Poor Stevie

I’m really starting to make like big bird and nest. I’m pretty sure J-man, the little cookie monster, is thrilled.

Recently, I decided to get creative by stealing someone else’s great idea of making a suitcase table. Because it was so much fun – not to mention being really great for our marriage – I have decided to share the process with you:

Step one: Go to Surry Hills markets and buy an overpriced vintage suitcase from a hipster conman. Feel empty, betrayed and bitter for the rest of the day.

Step two: Tell your husband to high-tail it to Bunnings and pick you up some table legs, some lacquer and some T-nuts. Set aside T-nuts for personal use.

Step three: Stain the legs on your white kitchen floor. Lean the freshly stained legs up against your white wall. You won’t regret it and, I swear, your landlord will love the new “bespoke” detail on his precious property.

Step four: Tell your husband to re-do your nails. And do it now, baldy!

Step five: Ask your husband to take a photo of you posing Charlie’s Angels-style with your new power drill in your messy kitchen. He won’t mind!

Step six: Drill some holes in that suitcase. Try not to let your mind wander to whether the Romans or whoever used asbestos to make their suitcases.

Step seven: Tell your husband to figure out what the hell to do with T-nuts. He, of all people, should know how to handle those babies with care.

Step eight: Don’t get angry at your selfish husband when the T-nut strategy goes balls up. He really is a good man deep inside and you can forgive him once he returns to Bunnings with his man tail between his legs to get plates and screws instead.

Step nine: Allow your husband to take over the drilling once in a while. It’s good for his sense of manhood.

Step ten: When he starts doing annoying things, like being reasonable and telling you to be careful, start swearing and calling him names until he storms out and says “I’m going to the gym”. Continue drilling and muttering under your breath.

Step eleven: When it becomes clear this really is a two person job, use your cutesy puppy voice to ask him to stay and help, promising you’ll never call him a “pain in the arse” or a “little poo” again. He’ll obey because he knows what’s good for him.

Step twelve: Admire your finished product! You have worked so, so hard to make this perfect. To celebrate, go and sink one of your husband’s expensive beers. You know the ones – the precious American ales he saves up for and stores away for special occasions. He’ll be totally cool with it, I promise!

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but J-man is kind of a big deal. In colder weather and in the ocean he is just a medium deal.

On an unrelated note J-man works in the music industry, meaning he sometimes gets tickets to gigs and takes me as his guest. And ladies, if you’re not going to marry for love you should definitely marry for clean toilets at music festivals. I will leave the guessing about why I married J-man up to you.

Recently we went to Splendour in the Grass together, like a BOSS(es).

On the night before we left for Splendour, J-man wasn’t giving too much away about the Wicked camper van we hired. I understood why when I – with what I believe is a fairly justified and reasonable stance against rape – saw this pretty rapeish slogan on the back of the vehicle we would be spending the next five days of our lives in:

It was an uneventful trip interstate and, surprisingly, it didn’t involve getting pulled over and cavity searched to within an inch of our lives.

When we arrived at Splendour, we chose a terrible camping spot we had to stick with because Ted Bundy the Wicked van couldn’t get up a slope with its three horse power engine. Obviously one of those horses was busy eating, the other was really a donkey and the last one was already dog food.

So we dealt with it, set up camp and did a lot of this:

That night we went side of stage. Did you hear that? Side of stage. I don’t know if you know, but that means the side of the stage. The actual stage. You know the stage where only famous people and their concubines are allowed? Yeah, we were there. On the side, that is. The side of the stage:

That there is the back of Kanye West. It turns out that while the side of stage (repeat side of stage) gives you a great behind-the-scenes view, including his poor dancers doing costume changes in front of leering roadies, you do spend a lot of time looking at people’s butts. But still! Famous butts! I felt pretty smug being allowed side of stage and signed a bunch of babes’ boobs without them even asking. Hey, just living the motto of the Wicked van, man.

And then J-man went and stole my thunder:

Yeah, so where were we? Oh, yeah. That’s right – me being all lame in Las Vegas.

