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| #16 |
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| Another sunny day in Feenix |
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| Dat right |
At home, I work as a
gallery receptionist. It’s a fantastic place and I love working there a lot
(unlike a lot of things I will actually be pleased to go back, considering I
haven’t actually worked a day in the last 5 months) and it’s nice. From someone who lied profusely to get
through an interview to work there, I pretended I was far more arty farty than
I was, but in actual sense, I think I really am a teeny tiny bit at heart.
ANYWAY with the grace of Grace Kelly (can you even double-Grace if one’s a name
and one’s a verb? Noun? Adjective? I don’t know). I do know, that in my absence
of being all cultured and well-rounded at the gallery my English has apparently
gone down the drain.
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| Feeeeeeenixxxx |
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| #torben |
Lazy afternoons in
the hammock, playing rounds of ‘Would you rather…’ with Dice, me never failing
to come up with the most absurd and difficult topics, covering all bases of
life. We read one just before actually, that, AND NO I DID NOT COME UP WITH
THIS ONE IT WAS FROM THE INTERNET I SWEAR;
Would you rather
kill (with your bare hands) a human baby OR 100 cute puppies? (pictures
supplied for each)
I’m not going to tell
your our answers.
But apart from those
morbid questions, we sung, I succeeded in kicking Dice in the head about twenty
times. And we had lunch in the sun. No Boxing Day sales here folks.
If ‘yall remember
back to New Hampshire, very early on when I started my adventures in the US of
A, Moose Brooks was a particular treasured place I longed to visit, (and
succeeded in whining all the way to get there). The Desert Botanical Gardens
was yet another Moose Brooks. And I have made plenty of references to ‘The New
Moose Brooks’, depending on which new overtly-expensive, tourist-trappy and
horrendously boring and lame attraction I can find in each new city. Honestly,
I am an advertisers dream. Throw me a fancy pamphlet or a discount coupon and
BAM we are going. Make the name sound exotic and
far-from-the-truth-of-the-attraction and BAM we are going. Put an overtly-big
and trashy sign on the Route 60 North highway out of Feenix and BAM I’m pulling
over and we by hell as sure are going. I remember fondly (and my mother
reminded me when I last spoke to her, which brought back tender sweet memories)
of when we visited a cactus farm in rural Victoria years ago. Another highway
sign, another distraction from the long drive to our final destination, another
excuse to pile the kids out of the car and have a look at the ‘World Famous
Cactus Farm! Biggest and most diverse range of cacti in the country!! Cool
drinks and refreshments inside at the café!’
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| Desert botanical gardens |
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| Thrilling |
It was, in actual
fact, someone’s backyard, in which the had planted a truckload of cacti, formed
some roundabout paths with rocks and debris, and thrown some dirt piles in
between as to fulfil the advertising promise of ‘getting lost in the maze of
cacti!’ The refreshments were, warm cans of lemonade that had been sitting in
the sun for about 20 years, and the price was collected by mum throwing a fiver
at the elderly gentleman, of which he pocketed, and then went back to his
lounge room to watch the cricket.
Now I’m on a roll,
another memory jumps to mind, holidaying down at the beach in Melbourne, out
Port Fairy way, when Mum and Dad thought it’d be a good idea to visit this old
volcano that is allegedly famous and massive and was a big deal a long time ago
– and get this – WAS ACTUALLY LIVE some billion years ago. The young and eager
age I was, Dad promised I’d get to take a little piece of the volcano home with
me; obviously I had visions of a monstrous volcano, over 20 storeys high,
spewing lava and smoke, and me rock climbing to the top to venture down the
monstrous volcano’s edge via bungy jump to retrieve my treasured molten rock.
In actual fact, it
was a crater in the ground, in the middle of nowhere, with some dried up scora
lying about. Fair certain I took my ‘souvenir’ of the volcano from the parking
lot, actually.
The jazz band was
the most memorable, with our favourite guy Craig on the sax, and watching old
people jive and swing dance together warmed our hearts.
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| #rudefinger |
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| Strike a pose |
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| Strike a pose |
Anywho, the point
is. I was (probably at the hands of my parents) so excited about the desert
botanical gardens and Dice sort of just went along with it. Needless to say, it
was overpriced, the beauty (can cactuses even be beautiful?)over exaggerated
and despite the raving reviews form the locals, not that exciting.
Dice refrained from
muttering “I told you so”, which I appreciated.
To end the day, an all 'Merican kitsch diner dinner, which I also appreciated.
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