Is Gael the hottest of the latinos?

Matt has been away for 6 days now.  The house is so quiet.  I haven’t really had a spare millisecond all week so haven’t had a chance to miss him yet.  Technology goes a long way I guess.  With the wonders of skype and SMS we’re still offering up to each other that running narration of our day…

Sometimes I wonder though. If we’re constantly getting real time updates of what’s happening, what are we supposed to talk about when he gets back? And, are we giving each other the opportunity to be missed?  Then I wonder, am I over-analysing this and who really gives a shit?

Supposed to be going to see Rudo Y Cursi tonight – a movie starring Gael Garcia Bernal.  And who doesn’t want to see a movie with he of the hotness, latino style?

But I’ve already seen one film in the past few weeks where Gael was sufficiently hot (Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch – snooze fest).  Besides, another movie about 2 poor blokes trying to make a living playing soccer (although, at least these ones will be hot – as opposed to those buddhist chaps in The Cup – and men – as opposed to say Bend it Like Beckham).  Bah!  I think I’d rather stay at home, alone and do nothing. Maybe I can visit Gael in my head without bothering about the film (*snigger*)?  Perhaps give myself a little time to remember to miss my husband.

I wonder if mum is doing the same?  Matt and Dad are skiing together – it’s “man week” at the Burgess family ski lodge at Perisher.  So I’m not the only one home alone.

I had lunch with mum on Sunday, seeing as we both had all this free time on our hands, and she told me that they have been somewhat at loggerheads of late.  Marriage counselling etc.  It’s funny how even as a grown adult, with a marriage of my own (of more than 5 minutes), it still gives me a little ugghh in the guts to hear my mum talk about that stuff.  I KNOW that marriage is up and down and all over the place. I KNOW that sometimes you really drive each other nuts. But they’re my parents.  Don’t think I’ll ever stop being their kid.  Don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling a bit sick when they are having a hard time.

Perhaps over the years, the source has shifted though.  You see, I’m too much like my mum and Matt is somewhat like my dad.  I suspect there’s a little bit of fear that if they can’t work it out, then we won’t either.  I know we’re not the same people and we make our own choices etc but still.  Besides, noone is even suggesting they won’t work it out. That’s just my gurgling guts.  Nobody ever said fear is rational!

Does Zooey Deschanel fantasise about herself when she can’t sleep?

It’s 3.43am and contrary to my earlier predictions this evening, I’m apparently still wide awake.  I’ve tried all the obvious remedies – warm milk, reading, valium and sweet, sweet dreams of my eternal girl crush Zooey… all to no effect.

This is not a new phenomenon to me.  Usually it succeeds a hatred for my job, distress about a best friend who didn’t live up to promises made, or panic about an ever increasing credit card bill.  This time, I can’t really lay claim to major concerns on any of those fronts.  Life is good (credit card debt notwitstanding).  Work is, you know, ok.  An previously undeveloped friendship has magically worked its way into real connection and I no longer feel the gaping hole of my formerly disappearing BFF.  Husband is funny, charming and keeping the home fires burning (*snigger *).   I’m creatively inspired and excited for what seems to be a promising venture.

Perhaps therein lies the clanger.  Today I inadvertantly did the most mortifyingly embarrassing thing through sheer stupidity.  The sun was out and mother had lent me her convertible for a few days.  What is a girl to do?  Get in the damn thing and drive of course!  I wandered here and there, lapping up the luxury of a warm winters day on my seasonably pale visage (all hail tinted moisturiser!).  As someone who works from home the sun is a foreigner to me.  I’m daily cloistered in a cool garret with a candle melting fat drips of  wax as I toil and a thin worsted blanket loosely covering my shoulders to keep the cold from bruising my bones.  Ok I exaggerate.  It’s a lovely desk with a pretty view of a vast, hulking, deciduous green tree and central heating. And I wear my PJs and slippers to work.  Whatever.  The point is, to spend an hour or two drenching myself in the sun is unusual.  

Notice how long I’ve avoided getting to the actual point?   Yeah well.  I managed to completely and utterly lose track of myself and forgot a 3pm appointment which was really important to me.  To do with aforementioned future creative endeavours.  Till I got a politely innocuous sms at 3.30 reminding me where I was supposed to be.  At that point, I would like to have flayed the golden warmth from my face and arms and return to my cold garret in shame.  I of course was in Manly  so still obscenely far from where I should have been – in Rose Bay.  Mortification complete.  Did I mention I had already postponed this meeting from the previous day so I could frivolously see some ridiculous baby elephant?  Which didn’t eventuate after much waiting around.

So here I sit, vainly (god, please let me be wrong) hoping that this last ditch effort to expunge my embarrassment from my brain by sharing with others in writing will, at last, help me get to sleep.  Writing as therapy and all that.