I can assure you, that lameness continued during our second day in Vegas. Unlike everyone else in that crazy city with their fake boosies, Flinstone houses and sparkly fanny packs, I hate spending money. I’m a cautious person. Just now I scolded J-man for washing the hand-held blender while it was still plugged in and told him to cook the chicken through. You have to be so careful when it comes to electricity and chicken.

So J-man had to convince me to re-marry him before Elvis Christ. Over lunch that day he talked me into a $200 wedding package at Graceland Wedding Chapel, the very same place Jon Bon Jovi Christ married his wife in 1989.

On my real wedding day, I spent the morning painting my nails, doing my hair and sweating. On the morning of my second wedding day, I walked with my love through Red Rock Canyon. It was truly one of the most beautiful national parks we visited. It’s just like the America I imagined – magnificent and slightly eery, with plenty of places to hastily bury bodies to the sound of duelling banjos in the background.

Later that night, we went back to our seedy motel room and got gussied up. Just after night fell, a stretch limo picked us up and drove us up the strip to the chapel. J-man had never been in a limo before and was pressing all the buttons and marvelling at the television screens tuned to AV and the (empty) in-car bar. Oh J-man, what a novice. I, on the other hand, was once taken to a Justin Timberlake concert in a stretch hummer with a bunch of strangers who plied me with alcohol in the name of building professional relationships (I never heard from them again, like most people who have a) talked to me and b) seen me dance while mouthing the words to Sexy Back).

When we went inside the chapel, Elvis was not in the building. The two blonde receptionists, complete with teased hair, entertained us by showing us photos of Hamish and Andy’s wedding at the very same chapel. We all agreed it was strange that Andy would marry Hamish, when he had steak at home.

They pinned a rose on J-man’s shirt and handed me a bouquet and then a very sweaty Elvis appeared. It was a Tuesday night and it was clear Elvis would have preferred to be at home gently stroking his shag pile carpet. He quickly ushered us into the chapel, gave us a little run down, before walking me down the aisle; something I didn’t let my own dad do in the name of being an Independent Woman (the rock I’m rockin’, I bought it).

I walked down the aisle to Only Fools Rush In, exchanged Elvis-themed vows with J-man (“I promise never to step on your blue suede shoes”) and hammed it up for the cameras:

Photies by Graceland Wedding Chapel.

When I look back at the photos, it’s clear I’m kind of getting over it towards the end and probably, judging from my bloated face, jonesing for some curly fries. But I remember leaving the chapel feeling absolutely euphoric. I was happy that we capped off our American adventure with something completely frivolous and crazy. And dudes, I may make fun of J-man all the time, but I would totally marry him a third time.

I’ve been without internet, so please forgive the huge gap between nail-biting life updates. You see, I’m only just now transcribing these words from stone tablets. And this loin cloth is kind of chafing. And I’ve only just figured out how to make fire by scratching stone with the bones of a dragon. J-man is away for the night clubbing baby bears to death to provide us with meat and fur coats for the winter. So I’m doing what any other prehistoric babe would do, I’m hanging out in our new cave tonight and I’ll probably watch a movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Oh boy, that’s bam bam right there.

Allow me to update you on our evolution:

- We moved into a new place and it is more amazing than I could have imagined. Our old place was a one bedder, but was kind of like a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and laundry all in the one room, which made toilet breaks really quite awkward. Now I can close the door on J-man while he plays Call of Duty 2 or Sparkly Unicorn Smack Down, or whatever it is he does, and pretend that we never really got married.

- That reminds me. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago. J-man was in America for work and, as a little man treat, took himself on a road trip to his favourite brewery, leaving me at home. How quaint! The night before we turned one, I had a dream that I was having Shaq’s baby. It was one of those completely convincing dreams that I could not shake when I woke up. Every so often I would figure out the time difference to see whether it was an appropriate hour to ring Joel and tell him I’d gotten busy with an NBA great and I was leaving him and taking the Dick Smith peanut butter with me.

