a bummer, a birthday and some botany

i started a new position at work upon my return from australia, which is good news for a variety of reasons, chief among them that something happens every day that makes me laugh so hard i cry. today it was a text message that my co-worker, smack, got from her brother. it said, "accident at grandma's" and was accompanied by a picture of a riding lawn mower almost entirely submerged in a large body of water, which turned out to be the chesapeake bay.

apparently, smack's mom headed over to grandma's to help with some yard work, but the riding lawn mower had a brake malfunction and driving it through a stone barrier and into the bay was the only way to go.

bummer.

but not so much of a bummer that i did not laugh (until i cried) about it for hours.

yesterday was the mama bear's birthday. i spaced on sending a card or a present, because i am awesome like that, but i did remember to call and she said a blog shout-out would earn me my forgiveness. so, i will say (shout out) this. i love my mom. i want to be just like her in pretty much every way. she is free of judgement and guile and full of patience and love and also makes me laugh until i cry. i feel a oneness with her that is rare and precious. i am glad she was born, and i am glad i was born to her. so, happy birthday mom!

the royal botanic gardens in sydney is (are?) one of the most magical places on earth. it is a place where parrots live in trees and trees live in the middle of the city, and flowers bloom like they are in a fairy tale and cacti grow to be enormous. the botanic gardens is (are?) even home to a woollemoo pine, a species of pine tree that was on the earth with the dinosaurs! (i love dinosaurs!) the woollemoo pine was thought to be extinct until one was discovered in the blue mountains outside sydney in 1994 and transplanted to this safe and happy home.





{the dinosaur pine tree}




and yes, we did hug trees, smell roses and walk on the grass. because if a friendly sign tells me to do it, i will.

park and ride(s)

almost any vantage point of the sydney harbor includes the weird and wonderful cracked smile of the luna park clown. luna park is a north sydney amusement park that is alternately open or shut down, depending on how strictly noise restrictions are being enforced. luckily, it was wide open for business while we were in town, and since i am always a sucker for cotton candy (or fairy floss in australian), dad and i took a little stroll over the harbor bridge to check it out.







i am not much of an amusement park rides person, but there was a sort of slightly creepy, retro-cool vibe to the place and it was definitely worth a look. and if there was ever any doubt about how much i love my dad, i shared my fairy floss with him, so there you have it.

pause

allow me to briefly interrupt the recounting of australia adventures to provide you with a recipe for a near-perfect saturday. it goes something like this.

step 1. prepare your pan with a morning trip to the temple. it is one of my fondest hopes to be a white-haired lady working at the temple on a saturday morning. things were a little hectic when LK and i arrived, and due to some mix-ups about who was supposed to be where when and for how long, i didn't actually accomplish that much temple work, but it was a joy and a pleasure to be there just the same.

step 2. add an impromptu anti-war protest. the original plan was to grab some lunch downtown and hit the environmental film festival, but jaron stumbled on a rally (did you know saturday was the seventh anniversary of the u.s.-led invasion of iraq? neither did we) and we decided marching outside sounded like more fun. jaron even scored a sign, put on his mean anti-war face and off we went. activities included leaving cardboard "coffins" outside the halliburton and washington post offices, as well as plastering the mortgage brokers association building with foreclosure notices. i might also add that it is one of my fondest hopes to be a white-haired lady taking my granddaughters to anti-war protests. sadly, we narrowly missed seeing protest poster child cindy sheehan get arrested, though we were lucky enough to hear her rather un-inspiring pre-march speech.










i will readily confess to a large degree of moral conflict about protesting when i actually like the president in office (i suffered no conflict of any kind protesting against the shrub) and i still believe in my heart that obama is going to do the right thing and get us out of there. but civic action is pretty much always a good thing, i guess, as is spending a gorgeous saturday outside. plus, taking your message right to the steps of the white house? pretty rad.




those of you still not convinved about the merits of protests and the like might be swayed by this message.




a patriotic duty to make out? sold!

step 3. garnish with a trip to baltimore for empanadas and ingrid michaelson with the girls.



