My three favourite conversations about the Election

1- On election day, at about 4pm in the afternoon.

 A- "Man, anything but Abbott, anything but Abbott, I'm moving to Canada if he gets in!"

Me- "So where did you vote before work, cos I need to get somewhere in the next hour?"

A-" Uh, I'm not actually on the electoral role. I'm an anarchist, actually. Not many people know that."

2- At 3.45 yesterday after the Independents press conference.

Me- "Did you hear, Labour got back in? Are you excited?"

D-" It doesn't make an iota of difference to me."

Me-" How come? You don't vote?"

D-" No, because, no one can stop the music."

3- Yesterday, during the presser, Windsor has announced and Oakeshott is banging on.

Me-" Eeps, Windsor has announced! We're just waiting for Oakeshott now! "

R- " Wait, which one is Oakeshott? Is he the hotter one?"

Pause. 

Me-" Yeah." 

Much tired, Hungry caterpillars and too many needles.

Can I have this now please?

Reason number 54 why I love my life: I spend all day on mondays at work emailing Holly from the Malvern store. We totally pretend it's really work related but it tends to dissolve into me calling her doofus and her writing IN CAPITALS. And the today she only emailed me once so I spent the whole day worrying about her, thinking she may have fallen under her desk and hit her head and was spinning into a fantasy land, in which she is a burlesque star/hired assassin and then she'll come out of her coma in about a hundred years, thinking she's still in 2010. WAKE UP DOOFUS, COME BACK TO THE LIGHT, CONTACT US!

Reason number 7 that I'm not such a fan: I have had about 6 blood tests lately, all for something quite serious and yucky and I really am a bit scared. And this week I get to have three 3!!!! more needles in about three hours. I is so going shopping inbetween. 

Reason 213 why I really like the way my life is going: Just when you've spent the last month or so a bit sick and hovering in test land and you're really a bit fragile and not sleeping. You head off to work and someone greets you with a high-five, then you get to hire a life-sized Spot costume for a launch including Paul Kelly and then you get home and lovely peeps are arranging to go see possibly the FILM OF THE CENTURY! 

Reason 1 why Reason 7 of the bad things isn't so bad: I is getting skinny and my Mum keeps buying me sympathy clothes, including hot high-waisted jeans! 

And also this which I am going to pur-chase in between the blood-letting on wed. Oh yeah! I am so hot-right-now with the under fives!

Yours in health,

Moi.

P.S- I'm not infectious and it doesn't have anything to do with toes, so breathe normally now.

P.P.S- Also on the happy pants list, I am now the primary children's book reviewer for Readings, oo, la la. I have a whole page! Goshity!

In which I moan about moving house and secretly wish for Lego

Moose.

Moving house is much like childbirth. 

(I knowingly proclaim never having given birth to a child or indeed a moose) But I have quite the imagination, to the extent I can no longer watch anything even vaguely frightening or involving Sarah Michelle Geller. So much like I HOPE with childbirth, once you have moved house you completely forget the sheer horror of packing and the sorting and the calling of the utility companies. And then once you have excitedly signed the lease for a new fancy pad, the memories start flooding back in. 

Blerg.

I only packed up the dvd's today ( 6 boxes, please don't judge us) and then I had to go and have a nap with the cats as I was so devastated by how hideous the process is. Unfortunately I napped right through dinner cooking time, so then my boy had to take me out to dinner which involved naan (my favorite kind of dinner) and then I had to be bought ice cream as I had eaten too much dinner (perverted logic I know) 

Its all been quite a rude awakening from the delightful mandarin scented cocoon of holiday world I was in up until  four days ago. Work and packing? Eeps, sounds far too much like real life for my liking. 

So instead of focusing on the reality of the situation ( you thought I had some DVD's, you should see the sheer volume of books) I am going to pretend I'm moving into a house made of Lego, because I'd quite like that.

