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- to ohave to listen to a drunk weeing outside near where my head was
- to be rammed by a passing car
- for someone to break in and steal the van with us in it
- for the police to bust us for sleeping in a vehicle
- for M’s niece to knock on the door and ask why we hadn’t come to say hi
- Our four year old guest from Rosebank caught her first fish and ate it
- Her mother caught one too…
- Ian didn’t catch a fish
- Jen and M share the same birthday - March 29!
- We had a divine dual birthday breakfast at Muddy Waters Cafe
- Ian and I got the feeling that our proferred birthday gifts left something to be desired
- M got four Eric C. Hiscock books and Jen received a pink milky glass art deco ceiling light shade
- I’m sure they could both sell them on ebay
- The next day I left for a meeting in Canberra
- I like motel rooms
- I flew back to Queensland on Friday. Naturally there were no trains back to Hervey Bay that night
- I paid $25 and dossed down in a 12 bed dorm at the Tinbilly Backpackers. I could write reams about it, but have no time
- The next morning (Saturday) I got on the Sunlander - a vastly superior travelling experience when compared to the clinical sardiney Tilt Train
- Got home and merged with the couch
Skink
Sunday, 23 March 2003
I’m puzzled. I don’t know whether I was helped or taken for a ride! Went to the chemist to get a prescription filled for some cortisone cream for my face. Now for those of you lucky enough to be rashless no matter how stressed you get, you may not know this, but cortisone is bad. It thins your skin, and the more you use it, the less effective it becomes…then when you stop you get v.bad withdrawral. Basically, it sucks. I know this, and I don’t care. I use 1% cream on my face (fairly weak) and that’s what I was going to buy more of. The guy at the chemist (he may have been Austrian, he had a very strong accent) had other ideas.
He didn’t even fill my prescription!! Instead he led me from product to product, told me that the top I was wearing didn’t let my skin breathe, told me to only wear cotton, instructed me to not drink, smoke or stress, to drink lots of water and eat organic. But he said all this in a nice, concerned way, so I wasn’t horrified, I was merely gobsmacked and let myself be led around the shop. I hesitate to say I was meek, but I was close. I ended up with MediHoney Cream, other stuff that smells like fresh road tar, antihistamine no-itch tablets, scary cod-liver/zinc/vitamin-cloaked-in-cherry-flavour syrup (if you haven’t experienced cod-liver-cloaked-by-cherry I have to tell you that it’s not completely successful…think cherry flavoured tuna? Yike.) Um, oh, as a special concession for really bad days he let me get .5% cortisone cream - but you can buy it straight off the shelf, so how much clout can it have?!
This all came to $35 - and as my evil prescription probably would have been about $10 less I wasn’t too unhappy. He encouraged me to come back in two weeks to see him and show him how I was going. It kind of made me feel nice, because I’m just used to going to doctors who take one look at me and throw the aforementioned prescription at me. I did go to a specialist once when the rash mutated after a three day canoe trip…he did the same thing.
The Friday Five 001
Friday, 4 April 2003
1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?
14
2. Which was your favorite and why?
My favourite? I have two. One was the house in North Caulfield because I had two little rooms of my own and everyone else had one big one. And it had a killer verandah. The other was the flat I shared in Windsor because it used to be one big old house and our flat was on the second floor.
3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?
Both. Because moving somewhere new is always exciting, but finding how much crap you’ve accumulated is stressful…so is throwing it out.
4. What’s more important, location or price?
Part of me says both. But my evil twin says location, location, location!!
5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?
A second storey, a verandah that faces north, a vegetable garden and lots of big windows with views to the sea.
Trailer Trash
Monday, 8 December 2003
Yesterday I did some serious grunt work on what will eventually be a garden.
Comfortably Numb
Wednesday, 12 May 2004
OK, I’m in Queensland, and it’s cold. The last few days have been truly beautiful, but last night I froze my butt off. So if I’m turning blue in Hervey Bay, no wonder things are getting dicey for missjenjen down in country Victoria. When I lived in South Gippsland the ice on the grass would crackle as we walked to the gate in the morning to wait for the school bus. I spent last night fixing M’s computer, the problem turned out to be a dodgy stick of RAM. When I went to bed (a considerable time after M) I had Melbourne flashbacks; my feet were so cold I couldn’t sleep. Tonight I am getting the doona out of retirement - cotton blankets only cut it so far.
On other wildly exciting topics, today I spent over $50 buying two pairs of gumboots, for a couple of reasons: one - I need to keep the person that has supplied me with half a mudcrab for the past four nights relatively happy (and computer fixing only gets me so far); two - I need to keep the person that has supplied me with half a mudcrab for the past four nights from feeling lonely while playing hunter gatherer (and I need to excercise my slowly widening butt, what better way than walking through mud hunting down my dinner?)
Tonight:
I promise this is the last crab pic for a while….
Feet
Tuesday, 13 July 2004
M is in denial about the size of his feet. Always has been as far as I’ve known him, but yesterday it reached greater proportions ;o) We went on one of our jaunts into town, having run out of sandpaper and realised, belatedly, that there must be better implements than a scourer to remove old paint from window glass. So we hit Bunnings ugh and got all that, and then headed to the supermarket. It wasn’t the one we usually go to - and I had quite a religious experience (for someone who wasn’t baptised and speaks in tongues after too much gin).
