Mathematical aptitude is not one of my widely acclaimed talents, however, this algorithm I do get: meeting a guy or a girl you like and want to hang out with for most or all of your life is a statistical process that can calculated on the basis of numbers and time. Theoretically, the higher frequency at which you meet new people, the lesser the time it is likely to take to arrive at meeting a person you really like. Other relevant variables can also be considered within the wider equation, like geography and social demographics.

A while ago, I was having a conversation with my mother, dramatically relaying my account of disbelief that I still had not met someone since arriving back home from overseas months earlier.

‘Why don’t you move to Moura?’, she said.  ‘Umm, okay…’

Apparently, this small Australian town in the centre of Queensland has a significantly high rate of single men versus women.

‘What would I do there Mum?’ ‘Oh, you can work in the mines darl.’  ‘Okay…….’

Then, on to what I had surmised to be the greatest flaw in this plan: succeeding at it would likely mean an extended, unknown length of time living in Moura. Plus, I had only recently unhinged my life of six years living on the opposite side of the world, bought an apartment full of furniture and started a new job. Even for my family, who for a while moved to a new place every two years without batting an eyelid, this seemed a little excessive.

I must clarify here, my Mum is a consistent and excellent provider of valued advice and it’s these types of bold recommendations that I enjoy receiving the most. And while the statistical merits of this proposal were robust (and I liked the undercurrent that when it comes to matters of love anything is reasonable), on this occasion, I decided to stay put and try my luck in the city.

A more obvious place to play the Numbers Game is at work: a collective pool of people you are mandated to associate with week in and week out. Perfect. It should stand to reason also, that the more people at work, the better the odds. However, it is here, depending on career choices made, that the demographics variable can skew the equation both ways.

At my previous workplace, for example, there were thousands of people based at the office. My girlfriends would say to me: Surely there is someone good at work! Well, if by good, they meant males in their late forties married with 2.5 children, then yes, the line-up was extensive. I suspect my counterparts at Google may have been dealing with more suitable candidates. There is of course, gold to be found in even the most challenging of places, it simply requires a more attentive focus: I have a colleague who does an industrious job of weekly floor walking to scout for new talent. And I did end up spotting a few good ones at my old work, but at the time I was hovering somewhere around a no-dating-colleagues policy. This policy has since been discarded as counterproductive and entirely unnecessary.

A friend was telling me the other day about a friend of hers who had played a great Numbers Game. She made an online dating deal with herself to go out with twenty guys and stop under no circumstances until the target had been achieved. It was, as you’d expect, a mixed bag, but she persevered and completed the twenty dates. She’s engaged to Number Seventeen.

Like most of us now, I know a lot of people who’ve met their partners online. Whichever method you prefer, the base principle of finding somebody is one we’re all aware of: one will not meet Boy or Girl while sitting at home on the couch watching TV. One will meet Boy or Girl while out doing things: at a friend’s wedding; at a work event; at a gig; on a Friday night in a bar; on Tinder; at a boxing class; where you buy your coffee; helping a friend move house; on a blind date; when the fire alarm goes off in your apartment block and never-before-seen neighbours emerge via emergency on the footpath.

There will be a multitude of time for television-watching once Boy or Girl has been located.

Being out a lot does of course come with its taxes (I personally think staying in wearing a high pony, tracksuit pants and my blue t-shirt with the panda on it from the Asian pop-up shop is a wonderful way to spend a few hours after a long day). However, I do imagine some of the most successful of women have put as much strategy into finding someone they like as they have into finding their killer jobs. I don’t think I’ll start creating mind maps on interactive digital white boards, but I do try to loosely run by three rules.

One: Go to everything.

Two: Alternate between a no-drink/minimum-drink maximum across nights to ensure event-going is sustainable throughout the week.

Three: Go on at least two dates with a guy unless on the first date there is a clear and present reason why a second date should not occur.

