Wallet, where the bloody hell are you?

So I lost my wallet on the weekend which is really, really annoying.

Of all the shit in my bag, I would have preferred to have lost:

• any, or all, of my 16 million pens
• my high-tech, secret-squirrel work pass
• my double-barrelled pencil sharpener (seriously the best sharpener ever, which I have carried with me (I shit you not) for eight, maybe nine, years)
• any of my many USBs, replete with awesome blackmail-worthy images.

But no. I lost my wallet, which has all the really cool stuff like my driver's licence and my credit card and, bloody hell, my Pet Barn membership.

So because it's late and I'm grumpy and possibly a little over-tired, here's everything I blame for me losing my wallet:

• The two boys on the train who were smoking this morning. Far out they were dumb
• My darling friend Kate who continues to live in Canberra when I would much prefer her to live in Sydney
• Big Brother, what's that shit about?
• Petrol prices
• Climate change
• Time machines (lack of)
• Rota virus
• The cost of living
• Capitalism
• Lenin (premature death of)
• Abdominators
• Chumps (generally)
• People who hose their concrete
• Unequal pay rates
• Sexism
• Plastic Christmas trees
• And Tony Abbott. He just out and out sucks dogs balls.

Oh bloody hell, I have nought to blame but myself. All I can say is love your wallet right (or else come join me for a pale ale to dull the pain; either way, win-win).

Is that a guitar in your lap or are you just happy to see me?

I have just started learning the guitar, and goodness me! Isn't it a marvellous instrument? Not only do I feel like Leonard Cohen (I sound like shit but in my head it's all Cohen) but I'm developing suitably rock-god-like calluses.

This is all very well and good, these calluses, and I am deriving a great deal of pleasure showing friends and loved ones my toughened digits (tapping them on benchtops, desks, any hard surface, "See look! Look! Can't feel a thing!"), but I'm beginning to realise that with every gain to my hardening fingertips there is an equal and opposite loss of everyday functionality.

You see, I'm discovering that wicked string-stopping calluses mean no fine fingertip sensitity.

This may sound like a small thing but the consequences are potentially massive (or at least very slightly life-changing in a handful of mildly inconsequential ways).

You see, I can no longer use chopsticks gracefully, or peel grapes, or pick lint off my clothes.

Or type properly, or do up bottons with aplomb. And my days as a hand-model? Over, baby.

I know what you're thinking, I probably couldn't do these things beforehand and you'd be absolutely right, but now that I really can't I'm starting to wonder what other inconsequential things I've been doing on a daily basis (like a chump) that I can get away with not doing, like working, cooking, vacuuming (occasionally), parenting, you know, participating meaningfully in society and shit.

So tonight I'm giving it all up for the couch, a glass of red and my guitar. Every once in a while it's good to be me.

So I went sailing on the Endeavour and stuff

Now that the histrionics of my last post have passed, I can get on with actually telling you about my trip on the Endeavour.

And what holiday re-telling is complete without a turgid holiday snap slide-show? None that's what, so here we find ourselves, turgid slide-show and all. So I entreat you to settle down with a nice cup of tea (or a beer if it's after 10am). Ready? Great, let's get started.

Slide number one, please.

Like all good holidays on the high seas, mine started with an interstate trip to the library. But not just any library, the National Library in Canberra which very conveniently happened to be showing an exhibition on Patrick White the day I was passing through (en route Sydney to Eden, where the Endeavour was docked).

My darling parents very conveniently live in Canberra so accompanied me to the exhibition where we nerded up a storm then ate Nicoise salads and drank wine at the library's cafe. It was a very, very good several hours.

After the Patrick White nerdgasm subsided I got back on the bus to Eden. We rattled south through Canberra then on to Cooma, where we stopped for a meal break.

In Cooma it was inhumanly cold; the little sign above says six degrees. I would have taken a better photo but my fingers froze so this was all I could do. Sorry about that.