(give me more) baltimore is a little more, shall we say, ghetto? than i was expecting, but max's empanadas is delicious, and ingrid never disappoints. seriously, i would give just about any body part to be her best friend. milkshakes and fries on the way home made the evening more perfect than it already was. which was totally perfect.

step 4. bake, cool, enjoy.

the big house

at first, sydney seems like pretty much every other city in a temperate climate: outdoor cafes, professionals bustling around everywhere, ugly office buildings, cars, noise.

but then all of a sudden you come to the harbor and there are the majestic sails of the opera house, and you realize that sydney isn't just like every other city at all.










from what i can gather, the sydney opera house represents a series of miracles culminating in what is probably one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. (the universe? who can say?) the design was rescued from a pile of rejects, and the construction required feats of engineering previously unattempted. originally scheduled to take three years and cost $7 million, the sydney opera house to 10 years to complete with a total bill of $107 million.

but wasn't it worth it?








i, personally, couldn't stop staring at it (or taking pictures of it). every angle, every view, is captivating.

when the sydney opera house first opened in 1973, one of the downstairs auditoriums was used to show surfing movies on a giant projector screen, which makes me really, really happy for some reason. another one of the opening events was a boxing match, though it was apparently rather quickly decided that that was not such a good fit for the venue. i went the more traditional route and caught an opera there on my last night down under. it was puccini's tosca, so it was heavenly, despite a rather strange modern adaptation with some distinctly quentin tarantino-esque undertones.

even if it had just been a quentin tarantino movie, it would have been a dream come true.

surfer, dude

the trip down under obviously satisfied the annual goal to take a trip out of the country but it also allowed me to knock another goal off my list.

that's right, kids. i learned to surf.

as in, in approximately 20 attempts, i actually stood up on a surf board five times and rode it all the way in.

feel free to be massively impressed. at the very least, you might consider uttering a very aussie-like, "good on ya!"

in the interest of full disclosure, i will confess that i was completely and totally exhausted at the end of a two hour surfing lesson on sydney's manly beach. you might not know this from watching matthew mcconaughey do it (since it is fairly safe to assume that anything he does can't be that hard), but surfing is no joke.

for one thing, my board was enormous. i pointed this out to the instructor, rob, and he responded, "the bigger the better. trust me," which he somehow managed to say in a totally non-creepy way. but seriously. i couldn't even get my arms around the board to carry it into the surf.

and then, of course, there is the issue of pushing the board through all that incoming water to get it to a spot where the waves are good. (the waves are sweet? gnarly? wicked? i don't quite have the lingo down.) you feel like you've been pushing your way out for ages only to turn around and discover you are still standing on the beach. practically.

and then, naturally, you have to get yourself on the board, on your stomach, paddle like mad, basically do a push-up to launch yourself into a squatting position and then attempt the greatest feat of balance ever known to man.

in five seconds.

while looking all hip and relaxed.

but, i did it.

five times.

and drank approximately 137 gallons of sea water during all my other attempts.

as i think should be pretty obvious from my totally awesome stance, though, i am well on my way to the intermediate level at least. maybe more.





surfing, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

the wonderful land of oz

hi, guys!

(remember me?)

or should i say g'day?

(you can expect the following additions to my vocabulary: "ta" for thanks, "cheers" for just about everything. also "how you're going" instead of how are you doing or how's it going. and "hey?" instead of what? i have not, however, been converted to "mate.")

i am back.

i have a tan.

(a suburn.)

i am exhausted.

(it took three diet cokes and a dr. pepper to get me through today. i will be in bed before 9:30 p.m. awesome.)

i had a practically perfect trip.

(wanna move to australia with me and open a bed and breakfast on the beach?)

i took more than 150 pictures.

and i just sorted through them all so that you will only see the very best.

(because i am the best. you know?)

that will have to wait, though, because right now i am exhausted. did i mention?

(silver lining: daylight savings made no difference to me whatsoever since i am already approximately 97 hours off schedule.)

never fear, though. adventure recounting will begin in earnest tomorrow. things you have to look forward to: koalas, every conceivable view of the sydney opera house, scuba diving and surfing, the rain forest. and more!

(did you miss me?)

down under

i am leaving for australia in five hours.

did that sort of sneak up on you?

yeah, me too.

the good news is, i had all day yesterday to get ready. and boy, did i need it. i crossed pretty much everything off my list, including but not limited to: buying a new camera (no more flames emitting from the flash!), a pedicure, booking my introductory scuba lessons, picking up a few books, downloading movies (does it take forever for everyone else to download movies?) and generally panicking. oh, and i had a big diet coke.

this morning i just have the little stuff left and then i'm off! i woke up in the middle of the night last night and realized i had forgotten to pack pajamas, so i am keeping my fingers crossed that's all that has slipped my mind.

besides my mind itself. i sort of feel like i lost that.

i'll be off the grid for the next couple weeks, but you can expect a full report when i return. if i return. did you know that 12 of the world's 14 most deadly animals live in australia?

did that sort of sneak up on you?

yeah, me too.