Originally published by The Clifton Courier, April 22, 2020

I’m supposed to be making postcards right now.

A very, very sunny lady I used to work with decided to start up a postcard swapping scheme to spread a little bit of joy in These Uncertain Times. The idea is that a bunch of people she was friends with on Facebook would send her their addresses and she’d partner the participants up, like a matchmaker for pen pals.

It’s a lovely idea. I mean, I love getting mail that isn’t the state government reminding me to have my cervix checked. It’s such a thrill.

It gives you something to do other than staring at the void fretting about the almost comically depressing state of the world.

And, in theory, it would give you an inner glow thinking about spreading a wee bit of cheer with a stranger.

I received two postcards the week leading up to Easter. One was from the lady who rigged up this whole system. The other was from my postcard partner, a florist with loopy handwriting that suggests she was feeling quite serene while composing her prose.

I’ve yet to respond to either of them.

I told myself that I would get to the postcards over the weekend, reasoning that the delay in my reply would be totally understandable due to the two public holidays that bookend the resurrection of Christ.

It’s now Thursday (Easter Thursday? Can I still get away with that?) and I haven’t so much as picked up a pen.

I had “reply to postcards” on my to do list, but apparently I was too busy to tick that off. I spent the weekend watching Tiger King (mostly so I could understand the memes), sharing memes, finishing a book and starting a new one… using the two postcards as my bookmark.

Part of the hold up is because I don’t have any spare postcards laying around (well, that’s actually a lie because I like to buy postcards of the paintings I like at museum gift shops and then stick them to my wall to fill my room with great masterpieces for a bargain bin price – so I’m not about to send them in the mail).

My plan was to make some. After all, I DID do art all the way up to Year 12.

But postcards are typically short messages describe what fun you’re having on a holiday with some lovely picture of your current exotic, beautiful location on the back.

I’m in suburban Brisbane and the most fun I’ve had recently was having a discussion about the difference between the word “quash” and “squash” at work the other day (FYI: they both have similar meanings to the word “crush” but “squash” typically applies to a physical object, while “quash” is more figurative and can be used to describe things like legal invalidations).

I mean, I could lie about the fabulous things I’m absolutely not doing, but I prefer unembellished, dryly-delivered truth instead.

So I’ve boiled the postcard convention down to an even simpler form, which is: an illustration of your location on one side and a description of your activities on the other.

Here are some examples of that:

Image: My laptop resting on my unmade bed. Message: “I ordered several pairs of stretchy, high-waisted knickers to wear around the house instead of pants. I also bought some discounted scented candles I do not need but hope will be therapeutic in some way.”

Image: My phone, sitting on the kitchen bench. Message: “I called my mum today and had nothing interesting to tell her.”

Image: My darkened lounge room with several cups and a plate dotted with toast crumbs resting on the arm of the couch. Message: “I lost all sense of time while watching House Hunters and low-budget home reno shows today and now I think I’m going through an existential crisis because I’ve realised that even the shiny, new kitchens of today will be described as “dated” in a few years. I know you don’t know me, but do you think I’m a bright, patterned backsplash that was bold and refreshing when it was installed but now comes off as tired and garish?”

Image: A close up of my bathtub. Message: “I spent ages scrubbing this but you can’t really tell just by looking at it.”

Hmm. I’m not sure if this is what my friend had in mind.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, April 15, 2020

I’ve bought a lot of ill-thought-out stuff lately.

What with all this uncertainty and confusion and general gloom, I’m a little on edge. And when you’re a little on edge, you can act in odd ways.

I’ve been going through the peaks and toughs of COVID anxiety and eerie calm that comes from passive acceptance. I swear my state of mind is nothing to be concerned about – at least, no more concerning than usual.

But I’ve noticed my shopping behaviour is a little different. I know I’m not the only one to come back from the shops with something I’d probably not buy in different times.

These items were probably not essential in an essential goods and services sense, but at the time they felt entirely necessary.

