Louisa Simmonds

Come to Sydney, they said, the climate’s great, they said.

Most of the time.

Since 2017 began – and remember we’re in summer here – the temperature has ranged between a pizza oven and cardie weather, with little variation in between.

And then came the rain; a deluge that has had the gall to wash away the old man’s latest attempt to grow grass from seed. In fact, watching the defeated look on his face each morning as he inspects its status has been the only compensation for the cabin fever of the past two weeks.

Each morning, NC, our resident climate scientist, has stuck her wet finger out into the air and sighed – the street’s daily broadcast that of course we’re doomed – and I have become more and more stir crazy.

The only benefit of being housebound with such a dire case of cabin fever is that it has forced me to become more inventive in how to entertain myself, especially when the rain was the latest excuse from Telstra, our telecommunication provider, to affect the quality of our WIFI – in much the same way that leaves and snow used to affect the entire rail network in the UK.

So, perhaps it was a fortuitous side effect in this age of instant gratification and my own dependency on social media, that while the old man filled his time cleaning out his bodily orifices in front of the cricket, I came up with the following interesting ideas:

1. Hair removal – this (typically monthly) chore wasted at least half a day because the weeks of rain had helped me cultivate maximum growth. A symbiotic couple, the task also used up a good part of the old man’s weekend spent cleaning out the clogged drains and plastering all nicks and cuts caused by his strangely, newly blunt razor.
2. Teaching the dog new tricks – all well and good, unless you have an eight-year-old menopausal bitch like The Princess, who at the ripe old age of 56 in human years, is tired of my requests for her to smile, take selfies with me, entertain and love me all the time.
3. Baking a cake, or in my case, a cheesecake. Alas, the dilemma with cooking on rainy days is that there is SO much time afterwards to eat it. It calls from the fridge, and if, like me, you have the biological disorder to put on weight simply by flicking through the pages of a Delicious cookbook, (let alone daring to pause at the Baking Section), it’s not a good plan. But then I spotted the idiot’s guide to chocolate cheesecake and my brain made the connection of how I could become the perfect mother with very little effort.
4. Cleaning the house – I managed to resist because this is the old man’s work.
5. Washing – say what?
6. Moaning to the old man about why the Internet wasn’t working, because in spite of my fervent belief in equality, that’s definitely his department.
7. Changing the bed linen – sadly, the old man beat me to this when he did it a couple of months ago.
8. Napping… never in question and took me nicely up to dinner time and the only highlight of my days, my next meal.
9. Curtain twitching – for a car space closer to the house, and then watching the old man dodge wild weather, puddles, and scary neighbors to move it, did bring the odd smile to my face.
10. Contemplating exercise and a long run, but then realizing that I couldn’t run because I have never run and it was raining.

11. And finally… Planning my To-Do List for the following week, but not having the time           to tick one damned item off it.

#Humor #Marriage #middleage #rainydays