Christmas 2018 in Adventures in paradise

I’m at my parents place in Pittsworth. I caught the bus down on Sunday evening after work to Toowoomba and they picked me up from there, you know, since transport doesn’t go any further than that and my parents live in the sticks.
It turns out my nephew was on the same bus as me (the son of my sister) but I didn’t realise, nor see him, even when getting off the bus.
I almost forgot my suitcase too. I’d totally forgotten that I packed one and had gotten into my parents car when I realised and had to run back. Luckily the bus was still there and there was one bag standing next to the bus. Had this bus been continuing on out west, who knows where my luggage would have ended up? LOL. Thank God I realized and that they’d kindly just left it next to the bus for me. I then ran back to the car, as my parents had parked around the corner in some obscure spot where I couldn’t find them.

It’s now Christmas evening and it’s almost over. The trip has gone rather fast, which is good. I go back tomorrow night, back on the bus and back to civilisation.
My parents took me on a drive back out to Millmerran (my old home town) and back past the old farm. Naturally, we can’t go on to the property anymore, but it was still nice to drive right past the old mailbox. Turns out the owners burnt down the old house that was next to ours on the property. The whole time I lived there, it just sat there and it was like an old desserted haunted house that I used to go play in sometimes, and it had a massive mulberry tree which me and my little brother used to climb in all day and eat the mulberries, coming home covered in stains.
Millmerran has changed a little bit. The post office has moved to the main street and there are a couple of new shops. My old church is up for sale. Things do slowly change in small towns.

As for Pittsworth, well, it’s as exciting as one could expect it to be. The closest Grindr guy is like in Toowoomba, so around 40km away. No chance of being a whore here lol. Crazy to think I used to drive back to this town every weekend when I was dating Daniel when he lived here. Mind you that was 17 years ago now - wow. I was a wee 18 year old and he was 16 and I used to climb a tankstand to hoist myself through his bedroom window every weekend. His parents would find me sleeping in the other bunk the next day, but the whole time just thought I had a crush on their daughter. She thought it was hilarious. Those were the days.

Nowadays, I’m here, mostly bored, with no other gays in sight. Although my cousin Zac is also here visiting his parents, but I didn’t see him. Or rather I did, but it was at church, but it had finished by the time I got there so I just sat in the park across the road on the swings and I saw Zac leaving the church to go back to the car with his parents. I also saw my parents going back with my grandma, but they didn’t appear to see me haha. I don’t know how - I’m only a 6‘3 guy on a swing in the park. Anyway, they just assumed that I was still at home asleep I guess. It’s an easy walk to the church. In fact, it’s a pretty easy walk anywhere in Pittsworth. I took a bunch of snaps, joking about the obscene traffic (there was zero).

It was great to see my sister make the effort to come out. Because of her treatment, she had to check first that no-one has been sick because she can’t be around anyone who has. Thankfully my sickness from a few weeks back has fucked off. She and her husband and my nephew (the one who was on the same bus as me) all arrived around 2:40pm. My other nephew Sam had taken off back to Toowoomba to see his new girlfriend. I’m stunned at how much weight Sam has lost since I saw him last. At least 40kg. He was a big boy and now he’s barely anything. Crazy. And apparently he hasn’t seen exercising, it’s all his new job that’s caused him to lose it. He packs eggs I think.
Anyway, Maddie was still there, but Georgia wasn’t, which was a shame. Georgia also has a new boyfriend and is also preggers to him, so it’s crazy to think that I am going to be a great-uncle soon. I didn’t sign up for this!

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that there was a point in the afternoon that made me very uncomfortable. My mum got up and grabbed a bunch of papers and started the conversation to my sister with, “I hope I’m not out of line with this but..” and then I saw what the writing on the front piece of paper was. It read “Death Certificate”. Mum went on to state that a friend of hers had given her the papers and told her to “Give them to your daughter”. Apparently this guy has had three children go through the same thing.
I mean, fuck. We’d just had Christmas dinner. And here’s mum handing my sister papers on (what I can only assume are) preparing for a possible death.
I was pretty mortified. But my sister seemed to take it in her stride and sat down next to mum and just changed the topic. I mean, fuck, what else could she do? I kept looking over at her, making sure she seemed okay.
Upon thinking about it a bit more, I can understand it. I just thought that surely my sister is already well aware of what could or could not happen. She was looking well. I loved her blonde wig too - it really suited her. I got to give her a hug and a kiss. It was no different to how I normally treat her but there’s this fucked-up information we’re now all aware of. She’s taking all steps she can to conquer this, and that’s all any of us can hope for. I just really am hoping that whatever my mum gave her in those forms doesn’t make her any more upset or stressed than she has been.

I go home tomorrow night, thank God. Then another week of work, then off to Tropical Fruits, which will also be in the middle of nowhere, although this time it’ll be a gay event so there’ll be heaps of gays! It’ll be interesting sleeping next to Peeta in his van. Not sure how that’s gonna work. I’m more worried that I won’t get let in because I’m arriving after check-in time closes, but I don’t have an option as it’s the only bus. Andrew said he’ll pick me up and take me to the showgrounds so hopefully the information I’ve been given will let me in, otherwise I will be sleeping on the ground somewhere for the night. I will worry about that when I get there.

I see Bryce is on Grindr too, even though he has a boyfriend now. He’s the guy I hooked up with this time last year. I doubt it’ll happen again, nor that I’ll probably get time anyway even if it did happen.

Bailey is still trying to ‘organise’ this whole Sydney trip, although he never tells me what dates he wants to go, so I dunno if it’ll ever happen! Once again I told him to let me know when suits him so I can apply for it off work. We’ll see if that happens as well.

Back to civilisation tomorrow. Briefly haha.

Sorry, I need a haircut badly

This is the main street on Christmas Day lol

I kinda liked this one as I was walking home

Me inside the house

The trip out to Millmerran on Christmas Eve

Random selfie, terrible lighting lol

A good lighting one lol

I took a photo of this house because it holds significance to me. This is where my first boyfriend used to live back in the day. Nice to see it hasn’t changed much. The tank I used to climb is a bit hidden.

We went looking at Christmas lights, but of course they turn out terrible on my phone camera