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Downs darling

Originally published in the Clifton Courier, September 27, 2017 

I’ve become someone who holidays on the Darling Downs.

I’m not sure how this happened. Growing up, spending time in and around The Womb was a drag. I yearned to be elsewhere.

But now, as I tick over the quarter century mark, I am not only travelling all the way from Sydney to Toowoomba but I’m also enjoying it. I was excited to get here. I was sad to leave. And I absolutely disappointed the heck out of my 17-year-old self.

I’ve tried for the past few hours to try to summarize my time on the Downs, but being very much in need of a good night’s sleep to recover from it, I can’t really string anything too coherent together. So I’m just going to play a lengthy game of peaks and troughs – where you go through and recount the highs and lows of your time. Or, as I like to call it: yeah nahs and nah yeahs (“yeah nah” is bad, “nah yeah” is good).

Yeah nah: My flight was delayed.

Nah yeah: I got to eat free chippies while I waited for my plane to depart.

Yeah nah: The mercury reached three degrees as we approached Clifton.

Nah yeah: Mum had made up my bed with flannelette sheets. It’s hard to top flannelette sheets on a cold night. That’s like crawling into a bed made out of pyjamas.

Nah yeah: I eat a steak while wearing a party hat.

Nah yeah: Was given a free commemorative Carnival of Flowers tea towel.

Nah yeah: I found a wine I actually enjoyed that was moderately priced, tasted like ginger and had the word “crush” on the label. It packed a cheeky 8.7 standard drinks per bottle, if that’s important to you (don’t pretend you’re above checking the percentage before you fork out for it). It went beautifully with my dinner (a doughnut the size of my head) and paired just as nicely with a mosh sesh to Taxiride’s Creepin’ up Slowly.

I bought one bottle and enjoyed it responsibly and in moderation (obviously) for the first chunk of the night.

Then, upon being informed the service of alcoholic beverages was due to conclude, I decided to stock up on my new beloved drop. I saw there was a three-for-two-and-a-half deal and capitalised on it. I had bagged a bargain and had plenty to share with whichever friends whose house I invited myself over to afterwards.

I was on top of the world… or at least 691 metres above sea level (I looked it up).

Yeah nah: Shortly after I made this important investment, I spotted a group of mates standing near a table. I went over, had a yarn and carefully placed two of my bottles on the table.

Unfortunately, someone who had been enjoying their wine a little less responsibly than I was sitting nearby and felt the need to grab the umbrella from the table, knocking it and my two bottles to the ground.

The glass splintered into hundreds of tiny pieces, as did my heart.

Nah yeah: I found a fluffy, leopard print hat on the ground, which improved my mood considerably.

Yeah nah: I woke up after just four hours’ sleep and couldn’t drift off again. I also had to keep a toilet roll next to my head because my nose was running and I couldn’t find any tissues. Apparently the “flowers” component of the festival got to me a little.

Nah yeah: Immediately after I rose from bed I was whisked off to my favourite chicken shop, endemic to Toowoomba. My chicken burger had a hefty schnitty overhang with double special sauce. I’d won the chicken burger lottery.

Yeah nah: I had to board the last plane out to Sydney, which, despite sounding very similar to the Khe San lyrics, is never that enjoyable.

Nah yeah: Seeing Mum, Dad and my sister still waving from the terminal as the plane took off even though they definitely couldn’t see me (I was able to recognise them easily thanks to the size of Dad’s hat, like a beacon of fatherhood flashing across the tarmac).

Yeah nah: Arriving back in Sydney severely underdressed in my thongs and shorts.

Nah yeah: Booking flights to head back to do it all again (except, hopefully, for the wine spilling) for Country Week. The countdown is on.

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In cob we trust

I sit down to write this piece during an interesting moment in history. There’s revolution in the air. A movement is gaining momentum. The tides are turning.

Earlier today I was alerted to a news report by a friend: cob loaves are back, the headline suggested.

Back in fashion. Back in demand. Back on people’s coffee tables.

And I can’t say this extra publicity for the world’s favourite bready dip isn’t welcome. It’s important to spread the word and reach as many people as possible.

But at the same time, the cobloaf has never been out of fashion. It has been a part of my life, and the lives of many of my comrades for decades now.

I don’t write this to say, “I liked them before they were popular”, because that would be untrue. They’ve always been popular.

As a dip that brings people together, a cob is an essential addition to any gathering of people. It’s a vital ingredient to any family get together. Everyone dips from the same bready basket of cheesy wisdom. Its very nature promotes harmony and inclusivity. So, if we’re going to be honest, it’s fair to say that the cob is a crucial element to our very democracy.

Cobloaves have always been there.

And so, to honour this noble dip, I’m going to use this Sunday/Monday post to share my recipe.

