

No matter what you slather on your neon-pink skin – cold tomato slices, refrigerated tea bags, the tears of your nemesis dispensed from a vial of polished amber – nothing takes away the pain of knowing you’re the only one to blame.

You begin cursing yourself in an internal Shakespearean monologue, condemning your own foolishness. I, a woman who has inhabited this earth for nearly three decades clothed in pale Irish skin, allowed myself to be cooked like a steakette on Dad’s barbecue. I know the power of the sun. I know the vulnerability of humanity. I am the slatherer of sunscreen and I am the wearer of long-sleeved, collared shirts.

And yet, here I sit of a Monday night, glowing with red like I was born with the same skin condition that afflicted Rudolf. Strap me to the front of a sleigh and I’d be able to guide it through the thickest of polar fogs.

My shoulders are erratically pulsating warmth like a cheap, dodgy heater you wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving on while you left the room to make a cup of tea. My arms feel as if they are dotted with permanent goose bumps. And my upper thigh skin is so angry it looks like I’ve been stung by multiple bees.  It makes the prospect of wearing pants impossible and even the passive act of sitting feel like an act of self-flagellation.

I’m currently in bed, curled up with a mug of chicken chippies*, reflecting on how the heck I let myself get like this.

* More specifically, a mug the shape of a Persian cat’s face. It was my second cup of chicken chippie tea that day, if that gives you any indication as to where I was at that point of my life.

I heartily recommend consuming chicken chippies out of mugs. First off, the long, cylindrical nature of the mug keeps the chicken chippies warmer for longer than they’d be if they were unceremoniously dumped on a plate where the cool, cruel air can get to them. It makes it easier to curl up with a mug bed this way. Secondly, there’s the handle aspect. You can be a gal on the go, nugg mug in one hand, smartphone in the other ready to share your ideas with the world through the democratising, disruptive power of social media. Of course, your smartphone hand will be Instagramming your nugg mug, so the world will know how adorably irreverent you are. Fuck conventional plates, you’re not going to conform to the norms laid out in front of you. You’re a disruptor. You’re authentic. You’re just a girl who loves chicken nuggets trying to fill a whistling void in your soul with validation on social media for being an empowered mess of a human being. 

It was a combination of things, really.

It was me forgetting to bring shorts on an overnight trip, opting to get about pantless. It was me running late, deciding to put on sunscreen when I was already at the beach instead of doing so beforehand. And I suspect it had a little something to do with my decision* to fall asleep** in the sun at about 2pm.

* It wasn’t an active decision

** Pass out

I could blame the person who brought the five-layer Mexican dip for distracting me with food when I should have been reapplying sunscreen. I could blame my long-sleeved shirt for lying in a crumpled heap on the sand instead of shielding me from the sun. I could blame my friends, for failing to properly supervise a 27-year-old spontaneous outdoor napper.

But I only have myself to blame. The fault lies with me.

And I know that I should be doing things to at least attempt to make amends with my singed self.

I’m acting as if doing nothing will undo all the damage, but I know I should have spent the day marinating myself in aloe vera instead of laying in my bed watching Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin live out the retirement of my dreams on Netflix (well, actually, my retirement plan is for me and my best friend to wait until our husbands die – of totally unsuspicious, natural causes, of course – before taking ownership the olive grove house, where we live out our days drinking margaritas, blasting Fleetwood Mac and hosting bonfire parties, however, I’d happily settle for the Grace and Frankie scenario).

And, hey, the passive treatment has already worked for me in some way – I got burnt on Sunday afternoon and much of the redness had dulled by Monday morning. So I am hoping that another good night’s sleep will be enough to combat the power of the Sun and completely liberate me from its wrath. I mean, sure, it’s the burning orb of energy around which our planetary system revolves, but you should never underestimate the power of a decent rest.

But by doing nothing, I’m hoping that I’m taking serious preventative action. I’m hoping this discomfort lingers in my mind, so next time I go out in the sun, I’m reminded to wear a hat. I hope I recall how difficult it currently is to wear undies when I next toy with the idea of going to the beach without a sun shirt.  And I hope the flecks of dead skin that will inevitably flake off in my sheets and stick to office furniture will traumatise me* into coating my body in sunscreen.

* It’s working. Yesterday I took off a dark green, long-sleeved dress after work, turning it inside out. I saw all these flecks of skin peel stuck to the inside, leaving the surface looking like a dark green lammington (my skin being the desiccated coconut in this simile).

I sincerely hope it works. Because if I want to outlive my husband and go on to have at least 10 good margarita-drinking years in the olive grove, I’m going to avoid skin cancer as much as possible.