So I had a bit of a breakdown last night.
After a dinner of pesto, salad with Simone’s Famous Dressing, and Tim Tams, the girls went to bed around 7:30pm and Dave and I plopped down on our TEMPORARY couch to begin working towards our goal of watching all three seasons of Veronica Mars. Two episodes in, I started drifting off to sleep. It might have been the Tim Tams and chamomile tea, the utter exhaustion of beginning life in a new country, or some combination of both. I pulled myself up off the couch, filled my water bottle, and stumbled into our bedroom… where all I could see were piles of clothes all over the bed and the floor. Clothes with no home. A big pile of cold weather kids’ clothes that we won’t need for at least three more months, and a massive pile of my dresses and blouses that have nowhere to go because the TEMPORARY furniture and housewares guys only brought 20 hangers, and our PERMANENT hangers are being shipped here and all of our belongings are still sitting at the Port of Oakland even though we moved out of our house on January 2nd in the hopes that our belongings would be shipped immediately so we could have them upon arrival. And yes I know I can just buy some hangers, BUT IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF IT DON’T YOU SEE and it’s a waste of hangers if I buy them now and then my real hangers come in April. And then there’s our furniture. And our laundry baskets. And our adorable welcome mat I bought at the Target across from Lucky Penny, thinking, “Oh this will be adorable. When we get to Perth and receive all of our belongings, I can adorably pull out this adorable welcome mat from an adorable box and lay it in an adorable fashion on the front porch of our adorable new house.”
So Dave tried to distract me by asking, “Have you noticed that the ceilings in this house are really beautiful?” And when that made me cry even more, he told me how much he loved me, and how beautiful I looked tonight when I was making my tea. And then I started sobbing because I am only going to be beautiful for a few more days, because, no matter how much sunblock I apply and reapply, I can feel myself getting PERMANENT sun damage and I will look like a wrinkled old Italian lady in a matter of minutes. And then Dave will be this incredibly dark, gorgeous, wrinkle-free gentleman hanging out with this creepy, old, white-haired, sun-damaged, washed-up old bag.
That’s pretty much the break down of the breakdown. Eventually Dave made me laugh by telling me that crying is not an effective means of cooling down the body. And then I read some of Helen Macdonald’s incredible book H is for Hawk which turns out to be one of those books I am reading at the exact moment I need it.
And today’s a new day and life is good. We left the house bright and early to go to Caversham Wildlife Park to pet some kangaroos and see some wombats in, ahem, compromising positions. And now the girls are reminding me I said I’d go in the pool with them so here I go.