I love making a good list.

As doing a makeover is for Cher in Clueless, writing a to do list gives me a sense of control in a world full of chaos.

It’s neat, it’s orderly and it’s a suitably restrained form of optimism: with its lofty hopes for a future and structure projections of all the things you might achieve in the time beyond now.

At some point in the week, or even possibly last week (it’s very hard to keep track of the days at the moment; it’s almost like time has become a mushed clump of wet calendar pages instead of the crisp, easy-to-distinguish units of time we once lived our lives within) I had a little brain spurt and wrote down a bunch of all the things I was hoping to achieve with my spare time. Something I could refer back to when staring down empty chunks of times to fill that void with fun, productive activity and, dare I say it, a sprinkle of relaxation. This list was, in the back of my head, a lifeline to prevent me from frittering away this free time.

All through the week I was scraping by from day to day thanks to a stretch of 3.30am alarms and a very scattered, restless sleep pattern, I found myself just kind of… existing. I wasn’t really in a state to be ticking off to do lists and was far too disorientated from the after work naps I apparently couldn’t avoid to do all that much. But I figured I’d really start living on the weekend, which I was lucky enough to have this week. I’d go through the list and I would feel productive and happy and relaxed and everything would be just dandy.

Today I was faced with a several empty hours to fill. I was a little bit dusty but otherwise still largely capable of engaging in most recreational ventures, so I thought I would refer back to this list full of endless cool shit to do.

I opened the Word doc that contained said list. I’d obviously written it as the scaffolding for a column and left it unfinished for a more inspired and energised version of myself to complete. As it turns out, this moment of inspiration and energy never came, because I was thoroughly underwhelmed with what I had written down, which was:

Try soaking my feet in port:There was an sales rep I used to work with back at the Armidale paper who reckons that you could get absolutely blind by soaking your feet in port. There’s something to do with the perfect level of alcohol in that it’s not too high that your body needs to expel it from your system but not too weak that if doesn’t make you go all loopy. I’m curious and interested in broadening my horizons, so I’m wanting to give this a try.  

Watch The Ten Commandments:It was on TV the other night and only got from the part where he was horny, preppy Moses to juuusut before he started fucking shit up. I mean, the movie is three hours and 40 minutes long and when you throw ad breaks into the mix, it’s a marathon. But my goal is to watch it from start to finish, especially because I got a tantalising snippet of Nefretiri, who is extremely glamorous and extra and vengeful and just all around fabulous. 

Re-watch all the Olsen twins movies:

That was it. That was the list.

I was three things.

I had written a list of three things. I mean, lists of three things don’t need to be lists because they can fit into a sentence without being a clunky mess. There’s no need for the formatting of a list because one comma and an “and” would have been enough.

Basically, my big goals for myself were to get drunk without consuming calories and spending hours watching TV.

And, unfortch, I don’t have a bucket of port on hand and the Olsen twin movies aren’t on Netflix. I also don’t feel emotionally ready to watch three hours and forty minutes of a single movie.

So I made another loaf of bread. Today’s is apricot, pecan and self distain. I reckon it’ll go great with a cup of tea.

I think I’m a whiteboard person now.

I’ve always been a fairly cynical person. People with hope and aspirations and dreams that haven’t been quashed by the crushing mediocrity of everyday life have roll my eyes made me. And people with home whiteboards seemed to fit into that category.

They had goals, which they would write on their whiteboard. They had affirmations, which they would write on their whiteboard. They drew strength from inspirational quotes, which they would write on their whiteboards. And they did it off their own bats; they weren’t at work and having to pretend to be engaged in life and at least a little bit driven to achieve things. This was a way they chose to carry on.

It was one of those weird things I took a stance on – like, I’ll write to do lists until the cows come home, but so help me god I’m doing it on paper instead of a glossy surface using pens that can easily be erased like some wanker. I’m different!

It’s kind of like how I used to scoff at people who wore Lorna Jane gear. Like, who in their right mind would pay like $50 bucks for a singlet that tell you to “never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up” when you could work out in an old t-shirt you got from a pub crawl in Amsterdam? I mean, why project positivity and wealth when you could communicate to people that you’re cool, drink the alcohol and have been to Europe via strategic t-shirtery? On top of that, why actually look good when you work out when you could make people think you don’t give a fuck about how people think you look, you’re there to sweat and get on with life because you’re so effortless and authentic and you’re not shallow, you know?

That was me.

