2 February 2010
I don’t know where the puppy is. I mean, there’s no noise or anything, which means he doesn’t have a cat bailed up somewhere; so unless he’s flooding the kitchen or chewing the weatherboards off the side of the house or something, I guess we’re good. Let’s work under that assumption, shall we?
I am a complete angel and have no idea what you might mean.
I have played around with the theme here again so apologies if the feed has gone awry and re-published hundreds of posts. I don’t think it has, but again, I’ll work under the assumption it may have. I finally got the phantasmagoria category in order, which involved creating them all as posts. Because this website was Kickin’ It Old Skool for so long, with its quaint html heritage, there are all sorts of little hanging chads like that.
Cleaning, eh? I understand.
I mean, there’s always so MUCH to do.
That puppy is really stirring up the dust around here.
9 December 2009
Yes, I know there was a thing when people blogged every day for the whole month of November. But a few of us chose the path less travelled… to NOT post for the entire month of November! Ah, the rackings of my brains as I chose what not to post… it was epic, really. No, thank YOU.
Also: I have been sick. Quite sick. I blame Geelong, as I went down there for the day and on the way back I thought, self, throat feels sore. As in the muscles of my actual throat felt sore; not like I had a tickly throat. I got home, ate some dinner, and thought I might just drop my head onto the couch arm for a minute. Hours later, Mr. T was waking me; and I went to bed, and there I stayed for the next 18 hours. Then I got up for a few hours, then back to bed for another 18. This is pretty much the opposite of how I usually live, and it is REALLY BORING. Anyway, to top this off I lost my voice on Friday night for the entire weekend. I had sort of recovered it by Monday, so I went to work and everyone found me most amusing; then my boss turned up and ordered me home. I went, because thinking had given me a headache. Bit depressing really. I am sort of all right now, but still not 100%. Who gets a sore throat and goes down like a sack of shit for a week? Me, apparently. And I guess a special sort of languishing Victorian heroine. Although I’m guessing they’d be less likely to describe themselves as sacks of shit. That reminds me; I tried to watch some movies in the past 2 days I was sick but couldn’t connect up our ludicrously complicated home theatre so it would show movies in colour (they all came out black and white); however I did find the new BBC Emma on youtube and watched my way through a few episodes of that instead. Romola has the buggiest eyes. I say this as someone who also has buggy eyes; constantly when I watch her I am horrified that my bugginess may rival hers. Say it isn’t so.
New Cat update: He LOVES the other cat and disdains us for his company. He also still does that annoying new cat thing when he flinches away from being patted and freaks OUT for no reason whatsoever, fleeing the room madly in a panic that he might be touched. However this is less frequent now and he actively comes to be patted now, especially when you are in bed asleep and not actively wanting, perhaps, to pat a cat. He will never be as affectionate as Orange Cat, who is aggressively loving and in fact annoyingly so; this is a Good Thing, as I don’t think we could cope with another such cat.
We has a moth.
8 November 2009
Well, you know. Clearly I am now consumed by wifely duties and cannot be on the computer all that much; duties like, uh, cleaning maybe? Playing the piano charmingly for our guests? Procreating? Well, since none of these things are happening (DUST BALL FIGHT in the hallway, get your tickets now!) clearly it must be the Laziness. Yes. Also add now the Heat, which always takes me by surprise. I sort of still expect NZ-style seasons, where there is an actual spring, and it’s rainy and then gradually gets warmer and sunnier; Melbourne goes straight from Winter Brrrr to full on It’s 29 Degrees and Blazingly Hot, sometimes in the same week. So today it’s 29 degrees and blazingly hot, and I am left bemusedly pushing aside the pile of trackpants and fleece to get to the shorts. It’s like a clothing exploration.