What you need:

  • A cob loaf – or any large singular bread roll from the bakery
  • One large brown onion
  • Five of six bacon rashers
  • A knob of butter
  • Olive oil
  • A box of chopped, frozen spinach
  • A tub of sour cream
  • A tub of cream cheese
  • Several reckless handfuls of grated cheese – a mix of mozzarella and tasty Bega will do
  • A kind, noble heart

Step 1

Slice the top off the bread loaf – about one third of the way down from the top. You want to be able to fit as much cheesy love gunk as you can in this honeypot, so don’t cut too far down. If you do this, you will bring dishonour to your household.

You also want to keep the top part – think of it like a lid – in one piece. So don’t fuck that up either.

Step 2

Tear out the innards of the bread, as if ripping the gizzards from the gullets of your enemies. Try to tear the pieces into structurally sound, load bearing chunks. They should be thick enough to support the weight of the dip, but not so large that there’s only a handful of pieces.

Make sure you don’t rip too close to the edges –the last thing you want is a breach. Think like a water tank – have heavy duty, thick walls as the base, because that’s where the pressure is.

Step 3

Arrange the pieces of bread on a baking tray and toast them in a medium-heat oven. You can put the hollow loaf and top on a tray too, but I like to spend more time eating cob than I do washing up, so I just chuck the loaf and lid in on the grate.

There’s no hard and fast baking time for this part, because the level of toastiness one prefers for their bread is a deeply personal thing. I would never try to force my own beliefs about bread darkness on anyone. Just keep an eye on your bread and bring it out when it has reached your desired level of golden brown.

Step 4

Dice your whole onion, and cut the bacon into similar-sized chunks.

Step 5

In a medium-sized saucepan, tip a good, Jamie Oliver sized glug of olive oil and throw in the butter. Then pile in the onion and bacon. Sweat this down until the bacon starts to brown and the onion gets slightly crisp.

Step 6

Chuck in that spinach and sire it around until it melts.

Step 7

Dump in the sour cream and cream cheese. Enjoy the satisfaction that comes with being able to get it out of the tub all in one piece – if you can mange it. This feat of perfection and soulful serenity must be savoured. So drink it in. Maybe even light a post-coital cigarette.

Gently stir all the creamy goop together until it becomes one creamy universal force of love.

Step 8

Finish off this saucepan of delight by dumping in your grated cheese. I find that three big handfuls and then a few liberal sprinkles will do the trick.

I will say this, however: go easy on the mozzarella. Probs aim for a ratio of 1:3 with your grated block. If you have too much, the dip will be too stringy and make it difficult to get a clean break from the cob. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but chose your company carefully if you go extra on the mozzarella because some people view wrapping mozzarella around their fingers to break away from the dip as uncouth. Actually, maybe try to avoid these people to being with. They aren’t worthy.

Step 9

Place the hollow, toasty loaf on a serving platter and arrange the bread pieces around it. Tip in the hot, cheesy mess from the saucepan.

Step 10

Eat until you no longer care about the worries of the world and transcend into a cosmic state of peace.

Bonus cob stories:

Cob yarn one: I made a cobloaf last night for a barbecue my housemate was having. There were dips. There were pretzels. There were plain flavoured (my favourite flavour) chips. Fark me, there was even halloumi.

But my addition to the table was by far the most anticipated.

I was queen of the barbecue.

Cob yarn two: On my 23rd birthday, I was in Armidale and didn’t have too many mates around to celebrate the monumental moment in history when I was born. I also had to work. So I decided to bring the party to my desk in the only way that seemed appropriate: by making a birthday cob, with candles and everything.

I Instagrammed this, because my life is nothing if its not seeking the approval of my peers to justify my misery and reinforce my delusions of wit and relevance. I got 42 likes, which was pretty good for back then. By comparison, my graduation post (featuring my two degrees and a Hungry Jacks crew member of the month certificate) only fetched 40. But please feel free to scroll through my account and give me an extra like. Even though it was nearly three years ago, I could still use the self-esteem boost to lessen the deep emotional scarring from that dark, dank period of my life.

Weirdly, barely anyone wanted to break off the bits of bread and thrust them into my cheesy, oniony, bacony dip. So I ended up with my own personal cobloaf and one heck of a dinner that night.

It was excellent.

 

 

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Dance is lyf

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, September 13

I have long thought that I would make a great parent.

I can say this with confidence, as my parenting skills have never been tested on an actual child of my own. I’m still allowed to be totally deluded when it comes to my notion of parenthood. I’ll have four daughters and we’ll all be best friends and everything will be as sunny as a Cornflakes commercial*.

* Except when we have emotionally-charged moments. Then it will be like Little Women, only with nicer furnishings and less restrictive clothing.  

But I do concede that I have concerns. Many of them. Like, what if my children enjoy screamo music? What if they point out plot holes in Harry Potter? What if they’re sleepwalkers and I accidentally stab them because I think they’re demon children? These are all legitimate concerns.