But when the thighs of my college merch ruggers were worn down to nothing and the chaffing became more insufferable than my personality, I found myself crawling to Lorna, enticed by the shorts that had little bike shorts inside them which prevented my thighs from looking like the cheeks of the stereotypical teenage fast food worker from The Simpsons. It was a revelation. And it didn’t change who I was: I was just as judgemental, only with less sweat rash.

* Yes, that horrifying illustration WAS inspired the ad for 3B cream but I added extra redness to the thighs to communicate the extremity of the chaffing. I also added what I call “pain lines” but they kind of look like hairs. 

I now have six pairs of Lorna Jane shorts and three pairs leggings. I mean, sure, I still wear shitty t-shirts with them because I need to cover my pale skin from the wrath of the sun and I still care deeply what strangers think about me, but I’m converted.

And that’s now how I feel about the whiteboard.

We put one up in our dining room/home office when the COVID hit and I’ve really taken to it.

Perhaps it’s still the novelty of the thing, but I’ve been enjoying writing down the house morning schedule and adding the task “be fabulous” to the list. I like using it to remind me what meals I need to make to clean the mildly decaying food from the fridge. I like subjecting my housemates to a “thought of the day”.

I’m now looking forward to writing other things on the whiteboard. It’s got to the point that I’m cooking up household events to alert my housemates to, like “happy hour on the deck, 1.3pm-6.30pm” and “Lounge Room Screening: Midsomer Murders, 5.30pm”. Then there’s the nightly dinner specials like “I’m cookin’ a roast, so dress fancy” or “chicken fingers, again”. I am looking forward to saying “so let it be written, so let it be done” before adding trivial tasks to the hallowed whiteboard. I mean, what a gas.

My housemate reckons the whiteboard is a temporary measure brought in only for These Uncertain Times. But it’s enriched our collective lives so much I’m thinking it needs to be a permanent fixture.

Originally published by he Clifton Courier, March 18, 2020

The other day I could have potentially poisoned a whole bunch of people.

I was making a batch of gingerbread bickies for an afternoon tea, which was being held in honour of a sunbeam in human form. She’s the kind of lady who appreciates and encourages baking, so I of course didn’t want to rock up with a packet of Tim Tams I’d bought for half price from the impulse buy bin right by the registers at the supermarket. I wanted to put in a bit of effort. And, ever since my gingerbread underperformed at the Clifton Show, I’ve been dying for external validation for my bickies.

So I decided to whip up a batch.

Everything was going according to plan. I’d sifted the dry ingredients. I’d melted the butter. I’d made sure to add a little extra love to the mix (in this case, “love” was “ground ginger”). And then came time for the egg.

I’d recently visited Mum and Dad, who, despite being empty nesters, often have full nesting boxes thanks to the chookies up the back.

And as much as I go home to soak up their company, I also don’t say no to a free carton of farm-that’s-not-actually-a-farm-fresh eggs. They’re just better than the ones I get at the supermarket. They’re more wholesome. The yolks are always yellower. And they’re often way bigger.

That was the case with the batch I’d recently brought back with me to the big smoke. One was so big that, when I stacked something on top of the carton in the fridge, it cracked – because it was too large to be protected by the standard-sized carton.

Not wanting to waste one of these golden eggs, I tipped the goo into a small container, sealed it and kept it in the fridge.

So, naturally, that was the egg I chose to add to my gingerbread mix.

But it wasn’t until I was well into mixing it all together that I realised: my trip back home wasn’t the weekend just gone; it was the weekend before that.

That means that egg hadn’t been in the fridge unshelled for just a few days, but for a good week.

I’d never been one to forgo a taste of raw mixture for fear of uncooked-egg-related illness, but given how long this egg was in the nude for, I did pause before licking the bowl. I mean, I ate the raw scrapings anyway, but still.

While I was waiting for the potentially tainted bickies to bake, I did some research. And the general consensus from the first page of Google results was that you should only keep a cracked egg for two days. After that, you should bin it.

This did nothing to relax me. I messaged the group, explained situation, and asked whether or not I should bring the bickies. The only responses I got back were in favour of my bringing the potentially dodgy baked goods.

By the time the afternoon tea came around, it had been a few hours since I tasted the raw mixture. And I felt ok, so I tentatively opened the container of bickies for the taking, adding a disclaimer which went something along the lines of “Waring, risky biscuits”.

Unsurprisingly, there were very few participants willing to literally risk it for the biscuit and I ended up taking home nearly as many bickies as I’d brought.

