Safe home

We brunched with my folks at Sydney airport and swapped presents. We were met at the airport in Melbourne by

crystalstorm

and the Hamish part of

kirmish

, which was awesome. Then we dropped by Fruit Peddlers in Westgarth to pick up fresh fruit and vegies for mushroom and asparagus risotto, went home and cooked lunch, caught up with Ann, the fabulous woman who has been living upstairs here since 1970 (I think she’s in her 80s) and now Doug is crashing out for a while. I’m doing the “power on through” thing, at least for now.

But then, I slept on the plane. Whenever people ask me that “if you had a superpower, what would it be?” question, I usually say something like “connecting people together” but Doug argues it’s the power to fall asleep anywhere, anytime, in about five seconds flat.

It’s interesting being back. It’s our flat, but the furniture is in odd places and half the stuff is Jack’s, not ours. Our room has to be sorted out and even the bed has been moved. So it feels like home but not. It also feels bizarrely like time has concatenated and the last eight months didn’t really exist; instead, we just stepped from January to December in the same house with the same weather but the furniture shifted overnight.

I can also suddenly see so many flaws with the place. In my imagination over the last eight months, the space has been warm and filled with my knick knacks where I knew them to be. I didn’t populate that vision with wine stains on carpets and awkward metal blinds. I’ve known for a while that I wanted to put floorboards in the lounge room, but now I want to do the bedroom too. I also want to put in cedar blinds throughout. I imagine I now can’t do that until I get a job although we’ll see — I’ll get some quotes and get started on it.

Yes, yes, I know. Don’t I ever just *stop* and enjoy? This *is* me enjoying. I like having things to do and to organise. Wedding first, then back to jobs and the apartment. All good.