And the list keeps growing. The last addition: what if my child expressed an interest in dance?

I was talking with my sister the other night, and somehow my end of year childhood dance concert came up in conversation. The whole show was lolly-themed, and involved some BS storyline about candies coming to life and dancing around for some spoilt brat princess’ birthday.

My class was dressed up in red hessian sacks and feathers as we were cast as redskins, the shockingly culturally insensitive lolly (these were different times) so sticky that it nearly ripped out your filings.

As a six or seven year old, I wasn’t overly coordinated. In fact, I was barely functional. I couldn’t handle complicated moves, and apparently neither could the other classmates my age. So while the older students took centre stage and did intricate step-ball-changes, we skipped around in a circle and clapped along with Will Smith’s Wild, Wild West (Again, I’d like to point out that these were different times).

Thinking back to that experience, I would have been bloody fuming if I were my parents. That measly, pathetic excuse for a dance was such a poor return for what would have been a sizeable investment.

Like, out of all the lessons kids can get, I feel like jazz ballet wouldn’t have been the cheapest*.

* I don’t really remember liking it all that much. Like, I did it, but it certainly wasn’t my passion. At least not then, anyway. I’ve never really been able to learn steps, you know?

If dancing is poetry written by the human body, I am more of a slam poet. I make bold, loud statements with my body. I am powerful. But I am not rehearsed. There’s no way you can pre-plan for that kind of explosive emotion; there’s no way to anticipate what will come next. Nope, I can’t learn steps of coordinate my moves. I have to dance from the heart, not my head.

There was also the whole thing about driving into town. Every. Saturday. Morning.

Our class was in the centre of Toowoomba, which meant at least an hour of driving for whichever unlucky parent drew the short straw to cart us in and out each week.

And when the concert drew nearer, we had extra practises, which meant more trips into town. Trips into town at night. And trips into town at night often meant a Happy Meal or some Super Rooster chippies which, while delicious, would have only added to the cost of the whole exercise (not to mention undoing whatever good that small amount of aerobic activity did in trimming my puppy fat).

Also, our “dance” went for about four minutes in a concert that, from memory, spanned over a good two hours. I think we were even after the intermission, so my parents couldn’t even peel off after our act to avoid sitting through the second half of the show.

So to go through all that for a whole year and sit through two hours of watching other people’s kids prance around only to watch your child skip, clap and mess up a grapevine step* would have been pretty hard to swallow.

* The depressing thing is that this would have been a vast improvement for me. I have a very strong memory from a few years earlier when I was in preschool of my teacher doing her best to force me to dance. But I wouldn’t have it. I stood stock still, holding the position as if I was mid-pencil dive while my classmates flailed about the room like their limbs were made of spaghetti. I thought they were imbeciles. My arms were pinned to my sides, my knees were locked, and my ankles were snapped together. Miss Julie, heaven bless her, tried her best to get my to engage with the song (and the other kids) by trying to move my arms. But I refused. I still remember the song. Wiggly Woo, by the Wiggles. It echoes in the dark space at the back of my head.

I don’t know if this incident made it to my report card, but looking back, it was certainly very telling for the kind person I would one day become. So yeah, me participating, skipping around in a circle, and let’s just say it, being enthusiastic about something would have been a good sign.

What a bloody joke.

Sure, I’ve complained about my parents. I’ve sassed them. I’ve slammed doors in their faces. And yet, not matter how heated our exchanges got, they’ve never hit me with the sucker punch of guilt I wholeheartedly deserve for putting them through that. Never once have that said “you owe me, remember that crappy concert you put me through?!” in the middle of an argument. You have to respect that.

Sorry Mum and Dad, you deserved better.

* UPDATE: On a recent trip home I had a visit with the relative who was also my dance teacher. We both agreed that her guidance helped me to shake my proverbial groove thing with very minimal drink spillage, if any. She was impressed. 

So maybe it wasn’t such a poor investment after all? I mean, think of the many litres of hot beer I was able to drink because of that skill. 

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Early birds

Originally Published in The Clifton Courier, September 6, 2017

Catching public transport before dawn is like belonging to a club you were forced to join.

I generally catch the 6.30am train into the city, hurtling toward productivity while most people are still waking up. But for a brief stint in the past fortnight, I’ve been hitching a ride on 5.30am train as an early bird trying catch the proverbial worm. And while it’s only an hour earlier than my normal ride, the difference is staggeringly different.

For one, the entire train reeks of morning breath. It basically smells like stale skin, onion and old couch with a hint of ciggies. It’s so powerful you can almost see it, like that smoky haze that hangs around when someone nearby is burning off. In my mind, it’s the yellowy beige colour your tongue goes when you have a sinus infection.

At 6.30pm the train it doesn’t exactly smell like a scented candle stand, but it’s less offensive. It’s not that it smells better; it’s just a lower potency of these smells.