Now, in case you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have a super fun combination of anxiety, the tendency to catastrophise and an overactive sense of imagination, let me paint a picture for you.

On the way home, I began to worry that I’d poisoned a few folk. Maybe they’d have a slightly runnier stool next bowel movement, but maybe they’d have their entire lives thrown off course because of my foolish egg choices.

Then I began to fret, hard. My stomach churned. I felt my pulse quicken. My checks felt flushed. Was this egg-related illness catching up with me? Or was this a panic attack? Or was it both?

I knew, thanks to nervous Googling, that symptoms wouldn’t show up until about 12 hours after ingestion. And it as I looked at the time, I realised it was nearing 12 hours since I ate the raw dough.

I began to worry about the other people who ate my bickies. Were they ok? Were they writhing around on the floor? Would they die? Would I be held responsible? Was I going to prison?!

I then cursed myself for not just getting a packet of Tim Tams. Everyone loves Tim Tams for heaven’s sake.

But the hours I’ve spent in a psychologists’ office kicked in. I forced myself to let out some long, slow exhales. I decided to go to sleep and, if I woke up feeling violently unwell, I’d cross that bridge when I threw up on it. If I woke up feeling fine, everything was fine.

And, thank heavens, it was.

* Note, I actually wrote this column a week ago**, but decided to leave it a week later just to make absolutely sure no one had been struck down.

** That note above was something I added to the printed version. This note is in direct reference to the delayed digital version. It’s been about a month and all seems to be well. I mean that, of course, strictly in terms of people not getting gastro. Because we all know that if I were to say “all seems to be well” I’d be a fucking liar. 

Sometimes I dream about being a homeowner.

I mean, that’s a long way off because I still have a lot more savings to accumulate and I have the unshakeable feeling that I have to do go out and chart my own course as the uniquely different, individual person that I am… by spending two years in the UK* like at least a third of all Australians my age.

* LOL, the coronavirus took care of that for me

Unless all the hours of watching Antiques Roadshow pay off and I find a very, very rare knick knack some collector would pay a whole lot of dollars for, it’s going to be a while until I can pretend to be in a episode of Buy Herself (it’s a show about women shopping for houses they’re paying for on their own, so it’s like a female empowerment House Hunters, which really ticks a lot of boxes for me).

So until this happens, I have plenty of time to nut out a list of features I’d like to have in my dream house.

Of course, from years of watching House Hunters, I know there are things most people look for (which need to be said aloud in a thick American drawl): granite counter tops, all new appliances, a double vanity in the master bath, a master suite, updated cabinets etc – but I have my own little wishlist. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

One big sink that a whole frypan can sit in without tilting: Ok, I don’t understand why this isn’t a standard thing. A lot of houses have double sinks where each basin is just that bit too small for an oven tray or a frypan to sit in flat, meaning they’re never able to be fully submerged all at once. This means “leaving it to soak” isn’t really an option for what are often the dirtiest pieces of equipment in the kitchen. I say to heck with the double sink option, just make it one big vat – a trough, if you will.

A camera pointed at the oven and stove to make sure that I haven’t left it on: I have had far too many instances of fretting that my oven and/or stove has been left on while I’m out of the house and it would be super helpful if I could just check it from wherever I am. Kind of like a baby monitor, but for an anxios scatterbrain instead of a new parent. And, actually, while I think of it, I’d like to have a kill switch I could activate remotely to make sure I could turn off anything that could start a fire. On that note…

A key that remotely locks all the doors from anywhere: Same deal as the oven, but this could also mean I wouldn’t risk revealing my position should I be inside the home and wanting to pretend I’m away when faced with an uninvited visitor popping around. I wouldn’t have to sneak to the door, I could merely click a button from under my covers and get on with my sweet, sweet isolation.

Flyscreens: I don’t care how traditional your wooden Queenslander is and how much screens could interfere with the character of the place. Any house that doesn’t have flyscreens over the windows and screen doors is not fit for Australia. I don’t know any of them personally, but I can say with confidence that the early settlers would have frothed the option of keeping blood-sucking mozzies and disease-spreading flies out of their homes. To live among the insects is an itchy insult to their memory.

A microwave that has a silent switch: I’ve written about this before, but I’m hoping that by bringing it up again, someone will actually do something about it. I’m hoping to inspire the youth of today who will become to microwave innovators of tomorrow. Reach for the skies children, aim for careers in technological industries. But, please, remember me and my simple request when you reach the top.