Everything I mentioned that we needed to buy miraculously turned up in the next aisle that we entered. Again and again. This was a wonderful thing, because the last few times I’ve been shopping (M has wisely stayed in the car) it has taken me 15 minutes to find the rice, and ten solid minutes to locate the tinfoil (with the intent of baking all the fish I haven’t been catching). So this beam of supermarket luck made M and I quite perky - we looked at towels, sheets, bathmats, and finally… thongs. M has had a pair of sandals that he has worn every day since February and about three weeks ago, they began to disintegrate around him. I spotted these thongs for $1.50 and suggested that we get him a pair. M looked undecided. I pulled out a pair of size 12-13’s. He looked horrified.
“I can’t wear them! No one wears thongs that big! They just look stupid.”
I sighed. “But you’ve got size 12 feet. These are your size.”
He shook his head mutely.
I tried again. “M, you are six foot two - the size of your feet is appropriate for your height. You would look ridiculous with tiny ballet feet. Hello? [waving the thongs frantically as the aisle clears around us] M? You need to face the reality of your shoe size? Hello? What about these ones? See? They’re blue.”
M looks stubborn. Reaches for a pair of green 10-11’s.
“I’ll get these ones.”
“They won’t fit you.”
“I’m not wearing those other ones. They’re just stupidly big. I don’t want to flap around in stupidly big thongs.”
“They won’t fit you.”
I mentally tap my foot. M puts the green thongs into the basket. I shake my head.
We get home, feed the cats, put the shopping away, do a bit more work on the windows, get bitten by swarms of mosquitos and call it a day.
I place the green thongs on the floor. A symbol of the hopefulness of Generation X (M makes it into Generation X by one year.)
“OK. Try them on.” I wait.
M rips off their plastic tie and wiggles his toes into the left one. It’s immediately clear that it is not going to just slip on. He wiggles his toes harder. I bite my tongue. He grabs the thong and wedges his foot between the two bits of rubber. His foot looks anguished. His heel is over the back of the thong and on the floor. I shake my head. M looks crestfallen. I take my moment (as it has, after all, been handed to me on a platter). I speak slowly and clearly.
“M. You. Have. Big. Feet. Big Feet Are Good. You must stop denying your foot size. We are going to go back to the supermarket another day and get you thongs that will actually fit you. Big Feet are Good. They are in proportion to the rest of you.”
M looks humbled. Then I can see a thought flitting across his face. I already know what it’s going to be.
“It must be because I have an unfeasibly large - ”
“Shut up.”
The Valuation
Wednesday, 14 July 2004
Midnight last night found M outside up a ladder puttying windows by the beam of a floodlight, and me inside, right arm fused to the vacumn cleaner as it sucked down every little bug from the ceiling of nine rooms. Nine rooms. Then I had to do the floor and paint all the bits that needed it - which I had never noticed until I began looking at the house in the way I thought a valuer might look. Closely. At 1am I moved on to cleaning the bathroom and M came inside. By 1.30am we both admitted that we could no longer continue and carked it, in our unusually clean bedroom. Five hours later we were up and at it again. I painted five window frames, carefully avoiding the glass (some of them don’t have have glass, which made it easier). M tidied up all the crud outside the house, by pushing it all underneath the house and then fixed bits and pieces, whippersnipped and generally was a cleaning demon. Meanwhile my right arm became fused to the mop for two hours. Finally, after we had scrambled into some clothes that didn’t scream “Everything about this house is totally DIY”, the valuers turned up.
M kept a fairly low profile, and I didn’t introduce him as then I would have had to say his name - which they then might have twigged as being the same name that was on the invoice that I’d faxed them - as the contractor who had done all the work. The valuers were an extremely nice couple - who had saved my arse a year ago when the bank threatened to kill the house deal over the small matter of my intent to pull down the carport. They wandered around the house. The woman said “I smell paint.” I shrugged bashfully, and explained that once I knew they were coming I’d run around an made some small repairs. I did not add that we’d actually been running around for twelve months. After peering at everything and discussing with me that they would have actually bought this house because it had so much potential - we walked them to the gate. They were happy. It was all fine. And if this doesn’t happen again for as long as I live, I will be happy too. I have had two cups of coffee this year - one today and one yesterday, and have become a strange mixture of flop and bursts of un-focused energy. Time for a nice lie down.
Thank god they never asked if the cooktop actually does anything other than look good - we’re still using our camp stove, but we hid it.
Flowers in the Winter
Thursday, 29 July 2004
So I found The Tulips album in my favourite record shop - Second Spin in Balaclava - the shop that I can’t leave without spending chunks of money that would otherwise be spent on things like lunch, train fares and taxis. I had actually been looking for the release they put out themselves with the screen printed cover - but am happy to have found In The Honeycone just the same. My visit to Melbourne has been rather fraught, but is improving slowly. Have now officially caught up with both parents, my sister got ‘Player of the Match’ last night in netball and my brother…well he is in London, though for how much longer I’m not sure. His sad little text messages to me indicate that his time there might be almost up. Today I have my first free lunchtime with no committments and am trying to decide between Victoria Markets or heading to the mall and dousing myself with my latest favourite perfume that I can’t justify the purchase of. Thank god for tester bottles. Work is very full on - I am working now. Right now. Pretend this never happened.
