Bloggin' Hoe

And my blue mountains weekend getaway with my SD last week. I did my first hike with a (very cautious) bit of running a day shy of 3 months post-injury, and came back 10km later with both ankles intact. I was — and am — so pleased and relieved…and then had to wait in the car for him for 40 mins lol. He said he watched me blaze away and felt very smug and happy that „with any luck, that’s mine tonight.” My calves were still hurting when I got back to Pilates on Tuesday.

We ate some lovely food (our first ever dinner together after 7.5 years), drank some lovely wine — two of our shared faves, Emmalene sparkling rosé and EPC — and chilled tf out for two nights. For large parts of it we sat on separate couches in total silence like a married couple while he did the puzzles in the newspaper and I texted my friends. That feeling came up again when I gently chastised him for complaining to the waiter about the bread and butter at the restaurant being too salty only hours after he told me his tolerance for salt is astronomically low.

„[Redacted],” I said. „I think, based on what you’ve said, this might be a personal preference, especially if nobody else has said anything. I personally thought it was all great,” I said, turning to the waiter. „And now it is well past my bedtime so we should hop to it.”

He thanked me at home for my tact and gentle management of the whole evening; the same waiter forgot about us for 20 minutes in the beginning and the cocktail I wanted was sold out. But really nothing is ever a big deal. Plus it was all overshadowed by the moment where he paused, considered and then said,

„Do I look like a sugar daddy right now?”

I did a head back laugh that made people look up, a Lizz classic.

„Oh…BIG time. And I can give you an open mouth kiss right now to remove all doubt if you’d like.”

At home I shamelessly cranked the underfloor heating to 30° in my bedroom and he went out wood chopping to build the fire for me while I read the newspaper out of idle curiosity. There was an article about Zyzz in there. Weird. And I played DJ the whole time, like always. It was actually he who blasted it in the car after telling me I was playing it too softly. When we got into the carport he stayed for the drop before he turned the ignition off because I was in my own world fist pumping. I didn’t realise until I turned to him asking what we were doing, and he told me he was just waiting for me to be done. I put it back on inside anyway, and he told me he never expected to know so much about hardstyle at any point in his life, let alone his sixties.

I was expecting to be more disappointed by that, mostly because my spending has been frivolous and carefree, but actually I am not. And it has been frivolous and carefree due to the fact that this July, which was supposed to be a month like any other, I have actually...had fun. Not just for an evening dancing til 3am at a rave, or mum visiting for a few days, or having dinner out with a friend, or going on a date with somebody about whom I end up feeling tepid. I have had fun the whole damn month.

I’m attributing it largely in part to the fact that, for the first time since 2021, I am here at home for the entirety of winter. I know I’ve banged on about this a bit since it rolled over into June, but it feels pertinent because I think there is some part of me — body, brain, psyche, subconscious — that is still in holiday mode. I’m programmed for a northern hemisphere summer now, and I’m used to flogging myself at work with that specific goal in mind: to have a full 5 or 6 or 7 weeks off, to gallivant and cavort, to eat drink smoke cigarettes and be merry. With no goal, no dedicated time off, no outlet, what does it all even mean? How does a girl get her kicks?

She gets them, I have found out, by working as little as possible, still by the grace of god hitting her monthly target, still going to Pilates 4x a week and taking 10km+ walks on the off days, and then living as luxuriously as possible. July has been champagne and cocaine and sex for fun and late bedtimes and eating off-schedule. It’s been friends and fashion and blasting banging techno while sitting on my bedroom floor doing my makeup in preparation to go out. It’s been last minute cancellations and last minute invitations and telling myself that next month…next month…it’s time to get serious. And I will. But I needed this.

And so now July is at an end. And it began to end last night walking around the grocery store with a silly sweet boy buying ingredients for dinner at 8pm, and then perching on my kitchen bench watching him make it for me. I hopped down and he smooshed me in his arms and kissed me.

„I think you like me,” I said, looking at our reflection in my window.

„I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t like you,” he replied simply.

And it got closer to ending this morning the way we finished last night — slick with sweat under my layers of blankets, slick everywhere he touched me and kissed me, and straddling a very fine line between enjoying it all immensely and that feeling of it being too too much, which is a kind of agonising pleasure when the guy you like has a big dick. Afterwards he wrote his name and drew a love heart in the dew on my bedroom door that leads to the balcony, and then he left me with a kiss and a second toothbrush in the bathroom.

After some contemplation I realised that, in the spirit of July being holiday lite, I would cancel my class and instead take a walk on this beautifully sunny day. And I will, later. The daylight hours are the relaxed vignette before the official end tonight and I need to recline on my bed for a bit longer. I am going out with the girls and in this current mindset I cannot be trusted to be anything but silly with them.