It’s not so much panic-buying, but buying things when you’re not really yourself. As such, I don’t want to use the phrase “panic-bought”. So here are a few things I have recently bought… on impulse:

Tigernut flour: Yeah, so apparently this is a nut-free alternative for almond meal and almond meal is often used in the place of flour in some super rich, decadent gluten-free cakes. So this probably makes tigernut flour the most alternative flour alternative I’ve ever beheld. It came into my possession last week sometime. It was at that point in the pandemic when everyone seemed to be baking their feelings so there was no flour left – except for this stuff. I picked it up because I wanted to know what tigernut flour was and then realised that I’d touched it with my grubby hands and didn’t want to play the guessing game over whether I’d infected the packet with actual germs or just the essence of me, so I bought it. It has all these stern warnings on the pack practically screaming at me that it’s not a suitable alternative for flour which makes it quite intimidating. So I probably should just try to bake the recipe on the bag but it’s also highly likely that I’ll go rogue just to prove that bastard of a packet wrong. Again, my state of mind is nothing to be concerned about.

A comically-large canvas: A few weeks back I went to the art supply shop to make sure I had enough paint to get me through These Uncertain Times. I’d also decided that, after a few practice runs on paper, I was ready for a canvas. But to get to the art shop, I had to go through the nearly baron halls of a shopping centre. Most of the stores had been shuttered up. The lights seemed dimmer. There were two police officers patrolling the halls. It was all very post-apocalyptic. I began to have a bit of a panic attack and just wanted to grab what I needed and get out of there. But because the shop was having a 50 per cent off sale and every other basic white girl had taken up painting (guilty!), there were no normal-sized canvases left. All they had were the ones that looked like they would have been big enough to save Rose, Jack and even that delightful Mr Andrews in Titanic. After painful deliberation, I grabbed the most-reasonable sized one and high-tailed it out of there. This was the day after our Prime Minister classified puzzles as essential items, so I reasoned I was allowed to buy art supplies. But the sheer size of this canvas didn’t scream “essential” to me. It was so big I had to lay the back seats down and put it into my ride through the boot. I had to store it under the house. When I took a photo to send to my sisters, I used a wheelie bin for scale and realised my canvas was one wheelie bin squared. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know if anyone snapped of a photo of me struggling to cart that canvas through the shops, but if they did, it definitely deserves to be a meme.

A carton of beer in cans: My parents have never really forced us girls to confirm to their way of thinking. We were allowed to decide if we wanted to get baptised. We were allowed to freely play our Britney Spears album. It was a very liberal household. But there’s always been strongly implied that glass stubbies were the superior vessel for beer. Cans were for Heinz spaghetti and condensed tomato soup. I’ve carried this belief with my into adulthood and will always opt for a stubby over a tinnie, no matter how much tinnies fit into the ironic Australiana worship we’re still seeing in modern meme culture (which, I have to admit, can be great fun to play up to). But I went into the bottle shop after the canvas incident and was still jumpy. There was only one carton of the beverages I was after in plain sight and I wanted to get myself home before I began hyperventilating so I didn’t ask the shop assistant about stubbies. I just grabbed it and went. I mean, it’s what’s on the inside that counts anyway, right?

White high-waisted shorts: This brand of shorts is prefect – they have good pockets, a flattering fit and this little clip I can hook my keys too. I have them in navy, which is a sensible colour for me to have in shorts because I:

1. Like sitting on the ground
2. Am a bit of a grot
3. Involuntarily wipe my hands on whatever bottoms I’m wearing

These are also the exact reason why having light-coloured shorts is a terrible idea. I mean, this isn’t a Degrassi episode, I’m not worried about squirting my uterine lining all over them, but the are going to get very dirty very easily. I’m also shithouse when it comes to stain removal, so this was extra dumb.