- J-man is now the proud owner of a really manly red scooter. When he perched on the seat for the first time, I told him he looked exactly like Audrey Hepburn. It was a really great buy on his part. Does he have a licence? No. Do we have somewhere to store it? No.  Did he run the major purchase by me, the treasurer of this exclusive club? No. I guess that’s what you have to love about him. He’s spontaneous, good looking and probably the most annoying person I know. To get him back, I set up a reading nook in the corner that he previously vetoed.  What’s that old saying? Oh yeah, revenge tastes like a big ol’ plate of cold barf.

Sometimes people ask me why did you marry J-man? Sure, he lets me eat food off his plate, buys me flowers twice in one week and strokes my head while telling baby animal stories when I can’t sleep. But just now? He made me soak his white t-shirt after he’d spilt homemade pizza sauce on it while making my dinner. It’s a lot for me to deal with when I’m trying to watch TV.

So it’s just as well he has the world’s stupidest sense of humour:

The reason this makes me laugh is not so much the fact that I can imagine J-man, who insists he’s some kind of professional, will leave it somewhere after a really important meeting. It’s mostly because it reminds me a lot of what I was like as an eight-year-old neighbourhood roughian. This is the kind of stuff I used to write on my wooden ruler. Once I sent an invitation to a picnic to a boy in the street with instructions to: “eat my shorts”. This is the same boy to whom I sent an anonymous Valentine’s Day card bearing the greeting “You Tickle My Fancy and I Fancy Your Tickle”, not fully understanding the glaringly creepy sexual overtones. I hate myself, I really do. It’s lucky I even found someone to marry.

PS. Just FYI, I’ve been meaning to BRB lately, but I’ve been trying to sort out the backend of my life. You may think I finally booked that appointment with the backend doctor, but I really mean “backend” as in, “offline”, life. We need to find a house! LOL.

We’ve been home now for 11 days. I have spent the last few of those 11 days unexpectedly trying to get me a job. So, understandably, I have not been in the most romantic of moods. After you spend all day trying to sell yourself to strangers (on paper, that is), the last thing you feel like doing is getting weird and lovey dovey with your husband. Unless, of course, he pulls an excellent job opportunity out of his pocket and later reveals his generous super package.

So, all poor old J-man can do at the moment is read this here blog and remember the days when we were flushed with cash and in love.  From the bottom of my now cold, dead heart I bring you my five most romantic moments overseas:

This is a neat tradition you see all over Europe. People put their initials on padlocks, lock ‘em to bridges or railings and throw the key in the water. How cheesy and disgusting. I would never do that.

Taking in the view of Florence from Piazza Michelangelo. To get to the top of this hill in Florence, you’re forced to walk past tiny shops with strings of fresh vegetables hanging on the door frames, buzzing wine bars and lovely Italian villas. As I trudged up the hill, I wasn’t expecting that much. It’s a view of a city, I thought, I could care less. Give me Real Housewives of Beverly Hills over this crapola any day. But, as it turned out, it’s not just any view. It’s a beautiful view on top of a lovely hill, where there are stalls to buy wine and warm chestnuts, people having their wedding photos taken and young couples huddling together on the steps. An autumn breeze blew lots of lovely aromas around and I just felt so content, happy and lucky to have such a wonderful J-man to share all of this with. A wonderful J-man who didn’t mind when I forgot that most Italians can speak English and blurted out: “Look! That boy matched his socks and undies! What colour are your undies today?!”

Taking the ferry in Venice. J-man, the vulgar romantic that he is, was planning to surprise me with a gondola ride. I pried his secret plans out of him with meticulous skill and then firmly told him no, I wasn’t interested. See, the thing is, gondola rides can cost more than 100 euro. Plus, if you want your rowing man to sing, you gotta pay even bigger bucks. At the time I felt like the grinch who stole my own marriage, but I’m glad we didn’t fork out a kidney and a half for foul touristy dross. Instead, we hopped on a public ferry that took us from our place, near the train station, around to San Marco in about 20 minutes. A lot of tourists had done the same thing, but there were also some genuine Venitian businessmen and families just going about their business and taking the ferry around the city. Plus, Venice is just beautiful and it’s hard not to get all wussy about it. When we got to San Marco, we walked around the square together and happily talked about our future. Gag, I know.

