4 November 2011
I went to Ikea today. I got none of the things I particularly went to get (linen curtains, a particular type of storage box) and instead ended up with Christmas decorations and a silicone cake tin. Although it’s silicon, so it’s not really a tin, is it? Cake pan. Cake holder. Whatever, you know what I mean. I’ve just looked it up on their website (it’s the SOCKERKAKA which clearly needs to be in caps, and also said aloud with JAZZ HANDS) and apparently it’s a cake mould. And because there are two of them I’m supposed to make TWO cakes and put one on top of the other. I did not realise this. This sounds good. I will do that tomorrow. It is supposed to be 30 degrees tomorrow, to which I say: OUR TURN FOR SUMMER, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. It has been cold and dark and dark and cold here and I have been doing a LOT of sleeping. Not your ideal cake baking weather, true, but if I do it I will have a lovely sunny day and also cake. This is win-win.
I went to find another photo to add to this post and could only find the one below, which is the first photo I took with this new camera. Oh, I dropped my old camera in wet sand at the dog beach. Don’t do that, by the way; your camera won’t like it. I did try to get all the sand out with a little paintbrush but it ground its little gears at me and still refuses to turn on. I live in hope. Anyway, I got a new one (thank god little cameras are cheap these days), charged the battery, sat on the floor, turned around and took a photo of the nearest thing to me, which was my ginger cat in the dog’s bed. Apparently the flash was on. He wasn’t impressed.
I AM NOT IMPRESSED
ALSO THIS DOG BED IS COVERED IN DOG HAIR, THIS IS GOING ON MY ONLINE REVIEW
9 July 2011
Apparently I took photos once. These are from February and I just found them on my camera now. Stop judging me! It burns! Anyway, in February we paved the side courtyard. It’s fully enclosed for some reason, including mesh over the sides and top, so we call it the cat courtyard as it’s handy for locking them inside while still leaving them some outside. Previous to this paving it was completely overgrown with grass, weeds and the decapitated corpses of tiny mice. My cats are horrible and do not deserve a nice paved courtyard.
The truck arrives to bring sand. Apparently you need a lot of sand for paving. Also pavers, but we already had those. Luckily for you I am sparing all other equipment photos. Who do you think I am, pioneer woman?
HE BRINGS ME PRESENTS
YOU LEFT IT UNGUARDED
(Please ignore our ghetto cyclone mesh fencing and gravel driveway. I know the industrial look is in style, but I don’t think this is quite what they meant. Fencing quotes are on the list. It’s a long list.)
What? It’s mine now. It was unguarded. Also, apparently, delicious.
Paving complete. Sort of. Oh, so the sand goes into all those cracks? Gotcha.
Yes, we understand some sort of noisy activity is going on in our courtyard. We don’t care.
Fine. THANK YOU. Can we go back to sleep now?
28 June 2011
I drove home tonight through an incredibly thick sea fog. It was quite impressive, really. What sort of fog rolls in at 5pm? Don’t fogs usually come early in the morning or late at night? I think it must be a Portent. Of Doom, of course. I don’t think there are any other kinds of Portents. Perhaps next there will be a plague of frogs. Or boils. Or frogs with boils. Although I may not see them, due to the fog. Am I going around in circles? It’s the fog. I was lucky to make it home at all.
And here at home, shrouded in foggy gloom, there was a Little Dog. Actually he’s quite a Big Little Dog now. He weights 58kg, which makes him the Biggest Little Dog we’ve ever grown. And he’s doing it in fits and starts, like a teenage boy who suddenly grows out of all his clothes and eats all the Weetbix. Would you like to see him?
Well, he’s somewhere in there. Actually, he’s #5 in line. Did you guess him? And can you see why we still call him a Little Dog? This is at his breeders’ house, where we leave him to gallivant around the city/country/globe. In the lineup, his mother is #1 and his sister is next to him at #4. That puppy is no relation, but is Super Cute and when we came to pick up our dog, we almost took her home instead. Because: SUPER CUTE. But has a lot of attitude, as you might expect from one so little who can hold her own in that crowd.
What else? I woke up the other morning distressed about an eBay purchase gone wrong, and lay there fretting about what I was going to say in a sternly worded email and whether it was worth reversing the Paypal or just letting the money go. Then I woke up a little bit more and realised I had dreamt the whole thing. In my view, it was as bad as dreaming about work, then having to get up and go and do the work you were dreaming about (which has also happened, clearly). For the record, all of my eBay purchases are going swimmingly, thanks for asking.
The cats are fine and because it is colder than a witch’s tit here in Melbourne, they have taken to sleeping on the bed. With us. And because they are cats, they don’t know how to share. In fact I can probably blame my stressful eBay dream on them, because when I woke up from that I was distorted into a kind of pretzel shape due to cats pressed against me in uncomfortable positions. In addition, I was freezing because most of my top half was out from under the duvet; somehow when one of my cats curls up on the bed, he magically locks all of the bedding around him in place. There is no way you are dragging any part of that duvet out from under that cat; you’d just better hope you had enough before he got there. And you NEVER DO.