It’s also very difficult to tell what jobs people are headed to, because most people are in trackies, sloppy joes and, like me, the kind of shawls the stereotypical cranky great aunt wears on bad daytime movies. At 6.30am, it’s much easier to distinguish what people do for a living. You have the tradies in high-vis, the site foremen in slightly-smicko high-vis, receptionists in pencil skirts and the banker wankers in suits that cost more than my car. But at 5.30am, it’s just a mash of non-descript comfy clothing.

It’s like people don’t really care at that time of the morning. The societal norms are relaxed. You don’t have to be as clean or well dressed or even lucid before dawn, because it’s a miracle you’re up at all. And everyone seems to be rather forgiving of each other, because we’re all in the same boat/train.

We’re all up hating life, avoiding eye contact as we shuffle groggily to whatever location we’d pledged ourselves to be at that time of the morning.

And if on the very off chance we did make eye contact it was the non-judgemental kind. We would each give the other a look that says: “yeah mate, this is a grievous injustice that we’re awake, bumping into one another when we could be in bed like all other people who have are not currently being smited by the universe. But we’re in this together. I get you. I feel your pain. And while I have no evidence to base this on, I believe you can do this”.

It’s amazing how much one cranky but non-threatening glance can communicate. We’re all like that bird Ronan Keating was banging on about when he sang When You Say Nothing At All – except we collectively smell like damp bed sheets that need a wash.

At first I thought this 5.30am club were a crude kind of people, but after just a few days, I became one of them. I mean, I would still brush my teeth but I certainly began caring even less about my outward appearance. I relied much more heavily on dry shampoo. I wore socks with my sandal-ish flats. I wore a shirt twice in one week without a wash in between (although I did strategically space the second wear from the first by a few days to make it seem plausible that it could have been washed).

Because, let’s face it, no one important was going to see me at 5.30am. And by the time I headed home again at 2.30pm, everyone important would be in meetings or getting a coffee to ward off the 3pm slump. I would come and go without really being seen.

By virtue of the time of day, it was like I was invisible. And I have to say, I liked the power that came with.

I may not be able to integrate back into society.*

* UPDATE: I’m still wearing my shawl to work and I DID get about with three-day-old hair despite going for two jogs. I mean, sweat plus head grease plus dry shampoo equals volume. I did, however, wear make up today to counteract my grungy hair because it’s all about balance. 

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Two thousand and late

I know it’s a veeeeery late Monday night. And I know this is another quiz. But if it means anything, I lost $40 of wine over the weekend to a drunken lout knocked over my table, smashed my dreams and crushed my will to live.

So I’m a little fragile right now, ok?

What was the last…

Thing you bought with cash: A doughnut. It was in my favourite flavour: plain.

I don’t really care what those Nutella diets say, plain is the way to go. You don’t want too much choc on your doughnut. If you wanted to just eat chocolate, you’d buy chocolate. If you wanted to just eat Nutella, you’d buy a jar, sit at home and eat it in your underwear.

Same goes for chips. Salt is the only flavour that you really need. Maybe salt and vinegar if you’re feeling flamboyant. I had a chip from an unmarked bowl the other day and was appalled to find out it was sour cream and chives flavoured. That was a crunchy mouthful of disappointment. Why is that even a flavour?!

Investment piece you bought: Today. I bought a jumbo container of yoghurt.

I’m not at a stage in my life where I can buy “investment pieces” or comply with fanciful notions like “financial stability” or “security”. It’s best just to forget all my troubles with a big bowl of good quality yoghurt.

Party you went to: My mother’s 60th. We ate steak. We wore party hats. We ate smarties. Perfect.

Beauty product you apply before bed: I’ve started using dry shampoo so I don’t have to wash my hair so much. But because my hair’s so thin, it gets greasy. So I spray the dry shampoo overnight to let it soak up all my head grease.

Piece of clothing you bought: A scarf. I needed it for neck warming purposes.

Song you played on rotation: The Gang of Youths’ Like a Version. I spent a lot of time on public transport – trains and planes – which meant a lot of time for staring out windows emotionally. I’m not even going to pretend that I didn’t cry on the train. I considered putting on sunnies to shade my tears but then I thought “fuck it, this is me” and let the world see my leaking emotions.

Thing you do to a model before sending her out on to a runway: I haven’t been in this position personally, but I like to think I would be something edge and empowering like “think goose”.

Text message you sent: It was a lengthy text about organising flights.

Book you read: Anthony Bordain’s something.

Photo you took on your phone: A photo of President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire wearing a leopard print hat. Well, it was a photo of that photo. The original picture was in a tweet about how old mate banned leopard hats except for his own.

Cocktail you drank: Espresso martini. I’m not a massive coffee fiend, but I love espresso martinis. And café patron.

Time you cried: Stepping on the plane out of Sydney. Just a single tear.