Going to Disneyland.  Throughout our trip, I was hoping that we would have enough money to visit Disneyland when we finally ended up in LA. I went to Tokyo Disneyland on a school trip, but J-man has never been and, you guys, he is the cutest when he’s excited. I would pay $80 just to see THAT. We went in mid-December and it was the perfect time of year to go, with every ride somehow Christmasafied. We started the day slowly, with the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and the Storybook Land Canal Boats. I could see J-man was kind of bummed. This stuff’s for lame, idiot kids, I could hear him thinking. That was until I took him on the kablamo awesome that is Space Mountain. It blew his mind. Of course, we did the Mad Tea Party, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and even It’s A Small World (CHRISTMAS!) My favourite was the Haunted Mansion, which was revamped in the style of Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas (CHRISTMAS!) for Christmas. But, the best part of the day was when the sun went down and we sipped the famous Disneyland hot chocolate and watched the Christmas parade. It was nice to feel carefree and be swept up in the magic. Barf.

Hanging out in the Malasaña district, Madrid. Spain’s capital was the last stop on our four month trip around Europe and we were exhausted, dirty, a little bit sick and really over each other. Instead of visiting churches, museums and taking walking tours, we decided to take a little break. A little Spanish break, how quaint! So we saw lots of movies, including The Town (hello, Ben Affleck, touch me?), ate until our bellies hurt, drank Sangria, went to crazy food markets and slept in a lot. We spent a lot of time in Malasaña, just wandering around, checking out shops and cafes. One of my favourite moments was devouring an incredible red velvet cupcake in a deserted playground while it drizzled. Life is good, dudes. Vom.

Locking the shit out of our love on the Pont des Arts in Paris. OK, so we carved our initials into a padlock, attached it to the bridge and threw the keys into the water. Gross, right? Our last night in Paris was the only romantic night we actually planned, but it was so much more amazing than I could have hoped. We had dinner at the McDonald’s near the Louvre, in the hopes of having a Royal with Cheese (no such thing, apparently). I remember I was worried about something and J-man worked his usual magic and talked me down from the top of the (figurative) Eiffel Tower over a serve of cold fries. When we left the Louvre to head to the bridge, it was drizzling and, huddling under umbrellas, we happened to catch the sparkling light show on the tower. Then we did the deed on the bridge (edit: some readers have mistaken this for actually doing the actual deed on the bridge. I actually mean this is the point at which we attached the love lock to the bridge). Afterwards we went to a little, empty bar and sipped on mulled wine, sitting on purple velvet chairs. A little part of me will always be in that bar in Paris (lame).

Last night J-man and I were doing the typical Romanian thing and having a drink in an Irish pub in downtown Brasov, Transylvania.

“Happy three month anniversary,” I said, raising my glass.

“Happy anniversary – we’ve been married for three months!” he replied, then quizically looked at the date on his watch.

Yup, it’s been three months since we got on a jetplane to Thailand.  Here in freezing, beautiful, slightly scary Romania, it seems a century ago since we were sitting poolside,  sipping cocktails and gorging on seafood banquets. With countless sleeper trains, overnight buses and bouts of explosive weebum now firmly under my (tightening) belt, I would like to share with you a list of things travel has taught me about myself.

A list of things travel has taught me about myself:

- I am not normal.