Three six packs of hot cross buns for one person: I’m hoping to emerge from this self-isolation situation completely and totally ripped, so buying decadent seasonal breads is a counterproductive move. I’m also someone who hates wasting food, so it’s not like I’d be able to live with myself if I threw perfectly good food in the bin. The first pack was a warehouse share special, but my housemates weren’t keen until I sliced it up with a cheese platter. The second pack saw me eating a luxe brioche chockie chip bun every day for a six days. I turned the other pack into a bitchin’  rhubarb and apple crumble which you can bet your sweet bippy will soon be he subject of an unimaginative recipe filler post.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, April 8, 2020

I’ve got news.

I don’t want to oversell this but, at the same time, I don’t want to undersell it, so I’m jut going to come out with it: I’ve had a lot of double yolkers lately.

Now, I know a couple of extra bits of yellow in a few eggs might not sound all that that life changing.

But my world is small right now. I’ve spent the past week and a bit on a self-isolation staycation. Aside from my government-mandated exercise, I’ve barely left the house. The Harry Potter series ended nearly a decade ago. I’ve seen all the episodes of The Simple Life.  I know seen what happens when you add bicarb soda to vinegar.

I’ve seen a lot in this lifetime of mine.

And I’ve seen my fair share of eggs. Heck, I’ve had quite a few eggs with double yolks in my time.

But not like this.

It started about two weeks ago when I cracked into my boiled egg and found two yolks. I found it mildly interesting and took a photo to send to my Snapchat group, but forgot to do anything with it by the time I finished my breakfast.

The next time I had a boiled egg, I was once again greeted with two yolks instead of one. “Huh,” I thought.

Then it happened again. This was now three double yolkers from the same egg carton. I had to honour this occurrence. So I posted it on Instagram.

My fans (yes, I’m calling them fans now) were thrilled. And by that I mean, eight per cent of the people who have been guilted into hitting “follow” on my account were impressed enough to compel their fingers to move a few millimetres from a resting position to press the “like” button.

A few days later the same thing happened again. I arranged the eggs to make a face and posted it online. Again, the response was overwhelming. 6.8 per cent of my followers were moved to the point of hitting the like button.

I had a new purpose.

I began planning my breakfasts so I could provide my fanbase with the eggy updates they were craving.

I was playing around with paints one day and found myself painting an impressionistic, almost Van Gogh-like image of egg salad without even realising what I was doing.  I posted this to my Instagram account and got an 8.2 per cent like rate.

I had found egg-related fame. It was dizzying.

By the time I was down to my last two eggs, I’d had nine double yolkers out of 10 eggs. That’s unheard of.

I felt like I had to do something more to document this monumental collision of chance and chicken reproductive systems before I ate them.

So I did what any sane person who had spent a week in self-isolation would do: propped up the two eggs on a pile of sheets and posed them like they were getting glamour shots. Then I painted a portrait of them.

Maybe it was the self-isolation talking, but I began to see personalities in their beige shells. With each different pose was a different story. Tender eggs. Defiant eggs. Terse eggs.

I ended up painting three portraits. My housemate said they were “pretty good”, which was probably her way of saying “they are so deeply moving – you have a gift Dannielle” without making things weird.

Now, with one egg left, I’m contemplating the end of what will be historically known as my Double Yolker Phase.

And I’m not sure how to mark such an occasion.

This carton was the last carton on the shelf at my local supermarket, so it’s not like I chose it. It’s more like it chose me, in some kind of mystical way.

I mean, I’m not saying that this is one of those “everything happens for a reason” things. I don’t know who makes the decisions about the happenings of the universe, but I highly doubt this higher power decided to unleash a global pandemic in a Chinese market at exactly the right date so it hit Australia at exactly the right time to induce people to stockpile essential goods to ensure that at the exact moment I stood in front of that open fridge there was only one carton of eggs I could select. I dunno about you, but don’t reckon this whole thing was orchestrated purely so a middle-class white girl could, as they say, “live her truth” and have something to post on social media for validation purposes.

