Keeping it real

Now this is more like it. Bugger swanning around in France and Spain. Grocery shopping in Northbridge, that’s where it’s at. Recycled toilet paper, a barbecued chook, a nod and smile to someone who seems to know me, but who I can’t place for love or money. Ah, the real world. Bliss. Actually, I was a bit knackered by the shopping. Those 10 hours sleep I got on the first night back barely touched the sides of my crippling jetlag/hangover. Or was it trudging around the supermarket on an empty stomach that did me in? (I’ve sworn off carbs and there was nothing non-carby in the house to eat, I even checked under the chooks’ bums at dawn.) And then there were the playdates I organised for the Sprogs yesterday afternoon … they seemed like such a good idea a month ago, before we embarked on the overseas odyssey. Sprog 2 was so not in the right headspace for a playdate. That was clear from about 9.45am, when she started screaming at Husband to “stop annoying me” after he tried to wake her for the third time. It was quickly followed by hysterical tears every time Sprog 1 played with a toy, which Sprog 2 would immediately decide was the only thing she wanted to play with in the whole house, but Sprog 1 “won’t share, and that’s not, waaaaaaaah, fair, waaaaaah!!!!!” Sigh. I am following up yesterday’s excellent playdate idea by taking the Sprogs and their cousin to Luna Park. Well, you see, they’ve got these annual passes, and I feel this pressing need to get my money’s worth (kind of blown by the fact I didn’t get myself an annual pass, so I have to buy a day pass at full-freight every visit to take Sprog 2 on the dodgems and into Coney Island for her requisite five seconds – excellent forward planning, eh?). I’m letting Husband stay at home and have a rest, because he has to go to work next week, unlike me. He’s also mildly incapacitated by bombing in the very shallow pool at our French holiday house. Bloody lucky he’s not a paraplegic (is what I yelled at him after it happened, closely followed by “How old ARE you?”. I am such a sympathetic and caring spouse). So he will be spending numerous hours over the coming weeks attending expensive physio appointments. Meanwhile, I am enjoying cutting off people who ring up wanting donations/to sell me things by saying, “I just lost my job”. Came in very handy yesterday afternoon, the woman on the other end of the phone was most upset on my behalf. Ah yes, woe is me.  

TONIGHT’S MENU: Dinki-di barbie of steak and sausages with salady things, plus this runny pesto stuff I’ve made (food processor kaput so had to make it in the blender) that has too much lemon juice in it (blaming that bit on the jetlag).