Most people do the thing where they check for their passport and tickets a couple of times and arrive at the airport/train station with a little time to spare. I feel like I have cooled out a lot since J-man scolded me for dragging him to the bus stop in Amsterdam about four hours before our overnight bus to Berlin was due to leave, but I am still a total freak when it comes to pre-travel preparation. Here’s a little checklist I go through the night before moving onto a new city:

• Check for tickets
• Check time on tickets
• Ask J-man to set alarm
• Pack bag
• Check tickets are still in bag
• Make sure J-man has set the alarm
• Have clothes, shoes and handbag ready next to bed
• Make sure J-man is asleep before I check the tickets again
• Tiptoe over to J-man’s bed to check he has set the alarm
• Lie awake wondering what it will be like if we miss the train and have to spend the rest of our lives in a place called Cluj
• Freak out about whereabouts of passport and rustle around trying to find passport
• Locate passport in the place I always keep it
• Dream about missing train/bus
• Wake up 15 minutes before alarm goes off in order to “clear the decks”, even if not necessasry, to avoid using train/bus toilets
• Wake up long-suffering, easy-going husband and force feed him breakfast at dawn so we can make our 1pm train/bus.

- I can read maps.

I first realised this when J-man and I were in Amsterdam trying to hunt down the Red Light District. J-man, who at this point had christened himself “Papa Compass” thanks in part to the compass on his Jason Bourne-style watch, snatched the map from me and led the way. Into surburbia we went and, upon passing several families with small children, I told him I suspected we were going in the opposite direction. “Trust Papa Compass,” he said. So I let him go, until finally he relented and I – the ever faithful wife – took us directly to where the girls in red boxes were trying to sell sex to drunk Poms.

- I DO have a bladder of steel.

There was a time in my life where I would have to stop to wizz at least twice between Lucknow and Orange. I remember once being so scared to tell my parents I needed to wee during a trip to Tuckerbag, that I snuck off to a neighbouring vacant building, thinking its “To Let” sign said “toilet”. Things have since improved, but suddenly I am the girl who can wait until I GET TO A WHOLE NEW COUNTRY before I wee.

- I am not afraid of germs aka my immune system is awesome!

Sometimes you have to do gross stuff overseas. Sometimes there’re no soap, old-looking sheets, three days of the same socks, two days of the same underpants, sharing train compartments with sickly old people, trusting fellow-hostelers to wash their dishes properly, buying food from dirty-looking bakeries and touching money so brown cavemen probably used it to buy their fur loin cloths. All of this and I haven’t even had so much as caught a sniffle (knocking on closest wood).  I rule!

Other things:

• I am a massive baby and miss my family
• I am a total cheapskate and will not hand over money for anything I do not have to (case in point, both the bras I packed have lost their underwire and my jeans shrunk to kid size in the wash. I scoff at suggestions of replacements)
• I am not yet done with Sydney
• I have the world’s biggest appetite
• I am brave. Sort of.

One of the most exciting nights  of our trip so far was catching an overnight ferry from Harwich in the UK to the Hook of Holland. When I say “ferry” I actually mean liner, complete with restaurants, a casino and an elderly Dutch bartender who cheerfully congratulated me on my pregnancy (gas).  J-man and I got all squeal-y when we went into our little cabin with its bunk bed and faux port window. It was a first-time experience and the beginning of a new adventure, so we celebrated on deck – in true Dutch style – with a Heineken. Before our ship even set sail on the mighty seas J-man decided he wanted to do something drastic – shave his head. It was something he’d been considering for a while. So while on international waters, the J-man became a cueball.

Yesterday, J-man and I casually closed the door on the little yellow apartment that has been our home for the last three years. We talked about how strangely OK we felt about it. Maybe it was because we’d spent the last couple of weeks packing our things, double-checking we hadn’t kindly left behind any pubes for the new tenants and scrubbed melted cheese off unexpected surfaces. Maybe we were just ready to be done with the damn thing. Really, we’d been thinking about leaving for over a year and we knew the break-up was coming. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t love you sunny, little number eight.

Here are some things I will always remember about our first apartment together:

- On one of our first nights, I was still shell-shocked about living in the city and having a job and having a serious relationship. J-man, in his eternally positive and hopeful way, tried to cheer me up by cooking dinner. I can’t remember what the whole meal was, but it included hash browns. As J-man proudly served it up, I took one bite and declared “This tastes like oven cleaner” and burst into tears. Why he ended up proposing, I’ll never understand.

