‘Have you packed everything?’ I asked my sister, glancing around the kitchen to see what I’d forgotten.
‘I think so,’ she said, wandering back into the room, chewing on a nail. ‘You brought Mum’s blanket, yes? Not just the picnic one, the one for her legs?’
‘In the bag already,’ I nodded, pointing at the beach bag I’d repurposed for our afternoon out together. We’d thrown this together quite quickly, my sister and I, at the suggestion of one of Mum’s nurses – a bit of fresh air would do her good, we were told.
It would probably do us some good too, in all fairness.
‘And the food?’ my sister pressed, scrolling through a mental checklist.
‘Sandwiches and fruit in the cold bag,’ I said, leaning over the countertop to touch it, as if I needed to physically grasp it before I could consider it “packed”. ‘Cheese and biscuits in that green one on the table.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Also in the cold bag,’ I nodded, then flashed my sister with a quick grin. ‘If I’d known organising this was going to be so stressful, I would have asked for help from those support coordination experts in the Adelaide area – they strike me as a very put-together lot.’
‘I suppose you have to be,’ my sister agreed. ‘Did one of us bring Mum’s chocolates?’
‘You did,’ I nodded. ‘I believe they’re melting in your purse as we speak.’
‘Drats,’ she swore under her breath, diving at the leather straps and pulling out the foil-wrapped sweet. She quickly (and valiantly) stuffed it into the freezer, where we both knew we would completely forget about it.
‘I’d rather do this than the NDIS stuff again, at least,’ I kept musing, mostly to myself. ‘Now that was a nightmare.’
‘What are you going on about?’ my sister frowned, unimpressed by my insistence on interrupting her list-checking.
‘This picnic,’ I said, gesturing at the supplies. ‘It’s better than having to figure out how to get NDIS services.’
‘Of course it is,’ my sister rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a picnic.’
‘Still,’ I frowned.
‘Still,’ my sister conceded, shaking her head. ‘Help me carry things to the car?’