A few weeks back, we booked a woman called Sally the Psychic to come into work. She was a surprise special guest at our colleague’s farewell, enlisted to provide some hot tips on what the future might hold as our friend embarked on her journey home to New York City. I picked Sally up from reception, briefed her, then took her on a quick detour to a near-by office so we could have a chat about a few things. Now I have a fourth rule: as long as you agree with it, believe everything fortune tellers say.

—–

I am Khloe Kardashian. Not in the big lips tight dress unapologetically glam-tacky social media worshipping money obsessed reality TV show way. I’m Khloe Kardashian when she broke up with Lamar and started hanging out on vacation with Kim and Kanye.

My sister and I always, wherever humanly possible, whether living in the same country or on opposite sides of the world, spend our Christmas holidays together. For this year’s spectacular we delighted ourselves by settling on a no-present, cocktail fringed Asian beach paradise theme. Visions of our non-working, rampant wares buying tropical selves were cemented. Then, somewhere between nailing our destination and booking our flights, a surprise loved and welcomed new player going by the name of Serious Boyfriend washed up with a new tide and Bali became three. For us, an unbalanced human holiday count of this nature was not in question. For some people though, uneven numbers can seem odd.

On Tuesday night I went out for dinner with a female relative; we live in the same neighbourhood now.  There is a significant age gap between us and, irrespective of the amount of time I’ve spent with her during my adult years, she has always been an important and present figure in my family and life.

She’s fun, intelligent, sophisticated and painfully stylish. She orchestrated a long and accomplished career in the corporate arm of the creative arts industry among others and successfully managed to find and fall madly in love with the man she went on to marry. Generally speaking, one of those women you want to be when you grow up.

While we were lounging in her apartment having a few glasses of pre-restaurant wine with smoked salmon canapés, I commented on her black flats: Fendi she said. Of course they were.

Shoe compliments aside, our conversation soon turned to the current state of play that was our mutual Single Lives. We took turns plucking out idiosyncrasies associated with everyday life without a significant other: we can’t be bothered cooking anymore because you have to buy too many ingredients and then eat the same thing for too many days in a row; spontaneous lunches that morph into all night escapades are long gone as fellow-lunchees have to get home to husband and kids; the annoyance of missing a good bar opening you hear of that morning because wing-women these days are generally not readily available impromptu on a Wednesday night.

We came up with our fair share of similarities, but there is one big difference in our single lives: I’m on the way to meet my other and she’s already said goodbye to hers. In her own words, she knew one day she’d pay the price for falling in love with a man who was sixteen years her senior (after a battle with cancer several years ago, her life as a widow goes on today). I wasn’t, however, expecting to hear what she told me next, and when the case in point happened to her at the time, neither had she.

When her husband died, lots of her friends stopped inviting her places. The regular dinner parties and social gatherings that she and her husband had spent with their network of coupled friends over many many years were, apparently, no longer open for her to join. Why do you think that is I asked her? In short summary, it seemed her female friends didn’t want an available woman hanging around at that point in their lives. The fact that this particular available woman was a package of interesting, cool and attractive clearly didn’t help matters.

A single woman in a couples’ world: threatening, uncomfortable, or maybe just the displeasure for setting an uneven number of settings at a table, whatever it is, on a human level it seems a pretty poor state of affairs.

A little while back I started to think about a phase in life where I could have been better to a particular friend in this respect. At the time, I was in a whirlwind relationship while she was experiencing the good, along with the not so good aspects of being single. I remember other friends sharing their man torment and how badly they wished they would meet someone. I listened to what they were saying and talked and sympathised with them but the fact was, I really had no concept of how they felt. I’d met my boyfriend at nineteen and the relationship stretched on for a lot of years. Up until the point we broke up, I hadn’t experienced adult life without a boyfriend or what it meant to feel alone without one.

This is one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt from Single Life. When things become difficult, it is a lot more difficult dealing with it on your own, without a partner to back you up, help you solve the problem, even just momentarily distract you. Life is easier with someone by your side. This isn’t about being an independent or dependent person, its basic human nature.