Vacation you took: I have reached a point where I’m holidaying in Toowoomba. I don’t understand how I got here. What even is life.

Time you were relaxed: Just before I realised I hadn’t written my column or post and time was rapidly slipping away from me – like sands through the hourglass… which is a really depressing way to look at life actually. Who would open a show with something that glib?! I’m glad The Days of Our Lives is over.

Time you felt really happy: I believe I was screaming the lyrics to Taxiride’s Creepin’ Up Slowly while pouring myself a ginger crush wine.

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A member of the outback club

Originally published in The Clifton Courier August 30, 2017

I think living away from the country is making me more country than living in the country ever could.

Confused? Yes, me too.

When I was in Armidale, I worked with a bunch of Sydney-siders whose first real taste of “country living” was in a town with a Kmart and a KFC. I mean, wear a puffy vest and your shiny RMs if you want, but if you’re living somewhere you can get drive-thru bacon and egg muffins for a hungover breakfast, you’re not exactly living in the sticks.

I found myself enjoying how stunned my co-workers were when I told them we didn’t have a McDonald’s in town. They just couldn’t get their heads around the fact that “going to Maccas for breakfast after a big night out” meant grabbing a plate and letting my Dad – who, like Cher or Madonna, is so iconic that he goes by one and one name only – load you up with bacon, eggs and that garlicy-oniony breakfast veggie slop he’s famous for after you woke up in a swag somewhere. Macca’s was definitely a thing, it just wasn’t drive-thru; you had to dine in and have a chat.

My co-workers thought of my Clifton life as a fantasy, like the town in Gilmore Girls mixed with McLeod’s Daughters and Crocodile Dundee. And I can’t say I didn’t play up to that.

I found myself morphing into this loud-mouthed, charmingly-bogan country mouse after spending considerable hours as a teen lamenting my rural roots.

I would talk about sleeping in a swag out in the open as they’d shriek about bugs. I’d talk about the bottle tree filled with the cement. I’d tell them the unnecessarily long story about how my belt with the pony buckle was made for me by the bloke who used to be my swimming coach and how I traded him and his wife – the woman who taught me how to type – a batch of gingerbread for the leather.

The small-town label had become a badge of honour, and now that I’m living in the biggest smoke in Australia, I like to keep that badge nice and shiny. I’ve fully embraced my point of difference from the Sydney masses, and flaunt it whenever possible. It’s like I needed to go full city to realise just how much of a country girl I actually am.

The other day I called my bank to ask them to redirect my replacement card to a Sydney branch. Because as much as I’d like to be able to pop into Clifton to pick up my card, it would be kind of tricky to explain my boss why I was away for six hours when I’d told him I was, “just ducking out to the bank quickly”.

I made it clear I was new to Sydney, I used the word “mate” and, when he put me on hold to call the Clifton branch, I told him to “say his to Jenny for me” just to really drive the message home that I was a fair dinkum, small town girl.

I don’t know why it is, but I find myself doing this all the time now. Whether it’s being an overly polite, talkative customer or scoffing at the audacity of the trendy market in my neighbourhood selling bunches of cotton to hipsters for $20 a piece, I get a kick out of playing the country mouse.

I’m not sure if I’m playing up to the country stereotype or just being my authentic self. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m homesick, or if I’m taking the p— out of myself and my town. Perhaps it’s a little bit of everything.

But it feels nice and it usually results in excellent customer service so I guess I’ll keep it up.

But if I start saying “g’day” too much, maybe tell me to pull my head in.

Also, in case old mate didn’t pass on my regards, can someone please tell Jenny I said hello?

* Apparently Jen got the message. A few times. 

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Sorry Grandma

Originally posted in The Clifton Courier, August 23, 2017

I’ve started calling my Grandma every week.

Every Monday at about 5.30pm I give old Audrey a call in a bid to feel like less of a terrible person, check how she’s doing and rip the Favourite Grandchild title from the hands of my younger cousin. She’s often wearing cute dance costumes, is very polite and loves to read, so it’s a tough fight to snatch that metaphorical prize from her little fingers. To help my cause, I try to make my conversations as animated as possible.

Grandma doesn’t have all that much going on these days. She has her puzzles. She has her books. She has her TV shows. She still lives in her own home and does whatever the heck she wants. And while living in a palace of solitude with a large supply of Tim Tams* sounds like heaven, it’s not overly exciting, day-to-day.

* A large supply of grandchildren calls for a large supple of chocolate bickies. One time grandma must have got a great deal on homebrand Tim Tams and they were terrible. My sister and I would gradually throw them out so her supply would run out. I like to think we did it for the family. 

So I like the idea of regaling her with thrilling tales of my life in the big city to spice things up… and to convince her that I’m not wasting my youth*.

* This is tricky, because I find it very difficult to lie. 

Unfortunately, I’m failing a little on both accounts.