Sleeping Rough
Monday, 2 August 2004
Friday night we had a lovely dinner at D & R’s house and M and I dossed down on the floor of their study for one of the best sleeps of our journey. We took D & R out to breakfast in the morning and got driven to the airport for our efforts 
It was so nice to have someone with me on the plane!! We sat right up the front next to the door where everyone comes in, which was moderately exciting. Once we hit Brisbane we took the excellent airtrain to Brunswick Street Station and walked from there to M’s niece’s place. Our van was so delighted to see us that it started first go! It was good to be back under our own steam. We cruised Brisbane and I ooohed and ahhhed at all the gorgeous Queenslander houses [sigh] and then, after muddling our way for about an hour, we went to see i-Robot (mostly because M, in his frenzy of Melbourne culture, had seen every other film that was playing). I kind of liked the premise, and I liked the robots, but the script? Not great. The plot seemed to fall off the rails quite often.
After the film we headed back to Newfarm (getting lost numerous times and entrapped on the wrong side of the river by the evil positioning of the Storey Bridge) and found somewhere to eat. Having a few bucks spare to do this kind of thing is a novelty for us - and it was divine. However we didn’t really have enough spare cash to warrant paying for accomodation - particularly since we’d thrown a mattress and a few sleeping bags into the van before we’d left home. So at about 10:30pm, after a glass of red and a gelati, we parked out the front of M’s nieces place and tried sleeping in the van for the first time. I spent the night kind of molded around the wheel cavity and woke up at every noise, expecting;
Suffice to say, I slept sporadically. We woke just after 6am, and M stretched. Suggested we might get going, and began to get out of his sleeping bag. There was the noise of a car pulling up behind us and M hit the floor with a soft whumping sound. Out of the last seven hours we’d just spent in the van, he’d chosen the exact same minute to sit up that a car with his niece in it had pulled up behind us. Luckily, from what M could see, his niece was in no condition to notice that there was a dead woolly mammoth parked out the front of her house, let alone a slightly shabby white van. We lay low for another half an hour and then got dressed. M wanted to wee into a bottle again, so I said that would be fine with me as long as I was in the front of the van at the time. After he’d finished exclaiming over the voluminous contents of his bladder, we set off to Wynnum for breakfast.
Happy Birthday Wissteen
Thursday, 12 August 2004
It is Christine’s birthday today, and as she has failed so far this year to get her computer fixed, and isn’t an internet junkie anyway, I know she will never see this picture. However, everyone should get to look babelicious on their birthday, and as we are separated by many many miles, this is my way of saying hello…
And here is a T-Shirt design I have been working on for M.
The 2004 Ernie Awards
Friday, 20 August 2004
‘Sexist remarks, insensitive statements and ignorant opinions. Over the years, everyone from politicians to star chefs have uttered some beauties…’ more here. And the awards went to:
The Gold Ernie
Tooheys Advertising
A bunch of Wallaby supporters hold up a banner at the game which says:
Boys, if you win you can have our sisters.
The banner has arrows pointing to ‘their sisters’ in the seats beside them.
The Warney (for sport)
Bulldogs Chief Executive Malcolm Noad
Let’s believe nothing happened in Coffs Harbour.
Media Ernie
P P McGuiness
The crude abuse coming from many of the ageing feminists and their ideological children who have for years repeated the tired stuff about women having the sole rights over their own bodies, as if there were no moral or ethical issue beyond that, merely shows that they have devoted no serious thought to the issue since the 1970s.
Political Ernie
John Howard for:
1. vetoing the $20 million campaign against domestic violence because it was too ‘anti-male’;
2. arguing against a paid maternity leave scheme, saying ‘it would not increase the fertility rate or improve job security’;
3. criticising Mark Latham for not wanting to change the Anti-Discrimination Act to allow male-only scholarships for teachers; and
4. describing as ‘crazy’ the ALP’s plan to offer casual workers the option of permanent part-time work with holiday pay and sick leave entitlements saying ‘women will be the biggest losers’.
Judicial Ernie
Melbourne Barrister, Paul Reynolds, for saying to a client: just let me feel those puppies then. (he was not referring to her pets)
Industrial Ernie
Australia Post, for:
1. telling female staff at the Bondi Junction Post office that if they wanted to be at the opening of the new Post Office they should lose weight; and
2. cutting the maternity leave of a worker from 12 to six weeks when her baby was born 13 weeks premature on the basis that this was 12 weeks earlier than the date she had nominated.
The Anon (the Good Ernie for boys behaving better)
Adam Goodes, for saying his mum was his inspiration and for taking her to the Brownlow Dinner.
The Elaine (for the remark least helpful to the Sisterhood)
Jackie Kelly, Federal Member for Lindsay
No-one in my electorate goes to uni… it’s pram city.
