TEXT: you still up to catch up this arvo at your place?
TEXT: yeah course, out with Troy 2morro night for birthday so only time I’ll see ya for my bd babe hint hint
TEXT: I’ll see you next week on actual day goose (so don’t expect a preset today!), but looking forward to tonight
TEXT: K, 3:30 sister. Sulking re pressie (just kidding)X
Although I convinced my self I was okay last week, I have to say if I’m being brutally honest she is seriously pissing me off. I mean, snubbed me all week, whispering behind my back at the gym with JPT, any would think it was me having the fucking affair. Truth be told, Troy has just avoided me – perhaps this ménage o trios’ aint gonna work unless I actually call them on it! I’m making myself anxious.
They pull into the driveway, so I grab the wine glasses and unwrap the Warrnambool Red Bell Pepper cheese, crack the Stone Bridge Rose and place the Fig and Almond specialty crackers on the cheese board. Zo walks in and declares she has homemade hommus (she’s added extra hot peri-peri to deli bought gourmet hommus, that’s as homemade as she gets), and places that along with the tomato & basil flavoured mountain bread torn into dipping sized chunks, on the table. We perch ourselves on the corner of the dining room table as usual and start drinking and eating, as usual.
Then we hear this enormous crash / bang / whimper/ crazy cambering from the spare room I am trying to renovate. (Over the past month we have been moving Dash into the other bedroom, last night Troy finally got around to dismantling the bunk bed and moving it into Dash’s new room). The blinds in the room are closed, Deputy is half blind and I walk in he’s tried to leap on the bed – that’s no longer there but is now only a pile of junk. He’s very confused the poor canine. I give him some sympathy, drag him out of his caper, and rejoin Zoe at the corner of the table.
“Jay, I decided to try your Mountain bread idea, I have to squeeze into a White Abba jumpsuit for the 70s party tomorrow night” Zo attempts to explain.
“Yeah, that bloody party” I snap “How can I forget that oh so important party that meant you didn’t help me fight for my 40th”
“You know I’m sorry Jay, this was planned nearly a year ago, I’d already committed”
“Don’t stress, no-one else was that interested either, best I got was half hearted commitments and maybes”
“Just bad timing Jay”
“Well I can’t help when I was fucking born can I! It’s not like it’s a surprise, it’s been on that date for forty years now”
She squeezes my shoulder and I wince.
“It’s okay”, I sigh “I’m over it, got my romantic night planned with Troy”
“Lovely” she says, taking a sip, okay guzzling, her wine “lets chink to that, tell me more”
We start to relax into conversation, enjoying our wine and we would both have to admit, the snacks, while I fill her in on our plans for the following evening.
Harry rushes in at that point, beckoning us to come outside and witness a discovery. The kids have been playing out the front and evidently found a discarded small pine tree from the neighbours re-landscaping efforts.
“Look, we found a Christmas tree Mummy” Harry squeals (I swear sometimes he sounds more girly than Dash)
“Yeah Aunty Zo, can we plant it Mum or at least put it in the lounge room till Christmas?” asks Dash innocently.
“Sorry kids, it won’t live, how about you plant it in the dirt heap on the block where they’re building the new house instead?”.
Thankfully the kids are appeased, by my suggestion and Zo high fives me for my quick thinking brilliance, shouting a gentle reminder to Harry they’ll have to take their shoes off and do a shake down dance before they return to the house.
“Yeah, yeah” kids reply in unison, I notice Harry laugh to Dash “You know my mum and mess …jeesh”, and soon they are happily ensconced in their new endeavor.
I suggest we venture outside into sunshine, to reconvene our catch up near the pool, I carry the wine and put some music on and Zo joins me with the food.
We continue to shoot the breeze about life, Jed and the gym (can’t discuss one without the other!), work stresses and Zo shares a story from the week.
“So Jay I’ve taken my dignity to a new low, for the second day in a row, I couldn’t sleep due to the workmen’s music next door, I kid you not it was reverberating through my bedroom, despite both doors to the walk-in-robe and bathrooms being shut, so I think to myself, stuff it, and march on over in my PJ’s, eyepatch on top of my head, earplugs still in and politely catch the attention of one of the tradies, who was quite hot I have to admit, and say ‘excuse me guys, I’m really sorry, I know you’ve got a job to do, but I work nightshift and I’m trying to sleep, would you mind turning the music down just a little’”
“Oh my god, Zo, tell me you didn’t” I almost choke on my mountain bread, “And then?”
“I screamed ‘turn your music off it’s like passively smoking your noise’”
“Oh god” I remark in dismay
“They said call the noise police and stop being a sooky lala!”
“Bahahahahahah” (well she is a sooky lala – I mean eye patch, earplugs…..seriously!)
“Jay, they called me a sooky lala” she repeats.
“Yeah I heard you”
“That’s my words, it’s as if they knew it”
I stopped listening after that.
She snaps me out of my little reverie with a curious question
“So how come you and Troy are not going away for the weekend or something?”
“Well Zo, it turns out he has training with you Saturday, that’s why” his excuse when I suggested it, was the race is only 2 weeks away.
Thankfully, Bryan Adams ‘Summer of 69’ comes onto the radio at what couldn’t be a more fortuitous time and instantly we are both in a great mood bopping and singing along, enjoying the warmth, wine and snacks.
I breathe a sigh of relief when Zo calls to Harry that it’s time to go. Sick of pretending today.
“Have a great night with Troy tomorrow babe, enjoy your last few days of dirty thirties, I’ll see you Tuesday on the big day. Love ya”
“Yeah I love ya too” I sigh and then they’re off.
Healthy, Happy & Whole 