I’ve found most of our conversations tend to wind up with me promising to “do something fun next weekend” to tell her about.

Each time I say it, I know it’s a hollow promise. But I had no idea how much of a lie it actually was.

Because sitting around on Sunday afternoon reflecting on how I spent my two days made me realise my weekend duller than an infomercial on cleaning products*. I’m really not sure how I’m going to spin the following into a juicy tale for the old bird:

* Actually, this depends on what cleaning product we’re talking about. Because while most infomercials are terrible, the CLR one still dazzles me. It mesmerised me a child and it still speaks to my soul. That ad is like a magic show. It had such a profound effect on my, as I can remember most of the scenarios to this day. Interestingly enough, I’ve never actually gone out and bought the stuff. Perhaps it’s my subconscious protecting me from the disappointment that would crush my spirit if it didn’t work like it did in the ads. I’m not sure how I could take a blow like that, come to think of it.

Friday night: I went to the supermarket immediately after finishing work so I wouldn’t have to leave the house and battle the wind again. I came home with a hot chook, vacuumed the flat, took out the garbage and put on a load of washing.

I’m not going to go into the finer, more mundane details of the rest of the evening, but I will tell you that I ended up taking 24 photos of the hot chook on my phone and tweeting my excitement over the fact that someone had finally bought a property they’d viewed on Escape to the Country.

Saturday morning: The first thing I did was I take three hours to eat breakfast. After that, I cursed the blind in my room for falling down, fixed my blind with a spare hair tie I kept around my wrist, felt like some kind of feminist MacGyver handyman. I then basked in my glory for at least half an hour.

Saturday afternoon: Went to the supermarket hungry, came back with $90 worth of groceries. Soaked in my filth/had a bath with eucalyptus oil to loosen the gunk on my chest. Finished Wuthering Heights. Muttered to myself about how much I disliked Wuthering Heights. Searched online for reviews from people who had the same opinions as me about Wuthering Heights. Stewed angrily.

Saturday night: Ate Brussels sprouts for dinner. Ate porridge for desert. Apparently felt the desire to punish myself. Looked at my HECs debt. Panicked. Wrote a to-do list of things I could do that might help my situation. Lied to myself that I would complete the to-do list in the future. Lulled myself into an uneasy slumber.

Sunday morning: Woke up. Debated about whether I wanted avo toast, eggs on toast or toast and Vegemite. Compromised by having all three. Instagrammed my decision.

Sunday afternoon: Put sheets in the wash. Got puffed. Napped. Ate a chicken sandwich. Realised I hadn’t written my column. Recounted my weekend. Realised my grandmother had a more exciting weekend than I did.

Sunday evening: Questioned who I had become.

** Just a heads up, I’m taking a little break this week and probs won’t be able to post my ramblings remotely for my usual Sunday sesh. I mean, if I were desperate I probably could post something. But one of the horoscopes I read today told me to take a breather, so I’m going to side with that one because it’s convenient to my needs right now.

I hope to return with a swag full of humiliating tales I can recount in an unnecessarily drawn-out way. 

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This one did not

Spicy five

Another Sunday, another selfie quiz.

I know I’ve been doing a lot of quizzes lately, and I make no apology for that. I’m tired. I’m grumpy. And I’m out of ideas.

Honestly, it was either a self-indulgent quiz or a rambling puddle of bullshit about me half-arsedly attempting yoga in the park the other day. I honestly tried to make it work, but it just wasn’t coming together. Long story short, a was heckled by a shirtless guy with a plastic bag of Hans Superdrys.

I’m actually surprised I posted anything today at all.

I’m far too tired for someone who spent their Saturday night watching Escape to the Country. I apparently had had a big week, because I didn’t even stay awake to see if the couple actually did buy the mystery house they seemed keen on (although this was partly because I didn’t want to go to bed disappointed in the likely case that the house hunters didn’t buy any property).

So yeah, maybe this is slack of me. Maybe I’m just being lazy for not coming up with a witty critique of society or being fun enough to have a graphic vomit story for you. But I’m too exhausted to be coherent right now, so tit bits of prompted prose is all I can muster up.

But in the spirit of Fathers’ Day, I’ll preface this week’s quiz entry with the immortal words of my dad, a man who goes by the name of Macca and gets more likes on Instagram than any selfie of mine ever could:

“Don’t be so bloody ungrateful. You’re too bloody we fed, yewse kids.”

Yeah, you git whatcha given.

