Sometimes the Best Days Start With “Why Don’t We?”
I am a planner.
I like bookings. I like knowing where we're going, what time we're going and, ideally, where we're eating when we get there.
Which is probably why we accidentally celebrated Father's Day a day early.
Not accidentally accidentally. We'd planned dinner for Saturday night, had a few drinks, ate carpaccio, ordered too much food and generally behaved like we'd absolutely nailed Father's Day.
Except it wasn't Father's Day yet.
Minor technicality.
The Father's Day Gift Test
Sunday morning arrived with the traditional presents-in-bed ceremony.
And apparently, we'd done well.
There were no bike tyres.
No ugly socks.
No new underpants.
Darren was delighted.
He specifically commented on the absence of bike tyres, which tells me there may be some unresolved trauma from Father's Days past.
Although I'm giving it approximately three weeks before he appears holding a pair of underwear with a hole in them asking why nobody ever buys him anything useful.
You can't win.
We'd also made him some little tokens; things we could do together rather than just more stuff…which felt particularly lovely.
Then came homemade breakfast.
Nothing fancy.
Just us.
And honestly, the day could have happily ended there.
But it didn't.
Everybody Else Apparently Had the Same Idea
We headed down to the beach.
And so did approximately the entire Gold Coast.
But it was one of those absolutely perfect beach days.
Hot enough that the water felt incredible. Cool enough in the water that you actually wanted to stay there. Our cabana was up, drinks underneath it, everyone wandering backwards and forwards from the ocean covered in progressively more sand.
It was perfect.
Eventually we packed everything up and wandered home.
Father's Day successfully completed.
Again.
We probably should have stopped there.
We did not.
Then Someone Said the Dangerous Words
We got home.
Had another wine.
And at some point somebody asked:
“Why are we sitting here?”
Excellent question.
Which was followed fairly quickly by:
“Why don't we just go out?”
And that was it.
No booking.
No itinerary.
No plan.
Apparently we'd abandoned the very system by which I normally operate.
We jumped on the tram down to Surfers.
Played a few games at Timezone, where I assume we spent a completely reasonable amount of money winning approximately seventeen cents' worth of prizes.
Then dinner at Vapiano.
Then Yo-Chi.
Because obviously after dinner you need dessert.
And apparently after dessert you need every topping available to humanity.
There is a point where frozen yoghurt stops being frozen yoghurt and becomes merely a structural support system for confectionery.
We passed that point.
It's Fine. We Walked Home.
This is important.
Because we walked home afterwards.
And everybody knows that if you walk home after eating an irresponsible quantity of Yo-Chi toppings, the calories cancel themselves out.
That's science.
Please don't research it.
Maybe “Why Don't We?” Is the Plan
I spend a lot of my life planning.
And there's good reason for that.
Life is busy. Kids have things. Adults have things. Work has approximately 47 things. If we didn't plan anything, I'm reasonably certain we'd eventually just stand in the kitchen staring at one another wondering why nobody had bought milk.
But Father's Day reminded me that sometimes the best bits aren't the things you organised.
They're the bits that happen afterwards.
The extra swim.
The extra wine.
The tram you weren't planning to catch.
The completely unnecessary trip to Timezone.
The Yo-Chi topping mountain that absolutely nobody needed.
Sometimes someone just says:
“Why don't we?”
And everybody else says:
“Yeah. Why don't we?”
And off you go.
Maybe the best days aren't always the perfectly planned ones.
Sometimes they're the ones where you leave a little bit of room for life to decide what happens next.
Also, Yo-Chi toppings don't count if you walk home.
I don't make the rules.
