Merry Christmas in Adventures in paradise

I ended up having a pretty alright Christmas, considering I didn’t have any plans for it. There was a message on my phone from Andrew saying, “Lemonade ready at 1:30pm!”, so I guess that meant I had an invite to my old place for Christmas dinner, and he always puts on a big spread, so I figured why not go. His sister was visiting with her new partner, so it was nice to see Sally again and meet him.
The turkey and ham and potatoes and parsnip and pumpkin and gravy were all amazing and delish. I went back for seconds. Andrew said he’ll be having leftovers until June lol.
But what was interesting was we decided to go for a walk after dinner and dessert (whilst Sally and her partner had a nap), even if it was just around the block, because of Andrew’s heart condition, he can only walk a few meters before being out of breath, so we were stopping literally every 30 seconds, but man he can talk despite that. The guy talks constantly and never runs out of things to say, I swear to God. I have no idea where people get that gene from. I certainly don’t have it lol. I don’t even think I have an inch of it. Anyway, as we were heading back, he recognized a girl and a guy standing out the front of their driveway who live on the adjacent street. Turns out they are two of the three neighbours who lived next door after I’d moved out, who I’d obviously heard a lot about over the years, as they replaced the annoying lesbians who had previously lived there. They were as cool as Andrew said they were. The guy was named Zac and an obvious stoner but very cool, and his girlfriend Evelene, equally as cool. No wonder they got along so well with Andrew, being hippies from NSW and all. The girl and I chatted for a little bit, which was a bit weird for me, but she was cool so somehow I managed to talk my way through that conversation, and she even hugged me twice, before we parted ways. They have adopted the neighbourhood cat that used to always hang out on our back balcony when I lived there lol. It is so fat now haha.
Then when we walked the short distance back, Andrew saw that Josephine (the lovely old Italian neighbour across the street) was home, so she of course invited us in and we sat with her and her son for a while. She fed us authentic Italian cookies and coffee and chocolates and even gave me a doggie bag to take home, so I’ll have lovely Italian shortbreads for the rest of the week. I did live on Bartlet Street for 11 years, so she remembers me well.

It had been threatening to storm all day, and of course as I left, the wind picked up and I’d barely made it to the Valley when the strong winds struck and I had to shield my eyes from debris, and then it finally started to bucket down, and I was pretty drenched. I’d intended to make it to my gym for shelter, which I eventually did, and the storm passed and I continued on my way home.
I’d worn my Birkenstocks, as I want to wear them in, but they too have given me God-damn blisters on the side of my feet, plus they got wet so were rubbing even more, and now I have a notiacable blister on the side of my right foot. The left isn’t as bad thankfully, but dammit, I am not having much luck with these new Archies slides and Birkenstocks that I was so excited about, as both have caused blisters. I have half-tempted to walk home barefoot, but there’s no way I’d do that walking through the Valley, as it’s Junkie-Central and I’d rather a blister than a needle through my damn foot. Actually, it looks like there’s a blister on the underside on my left foot as well that I just noticed lol - dammit!

Anyway, I need to take a shower, as I am drenched and even though it’s still humid as fuck here, these sudden storms I get caught in have been known to cause a cold (dumb, I know), so I’d better get myself in there.

Merry Christmas everyone :)