I got these questions after searching “seven questions” in Google. I’ve adapted them from a list about questions you should apparently ask your employer at the end of a job interview. I have only used five of these questions, because two of the original questions were too tricky to transform from a professional perspective and apply to a narcissistic 20-something wearing pony pyjama pants. Five questions is probably all I can handle right now anyway. And, after all, there were five Spice Girls, so you have to take that into account.*

How do you celebrate accomplishments and achievements? I find a big serving of ribs is the way to go. It’s indulgent, but can easily by justified as healthy. It has no carbs. It’s packed with protein. Iron helps us play. It all works. Actually, I’ve been using meat as a treat for a little while now. Recently I came up with a new rule that any time I get my period, I get to take myself out of a nice steak dinner. You replace your iron you’ve lost, you get a ripper feed and you toast your own womanhood. It’s all the fun of celebrating your femininity while gnawing on bits of dead cow. Like, I enjoy being a woman. I enjoy not being a pregnant woman. And I enjoy slow-cooked beef. I feel like one day I may regret toasting to my empty womb, but that day is not today.

From your perspective, what does success look like? Not having to skip my sugar pills for six months so I can afford to fulfil my steak dinner rule.

What are your top priorities? Completing this post so I can get on with the rest of my Sunday.

“The rest of my Sunday” involves me going for a jog to the nearest Guzman and Gomez. My plan is to bolster my self-esteem by doing exercise, which will then make it easy to justify spending $17 on a single meal of Mexican food – because I worked hard and I deserved it. According to my app, the nearest location is just 1.8km away.

But, let’s be honest, I’ll probably end up ordering in or having cereal for dinner. I may be wearing a sports bra, but I am also currently wearing pyjama bottoms. 

What keeps you awake at night? For the most part, it’s sobering realisation that my meaningless life will one day come to an end. But there’s a security spotlight that keeps flashing on and off with the breeze that’s cheesing me right off. I’ve thought about taking it out with a slingshot from the shelter of my bedroom so the Body Corporate doesn’t see me taking justice into my own hands. But I don’t have the aim or the rubber bands to pull something like that off, so I’ve been using a sleeping mask.

But then the blackness of the sleeping mark reminds me of the eternal darkness that is waiting for my soul.

Maybe I should considering sipping hot milk before bed.

 Are there any shortcomings… that I could address now? I can think of many shortcomings that I SHOULD address now, but not a single one I COULD address now. I’m just too damn sleepy.

* You don’t really, but I did just base my title loosely around that flippant Spice Girls reference, so I guess it does have extra weight now.

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Pub crawling

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, August 16, 2017

The other night I shamed myself.

Now, before you get carried away, I didn’t vomit into a sink, swear obnoxiously into a microphone of a bowls club karaoke night or beg for someone’s socks to cushion my aching feet (all other stories for other times).

In fact, for most of the night I was a model citizen.

But as I was walking home, I did a dishonourable thing. I used a pub purely for its restroom facilities and didn’t spend a cent.

You see, I had consumed a fair amount of liquid that evening and needed to use a ladies room. I was travelling solo, I wasn’t about to order a plate of ribs and tuck in alone.

So I walked into the establishment with a plan. My gaze was alternating between scanning the room and frowning at my phone as I mustered up all the acting skills I obtained from Year 10 drama to pretend I was in there to meet a friend.

Having put on the best performance my limited abilities would allow, I waltzed into the ladies room.

On my way out, I did an encore. I did my best to look extremely cross, phone in hand, as if I’d just been ditched.

Look, we’ve all done it from time to time.

We’ve all been en route from one pub to the other and heard the call of nature.

There’s a sense of urgency when you receive that call. You can’t screen it for too long without dire consequences.

Depending on your gender, you may or may not be have done so in shoes of a ludicrously impractical height and a quality so low, you couldn’t guarantee they’d hold together all night. This shortens your strides and makes walking decidedly more jerky, which isn’t good for an impatient bladder. You knew that waiting to your preferred pub wasn’t an option because it would take you that much longer to walk there.

Compound this with the bone-chillingly cruel winds and that unnecessarily slippery fog-meets-drizzle Toowoomba is famous for, and holding on until you reach your desired destination seems impossible.

So maybe you’ve stopped at some old pub half way through your journey to answer that call. You might have stayed for an obligatory beer, but if there were more than three people at the bar to distract the staff and you crept through a side door, you didn’t even bother.

And, depending on how… hydrated you were, you usually felt a pang of guilt as you left. But you still left.

You might have reasoned that it was better than the alternative. You didn’t want to have an accident and then call it a night – that would have meant spending less money in other pubs and bypassing the obligatory hot chips and gravy sesh afterwards. That would have had a negative economic effect on the entire precinct. And even though you never intended to spend your dosh at your toilet pit stop, you told yourself that the flow on effect of you partying on would have benefited the establishment in some way. That’s one way I’ve reasoned it.

But looking back, I should have felt guilty. I didn’t deem the place good enough for me to spend some time and my money, but I was fine with dumping my bodily excrement there. What a jerk.

And I was probably missing out on a good time. The gum-chewing, bleached-rats-tail-footy-haircut-toting gronks I avoided wouldn’t have been there. The dance floor, while non-existent at the time, could have been started easily and had ample room for moving interpretive dance performances. And, let’s be honest, pubs like that always have cheaper drinks. I was the fool.

