Hello hello hello,
And just like that, it’s June. It’s been a long June. More precisely, it’s been a long and excruciating past seven days due to a virus that became a sinus infection, that became a chest infection and keeps going back and forth. When will I not be sick, goddammit!?! Particularly annoying is that my left ear has been blocked since Wednesday. It’s muffled, doesn’t pop when I do the usual tricks and is causing me a lot of irritation. So now that you know what kind of illness-related mood I am in, let’s begin this month’s blog. Some bad things and some good things happened this month. Let’s start with the bad.
Our cruise was cancelled. P & O is all about Covid safety and that meant that our cruise was cancelled. The options were to postpone it, to get a credit or to get a refund. And while I wanted to stay in fantasy land of ‘they’ll change it back closer to the date’, my good friend Merryn said I should pull the plug on the whole thing. So now, not only will I not be going on a cruise this year, I will also not be going scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. Geez Louise it has been a heck of a year.
Onto good news though is… *drum roll*… I got my (learners) motorcycle licence! Yes! I did a two-day course and an online test and I got it. I was riding all kinds of ways; through cones, round in circles, practising braking and clutching and everything. I do not have a bike yet. Surprising to me is you can't just rent a bike to practice on because you’re a learner and no one trusts you. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that beforehand. So the new plan is to fix up an old bike we have at the house, practise on that with either my dad or brothers (who all have their licences) riding alongside in their cars (yes that’s legal), a bit of dirt biking to master the cone weaving and figure eights with my nephew and his mum, and then BOOM! I’ll get my legit licence. Once I have achieved this level of awesomeness, I am probably going to get a red Vespa. OH MY GOD, STOP JUDGING. Here’s the thing, I wanted a motorcycle licence so that I can ride in the country wind. But like, how often will I do that? And have you seen these Vespas? I’m getting all sorts of Lizzie Maguire type feels.
Other highlights of this past month include seeing my friend Irena in a spectacular Elton John tribute show done by the Little Red Company called ‘Your Song’. They tied my favourite banger ‘I’m Still Standing’ to a true story of someone celebrating the five-year wait of their divorce and so I spent the whole thing balling instead of dancing, but it was very therapeutic – so still phenomenal. I also set up my first little investments for my nephew and niece. That’s right guys, those little bundle of joys are going to have an inheritance when they turn 18 (or 25, with conditions such as reading through finance books). I always thought it was a rich man’s game, to get an inheritance. It is… but it is also possible for us lower class folk. All you got to do is plan and start really early for the investments to really work their magic. This does mean, however, that neither of them will ever receive gifts from me. Instead, they will have boring talks with me over which company they’d like to put money into on their birthdays, and they’ll receive an envelope at Christmas telling them how much more (or less) their investments have been travelling through the years #richaunty #richkids #bestauntieever
Oh oh oh and this month I made a friends wall poster thing to combat the sad realisation of relationship breakdowns I touched on in the last blog. I wrote down all the close friends I have here in Brisbane and beyond and stuck them up to remind me that they exist. This includes people that I rarely see, that I need to organise hangouts with. Sometimes I get down after receiving a rejection to socialise and so I stop there and think ‘woe is me, no one is available’. So this wall art will hopefully remind me that ‘hey there are heaps of people that might be available, you only reached out to one’. It’s already working too. In the last week, I’ve had long chats with several of my friends overseas. I just kept seeing their names on the wall and so I reached out. I’m also trying 'meet-up' this month. I used to use it in Sydney but didn’t think of it again until a friend said I should find a movie night crew. So far I’ve joined a book club, a music jam session and am hoping to join a motorcycle group once I get my bike.
To wrap up, books read this month included ‘Grave Tales: True Crime’, ‘Things we didn’t talk about when I was a girl’ and ‘The misfortune of Marion Palm’. That last one was a hoot. It was a fiction book about a woman who embezzled money from the school she was working at. Super witty writing, really good characters and for some reason, you ended up really liking the protagonist even though she was severely selfish and received no punishment for her crimes. I didn’t give away too much, I swear.
Movies I watched included ‘Emma’, ‘Her’ and ‘Quiet Place: Part 2’, ‘I’m your woman’ and ‘The map of tiny perfect things’. To be honest, they were all pretty dope films. I think I liked Emma the best though. Anya Taylor-Joy is very very good. I like her in everything I’ve seen her in and I haven’t even begun ‘The Queen’s Gambit’. I’ve also been binge-watching ‘It’s always sunny in Philadelphia’. Guys, I feel really bad saying this but I find this show really funny. So very rude and inappropriate at times but just so stupidly funny. The character Charlie reminds me so much of one of my exes. Like so much passion and energy and the funny voices, he’s just too good.
That’s it folks, wish me luck on my upcoming exams and to be rid of this plague (Covid and the one I’m experiencing).
All my love, May