We have been adding to the family, of course, since we are now married. For this I completely blame livebird, who has the tantalising link to the Save A Dog website on her sidebar. So yes, see the new recruit below:
He is about 9 months old and settling in nicely. We got him because a) AWWWW! and also b) we thought the Orange Cat would like some animal company back in his life. Well, company that does not involve being chased into a corner by a large loving dog and then licked repeatedly. So we bought this new cat home, and after several days introduced the cats to each other in person (they had previously looked at each other through the glass sliding door and been calm and interested). The Orange Cat, my sociable cat, promptly hissed, threw his ears back and chased the new cat the length of the house. NOT an auspicious start. However, now they are out in the courtyard together in the Blazing Heat, and I caught the Orange Cat licking the New Cat’s head last night. So all is well. And the dog, who is now a master of meeting new cats, is getting there; the new cat is not scared of him, and the dog is controlling his impulse to pick up the new cat by the scruff and bring him back to his dogbed and mother him intently. (My dog is a wuss.) He is not the Grey Cat, who was quirky and funny and headstrong; but he is his own cat and we are glad to have him.
NO HITTING!
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Butter would not melt in my mouth.
New Cat’s markings. Also his name.
25 September 2009
I… need to get those photos to move further down the page, seriously. Also I just updated WordPress and crossed my fingers and my eyes and tried to save off everything I might need to rebuild; it looks OK to me from here but if something looks screwy, please be sure to tell me and I will… well, I’ll be sad about it. I don’t think there’s all that much I can DO about it, but rest assured I will wish that I could.
My main problem with the dress you see below is not, in fact, the starfish (or the brittlefish if I’m being correct, I guess); it’s the way the ruching has been tacked down. On your four-figure wedding dresses, this stitching is done underneath the folds so it can’t be seen, and it looks as if a large amount of material has just naturally draped itself around you in the manner of a Greek oracle. I can, technically, remove this and restitch it, but a) I shouldn’t have to, and b) I don’t know if the satin material will hold the sewing marks & puckering, as I suspect it would (although I haven’t tried it and I haven’t asked a dressmaker). Nobody else has picked up on this stitching but me, but I find it GLARINGLY AWFUL and so it’s better I don’t have to defensively cross my arms all day, or request a horizontal bouquet I can hug against myself. Anyway, it’s v. nice apart from that so I don’t see a problem in selling it. Any takers? Beach Barbie, perhaps?
Car update: MY CAR IS BACK YAYYYYY. That’s eleven weeks. I am a SAINT. I drove it home on Friday afternoon, Mr. T washed it and on Saturday morning we drove it to trade it in. New car will be mine next Wednesday; with the slight problem that the registration on my car expires on Saturday, leaving me three days in which I must… catch the train. How I’ve missed my fellow train commuters. How happy I shall be to see them all again. How flat and lifeless I sound. Anyway, I have really liked my car (paid off! No trouble! Fill with diesel once a month!) but clearly I have moved into the expensive Old Age Upkeep part of its life and I am harshly fobbing its problems onto someone else. Good luck, little car! May your transfer case never (again) fail!
Cat update: He went to the vet for his vaccinations (well, we took him, he didn’t go on his OWN) and came away with a diagnosis of ear mites. The vet looked dubious when we told him large flakes of grossness were flying out of his ears when he shook his head (the cat’s head, not the vet’s), yet obediently looked down his ears only to find MITE CITY, or perhaps METROPOLIS. So we have a tiny bottle of yellow oily stuff which must be squirted into the cat’s ears and then you rub firmly under the ear to squidge it all in; it sounds revolting, and it can’t be any better hearing it from the inside, as the cat is doing. Anyway, it’s called canaural compositum, leading to us waving the little bottle over our head like a wand and intoning “CANAURAL COMPOSITUM!” towards the cat, in manner of Harry Potter. For the record, the yellow oil does not fire out of the bottle and directly into the cat’s ears; we still have to hold him down and drip it in there. This would explain our lack of back-to-school letters from Hogwart’s, I guess.
16 September 2009
You know it’s a bad sign when you have to read your own blog to figure out what you’re up to. Answer: you’re totally up to date. Nothing more has happened. OK, maybe a little bit has happened. Shall we do bullet points? Answer: Yes.
Mr T has bought some bathroom scales, which is an item we have never owned. He set them up and levelled all the complicated electrickery parts (of COURSE they’re the complicated kind of scales) and then weighed himself. I then weighed myself out of interest and was horrified. HORRIFIED. Now, I haven’t weighed myself for a good couple of years but I am quietly confident that my weight doesn’t change much. I like to think I weigh X, I actually weigh X + 3kg, and yet these scales were telling me that I weighed X + 8kg. The scales are WRONG. Clearly. Can’t be right. Can’t. I shifted my weight to see if that would help, and nearly tipped the cat off my shoulders where he was… ah. Right. That’s five extra kilos of STUPIDITY, right there. Ahem. After releasing the cat (who was quite enjoying himself) it turns out I weigh X + 3kg. As I thought. Actually, these scales can also tell you your fat percentage, a no doubt horrifying number that I have NO WISH to know.