But, at the same time, it’s fun to entertain the idea that something’s… afoot.

Anyway, that’s how my self-isolation is going. How are you all holding up?

Originally published by the Clifton Courier on April 1, 2020 

I’m currently* on stay-cation.

* I WAS on stay-cache, but now I am an backing to being an essential cog in the machine that is our economy again.

I’d put in for some time off from work this week because I was supposed to attend two weddings and have a little jaunt around Tasmania.

Not sure if you’ve been following the news lately but to cut a long, virus-related story short, I’m not able to do any of those things right now.

But I was still off for a hunk of time.

So I’ve had to change plans and have what is known as a “stay-cation”. Normally, a staycation is where people take time off work but don’t go on a holiday – they go to their local cafes, head to the beach, maybe go to a few museums and visit a bunch of mates.

Again, not sure if you’ve been following the news lately, but to cut a long, virus-related story short, I’m not able to do any of those things right now.

So I’m holidaying at home, pretty much exclusively – except for going on the occasional grocery run and fulfilling my civic duty by ignoring government self-isolating advice to stay at home to vote in local government elections.

Here’s a list of a few of the fun activities I got up to in one fun-filled day of myself-isolation holiday:

Spent hours trying to put a puzzle of my brother-in-law’s face together: For Christmas last year, I put puzzles on my list of suggested gifts. Puzzles are fun, force you to focus your attention on something other than the news alerts that come through on your phone and they’re great actives that facilitate day drinking. Perfect for when you’re trying to forget what’s going on in the world for a minute. My brother-in-law took this gift suggestion and ran with it, finding a company that turns photos into puzzles. He chose a picture of himself smugly raising a wine glass in a taunting “cheers” pose. My housemate and I have been staring at that face for days, trying to complete the puzzle. It’s getting weird.

Ate two cheese platters: The first one was for lunch, the second one was for dinner. My housemates were supposed to get married on this particular day in social distancing paradise but had to postpone it last-minute. So we did the next best thing: watched several hours of Kath and Kim while drinking prosecco and eating cheese.

Cleaned the taps in the bathroom: I mean, they’ve never been overly grimy, but I cleaned them so hard they could be used as mirrors.

Seriously considered making my own set of bagpipes: So I was just minding my own business, stalking the dark, shadowy halls of Facebook when a suggested link popped up in my feed and captured my attention. That link was to an article titled: How to Make Bagpipes Out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders (the word “recorders: refers to those wind instruments they make primary school children play and produce the shrieky sounds that, no doubt, haunt the dreams of most Australian parents). Now, I’d like to point out that I didn’t seek this advice out. It came about thanks to The Algorithm, which is something I don’t fully understand but know it takes my previous activity into account. Facebook takes note of the things you do on its platform and will use that information to show you things that, based on your prior behaviour, it assumes you will be interested in. I’m not sure what I did on Facebook to suggest that this is something I would be interested in, but I have never had more faith in artificial intelligence.

Googled where to buy two recorders from: I have it on good authority that you can buy second-hand recorders from op shops. However, my experience as a recorder player (I could play Celine Dion’s Oscar-winning song for the feature film Titanic called My Heart Will Go On, which is just so moving when played on a recorder) is that it can get quite caked in saliva on the inside. And congealed spit from a stranger might be acceptable in normal times, but in The Age Of Coronavirus, it just doesn’t have the same appeal, so I’d want to get my mine brand new. It turns out that you can get a basic model for about ten bucks, but there are legit “renaissance” recorders that can set you back more than two grand. That’s more than your basic-model Wallace Bagpipes – I mean, I’m no expert but I’d have thought bagpipes would have cost more. I just Googled how much bagpipes cost, clicked on the first link I saw and found there were a whole heap of different types of pipes. I clicked on the “Wallace” category because Braveheart is an excellent movie, no matter how historically inaccurate it may be.

Became increasingly concerned about my state of mind: Refer to the list above for evidence.