Decompression Time

Long week finally comes to an end

It’s 1pm here in Sydney as I write this.

I’m sitting in a deck chair beside my pool in the backyard, I’m wearing the skimpiest bikini that I own right now because I want as much skin as I can to get the Sun shining on it without giving my neighbour’s kid a total eyeful and ending up on some kind of sex offender registry.

Jamie took the girls to their swimming this morning and by the time they returned, my parents were waiting for them to take them on a Harbour Cruise for the afternoon. He’s now buggered off somewhere for the afternoon with his mates, which is perfect.

I made myself a massive pitcher of strawberry daiquiri in this industrial-sized blender that Jamie bought last year from somewhere. You could literally stick your head in this thing it is so huge… and right now, it is filled with daiquiri for mommy.

During the middle of the week, we got served a MASSIVE breach of contract lawsuit from one of our biggest clients. We’d not been told it was coming, the client never mentioned that they were having any disagreements with one of their customers, and then suddenly, this big gnarly ball of poo with extra peanuts landed on my desk on Tuesday afternoon.

I’ve spent the entire week trying to piece together what happened to cause this, is it legitimate, why didn’t our client “mention” the problem, and how were we going to defend it.

I don’t generally get stressed out about work, but this week was pretty stressful.

I learned a few things about myself and one of them I’m going to turn into a Medium story later on today or tomorrow, I think, but either way, the stress valve released yesterday when we figured out a way forward to resolution, so I’m feeling better today.

Actually, I’m feeling numb, and I hope the daiquiris make me even more numb.

My intention for today is to get blind drunk by dinner time and pass out in bed before 7pm - this will be the second weekend in a row for that, but getting white girl wasted isn’t something that I do very often, so the haters can take a hike.

I even warned Jamie and my parents, “Don’t expect me to be a functioning adult beyond about 4pm today.” Jamie just shrugged, my mother rolled her eyes, but my father said he’d make me my favourite hangover dish.

What’s the dish you ask? I’m not sure it has a name, he calls it “Lizbet’s Lifeline”… My dad calls me, “Lizbet”, “Lizzie”, or when he’s making a point, “Elizabeth”, in case you were curious.

It’s mashed potatoes, handfuls of grated cheddar cheese, lots of fried off bacon and mushrooms, mix the whole thing together, and then fry it off combined for a few minutes to crisp the whole thing up.

I’m salivating just thinking about it. When I was at university and would very occasionally go out and have too many wine coolers, he’d make me a batch of that to heat up in the morning to help make me feel human again.

But for now, it’s just me, the daiquiris, the Sun, and my neighbour’s pervy kid staring down at me and no doubt making a mess in a sock.

There’s a great Australian movie called, “The Castle.” In the movie, the family patriarch, Darryl Kerrigan, talks about going to his holiday home in Bonnie Doon, and he constantly says, “How’s the serenity?” or “Can you feel the serenity?”

Today, I’m Darryl Kerrigan. I’ve got my hand tucked into the waistband of my bikini bottoms, Al Bundy style, I’m smashing back daiquiris while laying out in the Sun, and I am loving the serenity.

And if you think I’m moving from this spot for the next three or four hours for anything other than to refill my drink or have a pee, well, to quote Darryl Kerrigan again, “You must be dreamin’”.