A vacuum cleaner that doesn’t stop working once it comes into contact with long hair: I’m sorry, I know there’s a lot of love for Dyson vacuum cleaners, but my housemates have one and every time I go to use it, I have to take apart the sucky bit to free the spinny bit rendered immobile because it has been bound with me and my housemate’s long, strong and, even after all that, still kind of silky, hair. Surely the big brains at that vacuum nerve centre could come up with some kind of solution for this.

* Also, in case the title gave you a craving for the opening banger for Barbie YouTube series, here’s a link that should whet your whistle. And here’s a two-minute version of the theme song which I only just realised existed.

So I was supposed to be going off to a quaint as fuck Tasmanian bed and breakfast a week from now, but what with everything that’s going on right now, it looks like I’ve got a bit of a stay-cation on my hands.

And, look, that’s fine by me.

I mean, staying five nights in a bed and breakfast by myself was me dabbling in a bit of social isolating before it become cool/a public health initiative. I was planning on checking out a few things, but I was mostly just looking forward to reading, drinking tea and sipping on wine.

Which is definitely something I can do at home.

And I’m pretty lucky: the house I live in has two decks and a big old backyard with a pergola that I’m sitting under now as I write this very blog post. Even though it’s relatively new-looking, it does have a lot of charm. There’s a whole lotta garden I can lounge in, looking all wistful. I’ve got a pretty good set up here.

When I’m not looking at my newsfeed, I’m filled with a sense of calm at my being a bit of a pre-pandemic hoarder. As an anxious person who keeps an eye on specials, I tend to always have a few spare essentials on hand. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are things I strategically invested in as the situation unfolded (see the first and second items on this list) but there’s a lot of stuff I just kinda… had which will really come in handy now that I’m holidaying at home.

Here’s a list of things that is making me feel calm about the prospect of self-isolation:

A four-litre box of red wine: This is for when supplies are really, really low. But then, let’s be honest, I’m expecting to find this just as drinkable as the more socially-acceptable bottled wine I have in my hosue. I generally tend to drink my red wine with ice and this dilutes the nectary liquid by quite a bit, altering the taste and the potency slightly. So even when I do get down to the backup supply, I fully expect to be in quite a comfortable position. But grabbing this box did prompt a bit of self-reflection, I must say. Exactly 10 years ago, I would have bought a box of Fruity Lexia just to have on-hand in case of a layback emergency. Now, a decade on, I am back to buying boxed wine. Am I really that different to Last-Decade Dannielle? Have I come so far that I’ve gone fill circle? Should I start listening to LMFAO again? Really makes ya think.

Four new novels I added to the aggressive pile of books I have been meaning to read: I think this right here is an example of panic buying. I had 13 books in the pile before this whole virus thing exploded. It has been leering at me for months, giving me the metaphorical stink eye for ignoring it. It is silently judging me for watching TV or scrolling on my phone instead of filling my empty head with word. It taunts me. There would easily be two months’ worth of intensive reading in that pile and, yet, I still felt I needed more. But, to be fair, I’m pretty happy with my choices. I went with:

• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Boy Swallows Universeby Trent Dalton
• NorthangerAbby by Jane Austen
• Lady Susanby Jane Austen

Mulled-wine-flavoured tea: This is going to be great for when I want to be drinking wine but probably shouldn’t. I can drink it hot or I could brew it, put it on ice and pretend to be having a sangria jug in a holiday location.

Drips and drabs of kooky flours: I usually have two to three half-opened bags of alternative flours to trick myself into thinking that I’m being healthy. You know, spelt, rye, wholemeal – real whacky kind of stuff. I’m pretty keen to turn this flour into unnecessary baked goods I pretend to love at first but quickly grow to resent and eat only out of spite.

A bag of chicken chippies: These were on special about a fortnight ago, so I obviously bought a jumbo bag of them. I’m not an idiot.

Three generic puzzles and a custom puzzle of my brother-in-law drinking wine: The three generic puzzles came to me after my parents’ cleaned out my Grandma’s house after she died. Grandma loved her puzzles and had a decent store of them in her house. If only she’d have lived to have seen them become so damn popular. The puzzle of my brother in law was perhaps one of the greatest Christmas presents I’ve received. It’s exactly the kind of weird and unnerving I want to be leaning into while holidaying alone in my own house and going nowhere.

