Blessed

I've had an adventurous life as of late. Adventure not necessarily in the sense of packing a bag and heading out of town, but just the mental state of adventure. Of discovery. Of trusting the unknown.

I had a couple in their mid 20s from England stay the night - they were travelling from Sydney on their way up to Cairns and crawling the coast the whole way. We stopped in to Chook and Broosky where my friends work for dinner, then wandered through an exhibition opening of an 88 year old  alzheimer suffering woman's drawings. We passed a jazz concert in the park on the way to ice-cream at the beach and then spent hours sitting at home in the kitchen, drawing up plans for their trip up north. I suggested they visit my mum at the seaplane (which they did!) and so many other adorable non-touristic ways to spend time on the road. 

In the morning we woke up at a reasonable hour and went down to the Ocean Baths, followed by breakfast at Good Brother. They were frothing over the good food, good coffee, good weather and good company. But so was I, I always am these days. And so really, me as a tour guide turned into me learning so much more about the country I'll soon be living in, me making new friends and seeing the city with new eyes.

When they left for their next stint, I fell asleep on the couch and was awoken by a friend who took me to the grocery store and then to her new little surfy weatherboard house in Merewether. She got ready for a party and I listened to Hozier whilst playing around with tarot cards. We took a roadie cider and walked all the way up Memorial Drive along the ocean route and I dropped her at her party. When I arrived back in my street, the neighbours were sitting with champagne and a newspaper tear out general knowledge quiz. I partook in both. 

My brother from another mother, Simon, rocked up from Sydney and whisked me away from the inebriated ladies convention and we grabbed a beer and then some Japanese before legging it back up the hill. That was a chronic, hectic pain in the butt. When Matt arrived, we all kinda talked about shit all for a bit before heading to drinks with friends down at the precinct and then after a few hours of drinking beers that I had not paid for and watching Shrek on the TV screens at the pub, we legged it back. Baaaack up the hill, this time listening to Hall & Oates and dancing back and forth. Matt peed on the Argyle House fence. Simon steered him around Honeysuckle on a stacking trolley. I giggled a lot.

And then when we got home, Simon played Willie Nelson and I cooked bacon and eggs and it was nice having my two favourites with me, racing each other around town, behaving entirely differently to how we're used to. In the morning when we all got up and went our separate ways, I realised on the way to grabbing coffee that I'd left my phone behind. Suddenly the day was open to absolutely no interruptions. Just me and the sea. And so I walked and wandered and meandered and lost myself in Merewether before being spat out at the ocean baths. The day was only fresh, but there was an ocean of people swarming about for coffees and for a spot in the surf. I watched children learning to swim and lost track of my own personal dog spotting tally and after a while left to walk back past Merewether, past Dixon Park, past Bar Beach and once again up the hill to my house where I fell asleep from heat stroke and from the sunny morning walk and from content of the weekend adventures.