- Our unfriendly neighbours. I have a bit of a penchant for dresses about four sizes too big, which I wear with a belt around my waist. One day soon after we’d moved in, I walked up the stairs as a neighbour and his girlfriend walked down. The boyfriend and I exchanged cheery ’hellos’ while the girlfriend ignored me. As I unlocked my door, she said loudly: “She looks pregnant in that dress”.

-  Our yellow couch. It was in a perfect, sunny position next to glass doors and was the perfect spot for reading, watching telly and making whoo- nevermind. Unfortunately we didn’t really have room for a dining table so it was also where we ate our dinner. It ended up more of a beige colour with tomato sauce and chocolate splatters as well as mysterious head patches. Gross.

- Crows Nest, Neutral Bay and Cremorne really became our stomping grounds. We’ll never have enough money to live there properly again but it really is a nice part of Sydney. Water views, awesome pubs, a historic cinema, green parks, good bookshops, cafes and heaps of purebred dog owners. Plus the weird Hare Krishna place that smelt alternately of spicy vegetarian cooking and wizz.

- Stir Crazy. My favourite place to eat in the whole world. For a little while it was our Friday hangout, until we started saving hardcore for our trip. The curry puffs are to die for and don’t even get me started on the fish cakes, baby.

- Cruddy appliances. Our first washing machine didn’t take in water, so we had to fill it with buckets and constantly re-start the bastard. One load of washing would take three hours. Our oven wasn’t fanforced so everything, no matter what, would end up slightly burnt on the bottom. I’m a good cook, I sweeeear!

- Beers in the park. Quite a few times, J-man and I would lie in a particular part of the park that’s really close to the freeway but has a view of Sydney Harbour. You could close your eyes pretend the woosh of the cars was actually the ocean. I always felt content lying there, half-tipsy, looking at all the other people in the world.

- The 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208 buses. One stand out memory is catching a bus into the city one weekend morning with J-man. As we got on, a younger looking guy asked me where Wynyard was. As I tried to explain, he asked me to sit down across from him and talk. I could immediately tell he was a Christian - something about the glint in his eyes. At first I thought he was trying to spread the good word, but it soon became obvious he was trying to hit on me, in that awkward way Christian boys have, as J-man looked on in bemusement. Conclusion? Christians are weird homewreckers.

- The time(s) J-man defrosted chicken breasts on top of the water heater. I have a life-long fear of getting Salmonella poisoning. I don’t know why really, it just sounds awful so I’m always cautious about chicken. In my opinion, J-man has always had some pretty suspect ways of cooking with chicken, but he used to work at KFC and declares himself an expert. One night, mum came to stay and my sisters came over for dinner. When I arrived home, there was a terrible smell wafting around the whole flat. I thought maybe someone farted or had just used the bathroom and, being senstive about that issue myself, decided just to ignore it and subtley open a window. As the night progressed, the smell turned from bad fart to bad poo to bad corpse-decomposing-after-violent-death-at-the-hands-of-a-deranged-serial-killer. When mum went to use the shower, I suggested she give it a few moments because obviously J-man was having some pretty serious butt issues. I don’t know what made me think of it but I looked towards the water heater and noticed a package of chicken sitting on top. We had planned to have a chicken dish the night before but had decided to go out instead. And, even though I constantly pester him to be careful with chicken, J-man obviously didn’t think that ruled out defrosting it on the heater. By the way mum looked at both of us that night, I knew we lost a couple of points. It was shameful, embarrassing and foul. And a couple of months later, J-man did it again.

- Other random flashbacks: dust bunnies, carpet stains, brown hot water, succulent pot plants, uncomfortable bed, dead other plants, our cactus Admiral Fitzwallace, bad internet, Doritos, Crust pizza, spooning, weevil disaster, love.