Going through a period of being by yourself, whether short or long lived, makes you understand and appreciate what it means and all it encompasses. It’s something I am conscious of and will continue to be conscious of through my next relationship and any others that might follow.

The dinner parties Ms Khloe and I throw will always be open to odd numbers.

—–

Nice dress, high heels, straight hair, bare nails, red lips. Lashes of waterproof mascara. You could swim 10Ks through a storm in this stuff and it still wouldn’t come off. This week a calm sea of Young and Old came together to say Goodbye.

For the last good number of visits, we’d be chatting about events and travel and anything we could possibly think of when she’d interrupt us: I want to die she’d say. We’d kick-up, straight back: You cannot say that to us! Don’t say that to us! But it was important she let us know and so we let her go. We’d pause for a while after that. Then she’d pipe up with something, tell me she really liked my green top, or, hands moving up and down, smile while she reminded us how we used to be this high and now we’re this high. And we’d grab her an Up&Go and conversation would roll on with wet faces and acid in the back of our throats.

She was surrounded by the constant love and care of a family of Sons, Wives, Grandchildren and Friends, but she was without her own Man by her side for too many years. So against a backdrop of stained glass, wood and stone, a man speaking on behalf of his band of brothers made us reflect on a good and eventful life – the best bits, the toughest bits and the funniest bits.

I’d written some of this post before the service. I didn’t want to finish it, I wanted to go through the experience and see what happened, what inspired the rest. Maybe a profound moment of emotion that moved… But no, it turns out my material was me being a little weirdo instead.

I stood up in front of the microphone and introduced myself before I began saying my farewell. I’d put so much focus on keeping my head on straight, voice steady and eyes dry that my body took the full weight of the force: it started shaking, like really shaking. My voice stood solid and words came out as they should, but the rest of me was literally out of my control. I was like one of those little wooden artists’ mannequins that someone had taken a hammer to hard at every limb. I thought I was going to have to stop and take my shoes off. I’ve never experienced a sensation like it before and it was difficult and intense but I had to get through it. We all laughed about it after, but with certainty I didn’t imagine I’d do something at my Nan’s funeral that we could later reflect on as being hilarious. I’ll speak at funerals again, that’s almost inevitable, and I rattled enough at this one to cover any more to come.

So there was that, then there was the encounter with a distant relative I’d never met who approached me at the wake to first discuss in detail the state of public transport in the city before going on to ask me if there was anyone special in my life. When I answered no, he stared me down with laser eyes and rephrased and repeated the question, this time putting great emphasis on the no one part. By this stage, with the grief, the shaking extravaganza and the general emotional exhaustion, I felt like I might transcend into a state of high trauma. I said I needed to eat some tiny sandwiches and politely removed myself from the conversation.

I didn’t cry there. I cried hard before and after.

A death is for us all a finite mortal reminder. It shifts our perspective and at the same time that we mourn the loss of a loved one we also think about our own lives and how we are living them: what we’re doing well, what we could be doing better, what we want to do but aren’t. Sometimes it changes the lives of the ones who live forever and sometimes time passes and we settle back into routine and days roll on as they always did. Then comes the news of another one passed and again, our focus rocks back to the fragile fault line between life and death.

It’s hard to see your Dad down like that. But it’s good to see the relief felt for a woman who was ready to rest and to witness all that love pour out through sadness and thanks. We grieve the dead, and we grieve for those who live and have lost someone so close to their heart.

When I was in my early Twenties I assumed everyone else I was hanging out with was too. Same deal in my late Twenties. Then I hit my Thirties and just thought we all did it together. No surprises this wasn’t actually the case. I only recently discovered some people I’ve loved and known for a decade are more than half a decade older than me. In the Party Years age doesn’t exist. When life takes hold and people move in different directions, have new priorities and progress through new phases of life, the gap becomes evident. Not in a bad way, you just start to see it more clearly.