I’m channeling my inner 35-year-old (she’s in there somewhere) and NOT putting out there for the first time, however. I cleaned my entire apartment and changed my sheets in preparation for him to be between them. On top of my new fawn coloured faux fur pile blanket with me on top of him, at least. Heater and heinously expensive Mexican tuberose body oil on.

In fits and starts, and every time someone asks me this I realise I NEED to have more discipline and determination. I’ve been reading a bit of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz atm and that is definitely inspiring in terms of my style and content.

We laid out a picnic blanket by the water, took our shoes off, opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio and then shamelessly rolled around making out and touching and laughing for hours while day slowly turned to dusk. I (accurately btw) guessed that the first „star” visible was actually Venus, and then the Dog Star, and then the sky turned a pastel peach pink with his hands inside my top and his lips pressed against my neck. You ever had a guy speaking his beautiful Romance language to you while you’re sitting on his lap with your legs wrapped around him? Woof. It felt like I was on holiday in my very own city.

I think — fortunately or unfortunately, you decide — that if I don’t proceed with caution feelings may develop quite rapidly. And we didn’t even have sex last night! Again! Although per my hand wanderings it is something I now want to do quite badly, and were it not for plans I had already made for the evening I think the rolling around and making out would have graduated to my bed with less clothes. The restraint and pacing is nice, though, isn’t it? Something to daydream about, which is one of my favourite pastimes.

Let’s not jinx it. I have to get up and make breakfast and go to Pilates before a rare Wednesday meeting with my SD. Here are the two beautiful sunsets I have enjoyed on these two beautiful, mild and sunny winter evenings:

We did make direct eye contact while sitting on aforementioned bench, me listening to him talking animatedly (he’s Italian, I’d expect nothing else) and noted his very pretty eye colour, a hazel more green than brown, and the warmth of his hands when they closed over mine briefly. He scoffed when I told him I was a secret romantic — „you’re not very emotionally expansive” he said. „Just because I don’t show it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. Anyway, you can find the romance in everything, not just a relationship.” I replied — but I’ll forgive him that after we discussed my reluctance at giving up any freedom or independence for a man.

Him: Can I send you a deposit for an hour sometime in the coming week?

Me: Sure, I have time on Monday after 1pm, and Tuesday after 11am.

Him: Can I see you at 12:30 on Wednesday?

Anyway. I am sitting in my current home, chilling post-Pilates and pre-lash appointment, and intending on getting my nails done tomorrow so I am up to date and perfectly aligned with my appearance maintenance. I figured I would do some Pinterest searching to decide what I want to get tomorrow — I’m thinking classic French with a soft pink cat’s eye base — but have somehow ended up on the „dream home” side of Pinterest adding mid-century modern bed frames and bouclé dining chairs and walnut TV units to the relevant boards.

My SD and my mum are back on my case about the nosediving property prices in Sydney and how this is The Time To Buy and what am I waiting for if I have the deposit plus some. I don’t know what I’m waiting for — to go to Central Asia early/midyear 2027 probably — and mum overloaded me with questions and links yesterday at work between one client who did too much tusi and fell asleep so deeply I had to shake him awake thrice to get him to stir, and a 7 hour party booking from which I emerged 2 hours after my shift technically ended and 10 hours after I first arrived into a setting sun and a bustling main artery road that felt entirely surreal.

„It’s pile,” he said, running his hand back and forth over it, changing the texture. „Is it folded over itself?”

„It is,” I replied to both.

While having sex with my SD I looked upside down at the rain falling from a set in grey sky, and I thought that tonight I would unfold the blanket so I could sleep totally naked for the first time since May, not just without socks like last night, and about a boy I am meeting on Sunday who is 26 and patient and gorgeous, who has eyes that are simultaneously doe and shrewd, who is going to send me a photo of the 15 books he brought with him to Australia from Italy now he’s back in from work, and how nice it is that he thought his books important enough to move across the world with.

I thought about my 4:50am alarm tomorrow, and dinner tonight — risotto with prawns — and about what tennis replay I might watch while I eat, and how many pages of my book I might read before I go to sleep. Flavio Cobolli got knocked out of Umag in the second round and despite the fact that I’m enjoying that tournament more as a whole, on principle I will probably watch a match from Gstaad, and I’m still so exhausted from this week that I will probably manage 20 pages at most. I thought about the fact that it is 46° in Tashkent today and 13° in Sydney and that this time last year in Tbilisi it was 35° and I took a wrong turn on Arnold Chikobava street and walked in circles and sweated behind my knees.