4.04am.

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Are Mangoes Better than Sex?

There are some smells that are so intoxicating that the world around you disppears into nothingness for the briefest of moment.  You can’t help but inhale so deeply it almost makes you dizzy. 

Mangoes do it for me in a big way.  A fresh, ripe mango is the most pleasurable smell in the world.  I don’t care what anyone else thinks… it’s mangoes ok!  Closely followed by jasmin… and fresh herbs.  I have a real thing for herbs actually – rosemary, basil, parsley and coriander.  Bruised between my fingers so they’re all peppery and fresh.    Initally, I figured that all the smells I love are only found in nature but then I remembered the smell of a crisp white tshirt which has been freshly washed and hung in the sun to dry.   And freshly baking bread… so lovely to wake up to. 

None of these smells evoke any memory though.  Contrary to popular opinion, I just don’t seem to derive any fond recollections from mangoes.  Except that I really like them… a lot.

Whenever I wear a certain perfume, L’eau D’Issey, Matt immediately recognises it and he says I smell like Paris.  He means it reminds him of Paris… not that I smell LIKE Paris itself…   at least, I bloody-well hope not!  And, while we were in Paris, he bought a man-scent which I adore absolutely.  But, annoyingly, it never evokes France for me. 

I feel jipped.  I love smell. And yet I have no scent-memory whatsoever… nothing “takes me back” or brings back a powerful memory.  I’m never immediately dropped back into that time and place.  And I feel like I’m missing out.  Like everyone else in the world has this super-power that I don’t have.

Whatever.  Did you know that musk  comes from the testicles of a particular type of deer?  Think of that next time you down a handful of those little pink lollies from Darrel Lea sucka.  You and your olfactory-evoked-recall.

A Fistful of Dollars

I make pretty damn good money and so does Matt.  By all rights we should be laughing it up in Monaco with a bottle of Cristal 1990 Krug in one hand and a Goldvish in the other.  And yet, we are always so damn poor!  It’s absurd and I want my money back!  Pun intended.

Last month, courtesy of 2 weeks unpaid holiday in New York, we managed to get down to our last $50 – with 10 days to go before our next payday.  So we economised somewhat.  We “indulged” by adding frozen peas to our 2-minute noodles.  We finagled invites to other people’s houses for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  We walked, we did not drive.  No toilet paper? Find a bloody newspaper mate! And stop whining about how it scratches.  Cheese on your toasted sandwich?  Luxury!  It’s vegemite sans butter again I’m afraid.  Oh, we’re a little late in paying our bill?  Sorry complete oversight, we’ll fix that up right away [well, in 10-12 days]…

This month it’s gonna be caviar and roses I tell you.  Or we’ll be paying off those bills we ignored last month that have now accumulated into a something akin to Rosie O’Donnell’s arse.  Large, pushy and not very fucking funny. 

Of course we did still manage to drum up $80 to pay the cleaner.  I mean really!  We can’t live in a pigsty can we?

The Moment I Realised I’m a Grown-Up

I struggle with the idea that I turned 35 yesterday.  After 35, doesn’t your skin start to wrinkle & pucker like you’ve been hoovering smack with Keith Richards for 20 years?   Doesn’t your bladder shrink to the size of Kiera Knightley’s left arse-cheek (very small indeed!)?   Don’t your boobs start resembling this?

Ok sure… that’s actually a man.  Whatever.

Even as a 10 year old, I felt like a grown-up. Always responsible, always sensible. Surrounded by adults, I felt like one.   The weird thing is, I AM a grown-up now.  I’m married.  I own a house.  I pay my bills.  I have a responsible job.  I remember to buy birthday presents for my in-laws.  But I don’t FEEL like a grown-up.

For one, I love to get hammered. Not in a ‘throwing-up-through-my-fingers-and-then-continuing-to-pash-that-hottie’ kinda way, more in a ‘gosh-this-bottle-of-verdelho-is-lovely-and-hey-I-can’t-feel-my-fingertips’ kinda way.  

Number 2, I say fuck… a lot.

Number 3, I still want Christina Ricci’s haircut NOT Jennifer Aniston’s.

Number 4, Cold War Kids & Santogold are the shit.  Paul Potts and Andre Rieue (whatever) are not.

Number 5, if you offer me a little something-something I’m saying yes please.

So what?  Am I regressing because I’m scared of getting old?  Hell no!  My mum’s 51 and she’s a child too.  We ARE grown-ups.  I think we are just gals about town with a sense of fun and adventure. 

So when did I realise it?  I’m sure it was something painfully mundane, like the first time I suggested dinner with my parents on a Saturday night, somewhere expensive, just because… oh and I didn’t expect them to pay.