It’s been a hundred years since I last blogged, and you probably thought I was dead, unless you follow me on Instagram, in which case you knew I wasn’t dead because I’m over there all the time providing incredible content like videos of my cat pole dancing and pictures of me driving a ferry.
Things around here are ticking along, as they do. Time is passing. Children are going to school, my first book is off with the editor, my next book is becoming notes on a page, which are slowly and unsurely revealing some sort of story. I don’t know. Don’t ask me about it.
Ask me about running. Because once again, I’ve taken up running. Well, jogging. But my knees got really sore, so my physiotherapist Nicole, one of the crack team of therapists it takes to keep me going these days, had a look and told me my kneecaps were not where they ought to be. Apparently they were sloping off round the side, like they thought they could get out of doing sport if no one could see them. Well sorry, kneecaps, it’s not that easy. We see you. Nicole dragged them back to the front and taped them firmly in place, which worked absolute wonders. She said they were causing the fat pads to bulge out the front, which was a revelation because I just thought that’s what my legs looked like. I’m not holding out great hopes that one day I will nice-to-look-at knees, but it’s exciting to think it’s not absolutely out of the question.
Pretty soon it may be all up to my knees to maintain my sex appeal. Because in addition to how I now pepper my pillow talk with references to fat pads, I also have to wear a mouthguard at night to stop me from grinding my teeth down to stumps. Hot. The dentist built up some facades on my front teeth, which were starting to look a bit like a shitty falling down fence. They look more like teeth now, but I have to be protected from myself with a charming plastic mouthguard when I sleep. It’s useful for games of night hockey though, I suppose.
I’ve also taken to wearing a mask over my eyes to get to sleep. I might as well just sleep in a sarcophagus. H is one lucky man.
Actually he is a lucky man, because he’s off right now on an excursion with Garnet’s class. They’ve gone to the Opera House to watch something or other. There are two parents joining the teacher for the outing, presumably for the purpose of sharing the blame if they lose any of the kids. They won’t lose the kids, probably, but if they do, H will be useful because as a psychologist he can provide the police with a behavioural profile of the kid they can’t find, and as an artist he can sketch them. He’s the whole package.
I’d like to be on the excursion but it’s my job today to stay home and work and listen to Spotify and its frankly judgmental playlists. Spotify has no sense of humour. You play ‘Here Comes the Hotstepper’ ONE TIME for your kids, AS A JOKE, and for months Spotify has been all “Here’s some more Ini Kamoze for you, Jess, we know how you love a lyrical gangster.’ Sorry if I’ve now got that song in your head. But welcome to my world.
The best thing on my to-do list today, and you can be very sure I accomplished this first thing, was arranging the ordering of ten kilos of cheese for the opening night of H’s art exhibition. Yes, I know there is a lot of information in that sentence. Art exhibition, let’s begin with that. H and his fellow artist and friend Amy have an exhibition called Canopy (here’s a link, tell your art-loving friends, and come have a look) opening next Tuesday at a gallery in Camperdown. I’m ridiculously proud of them because they both have very time-consuming jobs and children and wives and yet they’ve managed to draw all these magnificent pictures of birds and trees and get them framed and hire a gallery and organise wine for the opening. I’ve volunteered to do the cheese, which was only partly so I could make quite laboured puns about canapés and canopies which people have mostly ignored. I have ordered ten kilos of cheese. I’ve gone cheese mad. I can’t brie stopped.