Oil paints, paper, and brushes: The art supplies shop was having a 50 per cent off sale a few weeks ago and I decided that now was the time to give oil painting a crack. The idea is to produce a body of work that documents my descent into madness and make so much money from my isolation that I no longer have to work again and can afford to retreat to soul-crushing solitude full time.

An obnoxiously-loud typewriter: This is obviously going to be used to write my great Australian novel, which will no doubt spew out of me in three days, giving me enough time for painting my mental instability, staring at the ceiling and obsessively cleaning all the glass surfaces in the house. The only problem is that I’ve only got one sheet of A4 printing paper, so I’m going to have to write my entire novel on the same page and hope that people will be able to tell which layer is which. I suppose I could order an emergency ream to be delivered to my door, but I do kind of like the idea of writing a masterpiece that is completely illegible.

My long history of not watching shows other people have watched:Because I prefer to waste my time by scrolling through my phone or re-watching familiar series instead of keeping up with the current trends, there’s many, many things I could be watching during my time alone. I like to think I’ll start with The West Wingand Cheer, but I’ll probably end up watching 72 hours of House Huntersinstead.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, March 4, 2020

I don’t just do things for no reason.

I play with my hair a lot. It’s usually because I’ve recently washed it, it feels all soft and I want to get lost in its silkiness to escape from the coarseness of my day-to-day life.

I do a lot of clicking of my fingers and drumming of my nails on hard surfaces, but’s not for no reason either. It’s because I have a song in my head and I want to share it with the world. I’m also super annoying and I want to assert my dominance through sound.

I put my honey in tea before I add the milk, because I want it to completely dissolve and be dispersed evenly, so that each mouthful has a balanced ratio of honey, tea and milk. The honey will dissolve better in heat, so adding in cold milk before the honey is not in my best interest. Yes, it’s finicky and controlling, but it’s the laws of chemistry. I can’t go around flouting them and expecting to be rewarded with an optimal cup of tea. That’s not the way the world works.

So when I tell my housemate I keep my esky behind the driver’s seat for good reason, I mean it.

My housemate has borrowed my sweet, sweet ride a few times now, and each time, he removes the esky (note: I actually just had to add the word “esky” to my Microsoft Word dictionary because it kept telling me it was a spelling error) from behind the driver’s seat. But he didn’t return it to the exact spot in which it was purposefully stored.

I’m guessing it’s because he thought it was only there because it just happened to be there.

So I had to explain to him that this was not the case.

I could put it in the boot. There’s ample room in there, even with my swag, towels, emergency picnic rugs, one-person tent, backup green bags and a mini, lunchbox-sized esky in there.

But I prefer it to be right behind the driver’s seat, wedged between the back passenger seat.

For one, it’s an ease of access thing.

I like to put my everyday green bags in the esky so I can quickly grab them when I head into the shops to purchase my extremely necessary grocery items. If the esky wasn’t there, the bags could end up sprawled all over the vehicle. I’d probably forget they were there and run into the shops bagless. This would mean buying another green bag, which I’d chuck in the unknowable void of the back seat, only for it to be forgotten, thus continuing the cycle.  And on and on and on it would go until I’m drowning in a sea of items used to contain other items for a short amount of time (with a renewed sense of sympathy for turtles).

So, yes, the esky has to go there.

But there’s also another element to the esky placement: security.

I have rather short legs. It’s a bit of a family thing. Us Maguires aren’t known for our height (in fact, I don’t know exactly what we Maguires ARE known for, and part of me thinks it’s best I remain in the dark in this regard).

So when I drive, my seat is quite a bit closer to the steering wheel than your average Joe (or Jo, come to think of it).

This means that if someone else tries to drive after me, they have to push the seat back to operate the pedals without snapping a shinbone. But the esky placement prevents that. Pushing the seat back requires a bit of reorganisation in the back seat.

So this means that if a sneaky person attempted to nick my vehicle, they’d be slowed down by my strategic esky placement. I like to think that this would give them a few seconds to reconsider pursuing any further criminal action and give up. Or, in the worst-case scenario, they’d chuck the esky out of the vehicle in their haste and leave it behind for me.

But while that’s all obvious to me, I have to remind myself there are some poor, unfortunate souls out there who don’t think like me.

And so, instead of just saying, “because I know what I’m doing, ok?!” I have to explain myself. It’s quite efficient to explain myself via newspaper than having to go through those multiple times.

Perhaps I’ll tear out this page and tape it to the esky. In which case, please, whoever is reading this, return the esky to where you found it and, if you wouldn’t mind, please don’t steal this vehicle. I’d really appreciate that.