The Clinton (for repeat offenders)
Tony Abbott
Whale Watching
Tuesday, 31 August 2004
The moon is full, it’s almost bright enough to be daylight. I am a Whale. Went to bed just before 10pm tonight - M and my Dad both retired at about 8:30pm - tired out, I expect, from a combination of sand, sun, long walks, beer, dinner, campfire drowsiness and beer. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so wiped out. Until the wind started blowing outside and woke me up - then my overeating kicked in. My father is an advocate of the ‘clean your plate’ - and tonight, yet again, I forgot I turned 31 in May, and when he said ‘finish your dinner’ I shoved it all down. I am truly tempted to go and wake him up so he can suffer with me. Ugh. This is due to the late lunch (4pm) we had on returning home (bread, olives, dukkah), followed by early campfire cooked dinner of mackerel steaks and jacket potatoes. So now I sit in a darkened house, listening to the tap of my keyboard, the wind, and small unknown creatures killing each other companionably under the cover of the night.
Absorbing News
Wednesday, 22 September 2004
On Monday I recieved an odd shaped parcel in the mail. M looked perplexed, but I felt a genetic twinge and realised that I knew what it contained. Two sponges. Not just any sponges. High class sponges. Sponges that, if they had names, would be called Barbara and Felicity. Harrumph. When my Dad came to stay a few weeks back, he whined like a baby about how useless our sponges were - and sadly, he was fairly close to the mark. We get them in bulk from Bunnings and they scour a hundred times better than they absorb - i.e. they don’t. He threatened that he was going to send us some ‘proper’ sponges in the post when he returned to civilisation…and lo….! Now we have two, high priced, fancy sponges (this is from the man who thinks that spending anything more than $10 on a bottle of wine is dire treachery) and I am waiting for them to prove their worth.
Much Higher Education
Wednesday, 22 September 2004
For quite a while I have been dabbling with the idea of attempting a Phd. With the experience of my Masters being so demoralising, I’ve been becoming keen on attempting some proper, hands on, non-correspondence study that I can get my teeth into. So when I saw an advertisement in The Australian for a Doctorate in Creative Writing at Queensland Uni, I got very inspired, and contacted them by email. Surprisingly enough, they called me today, and I was able to have a great discussion about what my proposal might be with someone who sounded vaguely interested! I am now in a frenzy, trying to come up with ideas…any suggestions are welcome (well, almost any) - generally related to the internet, writing, and/or crime fiction.
Going for the Jump
Monday, 25 October 2004
OK - here I go. I jump at 1pm. Good luck me!
My Decline
Sunday, 31 October 2004
M got sick of me swooning over jars of homemade Passionfruit Butter at the market and bought me one. I am limp from fighting my urge to consume half the jar in one sitting. Help! We also bought some shortbread, which M is currently working his way through, so far he’s eaten four slabs, and I’m probably going to have to hide the rest so I get to eat mine at leisure. Tomorrow morning I am going shopping with M’s mother, who says that she has to buy me something and wants to get me something I’ll like. I’m erring in the direction of new shorts, as all of mine have been sacrificed to the goddess of paint.
Natter
Thursday, 4 November 2004
It’s getting hotter. I’ve been at my desk with a mosquito coil burning near my feet in an effort to stop being chomped alive by sandflies and the like. I have to duck every 15 minutes or so when mud - dauber wasps fly in the window looking for somewhere to set up house. If this is still Spring, I am dreading what Summer is going to bring. I already have to wake up and have a cold shower each morning to be able to function. The other thing is, our water tank is getting low - what with trying to keep the garden looking peachy and convincing the grass seed to do its thing, I have again started showering with trepidation.
My Nanowrimo is not going too badly - I am a little behind on my average of 1800 words a day, and am currently sitting on 4786 words. Tonights goal is to hit 7200. Yike. I shall persevere.
Drip Drip Drip Drip Drip
Monday, 8 November 2004
Oh how I pine for the days of yore when I used be able to utilise both nostrils at once. I have just dosed myself on chicken soup which has pushed up my body temperature to melty-hot. I spent most of the day yesterday flaked out on the couch. Then got too bitten by mozzies and headed for bed and the sanctuary of that wonderful invention - the mosquito net. I was so sick of feeling like a rotten old fluey lump that today I painted the ceiling in the kitchen, back room and bathroom. And collapsed. Thank god an ice cream van came past. I almost felt like I was in civilisation. Obviously after my efforts and my subsequent collapse I didn’t look like it, because they guy almost threw the ice-cream at me - I think I must have looked like I had long passed the end of my tether.
In an effort to annoy…
Wednesday, 1 December 2004
Lisa has been sending me increasingly annoying emails all week, peaking with her dissection of everything that is wrong with my ‘for sale’ website. She successfully achieved Nanowrimo legendary status - and I think the annoying emails were testament to the stress of the days before deadline. Anyway, one of the things she sent has just made me shriek with frustration.
Do this: …while sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off of the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there is nothing you can do about it.
I just went and made M try it. Just watching him try to rotate his foot clockwise brought me to near hysteria. Every time he went to draw a six, his foot would stop swivelling, but he refused to admit it. He said, “I did it. I did it!”
He so didn’t.
Happy Christmas
Saturday, 25 December 2004
Been for a swim - it’s humid, but not sunny. We’re a bit down in the mouth, but are setting off stoutly to M’s sister’s place for lunch. [miaow] would like to throw virtual kisses to everyone, but particularly kartar.net, catboy, and the lovely and surprising Lorraine - all of whom donated to help keep [miaow] afloat in these times of debt-laden mank. I’ll have a drink for each of you today.
