Birthday Parties and Garage Sales

    Some weekends are busier than others. We find ourselves rushing around from one place to another hoping to get in all in and still catch our breath. This weekend was one such experience with some rather interesting trends noticed.

     First, it was the Garage Sale Trail - a national movement to reduce waste by encouraging reuse of items. People and businesses all across the country are exhorted to have a garage sale on the same day. Having everyone on the hunt --or sale-- on the same day benefits everyone: more traffic out looking for sales and more sales for wandering shoppers to find.  
     We joined the fray. We hoped to find a few pieces of furniture to replace the broken garage sale finds of yesteryear.  Not much there but nestled among the usual collection of old toys, 40 year-old Tupperware being sold at new prices, dated clothing and chipped coffee mugs were a few treasures: a Sony Walkman tape player with a solar powered alarm clock, another portable tape player with the all important three equalizer quality controls (neither of these have I seen before) and the a most gorgeous peacock purse.  This never-used, antique piece of art decorated with peacock feathers was selling for $60 and probably worth four or five times that. I was afraid to touch it. The seller was afraid to touch it. She kept this beaute either behind a glass hutch door or inside acid-free tissue paper.  Which is what her grandmother did with the purse.  One would be a hit at the Perth Fashion Festival with this lovely purse but who wants to push the cabinet holding it everywhere?
      Highly disturbing and all too frequently found was make-up.   Used make-up.  Very used make-up.   Ewwwwwww.  Really, people, I know it's a Chanel compact but the powder is now three-quarters gone and who really wants to use the rest?  Crumbling eye shadows, congealed nail polish and mashed eyebrow pencils all had price tags. I almost fainted when I spotted an unused eye shadow refill still in the box.  We did not find this day what we have seen at garage sales in the past.  Used booze. O.K., opened booze bottles being sold by people who don't drink anymore.  And all priced accordingly--the 3/4 full bottle was priced at 3/4 of the purchased price, the half-full bottle asking for half the duty-free price it sold for and so on.  I don't know how I made it to the car before bursting out laughing.  The entertainment value of visiting garage sales sometimes supersedes the bargains found.

I'm 3 years old!

     And then, a child's birthday party.  My first since moving to OZ.  I had not given any thought to what differences there may be but why wouldn't there be in a different place?  This party was well-themed in Peppa Pig, an animated cartoon character watched by all little kids.  Joining the plastic tablecloth and napkins sporting the image were cups, goodie bags, carrying cases, masks, cake decorations, balloons and little raisin boxes. Standard, thus far.
     The food was different.  What would a party be without Fairy Bread? Triangles of nasty cheap white bread spread with butter and doused in sprinkles (called Hundreds & Thousands here in Australia.)  Paper cups filled with jelly (translate that to Jell-O)  and lamingtons (a small vanilla cake rectangle covered in chocolate and rolled in coconut)  all help get the party started. The cake has no ice cream served with it.
     There is a bit of a shift in the party itself here in OZ. Fewer people live in homes with big backyards, so parties are in public parks or expensive party venues that have paint tag games or other amusements ($500 for a kid's party, anyone?)  And in a public park many of the little reindeer games we all enjoyed--Pin The Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, Pass the Parcel--are no longer done. But this park had Zipline (also called a Flying Fox) attraction and a big mud puddle, so all of the kids were happy.
     
    After all this excitement, I took a nap.   It WAS the weekend, after all.

Forty-- The New 21

This past weekend, we went to the 40th birthday party of my brother-in-law Brian's girlfriend, Donna.

[Hold narrative here. The terms "girlfriend" and "boyfriend" are all but eliminated from the Australian lexicon and replaced by the term "partner". Long term partners are also called "de factos". As I like Donna, none of these clinically sterile terms shall I use. Henceforth, she shall just be Donna.]

It was a nice little party in the very recently finished backyard of the "renovator's dream" Brian has been chiseling into a home for the last 12 years. Friends, neighbors, kids, hippies and the august were there to wish her well, eat lots of good nibbles and sip on champagne. After the contemporary bit of art doubling as chocolate birthday cake had been presented, people called for a speech. Donna became teary eyed as she figured her last twenty years weren't as nice as her next twenty shaped up to be now that she had little Natie and Brian.A table groaned under fancy presents all making my jar of homemade jam look lame.


It all seemed a bit much for an adult birthday that didn't come with "the keys to the house." Kevin's 40th was a big deal for his family and they collected lots of money to give him which, in turn, paid for our hot air balloon ride. I thought he did rather well by me when I presented him with his long dreamed of yellow Ferrari. (Parks very nicely in a matchbox size garage, thank you.) It's rather an Australian thing. Eighteen, twenty-one or thirty aren't real hallmarks of adulthood or maturity. "Forty. It's the new 21," explained Kev and echoed by some of the ladies I was chatting with. Indeed, Donna will be going back home to Adelaide later this month to celebrate this momentous occasion with her family.

So now I have something to look forward to in a dozen or so years when I turn 40. ahem.