Theo: Mama, here’s a ring. We’re married now.
Alice: Oh, thank you darling. We’re married? What does ‘married’ mean? Do you know?
Theo: It’s when you show someone a dance forever.
‘When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem’. – Edward Abbey
Why is…Otto glittery? You couldn’t find any paper? So you drew on him? With glitter…glue?
Let’s clean that off.
Oh…you say it doesn’t matter?
Because he can’t see it.
Three Hundred & Sixty Five – Days at Home: Week 33
Baking day 1 + 2 + 3 / Afternoon walks in her favourite shoes; always on the wrong feet. / Oh, hello to you! The bulbs I planted in April, arriving just before Spring. So cheerful. / Quilts, embroidery, and a well stickered sewing box. / My stylist making some last-minute adjustments to my outfit. Or trying to get at all the Lego that he keeps in my handbag. / Sitting on the back deck, waiting for Summer. / Knitting, knitting, knitting.
Questions you have asked me to which I do not know the answer #2
Theo: Whose idea was it to put corn in a can?
…is that really what you’re wearing? Wednesday.
Alice wears: Gingham dress. It makes me feel like a picnic – Thrifted in Dunedin. Cardigan – stolen from my Mumma. She made it.
Shoes – Thrifted. They’re secretly slippers. A very foxy handbag.
And the face of someone who just wants the photo to be taken already.
Talking to Mabel on the Telephone #2
Mabel: Hello? Hello, Mama?
I answer on my shoe phone.
Alice: Hello, Mama speaking?
Mabel: WHERE’S MY WINE? I NEED $20! LOVE YOU! BYE! Beep, beep, beep.
I feel like I just caught a glimpse of the future.
‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’ – Albert Einstein.
Mabel: Use your assassination!
Alice: …excuse me?
Mabel: Use your assassination!
Alice: …do you mean imagination?
Mabel: Yes! Your assignation!
Alice: I…okay.
Love is a reciprocal torture. – Marcel Proust.
There’s a lot of whispering happening over there. I’m only as suspicious as I ever am. Four years of low-level torture has built up a surprising tolerance for these things.
Slowly, Mabel emerges from behind the couch and crawls on her little pink belly across the floor in front of me, to where the dog is lying in a small patch of sun.
‘You got any stored, Mae?’, Theo hisses at her, peeking out from around the armchair.
She reaches into her leggings and pulls out a small Phillips head screwdriver.
‘OPERATION TIME!’, she yells.
The dog lifts his head slightly. He looks at me with brief resignation, and goes back to sleep.
I almost join him.
Three Hundred & Sixty Five – A Weekend in Dunedin.
At your convenience.
I am standing at the kitchen bench barefoot, making the children something to eat.
As I cut the crusts off a piece of toast, to Theo’s prescription, I drop them on the floor for the dog.
‘That was surprising!’ Theo notes of the commotion that ensures; flat-faced-cat trying to lick buttered edges before they are inhaled by an ever available Dachshund shaped garbage disposal.
I hand Theo a piece of toast. Buttered with hummus. Crusts, as mentioned, removed.
‘And a top piece?’ he asks of me. ‘It’s convenient that way’.
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