Yep not yes

Every so often, my mum goes on a decluttering spree in her apartment, and unearths forgotten stacks of paper relics of my childhood — school reports, random certificates from maths or piano competitions, preschool artwork, etc. She sent me a massive collection of the latest such material, and I've been having great fun going through it.

My absolute favourite thing so far, which had me crying tears of helpless laughter, was the below list, written (judging by the handwriting and spelling errors) aged about eight or nine:

( Transcribed exactly as written, spelling errors and strange punctuation included )

So, there you have it: the top tips for achieving the pinnacle of early-'90s Australian primary school-aged cool.

I think the fact that at some point in my life I sat down and, in deadly earnest, created such a list, illustrates the fact that there is not a single point in my life in which I have ever been cool.

The story goes for another day

Saturday was spent outdoors (or out of the house, in general), and today's been spent (beyond swimming at the pool first thing in the morning) almost exclusively indoors, hiding from the rain. It's been a good mix of activities, although I think I'll end up starting the working week feeling tired, which is not my preference.

Saturday started with more excitement than perhaps intended: when heading over to the market to buy vegetables, Matthias and I found someone's lost mobile phone on the green in front of the cathedral. We couldn't see anyone about who might have lost it, so we took it home, with the intention of taking a photo of the lockscreen and posting it on the local community Facebook groups. When we opened the phone's cover to do so, we found that the phone a) had an utterly unremarkable lockscreen (no distinctive photo, no apps) and b) wasn't even locked at all. This proved useful, since we were then able to look back through the call history, and I phoned the last person to have spoken with the phone's owner, which turned out to be one of her friends. She was able to phone the woman's husband, who somehow managed to retrieve his wife, sans phone for organising all this, and the pair came over to our place to pick up the lost phone, falling over themselves with gratitude. I'm just glad the whole situation ended happily.

It was an absolutely beautiful day all morning, and Matthias and I decided to pick up food truck lunch at the market, and eat it out in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar. It was a lively, friendly environment — everyone else was clearly taking the same advantage of the sun, and there were lots of cute toddlers and babies, and one very giant, very cuddly looking dog. We made our way home via gelato from the chocolate shop, and a glass of wine at the bakery, and settled in for an evening of Chinese takeaway and our annual watch-through of all the Eurovision acts. I had only seen a couple of them previously, so was going into the whole thing blind, but was pleasantly surprised, and think the eventual competition will be a fun one this year.

Today has been much quieter — swimming, meal prep, yoga, household chores, and the like, although I did at least finally start reading a new-to-me book (about which more later when I've finished it). Now the rain has stopped, the sun's pouring in through the skylights in the kitchen, and Matthias and I are sitting in companionable silence in the living room, drinking smoky tea and reading (him) and catching up on Dreamwidth (me). In a couple of hours, I'll start on dinner, and fill the house with cooking smells, and then there'll be cosy Sunday night TV, and everything starting to wind down towards sleep.

It's been a good weekend, all things considered.