Today was Mum’s birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!), so after being A Most Good Son by vacuuming the house and cleaning the toilet and bathroom (assuming a whole 2% of the weekly household chores), I went to pick up Dad so that he could pick up the cake from Laurent’s and some flowers for Mum (partly as an apology for only writing her card this morning, and smudging it). The cake was called Le Canotier (not “The Canotier”, as the snooty staff are always quick to remind you). I came home, put the cake in the fridge, the flowers in the vase and spent the rest of the day trawling through neuroscience journals for research on epilepsy and memory deficits. Fun.
We went out in the evening to a restaurant called Rumi, a Middle-Eastern place in Brunswick. We had a variety of foodstuffs (including these delicious pastries filled with ewe’s cheese) and filled up our glasses with these seriously funky jugs (we bought one!) and then went home for Le Canotier (which Mum managed to blob onto Le Petit Robert– a French-English dictionary which is less Petit than its name would suggest) and La Cafe (that’s coffee, in case you haven’t done middle school French). Today’s Photo is of some bottles and sculptures of dancing Arabs at the restaurant that I thought were pretty cool.
Then (for some reason), out came several boxes of old cards and letters. We found some absolute gems, including a picture Lena drew for me (of a 3-year-old me in overalls and my Swedish bobble hat talking to a giant pig– don’t ask why), a hilariously rambling letter from my grandfather to my parents (concerning Divine Home and Contents Insurance, which will protect your home against, among other things, invasion by foreigners, Satan and floods) and a letter written to me by a friend of my parents. When I was little, there was some saga involving a toy frog which continually changed hands between us and this friend (I can’t remember the story entirely– will have to ask). The frog must have been returned to us at some point, as I have a letter (in an envelope with wax seals) written in legalistic language, detailing the judgement of Chief Justice Toad of the Supreme Court of Lillipilli regarding the matter of one Kermit C. P. Riggupp, who was found in a “drug induced haze” in the “Frogdom of Ashfield” (Well, isn’t that what one does in Ashfield?). What strange things happen.
Still A Teen 
Those statues are whirling dervishes.