I was sitting on a bench outside my work the other day when a woman walked past and looked at me – she circled back and sat down beside me for a chat. She was all killer yoga body, skin-tight lime green singlet, purple trainers, black sunnies, perfect brown Filipino skin. Then my mouth dropped open: she told me she was seventy two years old. She didn’t like hanging out with people her own age because she found them really boring. We talked for a while longer and then she told me to stand up – she darted around me, poking here and there, doing a body inspection. She said there was nothing at all wrong at the moment but if she sees me in a couple of weeks and I’ve gotten any wider she’ll yell out Fatty from across the street. She was a crazy bitch but I liked her. A nice reminder that being old doesn’t change who you are.

When you’re dealing with new friends and acquaintances, it doesn’t matter so much if your Age Gauge is a bit off. In a Boy/Girl situation though, it can become more important.

I had a crush on a boy who worked in one of the bottle shops in my neighbourhood for months. Each time I’d go in he liked to give me updates on what was going on: he told me a lot more than he ever asked me and for someone I hadn’t even introduced myself to I knew a fair bit about his life. I also always just thought he was my age – I guess my mind defaulted to the most convenient outcome. Every time we’d chat he’d reveal another piece of his life puzzle. One Sunday afternoon I went in to grab a beer and he told me he was really struggling: on Saturday night his brother had a birthday party and it was large. After he talked me through some of the highlights of the night I asked him how old his brother had turned: twenty one. We wrapped up our chat and I left, thinking back over some of the other updates he’d given me over recent weeks: enthusing about an awesome CGI shark video he’d found on YouTube; his current college course wasn’t going so well because he was distracted by the internship he’d started; one day I ended up giving him career advice and tips on how to get over his nerves to nail a job interview. I don’t think this guy could have been more than twenty five years old. I got over the crush pretty quickly after that. I’m not saying relationships can’t work with an age gap – I know couples with years between them who are rock solid and totally in love. For me, it’s more about the different stages of life you’re in and the experiences you’ve had or are yet to have.

I was chatting to my sister about the decades of life over the weekend. Her breakdown on it was that your first few decades are about learning the ropes of the world, getting educated on the basics. Your Twenties are for experiencing as many different things as you possibly can; your Thirties are for interpreting the experiences of your Twenties and working out how you want to use them to help keep shaping who you are as a person and how you want to move through life. It’s a good way of looking at it.

Lots of people I know in my generation, bridging X and Y, have pushed out the life phase timeline a good amount further than our predecessors – largely in the name of independence, travel, fun and generally living life. I always knew I’d do it, but I didn’t seriously recognise marriage and family as something I wanted until later in the game. And as long as I eventually do find my man, I figure it just means we’ve got fewer years to get bored and grumpy together.

——

A few vivid memories of everyday life in the suburbs somewhere in New South Wales in 1986: Hanging out with my crew of hair-hacked Barbie dolls; Being petrified of burglars; Exercising my right to eat ice cream like it was a vital organ supplement; Idolising my fourteen year old neighbour who in my eyes was a fully-fledged woman who’d made it in life; Sitting as close as humanly possible to the TV every Saturday night from seven pm watching Dannii Minogue and the others sing the greatest songs ever on the greatest show on earth Young Talent Time.

It was also at this point, somewhere between the ages of four and five, that I can recall for the first time really thinking about Life in Fast Forward – what existence would be like in the future.

My flagship reoccurring vision wasn’t a pipe dream, I perceived it as inevitable: Future Me at sixteen driving a red convertible with my best friends, radio up, having fun all the time. I had a boyfriend too, but he was never in the car with us. He was very cool and very good looking though. That’s as elaborate as the visualisation ever got. But that was enough. I was loving the future.

I hit sixteen in Real Time in the late 1990’s and looking back, my projection wasn’t too far off – it was all just so incredibly less glossy than my wide-eyed Young Self had imagined.

I was definitely having a lot of fun with friends. My red convertible eventually emerged at seventeen, except it was my Mum’s Toyota Cressida when she would lend it to me and later, a Holden Astra called Madonna who I loved dearly even though she cost thousands of dollars in mechanics bills and had an interior that never stopped smelling like Plasticine. I also did alright in the hot boyfriend stakes, although some were undeniably cooler than others.

