Where to start?! Arrived home [sob] last Wednesday and realised just how much had to be done before d-day (yesterday). I can’t even remember half the things that happened in between then and my dad arriving. I do know that we went out to a last dinner at Angelo’s (after I had replaced a headlight on the Humber, so we could drive at night) where I had my favourite spaghetti marinara that I cannot recommend highly enough. It was lovely to see M again after about a five week absence, even though we were instantly submerged in logistics and goodbyes to his side of the family.

Thursday morning saw M turn into an anxiety ridden alien. He had to get the van to the auto-electrician at 8am and at 7.30am he was shrieking around the house in a complete state…

“Where the f@#k is my wallet? Someone must have got in during the night and they’ve stolen it. Either that or it fell out of my jacket at Angelo’s….maybe it’s in the van…”

He ran from the house, while I croaked from under the doona;
“We didn’t take the van out last night.”

He returned inside, still ranting, now looking to deflect the blame elswhere.
“It’s you. You. You came home and distracted me. This kind of thing didn’t happen while you were away. Goddamn it. Meet me in the cafe near the auto-electricians. The van could take all day.”

I had, by this point, shoved my head under the pillow, wondering what it was that I’d actually missed about him as I whiled away my time in Carlton.

“OK, I’m going now. F@#k it.”

“Remember to take the spare wheel of the trailer so we can get it checked for a leak,” I replied romantically, through gritted teeth.

And the back door slammed.

I eased my way out of bed, walked to the coffee table, picked up M’s wallet, had my first rainwater shower in quite some time, fed the cats and drove out of the driveway and up the hill. As soon as I got halfway to the top, mobile coverage kicked in and there was a text from M.
Bring wheel.
As I turned the car around, I pondered on ways to intensely annoy him for the rest of the day, and dabbled along these lines of thought until another text popped through as I (and the spare wheel) reached town.
I am sorry I was in a flap. I have separation anxiety.

I found M, threw his wallet at him, and wallowed in his apologies for at least ten minutes. After that, we went and found a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, and made our ‘to do’ lists. They were scary. As we left, to begin to tackle the lists, the electrics on my Humber started going crazy. Dodgy indicators, mainly. We fiddled with the fuses and they came back. Then the left indicator died. The switch had broken. I managed to massage the indicator into performing, but it was getting worse. Perfect timing really, considering that it was being driven to Melbourne in four days time…