Best Wishes!
love
B
R.I.P & Home Alone
Wednesday, 5 January 2005
Yesterday was our first day back home after our New Years jaunt. At about 1pm M and I borrowed some money from his mother and booked him a return flight in a flurry of websites. M’s brother passed away (passed away or died? both I suppose…) on Christmas night and the funeral is today. It was not unexpected, but that doesn’t make it any better. M drove back to Brisbane last night and is flying to Newcastle as I type. It is an odd situation, as M’s brother was about a million years older than him and he barely knew him at all. But it is good that he is going. Naturally I have to relate this to myself (it’s all about me, me, me, me) and say that last night was the first night I have ever spent here on my own - it was tres hard to get to sleep. Cat fights, bumps in the night…my fight with a poodle sized cockroach. If I suddenly became single, I learnt one thing last night - I would become instantly fatter. I still cooked for two - decided I couldn’t be bothered putting the leftovers in the fridge, and ate them instead. Roly poly.
Ack
Friday, 14 January 2005
Am incoherent. Beginning to click at the wrong time and lose my ability to spell. Have been geeking out for more hours than I care to admit, fixing up this site. There are still things that are broken, but I will have to attend to them at another time. Job application is in. Thank god. Sleep now.
It’s all awry…
Sunday, 16 January 2005
This is a test.
And Another…
Friday, 21 January 2005
This is still a test. As I am tweaking away in the background, after a less than subtle hint from Kartar that I should maybe just chuck this whole look in and try something else. So now I need to test some different styles.
Frog is in the kitchen, having bathed in a bowl of water, and is now climbing the wine rack. The biggest huntsman spider that has ever been seen has six legs and is on the opposite wall to where I’m sitting. M is over on the couch spouting excerpts from Trout Fishing in America, by Richard Brautigan. I’m typing, tweaking and sipping a lime fizz (Bickfords Lime Juice Cordial mixed with lemonade).
Yup. Now an image.
And so on…
Moo…I am a cow*
Friday, 4 February 2005
Poor M is still wretchedly under the weather. He was taken to the doctor today - I gave him lots of hope by chirping “antibiotics will fix it, antibiotics will fix it”…
Apparently the doctor said antibiotics would fix it, if it wasn’t a virus that can be fixed by nothing but time. D’oh. It’s bloody hot. M has carked it in front of the fan. I am being a good cat owner, and took both cats into the vet this morning for a checkup (their first since we moved here).
The vet, strangely enough, used ‘doctor-speak’. He actually discussed the cats using the royal ‘we’. Is that third person removed? Who knows… So he looked down at Mow, who was trying to render himself and his accompanying fur, invisible on the examination bench, and said;
“We don’t want to be here, do we?”
I looked around for this friend of his he was referring to, but found no one.
“OK then,” he said, grabbing Mow by the scruff of the neck, “now we won’t mind this too much.”
And in a rapid blur of vetinary karate, he squeezed, peered, innoculated, worm tableted, and shoved Mow back at me, smiling engagingly.
Saffy, on the other hand, came out of the carry box and ponced, purring provocatively, around the examination bench. He rubbed his head against the vet, then came over to me and allowed me some affection as well. It was almost embarrassing.
“We don’t mind it here at all!” crooned the vet, performing more cat karate, “We have a very nice personality, don’t we…”
Thankfully, the royal ‘we’ was good for something. It reminded me of wee. Which reminded me of my worry about how much water Saf has taken to drinking, and how I suspect kidney problems. So I relayed this to the vet, who had a go at putting a needle through Saffy in some magical manner that would draw some urine from his bladder, but despite the fact I’d watched Saf chugging back the fluids just before stuffing him in the cat carrier, there was not enough there for the vet to nab. So I had to leave Saf there for the day, in order for him to build up enough wee to be stolen from him for testing.
I was a bit apprehensive about going to pick him up, but apparently the tests are neither positive or negative, they’re borderline.
“So just keep a good eye on him,” instructed the vet.
“And if we noticably lose some weight [I looked down at my thighs, and quickly glanced away] or seem to be going off our food, then bring him back in for some blood tests.”
Even though he’d told me this morning that blood tests aren’t much good for kidney problems, as they only indicate something is wrong if it’s really wrong, I nodded dutifully.
*The cow reference is because of my recycling rant, about which I am feeling a little bit guilty…now that M is still ill. Bugger.
Storage
Friday, 11 February 2005
The day was grey and the humidity low, so I took that as my cue to finally go and sort out all our manky stuff in storage that we haven’t looked at for 18 months. Actually it’s not all mank - the majority of stuff is books and cds [sigh]. I needed room in the storage space to put all our more recently accumulated crap - all the stuff we hide in the van when someone comes to look at the house. So I left M sleeping, and set off stoutly to tackle it on my own.
The mank factor escalated when I discovered the decayed corpse of cane toad in amongst all the boxes. Ugh. I got it onto some cardboard and carried it precariously across the carpark to the bin. I went through every box that was open and did something that doesn’t come naturally to me; I culled. And then culled some more. And then took it all to the tip - a very cleansing process. Then I stuffed even more boxes etc. into the storage compartment - though it now looks much neater. This is possibly the most boring post I have ever written.
Home again, again.