Great Expectations can take an unjust shine off things that materialise in reality to be pretty great in their own right. I still try so hard not to apply the future visionary gloss on life, but I always do it.

Like before I go on holidays. I envisage the villa or the apartment or whatever it is and picture different scenarios, like people hanging out in the living room on giant couches; sitting around a big wooden table drinking out the back by the pool; people dotted across the kitchen bench while others cook. When I actually get to the place though, the couch is L-shaped; the layout of the pad is all switched up; the deck faces east instead of west. It’s all still amazing, it’s just completely different to what I had imagined in my head.

If you give me a choice between high expectations or low though, I’m always going to push for up. Some people default to setting the bar a few rungs lower.

A bit like the bar someone set for me recently. I was visiting a friend at her place and her husband came over to join us for a chat. After a few customary How’s Life questions he asked me if I was seeing anyone at the moment. My answer was no. He then went on to provide me with an unsolicited evaluation of a very important part of my future life: in his view, considering I’m in my early thirties, there was really only two options in terms of the type of guys who were still out and about and available to marry.

Option One: the Divorcee.

Option Two: a loose guy who is lacking direction and doesn’t know what he wants in life. If he’s not married by his 30’s, that had to be the case.

I adore my friend’s husband, but this was a bit heavy going for a Saturday mid-morning. To say I was slightly underwhelmed by his forecast of my Man Future would be an understatement. Option One I am fine with. People make mistakes or get to a point where they decide they can’t resolve whatever issues it is that they are facing and need to move on. It was Option Two I didn’t particularly agree with. If he doesn’t happen to be a Divorcee, I’m pretty sure the guy I do end up marrying hasn’t been mulling around the house for years-on-end smoking bongs and watching infomercials waiting for me to call. He’s probably been out in the world doing stuff, like I have. I don’t think that’s me applying too much Future Gloss either.

There’s no doubt that there are some tough things about being Single. There’s also some great things. Like the fact that it’s actually really exciting knowing that the man you are going to tear up life with is still to come – a monumental new player to enter the people pool.

I know life doesn’t usually turn out the way you imagine it will, but it’s still fun thinking about the future. I’m sticking with Great Expectations too.

—–

I was in Byron Bay a few weekends ago for a friend’s wedding. And while I’m on the subject, another shout out to the beautiful Bride and Groom who not only did a stellar job of getting married in style but put on a fabulous mini fun fest for us guests.

The night before the nuptials extravaganza, my sister and I met some friends at a local pub. The group hang out kicked on for a few drinks before we said our goodbyes. Me and sis decided to stay on for a few more. We were deeply immersed in one of our signature talking vortexes when a guy approached us at our table: he asked us if we would mind looking after his stuff while he went to the bathroom. He was at the pub by himself, waiting for his brother who was driving up from down South. We took on our minder role and once he was out of earshot, did a quick situation assessment and agreed we’d ask him if he wanted to join us for a drink. He returned shortly after and asked us the same thing. Naturally, the answer was yes.

He was blonde, well dressed and hot.

What this guy revealed next, however, was bordering on unbelievable. A few minutes into our new friend hang there was a natural pause in the conversation – he took that opportunity to tell us that is was really nerve wracking approaching beautiful girls like us. He nailed the pick-up line. As our talk continued though, we realised he was being serious.

My immediate thought in response to the Boy Nerve Bombshell was ‘how the hell can it be difficult for you to approach girls?!’ But before I got to verbalise that one he answered it for me with his follow-up statement, which, loosely translated, was that girls can be really mean to boys sometimes. Our new friend had obviously been burnt once or twice approaching females, like, I’m almost certain, the vast majority of males have at one point or another in their lives at the heartless mercy of pretty girls.

Then the alarm bells started ringing. This guy was obviously a considered and well-thought-out product of the male species. How many other nice guys have been floating around not approaching us girls – I don’t mean me and my sister, I mean all of us girls – for fear of rejection when in reality we’d love it if they came up and introduced themselves.

