Ok, so before we get into the latest instalment of Charmaine’s adventures, I think we need to do a quick recap of who Charmaine is and how she scored herself a gig on this blog!
First up, she’s not a real person and she definitely isn’t me! Although we kind of share a similar hair style…
Werk It Charmaine!
Now if you’d like to know how the whole Charmaine thing started, you need to read this post: Dear Guy At The Gym Who Thinks My Name Is Charmaine
And here is his reply: The Guy At The Gym Replied To My Open Letter!
Now once I hit publish on those two posts, the name Charmaine started to stick. Family and friends thought it was hilarious to call me Charmaine and so the character of Charmaine was born!
Here’s the post where a few things are revealed about her: 5 Things You Need To Know About Charmaine
Charmaine’s husband, Barry. Rocking the high vis!
And here’s the following up interview I did with Charmaine, where she answered some of your questions: Kirsten and co. Interviews Charmaine!
She sure was!
Ok, so now that we’ve got that all sorted, let’s get into the latest update from Charmaine shall we?
You see it’s a been a while since I’ve heard from her and I was starting to get worried. She wasn’t replying to any of my faxes and for some weird reason her MySpace page had disappeared, so I knew something was definitely up!
I tried contacting her husband Barry, but he wasn’t answering his phone (although to be fair, mobile phone reception can be a bit limited when you’re 4,572 feet underground.)
I thought about trying to track down her twin daughters via Facebook, Mersaydees and Saturday, but thought that might make me look a bit like a stalker, so I let the whole thing go and waited patiently for Charmaine to get in touch.
Finally, last week, she sent me an email!
To: teamkandco@live.com
From: charmaine87@hotmail.com
Subject: Hi
Hi luv. Sorry I’ve been a bit MIA lately but I’ve had a few personal issues that I’ve had to work through. It all started a couple of months ago when I finished reading Eat, Pray, Love. Have you read it? That Julia Roberts sure is talented. Imagine being able to act AND write books!
Anyway, after I read the book I thought I might do a Julia and take a solo trip to Bali. It’s not that I was unhappy with my life or anything, it’s just that when I was a toll booth operator life had a bit more meaning. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mum, but working on one of the busiest bridges in Australia and handling so many $2 coins every day was exhilarating, you know?
And I know I’m really lucky that Barry has a great job in the mines. If it wasn’t for all of his hard work, we could never have afforded for me to quit my job and become a full time mum. But since taking that job his rotations have changed and now he’s hardly ever home.
So I read the book and thought ‘F(*k it. I’m going to Bali to find myself!’
Long story short, when I was over there I met someone else. A lovely bloke from New Zealand. He owns his own lawn mowing business but escapes to Bali during the cooler months in NZ because apparently it’s a bit hard to mow lawns in the snow.
We met near the prison there. He was visiting one of his mates (relax, his friend works there!) and I wanted to see what the place looked like. After I’d wandered past it a few times, I decided to get a drink at a nearby bar. I was struggling to crack the lid on my Bintang (that’s a fancy Bali beer) and this kiwi bloke leaned over and said, “Here, lut me hulp you with that.”
He was able to knock the lid of with his teeth, which, I won’t lie, was a bit of a turn on, and after that, one Bintang turned into 7. Before we knew it, we were watching the sunrise on the beach and thinking about getting matching tattoos, but then he remembered that he was flying back to NZ that day and he had to get back to his hotel to pack.
So we swapped email addresses, said our goodbyes and he promised to email me the minute he was able to access free wi-fi from a McDonalds store.
Anyway, that was over a month ago and I haven’t heard from him. I tried emailing him a couple of times but they keep bouncing back. I’m starting to think that hellocammo@mowmylawn.co.nz might be a fake email address?
I haven’t told Barry about those 24 hours in Bali, because I think he would be really upset if he knew I’d watched a sunrise with another bloke. But now that I’m home and I’ve had sometime to think about things, I think I should come clean and tell Barry that I almost got a tattoo of a lawn mower on my wrist?
Maybe you could ask your blog readers what I should do? My main concern is that I’m actually allergic to grass clippings (they make me sneeze like a mofo) and Barry and I have always said if we ever got tattoos they’d be of each other, so he would probably be really confused by me wanting to ink up with a lawn mower?
That would obviously lead to all sorts of questions and I really don’t want to tell him that I spent a night listening to some random kiwi bloke talk about nothing but the All Blacks (Barry is a proud Wallabies fan and would be devastated to learn that I now know how to do The Haka!)
If you or your readers have any advice on what I should do next, I’d really like to know.
Love Charmaine x
Ok readers, it’s over to you. What do you think Charmaine should do? Come clean about the Lawnmower Man or keep things to herself?
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