Bummer. There they were, four days before the kids come en masse for Christmas Eve dinner. Two red lines. Very 2021, which is not on-brand. A positive COVID test.
The lines glowed into life the same day I hit send on my first book manuscript. It was 53 years since I’d pumped out a prototype and dreamed of doing it for real.
Kate Halfpenny has had a positive test for COVID.Credit: Istock
Big day. Which is why in the selfie taken seconds after that baby was sent off into the ether to my publisher Martin I look devastatingly ugly and beyond happy. Bad hair, sobbing, jaw twisted. Part Kevin Rudd when he resigned the first time, part “wait, I’m going to be a grandmother?” That level of dichotomy.
The photo so my husband could share the moment. I’d come up to Parkville for two days of solitary final rewriting and planned to burn back beachside to him to toast my own brilliance once deadline was met.
Yeah, nah. Not happening.
I won’t lie, the reality I’d be celebrating with just Nurofen and a light full-body sweat wasn’t great. But what can you do? I’m so not a Zen person but either didn’t have the energy to get upset or am influenced more than I realise by the words of well-known philosopher Britney Spears: It is what it is.
Mostly, I reckon my unusual maturity is because the world has had it up to pussy’s bow with whingers at this time of year and I refuse to add my own tiny woes to the pile.
How are things in your neck of the woods? Anybody having fun yet? Or are we all griping about the weeks of military organisation for one overhyped day? All dishing out – or, arguably worse, hearing – whinges about whether the person bringing the Christmas crackers is reliable, whether the December 24 flight will take off, whether four cartons of cream is enough for the pudding, pav, trifle?