3 May 2011
Guess what? It’s May. MAY. I don’t know where the hell this year is going. Anyway, I’ve been in New Zealand for the past three weeks, which explains my complete lack of internet-ness. The previous weeks… well, I’ve got nothing. Disappearing! It’s what we do! Anyway, now I’m back and I have some sort of hideous throat infection which has become an horrific sinus cold thing. Why am I always getting sick lately? I remember when I was never sick. Never! I took the train by god and no germs could touch me! Now, however, I have been coughing weakly and staring with great suspicion at anything which looks like food. Which is to say, anything. This has only been compounded by the smell of my kitchen, which I have not walked into for a week. You think I am joking but I am not. We came back from holiday to find the power had gone off and tripped a fuse, which meant everything had been off. Including the fridge and freezer. For a week. A WEEK. Thank god Mr T dealt with all of that because in my sickened state I couldn’t even face it. We have three fridges and two freezers and all of them were mouldy. Currently they are filled with nothing but giant mounds of baking soda and, funnily enough, ground coffee. The coffee is really doing the trick. There’s a tip for you, should you ever need to throw out $500 worth of spoiled meat. And I sincerely hope you don’t.
Little dog is back, and is… pretty big now actually. He went to his breeder’s house and played 23 hours a day with his sister and three other dogs. He’s exhausted. Also skinny, as he walks away from his bowl (an only dog, obviously) and the other four fling themselves towards the unattended food like homing missiles. Three weeks and he never learned that if he turned his back on dinner, it was NEVER THERE when he came back. The cats, on the other hand, are fat and glossy. I have no idea what they were feeding them but they are in far better condition than when we dropped them off. Sushi? Avocado oil? I should find out, they look like a shampoo ad.
28 January 2011
WHY didn’t this post? Goddamit. I’m retrospectively dating this so that it appears on Friday. BECAUSE I CAN.
You may recall Victoria had a locust plague, which barely reached Melbourne. Here is our contribution. Mr T trapped this in a vase because “I thought you might want to see it”. I didn’t, really. But now you have to see it as well.
GIVE ME THE LOCUST I WILL EAT HIM.
1 October 2010
Oh no. She’s home. She sees us. She’s taking photos because she thinks it’s funny we’re all sitting in the window. God. PAY ATTENTION YOU GUYS. What should we do?
OMG SHE’S COMING IN. OK act cool guys, act cool. Pretend we only just got here.
What? We always sit here together. There’s nothing strange about it whatsoever. Let’s change the subject. Dog, in about ten seconds you are going to get in trouble for standing on the couch and you don’t even have the brains to realise it. DO I HAVE TO THINK OF EVERYTHING.
20 September 2010
You will be pleased to know that the washing machine, although still outside, has moved undercover. It is now next to the new back doors, which replace the laundry door plus tiny window, now both smashed out of the house with great vigour. This new laundry placement is much better and greatly reduces my risk of electrocuting myself. Now I have no more than 40% risk of death, tops. A bit higher, I guess, if the dog chomps on the cord. Yes, that dog. He is a terrible washday assistant. He can’t even FOLD.
He also likes to sleep somewhere in this vast collection of crap, which entirely fills my second lounge room. It was a big empty space and now I have filled it with the contents of the main bathroom and the laundry cupboard, including but not limited to: tools, electrical leads, gardening equipment, 20kg bag of dog food, reusable grocery bags, non-reusable grocery bags, brooms, frisbees, dustpans, mysterious cables of unknown provenance, 87 mini-shampoos stolen from hotels, dog towels, useful empty plastic containers, 3 vacuum cleaners and any semblance of housekeeping skills I once possessed.
Yes, I have seen Hoarders. [clutching] Don’t make me throw out this yoghurt container! It’s REUSABLE!
Anyway, my original point was that for the past few weeks there has been stuff everywhere, which the dog has slowly decided must belong to him. He walks off with tile grout, electrical tape, bits of plasterboard and various objects of his choice from the pile above. Usually he just takes them outside and admires them, but sometimes he does some renovations of his own.
Well, one thing you can say is that he does a thorough job. Not a quitter, this dog. You’ll be pleased to know he didn’t touch the batteries, which saved him from a vet visit. And no, this remote was not in the pile of crap; it was in the lounge, with all the other remotes, on the ottoman. The sooner I get all this stuff up off the floor, the better.
I will not be disturbed here. He doesn’t play with these toys any more. He plays with all the NEW toys.
