Blonde’s chronic unemployment has its downside, what with the whole no income thing. The upside of unemployment is how it frees up time for travel. Only recently has it become clear(ish) that spending money traveling has not been a financially advantageous way to have coped with the whole lack of an income thing. However, being Blonde, it took two years and a lifetime of savings to get to this realization. One way the savings decreased dramatically was a three week adventure with Brunette in Australia.
The alleged “justification” for the trip was that we wanted to swim with whale sharks. It wasn’t clear (ahead of time) that whale sharks rarely offer employment to aging marketerettes. Live and learn. Or as we do, just live while other people learn. Speaking of learning, Brunette was revealed, on our first full day in Oz, to be a stunningly delayed learner .
A friend of Blonde’s from a former job (they’re all former at this point) is from Melbourne and her mother, originally from the U.S., still lives there. The mother, Lucy, is 70 and appallingly energetic . Prior to our arrival she had offered to take us to Healesville Sanctuary (http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary) for an up close and personal sampling of some of the required animals of Australia.
In addition to being energetic Lucy was also quite testy, a high-speed tailgater and – surprise!- had had cataract surgery two days before we got there and wasn’t seeing well yet. Off we went with her driving at alarming speeds along a very curvy roadway as she spewed a litany of harsh opinions. One of which was that she doesn’t like animals. Good to know that in less than 24 hours in Australia we were already wasting someone else’s time. Not that we are ever laggards in that department.
Gravel and innocent visitors went flying as Lucy blindly rocketed her car into the Healesville parking lot. With the new knowledge that it was unlikely that we would survive the rest of the day, we wanted to at least cross koalas and kangaroos off our bucket lists.
Healesville offers something called “Personal Moments” (or something else, not worth verifying) that allows visitors to spend extra money to essentially speed date select species. We were in! For something north of two unemployment checks we could be with (not in the biblical sense) koalas and kangaroos.
Koalas were first on the agenda. Brunette and I were paired with a humorless couple and a guide. (Note: Brunette always says “other couple” with no awareness that we are not in fact “a couple”. Brunette lives close to Appalachia.) The guide was a no nonsense male impersonator who at one time clearly dreamt of a more rewarding occupation. She stomped us over to the koalas and permitted photo opportunities but no touching (unlike that guy I met on Craigslist).
Brunette posed under the tourist-designated koala named Benny. Blonde did the same, as did the humorless couple. After all of our photo opps the guide asked if we had any questions. Brunette asked “what are those appendages on Benny”? The guide, not a gal for male appendages in general, replied dryly “testicles”.
Look at the photo and see if this was a reasonable question from a woman with four sons. It was the moment Blonde realized how she had gotten four nephews from a frequently pregnancy-surprised sister.