Wednesday, 23 March 2005
I made it home, again. Very happy to see M, and the amazing job he’s done on our acre. People should be champing at the bit to buy it. Grrr. I departed Melbourne in a cloud of IT angst, having put in a request for ftp access to my files on March 15 and getting no action until half an hour before leaving the office for god knows how long on the 21st. This is the first time I have really loathed supposed ‘help desk’ people. Because I worked as one for a while, I thought I had increased tolerance - not anymore. They sent me in circles, which culminated in all of them calling or coming into the office to tell me that no, you can’t have ftp access to your groups files - use netstorage…
but netstorage sucks, and it’s beyond sluggish, and I hate it…
Anyway - they shared my required folders to netstorage, and thus, after having a bit of a poke around an hour or so ago, I realised that they have unintentionally given me FTP access, which is what I wanted all along. Suckers.
My last night in town was a blast. It was the launch of the Four Minute Wonder videos, all the bands and film makers got to go along and drink free beer and eat nibblies. It was the first time that Bidston Moss have all hooked up together for about a year. The shame. I made a valiant attempt to take it easy on the free Coopers as I had to get up at 5.45am to get to the airport. We met and thanked the excellent Adam (and his friend…Adam) for their killer clip, and gave them some cds. They actually were very much our kind of people, so hopefully we can hook up again somehow over artwork or whatever. I am very keen to start playing again - also in the little ’side project’ that Chris and I do - 10Speed. Am debating on finding another guitarist/bassist to make us a three piece. Hmmmm.
A Recap
Wednesday, 6 April 2005
I have waaaay too much to write about - so I am going to cover the past two weeks in point form in an effort to clear my mental state and move on…
AMENDMENT: Ian says he caught a fish. But he didn’t write the theme tune, or sing the theme tune, so I don’t believe him.
Birthday Recommendations
Monday, 2 May 2005
A long morning shower, followed by energetic naked dancing to Miriam Makeba singing Pata Pata from the excellent cd The Very Best of World Divas that I gave my mum for her birthday a couple of years ago. Woo! Now going out to breakfast… no work for me today, though I am going into the office to pick up some birthday cards that were sent there, as I am of no fixed address.
Exhaustable
Tuesday, 17 May 2005
Miaow has been down (not put down, just down), due to the delightful habit of my chosen domain registry deciding to ignore changes that I made a few weeks back. Hate them. Also have had a blast of a weekend, with M arriving on Thursday night - we did dinner, the big party for Ellise and I on Friday night, an even bigger wedding on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday, and a visit to Boat and dinner with friends (also on Sunday). Then I had to go with M to Spencer Street Station and put him on a bus to Avalon while sobbing miserably. Throughout all of this, my landlords have been sequestered away in North East Victoria and are only due back today - so I had a few hours after work last night to tidy up the wreckage of my bedroom and cook my first dinner. Then… I went to my first band practice in over a year! There were some stumbles, but I was surprised at how good some of the songs were - they were smoking.
Dead-Eyed
Tuesday, 7 June 2005
At conference. Need help. Beyond boring. B.O.R.I.N.G
Why do all computer nuffies have such bad refresh settings on their monitors?
Small Brother Intact
Thursday, 7 July 2005
In case anyone is interested, my Small Brother, who I was just speaking to last night in response to his text message which read:
“God damnit! Turn your god damn phone on! There is phone coverage in Victoria!” (referring to my dodgy phone reception for the past week and a half) is fine, and was not on the Tube or in a bus at the time of the bombs. Luckily for him, because if that had been the last text message I’d received from him, it would have had to be his epitaph. But I did feel very sick for a while, as text messages tumbled through to my phone, asking if I’d heard from him, and if he was OK. I’ve been living in a vortex, hadn’t turned on the television tonight, so I didn’t know what the hell was going on. For all I knew, he’d be beaten up by rabidly jealous Franz Ferdinand groupies…
I’m glad he wasn’t.
Try again…
Thursday, 21 July 2005
Relationship now repaired. Mutal apologies swapped. Lucky mobile phones were invented, otherwise it would have been a long walk home. My scary secret interview kind of went ok - but don’t want to jinx anything by blogging it. Am going back to the gym 12 hours after leaving it, and trying again. Guess who’s going to be in bed early tonight?
Dbye Code Dis Impoovig
Thursday, 11 August 2005
My cold is on the mend. I no longer feel like I was repeatedly run over by a semi-trailer. This is a good thing, as my new job is proving pretty hard going. How I hates the curve of the learning. Now that I feel more human, I am going to have to return to gym [groan]. Last night was spent at Essendon Keilor College’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar, choreographed by my very own housemate. It was an awesome show - the first that I’ve seen there where they have used a live band, which made all the difference. Tonight, the 10Speed practice was called off due to bad weather and Christine’s lack of drums [eyeroll] when, oh when will she get her hi-hat and snare? Instead, I spoiled M and made him a recipe I’ve been wanting to try for ages. It wasn’t that great, but I followed it up with rhubarb and yoghurt - which was.
Feeding the bookshelf
Friday, 26 August 2005
M is a delightful creature fairly often - he’s been working on building some bookshelves this week. This is the first one completed. He took great delight in arranging all his boat books. Mine might be ready tomorrow, and all my books that have been in boxes for two years will be set free (or some of them, anyway).
Scoresville - I got some loot!