23 August 2010
It’s fair to say that during this renovation, I have received a fair amount of help. I’m sure you remember Exhibit A as shown:
And that helpful effort is currently slap bang on the outside of the new front door, ready to greet you as you enter. It’s only the undercoat, but still, a great team effort. However once the door was up, clearly the helpering had to move on. Perhaps some helpering needed to be done under the house?
I was HELPING. OBVIOUSLY.
I don’t know what you are yelling about and I will stare airily in this direction until the yelling stops. Also my face is heavy.
And since the helpering was clearly under control below, perhaps someone could get going on the above?
AAAAH RATS I TOLD YOU THERE WOULD BE RATS
… oh, the flash. Right. Only a ceiling cat, then.
11 August 2010
Painting the new front door (inside, because it’s so cold and windy outside it will never dry).
WHY MUST YOU HELP ME?
8 August 2010
Why yes, I have been overseas again. I am turning into quite the cosmopolitan jetset traveller. Not by choice, this time, but due to my work’s conference, which was great. Sitting by the pool, day tripping around the country – what’s not to love. I had a great time, right up until the point where people started falling ill left and right around me. And then I still had a great time, because I (miraculously) did not get sick myself. Apparently the Gastro Event Of Extreme Horror I went through last year may have better equipped me to handle similar things in the future. Which is good, because MY GOD I did not want to get that sick again. So I survive, with just the faintest touch of frailty and digestive upset. Then again, the same thing pretty much happened after our USA trip, so apparently a trifling change of diet is enough to upset me. (Mmmm, trifle.) Sorry, sidetracked. Want to see some elephants?
This was amazing, clearly. Watching this many elephants together (about 40 all up) made it really obvious what a social animal they are. Lots of play-fighting, pushing, poking with trunks, and rolling around in the mud and the water together. There were three small elephants that were totally submerged for most of the time, with just their trunks poking out of the water, as they formed and re-formed a big underwater elephant knot. This is an elephant orphanage, by the way, where they’re raised and then released back into the wild. Which is pretty much the other side of the river, to be honest.
What else? Oh, I took this photo on the plane over; it’s my view between the seats in front of me. Unfortunately my sneak photo-taking skillz need some work, but the lady in front of me had been watching Lord of the Rings and then paused it to take a three-hour nap, with the screen tilted in such a way that I could see it. Sadly for me, she paused it right on a scene where Frodo is passed out and staring blankly out of the screen with those big empty eyes, and I kept catching this disturbing image out of the corner of my own eye. Disconcerting.
Anyway, after my trip I returned home to find my laundry being ripped out. Yay! I have been wanting to do this since we walked through the house when considering buying it. Our kitchen has a little laundry room tacked on the end of it, and the plan has always been to smash out the wall dividing them and make it into one larger space. Now that wall is gone, and also the cupboard that used to be the entire end of the laundry room. LOOK AT THAT WALLPAPER. Just look at it.That had been hidden by the cupboard, by the way, so I had only seem glimpses of its magnificence before this. And it turns out that before this was a laundry cupboard, it was actually a toilet (see the roof cornices dividing it off, plus the louvre windows at the end). I can only think you would do your business and get the HELL OUT as soon as possible.
Luckily for us, one of our best mates has a home handyman-type business, so he and Mr. T are destroying the house together. Well, when I say Mr. T is involved, I believe he is in charge of making the coffees and fetching the left-handed screwdrivers. Also keeping the Little Dog out of the way, since he seems to have no sense of self-preservation. He walks into the path of swinging hammers, lies down in grout, sniffs running power tools, and yet is scared of the metal tape measure. Anyway, ripping up the laundry has revealed no less than four different types of tiles/lino under the sub-floor, as well as some rotting floorboards due to water damage, which have been removed to be replaced.
Unfortunately, having holes in the floor makes me morbidly conscious of rats, and having the cats flitting around getting into everything just makes me jumpier. When a sinuous furry thing come slinking out from under cabinets, my first thought is not GET OUT OF THERE CAT but instead a visceral GAAAAAAAH GIANT RAT KICK IT KILL IT KILL IT. My cats are lucky to still be alive, is what I’m saying. I mean, I’ve never seen a giant ginger rat, but there’s a first time for everything.
We are not rats. We are LOVELY.
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phantasmagoriaReading:
Stephen King, "Everything's Eventual". I found this abandoned in a suitcase.
Listening:
The snores of the Little Dog, who sadly seems just as loud and snorty at night as the Brown Dog.
Watching:
Endless episodes of UFC, which is some sort of fighting... thing. Do not want.
Eating:
I'm having a bit of an avocado binge. The Little Dog likes them too.
Liking:
Renovations! Apart from the cost of said renovations. Let's not think about that part.
Pondering:
If there is dirty washing in the basket, the cats ignore it... but if it is CLEAN, one of them has made a nest in there within 10 minutes. Five minutes, if it's black clothes.
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