So next time, I vow to buy a beer at the next pub I empty my bladder in. And if it’s the end of the night and I’m riding solo, I’ll get ribs.

Because having a whole plate of ribs you don’t have to share sounds like a pretty good way to end the night anyhow.

 

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This one did not

Plan, Stan

On Monday, I had a bit of a meltdown.

I was home sick and was weary enough not to change out of my pyjamas, but just functional enough to use the internet (which, essentially, sounds like my constant state of being). I decided to use my time off to get a few things organised for my visit to a tax agent in a few weeks’ time and do a cheeky pre-emptive tax return estimation to get a rough idea of what I could expect to receive.

This, especially given my current state, was a baaaaaaaad choice.

I discovered that my silly notion of not taking holidays in my previous job, which I had left in the first half of last July, meant the lump sum payout when I finally quit was included in my total earnings for the financial year just gone. And this meant I was bumped up over the threshold for repaying my HELP debt for that financial year. The consequence of this was that the decent chunk of change I’d originally thought I was entitled to upon a previous estimate had diminished by an obscene amount.

The money I’d already spent in my imagination disappeared from my grasp, and I didn’t even get to enjoy the thrill of gambling it away or dramatically setting it able to make a point about capitalism.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in a great state after this discovery. I was snotty, I was tired and I was soberly aware of how poor my financial decision-making skills were. I was in a rut, and it was all my own doing.

Compound this with the episode of Insight I happened to catch a short while after this nasty surprise. I usually love Insight. It’s one of the best programs on television. Jen Brockie is fabulous – she’s compassionate in a non-condescending way and is non-judgemental and removed without being cold – and each episode is real food for thought. But this week’s episode was hard to swallow.

I’d caught an afternoon rerun of the program, which focused on older women living in difficult conditions as a result of the financial state they found themselves in. Some of them were divorcees, some of them had businesses go bust and some of them were just never in a position to get themselves ahead financially. One woman lived in a campervan. Another lived in her car. These brave women shared their stories and some of them didn’t appear as if they’d have happy endings.

It was devastatingly sad and kicked me right in the guts. It didn’t just make me think about my own lack of a financial planning and insight, but made me aware that even if I did make all the right choices, I may one way be in a similar position.

I spoke on the phone to Mum about it, asking her if she’d had a financial plan as a woman my age. She hadn’t really, nothing overly concrete.

It’s easy to hear these stories and, being removed from the individual situations, label the women as foolish or complacent. It’s easy to say “you should have bought a house” or “you should have thought ahead”.

But what does that actually mean? What could they have actually even done? And how do I apply this to my life, being at the pivotal age and position I am to influence the course of my life for better or worse? It got me thinking about my own plans, and where I expected to end up at my mother’s age.

I do have a plan for my retirement. When both our husbands are dead, my childhood best friend and I plan on buying a beautiful old house just a few kilometres outside the town we grew up in. It’s a pretty ideal way to live out your days – among the olive trees with a lifelong friend, with plenty of wine and fresh, country air. But it hinges on a lot of assumptions and a lot of unknowns. We assume that we’ll both marry. We assume our dearly beloveds will cark it around the same time. We assume we’ll out live them. And we assume we’ll have enough dollars to not only buy the house, but to live comfortably in it.

There are so many logistical details to this plan that we simply haven’t thought out – how we’ll con some poor schmuck into marrying us, how we’ll ensure they die before we do and where we’ll find this money.

We have an end destination, but have in no way mapped out how we’ll reach this end point. My steps to get there are simply “be wealthy” and “don’t die”. The nitty gritty deets that will ensure this plan goes ahead just aren’t in place. Practical steps to this broad plan are missing.

The last practical plan I came up with was deciding to have a small dinner at 5.30pm so I could have toast and vegemite, my third breakfast of the day (I had cereal for actual breakfast and an acai bowl for lunch at like 4pm) for dessert. And hey, I’m not knocking this plan. It’s a great plan. And at just after 7.30pm, I am reaping its benefits. There’s truly nothing like enjoying a cup of tea and some buttery, salty toast on a cold, stormy night.

But unfortunately I don’t apply the same meticulous planning to the big picture aspects of my life as I do to triple breakfasts.

So what do I do now? What’s the plan? What’s my future?

Well, considering my livelihood is based on my humour writing and I’ve just written a deeply depressing post, I may have to fall back on some of my other “plans”.

Unfortunately, Plan B for when everything goes completely to shit isn’t really a plan, but more of a gimmick. It’s based on my big idea of a burger joint where the buns are exclusively garlic bread. That’s it. That’s my backup. Garlic bread burgers.

Beyond that, Plan C is being hit by a fancy, fancy car and living off the compo.

Suddenly that rule about multiple-choice exams and always going with C when you don’t know an answer seems so incredibly poignant.

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