Wedding update: OK, I was lying about the bullet points. It’s paragraphs, all the way!
Days To Go: Actually, I don’t know. Calendar? 23 days. OK then. That seems… close.
People Freaking Out: One, my mum. Maybe more. Although she now has something to wear, which is good.
Bridesmaids with Clothes: One, or 100%. This is good, because I forgot my sister can’t make a decision to save her life, and therefore telling her to wear whatever she wanted was actually a special kind of torture. Anyway, she found an awesome dress in peacock blue silk. Done.
Grooms with Clothes: One, or 100% (200% if you count the best man, who just has to follow along, poor lamb). Clothes had all been decided ages ago, but we couldn’t find any shoes (barefoot would have been fine but bloody cold). Shoes found: Chuck Taylors, which look great. He is considering bright blue ones, but turned down the silver velvet ones (silver velvet! They were so nice to pat). I’ll keep you posted on what actually eventuates.
Wedding Dresses Owned: Three. Yes. Correct. Remember when, a couple of weeks ago, I said there was a long story here? Well clearly it has now gotten even longer, and is in fact so complicated that I can’t remember where in the story I am up to when I talk to people, and just sort of gloss over the whole thing. Short story: decided on dress and couldn’t find anything similar off the rack or as a sample or second-hand. My only option, with my short timeline, was to get it made in China. China sent me the dress, which was a) the wrong colour and b) had a gigantic starfish made of beading on the bodice. I pointed out this out. China flogged the 9-year old seamstress (I may be extrapolating this part) and sent me the dress again, without requiring me to send back the other dress. Received dress number 2, which was the right colour but (due I presume to being made within a week by a flogged seamstress) had one shoulder strap half a cm larger than the other and because this colour fabric was somehow thinner, the boning was visible through the dress. Well, I felt it was, even though my Objective Opinion Person thought I was mad and that the dress looked great. It just wasn’t as awesome as I’d hoped. But the dress is flattering and fixable and I was prepared to fix it, especially considering I got it made at the standard length and had to get it taken up anyway. Except that on Saturday I just stuck my head into the clearance bridal shop I had been to at the start of my search (and found nothing then) and… of course found a dress. It’s basically the floor sample of the original dress which had just made its way into the store that week: identical designer, identical colour, very similar cut, half price. So of course I bought it and now I have three dresses. And keep in mind this is the SHORT version of this story. Are you exhausted yet? Try being me. So the moral of the story is as I said it was all the time: buying a dress off the internet is a gamble, but it is one that can pay off. If it doesn’t, be prepared to deal with it.
No, Wait, Go Back to the Starfish: I know, it really is the funniest part. On the original picture of the dress, there’s a brooch on the bodice. I didn’t think to mention the brooch to the Chinese people, as I planned to turf any tacky brooch they sent me and source my own brooch. Here is a mistake right here: NEVER ASSUME. Because instead of just pinning a crappy brooch to the dress, they “interpreted” the brooch in beading. A LOT of beading. With ARMS. I was… mildly nonplussed when I zipped open the bag, that’s for sure. I have just gone looking for photos but they are all blurry once I crop myself out of them, so I’ll get right on that.
What, No Photos At All? I’m as surprised as you are.
Car Update: Eleven weeks. ELEVEN WEEKS. I have the patience of a SAINT. They tell me this Saturday. They have told me this EVERY Saturday. I am… not optimistic.