We eventually made it to Eden at some late hour. I had the nine-hours-on-a-bus crazies:

But sent my family this photo instead, so they wouldn't worry:

Then I slept and had a nightmare about being stuck on a bus for nine hours and having to stop at Cooma and freeze my arse off and then getting the crazies in a budget hotel room in Eden (no wait).

The next morning started with instant coffee (which we won't speak of), then, goodness, this:

And look! This:

Is it not the most beautiful boat you've ever seen? I think so too.

On the boat there was lots of rope.

We eased it and hauled it, then we coiled it. Rope is cool.

When we weren't on watch (four hours on, eight hours off) we were scoffing food down in the teeny weeny galley (or, more likely, playing cards):

Or trying to get some sleep in the hammocks:

Or up on deck enjoying the wonder of it all:

[Thank you, dear crew member Foremast Number Six, for helping me climb aloft. You rock Mr P.]

Despite the sleep deprivation, the non-surfeit of showers, the sometimes-we-work toilets and the constant rolling of the boat under our feet, coming home was very hard and I wasn't at all sure I wanted the voyage to end. Sailing into Sydney harbour (almost) made the end bearable:

And after a week at sea nothing, absolutely freakin' nothing, could have tasted better than this did:

Where to from here? My small boy and I were out on the ferries again the following Sunday, and I'm busily planning my next trip into the great blue. Huzzah.

The worst thing about writing a nonsense blog is that every now and again life slaps you in the face and what you want to write about doesn't fit the frippery you've been throwing around.

This, of course, comes with the danger that you're taking yourself too seriously and there's nothing worse than that (really, absolutely nothing).

So what to say? I want to tell you that I sailed on the Endeavour for a week and it was the best week of my life and the worst. It was physically hard, mentally hard, cold, wet, rushed, panicked, incomprehensible.

But it was also ridiculously fun, other worldly, companionable, magnificent, irreplaceable, unrepeatable.

For the first time in my life I get this:

There is no static middle ground, really. Who are we kidding? We swing right across the spectrum in everything we do. And I like that. If we didn't, how would we know we're alive?

Time to sign off before you start snorting in derision at me.

Stop wining [yes wining!] and do my tax?

So Mr Kettle is heading off to Melbourne for a long weekend at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Go Mr Kettle!

Since cloning technology has not (surprisingly, yes?) advanced so far as to enable me to be in both Melbourne living it up and Sydney raising the next generation I find myself trying to decide how best to spend the weekend here in Sydney.

Should I:

1. Buy half a dozen bottles of wine and invite some friends over for a few hours of crapping on and ad libbed performance poetry, or
2. Do my 2010/11 tax?

Please, take your time, it's not an easy question to answer (and, also, it's the question that does actually face me). Your thoughts?

And when you're done with that, can someone please explain to me what the fuck happened with the Greens today?

Once-diligent blogger 'got peckish', forgot to post

Goodness me I've become the world's least-posting blogger.

Luckily there are a few oft-searched words in posts from earlier years so to my delight this site still pops up in the Googles every now and then.

And to my extra delight the most commonly searched terms that lead people here are 'nice boys' and 'good hair,' which I'm cool with (the search phrase that does actually worry me a little is 'how to survive a dust storm'; true story. There really is nothing here that can help you if you've got a dust storm bearing down on you. Please! Leave now! I don't know shit about sand!).

Anyhoo, so here we are in April already. While it may look like I've completely neglected this site for months now it's not entirely true that I have. You see, I've been annoying dear friends and family taking photos of, well, bloody everything, all with the intention of posting them here. I've stopped meals, halted martinis mid-sip, made people pull over, ignored dear companions for whole chunks of evenings while I've set up just the right shot... All for what? For nought, because I've posted none of them here.

Urgh, I really am the world's worst blogger (and possibly friend/daughter/Mahjong partner too).

So, time to re-engage. Here's a little something we can talk about tomorrow. See you then?

Things I should probably work on:

1. Emotional resilience.

(So. Very. Tired.)

Here's a picture (why not?):