Tuesday, 27 December 2005
Dry by Augusten Burrows
Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim by David Sedaris
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Theives Picnic by Leslie Charteris (!woo!)
Jamie’s Italy - a cookbook (shared with M from our lovely housemates)
512MB Sandisk SD card (my T3 is brought back into action!)
A very beautiful frog vase
Two equally classy drinking chocolate bowls
Chocolate x 4
A cat bag
An open ticket to the MTC (yay, culture!)
An excellent pair of shorts and a top
A Penguin bookbag
Foot scrubby Body Shop stuff
Sequiny thongs (that didn’t fit - I think that’s a good thing)
UPDATE! - have been told off by my mother, who naturally decided to look at [miaow] for about the third time ever on the exact occasion when I was stupid enough to list all my presents online, knowing, even as I did so, that I would forget something important…
The PICNIC TABLE - perfect for holidays in the van, and has in fact already been used for our house dinner the other night overlooking the beach.
Not Dead, Just Procrastinating
Sunday, 22 January 2006
I am not missing, presumed drowned, later to be spotted on the streets of Rio with a new nose. I have been back for a week, but the shock of returning to work two days after we got back from The Oddessey was too much for my psyche to handle, and it melted. I rendered unable to type. I now continue to melt - as it’s a lovely 41 degrees (that’s 105.8 Fahrenheit, btw). Horrible. M is at the kitchen table concentrating on Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and I am trying to see if shallow breathing and ice water will help my melt.
I am trying to stay away from realestate.com.au and am being fairly successful. We have been given a date to get out of this house we’re in - we must remove ourselves by the first weekend in March. Gulp.
Today is Towel Day
Sunday, 25 June 2006
Baking
Monday, 26 June 2006
I made these biscuits/cookies the other day. (I am also now very glad I was wearing clothes while taking this photo as I can now see myself reflected in the kettle - isn’t there a name for that kind of porn? i.e. where naked men are reflected in toasters for sale on EBay…?) After I’d bought all the ingredients (I didn’t use the one cup of peanuts) I began them on a wing and a prayer because our oven doesn’t have a readable temperature setting and I also realised that the only measuring cup I had was a 1/4 cup measure. They turned out fine. In the name of the budget I am going to try and bake something at least once a week. [looks hopeful]
Peanut Butter/Chocolate Chip Cookies - a Fannie Farmer Cookbook recipe
1/2 cup peanut butter
8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
1 cup peanuts
1 cup chocolate chipsCream together the peanut butter and butter, beat in the two sugars and then stir in the remaining ingredients in order. Arrange by teaspoonfuls on baking sheets. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Stick half of them in the freezer to hide them from your boyfriend
First book haul of the year!
Saturday, 6 January 2007
On the final day of our surfing safari we went to a book fair in Drysdale on our way to Queenscliff. I scored.
Breakfasting Valentine
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
This morning, M and I rather blearily roused ourselves from the spare bedroom where we slept last night, our insides still marinating in too much red wine, coffee and Bailey’s. Yike! We were, however, determined to get ourselves a Valentiney breakfast before having to go our separate ways for another 24 hours.
Some advice? Don’t drive from Oakleigh South to Hampton down North Road at 8.30am. It promotes frustration and impatience, which can only be tempered [sorry] by calming Valentiney thoughts of breakfast.
We were thwarted in a few ways, but I was stout of heart, as my horoscope had said that pretty much, Valentines Day would be a write off and plans would go awry. Urchin Bar was shut, and after a few more attempts, we ended up at Brown Cow, where they sometimes get it right.
The eggs were great. M’s first coffee was lukewarm. My chai latte was too overly sweet to finish. M’s second coffee was perfecto. The hash brown I ordered for THREE DOLLARS EXTRA was just one of those MacDonalds looking pre-frozen jobbies - perfect for my sore head, but nil on the scale of innovation. M and I bitched happily to each other and dreampt about holidays, long boats and outdoor showers.
M resisted the second hand bookshop over the road (the esteemed Bound Words and I did not go into the shoe shop opposite which was having a 50% off sale. We are trying to be frugal. And I didn’t even sneak back later when M had gone….
I’m typing this in the Humber, sitting outside a Thai place where I’ve ordered some takeaway. I’m not sure why, over the past four years, I always seem to end up scavenging for food on my own while I’m away for work. Sometimes it gets old.
Happy Valentines M - I miss you!
Churchill Island Working Horses Festival
Sunday, 8 April 2007
After the departure of our latest trailer guests, who came to chill out, and then complained of being ’slightly bored’, we took off this afternoon to the Churchill Island Working Horse Festival. The weather was completely sublime. The traffic was less so. But once I got over having to pay $16 each to get in, I began to recover. Churchill Island is surprisingly unspoilt, with a few historic cottages on it.
We thought that it would be a great place to sail to - we’ve sailed past, but have never pulled up and gone exploring. M bowled up to the Friends of Churchill Island information tent, and asked where would be best to pull in on a trailer sailer. They thought we’d asked could we pull in on a boat. The woman to whom M addressed his enquiry barely had time to compose her face into doubtful lines before another woman, reminiscent of an alpaca blared “No. NO. Oh no. I don’t think so.”