This male minefield must be amended, one nice girl at a time.

It’s true though. Girls can be tough. I’ve had conversations with women who flat out say they won’t date Tradies. What’s that about? Firstly, you’re cutting yourself off from half the male population. That’s just bad math. Then, flip it and imagine this: you meet a guy you really like. You get to the career part of the People Reveal Process when he apologises and stops you – he just can’t be with a girl who works in an office job. It would be heartbreaking. But then again, you probably wouldn’t want to be with someone who judges the worth of a person based on how they earn their money, right?

On Friday night I was at a bar in the airport having a glass of wine while I waited for my flight that had been delayed. Once I’d sat down, I noticed the guy at the table in front of me. He looked interesting; nice looking; maybe a little bit rough. He had a tripod so I thought he might be a photographer.

Around thirty minutes later I was on the plane and settled into 24D when a guy leant down to get my attention: Bar Boy was sitting in 24E. We muddled through the initial standard Plane Stranger formalities then ended up talking for the length of the flight. He had a degree in Chemistry and the reason he looked a bit rough was because he was on the back end of a two week ski trip with eighty teenagers from the high school where he was a teacher. A year and a half ago he handed over the reigns of the graphic design business he was running with his brother and their ten staff to try something new. Before that he was living and working in South America and travelling the world. He’d escaped the fate of his fellow teachers who were currently on a twenty hour bus trip with the eighty teenagers because he had to make it back in time for a windsurfing competition the next morning.

My point is, when I first clocked this guy at the bar, I never would have guessed any of the things he went on to tell me about himself or his life. I wonder how people size me up before they know anything about who I actually am.

Maybe in your mind you see yourself ending up with a High Flyer or a Free Spirit. Whatever it may be, your Surfer might be in a suit the day you bump into him and your Banker might be in boardies because he loves the beach.

Girls, be nice to nice guys. You don’t know who somebody is until you give them a chance to tell you. Plus, nice guys make girls feel beautiful. And that always feels good.

—–

I recently discovered I am in the possession of rubbish bags that are scented with lavender aromas. This both surprised and annoyed me all in the one go. I understand and appreciate the innovators at GLAD who are putting lab time and man power into taking bin liners to the next level – it was the generally excessive lengths consumerism seems to be reaching that was actually bothering me.

This is one of my latest Single Life discoveries: my care and attention for materialism has sunk to an all new low. I can buy anything I want, except, yes, the one thing I really want. In response to this my brain seems to have launched a counterattack on the purchase of unnecessary items. This is not ideal. Number one: it means I can’t temporarily fill voids by acquiring expensive shoes. Number two: my brain is inadvertently robbing me of the result of materialistic void filling: a burgeoning killer wardrobe filled with hyper quality goods – and it would be getting a pretty healthy injection at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first person to drop a bomb on a man bag or a pram when I need to, I’m just currently sick of buying things for myself.

Over the years I have consistently sported a well-balanced talent for throwing money at a myriad of different items along the goods spectrum. I’m a woman: handbags and clothes have featured well. Then there’s home wares: cushions in three shades of beige and exorbitantly priced candles that I buy to burn. Checking prices has also never been a strong point: one morning I went in for milk and rolled out with a receipt for $40 and nine packets of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. This was a point-of-sale display accident but in my oblivious daze I happily handed over the cash. I have an aversion to using discount vouchers of any kind.

A few weeks ago in an attempt to rectify my surprise new war-on-goods persuasion I set myself a spend challenge. The aim of course, to see if I couldn’t get some materialism back on the games board. I settled on an upward limit somewhere between over-the-top and relatively reasonable and gave myself a pass to blow it on whatever I liked. The challenge didn’t go well. I got bored in less than twenty minutes and removed myself from goods world: all the beautiful shiny things just seemed a little pointless. Madonna would be appalled by my behaviour. Clearly I hope this phase passes. I have DJ’s vouchers to spend.

