When Moses was a baby I gave him my mobile phone to
slobber on. It promptly died, but fortunately my brother no longer needed his old one which happened to be exactly the same
model as mine had been. He posted it to me, it was awesome, I gave it to Moses,
he slobbered on it, it died too. Both now live in our toy box
(because HELLO, toy manufacturers, babies don’t like mobile phones because
they’re mobile phones, they like them because they’re shiny and smooth and they
light up, which is why they’re not interested in your oversized plastic “mobile
phone” toys. If you want to make a toy that babies will go for, take the things
that babies like about mobile phones [shiny, smooth, lights up] and MAKE UP
SOMETHING WITH THOSE. The same applies to keys).
ANYWAY, the toy box is often a lot further away from
me than my mobile phone is, so I may or
may not have given Hazel my phone to play with (I did. I gave her my phone)
and now all conversations on it sound as if they’re being held on the ocean, and I’m
in one boat and the person on the other end is in another one, way over there.
If I could choose any job in the
world, I’d be a spell-checker.
I’d enjoy it so much I wouldn’t
even want to be paid, as long as they let me cross things out in red (green doesn’t
feel anywhere near as satisfying).
Is it rude to let someone
know there are spelling mistakes in their writing? I don’t find it rude; I love
it when my mum emails me to point out errors she’s noticed in my blog posts,
and I’m embarrassed if I read back over old posts (or text messages, or emails, or Facebook posts) I’ve written and spot a
sneaky spello. Do others feel this way,
though? I always want to point them
out, but I fear it will seem nitpicky and arrogant when I’m actually trying to
be kind and helpful. I especially wrestle with this question when it comes to
business-related writing.
Belle: Making the world a more beautiful place, one typo at a time.
///
P.S. I wanted to include a
spelling error in here just to see how you’d react, but I COULDN’T DO IT.
P.P.S Unless I accidentally
did, which would be embarrassing.
A couple of Thursdays ago we found out that Alan had
been offered the job in the city, and then the following day we visited and
fell in love with a preschool for Moses, one at which his friend from Kerry’s had just
started AND which still had spaces for this year. I wanted to find an apartment the day
after that and have our application approved two days after that, just for the tidiness of it, but
it didn’t work out that way. Life’s just not interested in cool-sounding
Facebook updates, apparently.
So we’ve spent the last three Saturdays driving to the
St George region of Sydney and pushing Hazel’s easygoing nature to its limits
as we race from one inspection to another, jumping in and out of the car and
ignoring all normal routines. The first two weeks gave us a good idea of the
area, and helped us to narrow our search; for example, we realised that we
could never live in Beverly Hills for the simple reason that it would mean we’d
be singing Weezer’s song every time we mentioned or thought about our address (“THAT’S
where I want TO BE! Li-ving in Be-ver-ly Hi-ills!”), and neither Alan nor I
were prepared to make that kind of sacrifice.
It’s possible it would have taken us less time to find
somewhere had I not been in denial about how much rent we’d be expected to pay
for an apartment. If you’d asked me that first week what one could get for
around $400 per week somewhere centralish between Mortdale and Pyrmont, I’d
have replied, “You know what you won’t
get?! A spacious three bedroom house with built-ins and air conditioning and a
backyard and a lock-up garage!” and then run away crying, arms flailing. After
I stopped comparing the prices to those we’ve enjoyed out here in the western suburbs,
it became easier to choose the right places to look at, and now I’m an expert
at all things real-estate-y and apartment-y and St George-y.
My ever-positive mother-in-law has for the last few
months been listening to our updates on jobs Alan was considering applying for
and the places we were therefore thinking of moving to, and responding with
enthusiasm:
“Byron Bay? Byron Bay’s not a good place to live, is
it?”