M and I stood and examined them all for signs of human life, found none, and walked away as they all laughed amongst themselves. So although they’re happy to put together the festival and hoick $16 out of each of the 4000 or so people visiting over Easter weekend, when it comes to answering questions, it’s all a little bit too hard. With friends like that, Churchill Island should hope for the best.
The food at the festival was less than inspiring. A highlight was a stall for my favourite brewery - flogging it off at $6 a stubby. The horses were amazing and huge! The donkeys were docile and large of ear. James Reyne and his special guest, Mark Seymour were actually great. But the BEST bit? The VINTAGE CARAVAN display!!!
There were teardrop vans, and other cool ones as well - no Sunliners like mine, which was a shame. It was fantastic to be able to go inside them and see how they had been restored. Some of them had photo albums of the restoration process, which was comforting. I had only ever seen proper vintage vans online over at vintagecaravans.com - a lot of them were all tricked out with the 1940s and 1950s cookware and ornaments.
We had dabbled with the idea of going around to the music festival at the Quarantine Station near Portsea, but the thought of doing the eight hour or so sail only six days after we’d done it last was just too tiring to consider. A grand day out was had regardless. I want a donkey.
I hab da code
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Poor [miaow] - neglecded, alode - sord ob like dbe. By nodse id sduffed wid sdnot. Sdtupid windter weadther. Cadn’t breadthe broperdly. Sick od itd all. Sdneezy. Sdniffly. Ad Budns the rabbid sgratched dby handd dwen I dried do made hib go id dhis hudtch. Gahd.
A photo finish
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Yesterday evening, just on sunset, after a rainy bastard of a day.
News of Trailer homicide shocks Australia.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Last month I gave L a fridge magnet with a 1950s man and wife on it. The man was looking into an open refrigerator with obvious puzzlement, and the caption read something like; Another case of male refrigerator blindness. It’s my assertion that this blindness is not confined to the fridge. I feel comfortable that I am not alone in suggesting this.
M exists in such a vortex of domestic organisational despair that occasionally I can take no more. I buy him multitudinous amounts of clothes from op-shops to wear while working on the boat. He wears them once and then divests them as they are itchy and need washing. Overalls? Far too practical. Why wear them when one can have so much more fun whinging and itching? Last night he came home with a head full of fibreglass dust. I gently suggested headgear.
He whimpers that he has no socks. I buy him bulk amounts of cheap socks, which are deemed floppy, and then get him several pairs of Explorer socks in apology. In my family Explorer socks have always been held in high esteem. I think I can honestly type that both my parents probably own Explorer socks that they have had for, oooh, ten years? Seriously. They are hard wearing socks. But, as with most things (such as lifetime guarantees) M takes this as a personal challenge. He didn’t want to stomp around on the boat in shoes, but did he buy booties or soft slippers? No, he just wore the socks. They are now indiscernible clumps hardened by epoxy resin and a myriad of indefinable shed mank. All. Of. Them.
This morning M had to go to the dentist for the final bit of his root canal. I heard him begin the search through his cupboard for something non-boat to wear. Three weeks ago I did something that I had never done before and rearranged his cupboard into some semblance of order - purely so I didn’t have to cope with his ongoing angst of not being able to find anything in something that made a rubbish tip look like a well-designed flow chart. I heard the search begin and squashed myself further down in bed.
It was no use.
“Have you seen my Show Me The Monkey t-shirt?”
“Yes. I washed it.”
“It’s gone. So is my red one. Maybe I left them in New South Wales.”
Maybe I should have left you in NSW, I thought, uncharitably.
“No,” I said, “I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere.”
An exasperated sigh, as the t-shirt had not appeared as if by magic. In tones of finality. “No. It’s gone. What am I going to wear? Where are my t-shirts?”
I did one of those deep cleansing breaths that I read about in birthing books. “If you want to go and have some breakfast, I will find the Show Me The Monkey t-shirt.”
This was deemed far too patronising and I got glared at. I tried a different tack. “Look in the bucket of clean clothes, there’s a blue t-shirt in there.”
He wore the blue t-shirt. After more general unhappiness, he had breakfast and finally left, while I lay there hoping that the dentist would slip and accidentally prod the part of his brain that makes him so very unbearable. I lay there for a bit longer in case he came back. When the coast was clear, I got my camera and went to his cupboard. I touched nothing before taking this picture.
After this I went a little bit insane. I went and hauled out M’s dirty clothes basket that he had, for god knows what reason, put in the carport. I tipped it out. There were about five pairs of trousers, four shirts, five t-shirts, four jumpers, about a billion of things that had once been socks, and a couple of pairs of undies. I tipped them on to the porch and spent several long minutes stamping furiously and screaming at the sky.
I fed as many things as I could into the washing machine, which sighed as I closed its door. Then the phone rang. It was M. I told him to be very very careful what he said to me. I asked, with legitimate interest, if the denist had hurt him. I told him to be very very careful when driving home, as I wanted to be the orchestrator of his demise and didn’t want him taken out by some runaway truck. And now? I wait.
Hello Dawn!
Friday, 18 January 2008
The sky this morning was bright orange. Dawn is someone I’m seeing more of…
Footless
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
We have hd to savage a few onesies which fit Z everywhere (even over the cloth nappies) except her FEET! And so M’s genepool again makes itself known. Is this kid related to me at all?