Me and my sister have a thing. It’s a shared sibling future vision that marks the utopia of ultimate happiness and trumps over all else: the barbeque. At the barbeque, we’re with our men who we are madly in love with. While they hang around doing man things we do things like lean back in our chairs with our feet up on the edge of the verandah and sip red wine watching kids go wild. If I happen to be minxing around the kitchen ripping up cos lettuce and washing dishes in Helmut Lang, that’s fine. I don’t care what I’m wearing, I’d just like to make it to the barbeque.

—–

This is what my Mum told me last time she was in my kitchen, shaking me back and forth in a lovingly exacerbated way after watching me do something that would normally be described as OCD.  We’d had a few wines though so she told me to stop being Australia’s Greatest Ever Rock Band instead.

For as long as I can remember I’ve dabbled in a bit of the AC/DC: a comfortable fringe dweller in the healthy garden variety camp of obsessive behaviour.

At different junctures of life, I’ve picked up and put down different AC/DC activities. As a 3 year old, for instance, I enforced strict guidelines around the process of sock putting-on.  Perfect toe corner placement was of the highest imperative and when someone else is in charge of putting your socks on (that was my Mum) achieving the strived for perfection could prove quite the gruelling task for both parties involved.  After sock obsession, it was even number light flicking, chased closely by the somewhat less jubilant need to follow every good night with see you in the morning in a telepathic effort to guard against the death of an irreplaceable loved one in the night.

Today, I’m valiantly committed to wasting precious seconds of my days turning things on so I can turn them off.  If I’ve got the people-free space at the station and can bothered to do it, I like to position myself directly in the centre of the facing billboard while I wait for my train. I could write a book about the adventures of furniture alignment.

Clearly, I’m dealing with AC/DC tendencies that lend themselves largely to the pursuit of balance and perfection.

A bit like my friend at the Neatest Ever Ezy Mart in the World. Me and one of my girls had the pleasure of stumbling upon this Scandinavian-stark-white-clinic-like establishment a few weeks ago in between drinks. We perused the store, marvelling at wares like we were on a tour of the Palace of Versailles – reaching out but knowing we shouldn’t touch. Standout features include a 12×8 Allen’s lolly wall that would rival Tetris in an alignment challenge and armies of obedient chocolate bars that could only get that plastic-sheen perfect through polish. We did discover a few cleaning products that were out of place in the back room, but we straightened them up for him. As we reluctantly made our way out of this wondrous suburban phenomena, Ezy Mart man assured us that it wasn’t just us – he gets many compliments from many patrons. A proud band member of the AC/DC elite.

I went to high school and later university with a clever, very funny girl who one day at lunch recounted to a group of us her routine of the moment: The Tea Challenge. I can’t recall all the exact details but it essentially involved a highly organised sequence of mandatory tea-making steps and a monumental race against time – the kettle boil was her deadline. I’ve never graduated to anything quite that elaborate, but I could certainly relate. I have another friend who cleans the soap with soap.

Recently as I was taking an excessive amount of care distributing knives and forks evenly across the different sized compartments of the plastic cutlery thing in my dishwasher, I had a thought: is Single Life aiding and abetting my AC/DC? A reflective years-gone-by Obsession Analysis revealed interesting results. The boyfriend and men decades of the Teens and 20’s dished up a distinct lack of attention or time for obsession-fest. Rewind to the 80’s though and there’s carefree single little me in my 3’s with all the time in the world to create and defeat The Sock Challenge Daily. Today, it’s carefree single me in my 30’s up against all-new and exciting challenges. The carefree part’s a little more debatable though and granted, my concerns have definitely shifted from socks.

Hmm. Of this one I was unsure. Could that really be the AC/DC elixir? A chaotic husband and unaware children who innocently rob me of my supreme genetic disposition to achieve a five star level living environment, all-encompassing attention to creating soul-calming symmetry and a general aesthetic beauty in as many relevant scenarios as possible?

I know spent Wives and worn out Mums like to escape to day spas and weekend retreats to eat raw food and do yoga. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be at the Ezy Mart.

—–