6 August 2009
It is really windy outside – howling and whistling around the windows. I am thinking much more about the weather since I have been catching the train for the last month. Or is it more than a month? I’m pretty sure the mechanics who have my car are fobbing us off with stories and slowly stripping my car for parts. All I can say is, I wish they’d hurry up about it as it’s bound to rain on me one of these days. I have been walking around four times a day, five days a week, for five weeks in the middle of winter, and I’ve been rained on twice. Plus one sort of drizzle which I didn’t count. If that doesn’t tell you we’re in a drought I don’t know what will. Over the same period in Auckland I would have been soaked to the skin at least three times, and dampened considerably for another dozen. But: Rain = 2. In other train counts, Crazy = 1 (a guy who was probably more drugged than crazy but was wearing a large Mad Hatter-style hat, rendering him quaint rather than scary), Inappropriate Conversations = 1 (one lady ringing up her daughter’s school to plead for her to stay on the netball team even though she hadn’t paid the school fees), Wrong Trains Caught = 1 (I leapt on a departing train, congratulating myself for my cleverness, before discovering far too late that it was running express to Laverton, which is a long way from where I live; and also is not the sort of place you want to stand around at night waiting for a train to go back the other way, necessitating a call to Mr T to pick me up, as fortunately he was working out that way and on his way home, and this is the longest sentence EVER that is totally official).
… and it is at this point that my laptop shut down without warning. AGAIN. It has been overheating regularly in the past few weeks, so this time I cracked the shits and made Mr. T open the back of it to see if there was any dust in the fan thing. Apparently this can contribute to the overheating. So he waited for it to cool down then unscrewed the back and… um. Turns out this laptop is quite an effective vaccuum cleaner. Packed into the fan vent bit was a tiny carpet of compressed dust and dog hair. He peeled it out of the little recess like he was picking up a thick piece of felt. Whoops. Hey guess what! The laptop is SO MUCH COOLER on my lap now. Who could guess? And here is my post, saved automatically into Drafts, thank you WordPress. I mean, it’s not the best post ever written, or even the best written TODAY, but I would have been annoyed to lose it.
OK here is a photo of my cat. I was taking it to show his new collar (I have never known cats to lose collars as often as this one and his brother, it’s an epidemic I tell you) but I don’t think I’ll send it to the Etsy seller as it looks like…
… I’m poking the cat in the eye. I’m not, for the record. And he’s sitting on my stomach as I’m lying flat on the bed so the photo was quite hard to take, OK? I’m not sure that justifies me not-poking him in the eye (I’m NOT), but I thought I’d point it out. Mitigating circumstances, and all that.
28 June 2009
I have good intentions here, I really do. But it’s dark so early and there’s so much work to do at work and I don’t get home until late and I don’t feel all that interesting, most of the time. Also I’m about to go interstate for a week which will leave another hole in this here blog thing.
What’s been going on? Death, that’s what.
- Michael Jackson. I can honestly say I have no emotion about this at all. I liked his music when I was a kid, and he was a good dancer, but he was a nutbar. I felt a bit sorry for him, to be honest; like he was surrounded by yes-men who would never straight-up tell him that his behaviour was not childlike and innocent but instead weird and creepy.
- Farrah. Nice lady. Cancer’s a bummer. But she was a bit before my time, so she never really impinged upon my consciousness. I liked her style and her guts, but again, she’s a stranger.
- My grey cat, who was hit by a car and killed on Wednesday. I am heartbroken, we are all heartbroken, so much so that I would not even mention it here, except that you would notice the lack of photos of him. I’m sorry little grey.
Argh. Sucks, right? I feel as if I’m constantly bummering people out at the moment. I have now taken a short break to compose myself and I am back. Would you like to hear about my wedding instead? Of course you would. You may even be judgemental if you like (and I feel bad that you feel bad about my cat so I have now added in links to add to your judgy pleasure). Please, I would appreciate the judgementalness. Everyone bends over backward to love everything I’m suggesting, then when I finally pick one everyone is like, “oh yes that is definitely the best choice. I didn’t like the other choices at all.” Well then you should have SAID SO when I was trying to make a CHOICE. It would have been HELPFUL. Anyway. Turns out almost all the Australians we’ve invited are coming over (crazy. Wow. CRAZY.) and we are extremely pleased and excited, but I’m sort of apologetic that the wedding is therefore so… non-weddingy. I think as some sort of compensation, I’ve gone super-weddingy with the dress. Anyway:
- Date is set, in October. Yes, that’s 6 months from engagement to wedding. Apparently this is weird. Or even insane, according to the eyebrows of one wedding dress consultant, which raised so high they disappeared into her hairline and nearly slid over the top of her skull. You may also judge, but probably with less skill.
