“Honey, where’s your drill?” I asked my wife.
You might have noticed the use of the word ‘your’ there instead our ‘our’.
The drill was a recent purchase necessitated by our pantry door taking a very cavalier approach to its primary function of remaining shut as we bounced around a corner, meaning all our groceries, including about thirty tins of baked beans, jumped loudly out of the cupboard and raced un-ca\n-like around the bus floor. The excessive number of baked beans cans is a result of me buying them by the tray when I shop despite Tracey telling me we only have one child who eats them and that’s me.
Tracey was very clear when we needed to duck down to Forbes’ Bunnings – this drill was going the same way as her hammer – she was going to hide it on me.
Actually, it’s not just the hammer she’s been hiding. I had cause to ask her for the steel wool the other day while doing the dishes and I got a minute long lecture on how I’d damaged the new electric non-stick frypan with nothing but my conviction to remove all the burnt tomato paste.
And when I say my wife has hidden something, I mean it may as well have never existed. I warn any potential thieves to bypass our home on wheels if they’e thinking of breaking in for valuables. If there’s any cash on this bus you have no hope of finding it because there are apparently hidey holes everywhere. I mean, Miss13 pulled out a sewing machine the other day I didn’t realise we had with us.
“You don’t need a drill,” Tracey informed me.
“You can’t know that,” I responded.
She sighed.
“Then what do you need it for?” she asked, clearly against her better judgement.
I smiled.
“It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t like the sort of surprises which happen when you have tools in your hands.”
I genuinely don’t know how my wife always manages to take my words and bitch slap me with them, but she does it with unfaltering regularity. It’s one of the things I love about her.
“Trust me,” I said.
And to my great astonishment, she did.
Which is why, only a short hour later, she got to enjoy a banana cake.
I may not know how to encourage a nail into a bit of wood, or how to retrain a pantry door, or indeed, how to remember to pack all the kitchen appliances back into the bus when we’re about to leave for a year on the road.
But I do know to bake.
It’s my one redeeming quality.
FORBES
We had a ball in Forbes, enjoying campfire chattering with the caretakers there, Doug and Skye. Because Skye let on Doug happens to be an auto electrician, ‘they’ also helped us fix a few issues we had with our bus – brake controllers and the like. It was an expensive and alcohol fuelled week, but we got heaps of good stuff done. Plus our respective kids had a ball together. This is the thing about life on the road: it isn’t the places you go so much as the people you meet. People with similar goals and ideas about what’s important. Can’t wait to see you guys out here in 2019.
Raising a family on little more than laughs
– this post is not sponsored or gifted –
