Friday.
The box was on the doorstep when I got home. Monday's order, brown and square, a little soft at one corner from the morning drizzle.
Carried it in with both arms. This time I knew exactly where it was going.
Dinner first, though. Always dinner first. Steamed salmon with ginger and spring onion, broccoli tossed in garlic, a small pot of pumpkin and corn soup. Something proper for a girl with Economics next week.
Told her the notes could wait in her room. For twenty minutes, at the table, with a bowl and chopsticks and nothing else.
She sighed. Then she did it. Ate slowly, had a second helping of the salmon, and told me about a girl at school who'd brought a whole thermos of instant noodles to a study session. It was the most she'd said at dinner all week.
Dishes done by half past seven. Lamp on under her door. And then, for the first time all week, nothing was needed from me.
Hallway floor, socks, scissors. Counted out seven bottles of Probio PCC into two paper bags from the shop drawer. Five for Penny. Two for Carol.
Then, one in each bag, a tube of AP 24 toothpaste and a Scion roll-on, tucked down the side. Small presents. Neither of them will let me give away a bottle, but a toothpaste is harder to argue with.
Bags by the front door, keys on top. Three spare bottles back on the cupboard shelf.
That was the useful part of the evening. After that, the laptop, the kitchen table, and no reason at all.
Wandered through the Nuveska pages the way you flip through a magazine in a waiting room. Not looking for anything. The jacarandas along Epping Road have started to turn, which in Sydney means summer is about a month away, and on Wednesday I'd stood in front of the wardrobe with last year's linen trousers in my hands and not put them on.
So. Maybe it was time for a little project. A few kilos before the heat. Nothing dramatic.
Which is how I ended up reading about the ageLOC TRMe 30 Day Essentials Kit, properly, to the bottom of the page.
Four products, laid out as one thirty-day plan. SmartWin, three capsules twice a day with a meal. MyEdge, a stickpack stirred into water just before eating. MyTriumph, one capsule with a meal. Slim-S, two capsules with a meal. There's also a dearer version with a vanilla protein powder, which the page says is not meant to replace a meal.
Five hundred and eighteen dollars for the first. Six hundred and ninety-seven for the second.
Not nothing. Not a number to click past on a Friday night.
The page doesn't promise a thing, I noticed. Just directions and a line near the bottom about a balanced diet and asking your doctor if you're unsure. Read it twice. Wasn't sure whether I was relieved or a little disappointed.
Then I counted. Nine capsules a day, and a stickpack.
Every one of them with a meal.
That was the other thing that stopped me, after the price. The whole plan is built around meals — and most of the meals in this house are for other people. My daughter's dinner. A rice box eaten standing up at ten past three.
Pictured a second little white dish on the bench. Mum's has her morning pills in it, lined up by the kettle. Mine would have nine.
Funny. For months I'd been the one building everyone else's routines. Hadn't once asked what mine would look like.
No cart. Not yet. Five hundred dollars deserves a night's sleep and a second opinion.
Tomorrow, then. A WeChat to Ninuo. Does it really work, or is it just a well-written page? And the powder — does it come in anything besides vanilla?
Left the tab open. Closed the lid halfway.
Wondered what she'd say. Wondered which answer I was hoping for.