Day By Day

Monday I made some lentil soup with carrots, onions, a whole thing of tomato paste and some leftover frozen corn when I got home from work. I would have liked to put in some celery but celery was SEVEN DOLLARS at Moore Wilson and I was too tired and cold to go over to New World so my soup remained cheap and celery-free. I ate it with some nice rye bread (which was way less than seven dollars, I’m just saying) and discovered that I was too warm with all three of my blankets on the bed and downgraded in the middle of the night to just two.

Tuesday I had sort of had dinner plans but they fell through and I meant to watch Outrageous Fortune but I got really into this book I was reading, which wasn’t even that good so I don’t know why I felt like I had to finish it all of a sudden. I had lentil soup for dinner and did some washing and talked to my flatmates and wrote in my paper journal for a while.

Wednesday I had a late work meeting and was feeling very tired and cranky and irritable and like I wanted nothing more than to just go home and put on my pajamas, but my friends Amanda and Esther were waiting for me at this craft night thingy at the Southern Cross so I girded my loins and dove headfirst into this nice vegetarian tasting platter they’d ordered and chatted to them and to the other people at the craft night. The girl sitting next to me knew my friend Jo. The girl sitting next to her was the creator of the awesome sock monkey kit that my former flatmate made a while ago when she still lived here and which I always thought was very funny and cute. The girl sitting next to her happened to have made the button I wear on my coat collar, which was repurposed from an old tea towel and which I always get compliments on. I worked on my fun fur scarf that I’ve been working on for ages and Amanda showed Esther how to cast on and we all ate snacks and chatted congenially and by the time it was time to go home I was feeling much better, thanks. Esther slept over at my house because she had an early morning flight and we sat and drank tea and ate mandarins in front of the fire before calling it an early night.

Thursday I got to work in town instead of the suburbs, which I always like because I get to get up at 6:30 instead of 6:00. I wore my cute silver flats to work, which are made basically of cardboard and aluminum foil and which I love immoderately. I booked myself in for a yoga class after work and read some National Geographics at the library while I was waiting for the class to start. I haven’t done yoga for a year so I was expecting the class to be pretty hard, and it was: we did all sorts of twists and then this crazy thing that really needs a picture to do it justice, like there was this special wall with hooks in it and the instructor got out these weird slings and you were supposed to balance upside down in them to released your shoulders and neck and spine or whatever. There were only about three people in the class and the instructor told me I had ‘open shoulders,’ whatever that means, and then we did the relaxation thing at the end but there were all these comfy bolsters and eye pillows and soft fuzzy blankets and nice trippy music and instead of relaxing and breathing all the tension from my body I just plain straight up fell asleep. I had lentil soup for dinner.

Friday I got to work in town again but I just wore my old tennies to work because in actual fact those little silver slippers are not very good for my feet. I had lentil soup for lunh and stopped at New World on the way home for porridge oats, sultanas, dark chocolate, and some trail mix and by the time I got home was considering not going out to see the Slow Song Revue just because I was tired from a long week (even though I didn’t do much at the beginning of it, except make lentil soup) and wanted to be in my yoga pants and hoodie in front of the fire reading my new book, which is very good indeed. But I thought that I probably should go out and that it would be better for me, in terms of being a more awesome human being, if I went out, so go out I did, in my same outfit I’d worn to work just jeans and tennies and a cute, slightly small shirt layered over a regular long-sleeve v-neck), so I girded up my loins and got on the bus and met Alice at her work. We walked into Newtown and got to the community centre and there everyone was, we knew about a third of the people sitting in that tiny little room loving up on the live music. There was this one table of people sitting right at the front who just kept chatting and laughing drunkenly during the first set, by this guy who happens to be a friend of Alice’s flatties Tim and Helen—he dedicated what he said would be the indie hit of the summer to them and it was the sweetest and cutest thing ever because if any couple should get the indie hit of the summer dedicated to them, it would be Helen and Tim—and then this other guy actually yelled at that table, like really angrily scolding them, asking them what the hell they were doing at a show if they were just going to blab the whole time and I kind of agreed with him because Tim and Helen’s friend makes this really stunning music and I would have rather listened to that than to a couple of drunks screaming about what their friend said that one time when they were all drunk. But then Alice said, “Well it’s not like we’re at Mass” and I could kind of see her point too. The rest of the music was great, really soft and dreamy and intricate and intelligent, and when it was all over I walked back to town with my friend Michael, who was happening to talk to one of the guys from Rosy Tin Teacaddy (who is also in the Woolshed Sessions) and so I got to meet him (the guy in the bands, I was already acquainted with Michael because he is Sylvia’s partner and we went out for afternoon tea just last weekend) and I felt very cool there for a minute, and then it was time to go home and since it was a pretty warm and very windless night Michael and I walked back to town from Newtown and I took a cab home because I missed the last bus and texted Alice to say I was safe and very happily went to bed.

Today I got up kind of early but lazed around in bed for a while before finally getting up and washing my hair with the last of the coconut shampoo and eating my new porridge oats and Skyping my mom, whose face I hadn’t seen since she had her knee surgery and who is looking fantastic. Yasmin asked if she could borrow some of my sultanas to put in the bread she was making and I put on a cuteish outfit, including my beloved gray jacket that I got for eighteen dollars at the Buffalo Exchange in Seattle last year and which I haven’t been able to wear all winter, and was just about to run outside and grab the bus when Amanda texted to say she was going shopping in town too and did I want to come? She very nicely gave me a ride and came to the jeans store with me, for that was my grim errand today, getting new jeans, and she was an absolute star, encouraging me to go down a size and promising me that the jeans really would stretch so as to slightly mask any incipient hints of muffin top that I may have about the waistal region. She got some skinnies and I got some plain old bootcuts and I felt very happy with my purchases indeed, especially, for some reason, because instead of putting them in the store’s plastic bag I put them in my new reuseable bag which happened to look pretty cool with my outfit so I felt pulled together for once. When I got home I had lentil soup for lunch and then a couple of hours later the raisin bread was ready and so we had that with tea. I’m about to have another cuppa with the last of my mandarins, and tonight I’m going to dinner and a play in town with three French speakers and about eighteen Italian speakers; I’ve got my top all ready to go (gray batwing with a long silver leaf necklace, singlet top underneath) and I’m definitely wearing one of the new pairs of jeans but haven’t decided what color yet, dark rinse or plain black, and also haven’t decided whether to wear the silver slippers or the black boots.

Tomorrow I’m meeting a lovely and gorgeous internet acquaintance for the first time, in town for coffee, and then maybe going to the fruit market or for a walk along the waterfront if it’s nice. I also plan to switch out my duvet cover tomorrow (with the attendant hilarious thrashful wrestling of the cover) and to decorate my room up a little more, in between cups of tea and chapters in the book I’m reading, not to mention finishing up the last of the lentil soup: spending the year, making a life, going along day by day.