Fab Feb - A Fab Friend

❌Fitness 

❌Free of Alcohol

✅Friendship

✅Fast Food refused

✅Jigsaw Puzzle

✅Cars serviced
✅Last Open House

Only day two of FabFeb and it is the first cheat day, a Saturday. The only form of exercise was in the form of racing around the house to prepare it for Open House. We are renting but the owners put the house on the market two months before our twelve month lease expired. For some reason we do our best to make the house look amazing for show even though the owners are less respectful of their own house and the people renting it. Today, thankfully, it was the last Open House. It was passed in at auction a couple of months ago but the process limped along until now. At least we had a 5% reduction in rent during this period.

During the Open House we went out for coffee, picked up one car from a service and dropped the other one in. A text arrived from a good friend: 

You see, this friend received for Christmas a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle with the extra bonus of sorting trays, who knew there was such a thing. Very handy for a 5000 piece puzzle. Who knew jigsaw puzzles came with so many pieces? Of course I leapt at the chance. What a great way to deal with the stresses of life – a chat with a good friend while focusing on something mundane but with the feeling of progress and achievement. And wine. To accompany lunch of salmon and salad sandwiches.

I think the last time my friend and I had a decent chat was early in the new year when the puzzle barely had the edge pieces all around. We have been friends for fifteen years, since the year I started teaching at her place of work. Now we walk into each other’s houses without knocking, wearing pyjamas if we feel like it. Today we were dressed properly but totally chilled. I talked, she listened. I reciprocated but to a lesser extent. Basically, I poured out a month’s worth of tension and now feel lighter for it.

So now wine had been consumed once on this day, we had it twice. I felt noble, though, about refusing a biscuit for afternoon tea and not staying on at my friend’s for a Thai takeaway dinner. Instead, back home, we had healthy leftover chicken from a #28 meal earlier in the week. We then watched Better Call Saul on Stan, which we are planning to give up in a few days.

So what many would perceive as a boring day, to me was perfect.