Just Married

It’s official. I’m hitched! As predicted, the wedding itself was pretty much a blur, but everyone assures me that a good time was had by all. My only goal was not to take a nose-dive down the aisle, so mission accomplished on that front. Here are a few photos, but, naturally, the “official” wedding photos won’t be ready for at least another month, so don’t hold your breath.

Many thanks to all of you in attendance! We are “busy” enjoying our honeymoon in Nuevo Vallarta, which, thus far, has consisted of lounging by the pool and a visit to the spa.

More later!

Neighborhood Watch

It’s been several weeks since we moved into our little house-top apartment in Bronte and I am slowly familiarizing myself with our immediate surroundings.  Today was a gloriously sunny day and, having spent many a rainy, blustery day indoors, I decided to capitalize on this reverse of fortune.  I took James on a lovely, long, lingering walk along the seaside cliffs between Clovelly and Bronte beches, sat outside on our patio and read my book (Independence Day by Richard Ford – I’m enjoying it very much), all the while doing my best to soak up as much sunshine as possible (having dutifully applied the prescribed 50+ SPF).  Toward the middle of the day, I walked up to our local strip of shops on McPherson Street to see what I could find for dinner.  Unfortunately, our local organic pasta shop had sold out of the fresh pesto I had hoped to purchase, and, as I walked back to the apartment, I weighed the odds of convincing Michael to pick some up on his way home from work.  Then I weighed the odds of his knowing what pesto is and being able to locate it at the grocery store.  Ultimately,I  figured it was worth a shot anyway.

This is what I was thinking as I pushed open the wooden gate at the base of the steps leading up to our apartment.  I took a sidelong glance at the patio downstairs as I headed on up, and that’s when I saw what looked like the naked form of one of our downstairs neighbors, let’s call her “Suzy” (not her real name), laying on the patio table.  I thought that was a little strange.  Then I noticed that she wasn’t actually nude, but wrapped in layers of skin tight cling film.  Stranger still.  But before I could even begin to hypothesize that I might have stumbled upon some new age de-tox ritual, I witnessed another woman (fully dressed) bustle up to the patio table and place a silver candlabra and a big bowl of lemons near the head of my neighbor’s bare but trussed-up form.  And at the point I decided that whatever was going on down there was none of my business and I beat feet up the remaining steps and sequestered myself up here for the rest of the afternoon.  I’m frankly a little afraid to leave lest I stumble upon the denouement of some bizarre Wiccan rite I very nearly interupted.  I’m sure there is some “rational” explanation why a person might be swaddled in saran wrap and laid out on their patio table in the middle of the day, but, I confess, nothing jumps immediately to mind.

And here I was worried that I would be the weird one in the neighborhood.  Honestly, I don’t think I’m up to the challenge.

Seeing Red

I apologize in advance to those of you who are eager for an Australiana update.  I’ve got nothing to report on that account.  It’s raining again…there you go.

This post is more about how I’m not always very bright.  Unfortunately, I don’t really have anyone to blame for that.  My parents are smart people and spent a lot of time and effort (read “money”) to ensure I was well educated.  What can I say?  Sometimes things don’t work out the way you hope.

Anyhoo, here we go with another story about how I could stand to be smarter.  I woke up this morning to discover that the rain has, lamentably (for me), returned to Sydney.  (To be fair, the past two days have been gloriously warm and welcoming and had me thinking I might be able to live here afterall.)  I glowered out at the weather, drank my coffee and tried to avoid eye contact with James Brown who, per usual, had decided that since I was no longer supine in bed, it was time for his morning walk.  We engage in this battle of wills every morning.  Apparently he thinks it’s fun.  When I could no longer handle the sad looks and sighs from the dog, I capitulated and set about getting ready to take him for a walk.  I got dressed, brushed my teeth, put in my right contact, put in my left…suddenly a bright, searing pain wrapped around my eyeball.  My eyelid automatically clamped shut and my tear glands went into overdrive as I feebly clawed at my face in an effort to eject the offensive contact lens from my occular cavity.  Finally, I managed to pry open my eye and extract the lens.  Sweet relief!  The incendiary threat in my head subsided.  I quietly congratulated myself for rectifying the situation without wetting myself or blindly bumbling into the wall and knocking myself unconscious.  Then, thinking that the contact lens must not have been rinsed well enough, I placed it in my palm, submerged it in saline solution and gave it a good scrub.  After which, I popped it back into my eye.  Again, the searing alien pain bathed the right half of my face, and, again, whimpering audibly, I frantically struggled to cleave the evil, poisonous film from my retina.  Once removed, I stared at the contact lens in my palm, the pain in my eye diminishing, and wondered aloud, “Well, what the hell?!?!”  I stared and wondered, wondered and stared, and then, and only then, did I recall having chopped a bunch of chillies the night before to make Hot Chilli Prawns (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/517008).  Three medium red chillies, in fact, after which I certainly washed my hands, but apparently not in the pre-op surgeon’s fashion necessary to dispell the tenatious capsaicin clinging to my fingertips. 

Now, I’d like to say that this is the first time this has happened to me, but, as aforementioned, I’m not so bright.  I like to learn things the hard way, forget them, and then re-learn them repeatedly.  Keeps things exciting.  At any rate, I had at the very least realized the source of the problem, and so, hopefully, could save myself a repeat performance of all that initial unpleasantness and foul language.  I washed my hands…twice.  I rinsed and re-rinsed the tainted contact lens in a series of ablutions of my own invention which seemed, to my mind, likely to do the trick.  I washed my hands again and then steeled myself for re-insertion.  I placed the contact on the surface of my eye and blinked a couple times and it seemed okay…except that a second later a gentle stinging erupted around my eye and escalated with alacrity to a firey crescendo before I could pry it out of my eye…a third time.  Now, at this juncture a smarter person would have abandoned the entire effort and gone about their day wearing a perfectly serviceable pair of glasses, but I have the dubious distinction of being both stubborn and dumb.  And I wasn’t about to be beaten by…er…myself. 

Since I wear weekly disposable contacts, I abandoned the chilli marinated pair and released a fresh pair from their hermetically sealed plastic pods while smuggly thinking to myself, “Well, that’s about enough of that.”  Out of an abundance of caution, I rinsed a fresh lens and inserted it in my eye.  Again, the stinging, the crying, the frustration, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Not to be so easily bested, after removing the fresh lens and placing it in its case with a generous squirt of saline solution, I washed my hands no less than 10 times in increasingly hot water until my skin was virtually scalded and my fingers were prune-y.  And again, for the fifth time, I bellied up to the mirror, rinsed the contact lens and put it in my eye.  I blinked several times and waited.  As the seconds ticked by there was, happily, no inkling of the searing pain I had previously experienced (repeatedly).  Success!  Almost an hour later, I emerged from the bathroom ready to take the dog for a walk.  Phew!

And Michael wonders how I manage to “entertain” myself all day.