- Booked: Restaurant for reception (ensures no bridal table, first dance, bouquet toss or cringe-worthy garter thing), photographer, celebrant (probably). I know that ‘probably’ looks bad so feel free to judge on this point.
- Invitations: from Etsy, being printed and shipped this week. I would have preferred to get this done locally (for shipping costs and my shitty exchange rate alone) but I really loved this design. Feel free to judge, especially the line about cake… I have had multiple questions and blank looks about it. Look, WE think we’re funny.
- Dress: selected and about to be ordered from obscure Chinese website, once they send me a sample of the fabric (it’s ivory, not the very fetching silver in the link). Yes, I am getting a dress copied. It wasn’t so much the cost (although, really, that helped) but more the fact they can get it to me in a month; all the stores want sixteen weeks to order in a dress. I don’t have that amount of time (see: gravitating eyebrows, above, before I learned to tell them my wedding was in February 2010). So basically I used Melbourne’s premier bridal boutiques as a trying-on facility and was never likely to spend my money there. Judge away!
- Ring: designed (modified slightly from original ring) and ordered yesterday. All the money ‘saved’ on the dress went directly into the ring. Don’t tell Mr T, who thinks it was just ‘saved’. Judging potential: it’s got a gap in it (a gap! in our loooove!) and I’m only having one ring, so no engagement ring at all. Quelle horreur.
- Shoes: Barefoot or flat shoes in the sand, then turquoise blue heels bought from the DFO outlet mall for $29. Blue! Continue to judge!
- Jewellery: Earrings bought for $5 from, um, one of those mall chain jewellery shops. The judging! It burrrrns!
Are we done? I think we’re done. I’ll give you more opportunities to judge as it happens, I’m sure. Feel free to be backhanded in your judging, like, “It’s so nice you feel secure enough to wear coloured sandals, when an elegant ivory shoe would be such a lovely choice!”
6 March 2009
Whee, we just had an earthquake. What, the bushfires weren’t enough? Richter scale 4.3 : enough to make our whole house shake and the cat bowls clink together, but not enough to make us RUN RUN DIVE for cover. In fact I don’t even think the cat on Mr. T’s lap woke up. I say again, it is a FALLACY that animals can sense earthquakes. My animals, anyway. Maybe I just get non-psychic ones. Typical.
Eggs for the dog (I had just bought a dozen fresh ones so these had to go).
One is free-range, the others are not. But they’re all happy!
5 March 2009
OMG! Look at me posting-posting-typing-posting. Mr. T and I do a thing where whenever one of us is typing, the other of us pretends to type dramatically on their own keyboard while tsk-ing with a lip-smacking type noise to imitate the tapping of the keys. (It’s our roundabout way of making fun of the other person for contributing to the internet, instead of just passively reading it LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.) I realise you didn’t need to know that, but I find I do it to myself when I’m typing now, which is slightly sad. Just imagine me sitting here typing more animatedly than normal, sounding like Skippy the kangaroo. (I hope you know the noise I mean otherwise I’m going to seem strange. MORE strange, I mean.)
I just deleted a sentence about the weather. You’re welcome.
I’m not deleting stuff this about the cats, though. Especially not since I’ve discovered how to add borders to the photos (and how to NOT add borders to the other images, which was eleventy-times harder).
You sleep WEIRD. That cannot be comfortable.
I AM PROTECTED FROM DEMONS.
27 February 2009
This web stuff is tiring. The last time I really poked around with the back-end of the internet (NASTY) was about 2003, and it turns out a LOT has changed since then. Who knew? Anyway, the blog has moved to WordPress (oh god let the blog have moved to WordPress) and hopefully you can see it and continue to ruminate on my words of wisdom. Or, you know, just ruminate. I’m not too concerned either way.
The one thing I’m really concerned about is the site feed. I THINK I have migrated it to the new blog (I guess I’ll find out when I publish this) but if I haven’t, the new feed is http://www.siximpossiblethings.net/feed. Although how will you know, because you won’t see this? Halp! Stuck in endless feedback loop! I don’t think I’m cut out for this anymore. Here, have a cat picture.
Doing new stuff makes our brains hurt too. Our tiny, tiny brains.
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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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