(I do quite like our new flat but not quite as much as I like Lego)

I also heard a rumour that there is a huge toy sale on somewhere in the capitalist ether and perhaps instead of using my money on, oh, useful things like bills and moving costs, I best just buy some Lego.

If you hadn't noticed this post is quite nonsense but look! Houses made of Lego. Much more interesting that thinking about packing

(That last house, not Lego, but I would live there if necessary, although I might have to take up cooking children in the oven)

Holidays

Shall I tell you about my holidays? I don't want to make you feel sad but I'm very excited for MANY MANY reasons. Reason 1 is that I am on holidays, reason 2 is that my workplace is under renovation and its horrid (no heating, ugh), reason 3 is somewhere between needing a good nap and sheer bewildering fatigue.

But you needn't be too jealous, I'm not off to Morocco or London or even... Perth. No, no, I'm having a holiday just around the corner and in my local cinema and at that new restaurant on Victoria St and at my Parent's house and for most of the time, on my couch. 

Yesterday I went to a bookshop and ate mandarins, the day before I went shopping and bought seasons 2 AND 3 of Mad Men. Today I went to another bookshop and bought a cardigan, then I bought some special chocolates and ate most of them. Sunday was the official first day of the holiday and I went for a one and half hour walk to the Botanical Gardens. (That was the exercise allotment for the holiday) 

Tomorrow I'm having lunch with my boyfriends brother and his wife and son and semi-son (stillcooking) and my boyfriends sister and her husband at the very specific time of 12.30, where we shall have a strangely large amount of time before going to see Karate Kid. My semi-demi nephew chose this, being 9 and VERY interested in kicking and as I once accidently, ACCIDENTLY, smashed his head into a glass ice cream case, I have to do anything he tells me or else he brings up the INCIDENT and everyone laughs at me for hours. 

What else am I doing? I'm off to the zoo and to see Shrek and read a lot of books. I'm going to go to the farmers market and drink cocktails. I'm going to Bendigo to one set of parents and Samaria to house sit for the others. I'm going to sleep for extended periods of time and figure out what I want to study next year. The final days of my holiday will be at 50 year old's party and I will be dancing like a crazy lady and I MAY even drink rum and cokes, cos I haven't ever done that before. 

I will also, in no particular order, write a children's book, have a business meeting with the awesomest gal called Holly, throw out half of the shitty furniture that clutters my house, make two skirts, get my friend to fix two skirts I just made, drink cider, pash my boy, cook brownies and go to work for one day because I am irreplaceable. Gosh, I am busy on these holidays. 

Did you want to know all that? I'm sorry if you didn't but here's some 

photos of my cats if they were hipsters to make you feel better. Yes. 

This is Ally, she likes to wake me up by climbing on my tummy.

And this is Ptolemy, she is the other half of the 'and me'. She is such a hipster kitty she is too cool for photography and she is quietly angry with all of us. 

I hope you are on holidays too or if not, you can share mine. Can you sew at all?

Yes, it is true.

If you couldn't tell, I kinda like this lady and I like it when the world changes and I like today. There is so much time tomorrow to be cynical and suspicious and face reality but today I get to like the world and its shiny red-haired people.

Living dangerously or not at all or maybe living soft and comfy

Does anyone else get whizzy-brain syndrome? The kind of fullness that comes from trying to absorb too much or maybe do too much thinking or maybe the kind of itchy brain fever that you get when you read too many blogs that make you feel...well, like you're doing it wrong.

I got the whizzy fever bad today.

Today on the whizzy-brain front, I wanna new job, I wanna new house, I have decided that all the things I thought were important were really silly surface things and now I just want more real. More real relationships with people, more real connections, a real job/career/direction that means I can do something useful with this strange thing called lifespan. And I want to try and get some of this done before my desire for kidlets actually kills me! ( Damn you biological urge)

So we all search for guidance outside of ourselves. I read lots of books and read interesting blogs and seek out wise people. And then I feel really ick. Cos I'm doing it all wrong you see. I'm not enough of a rebel, I like comfort too much, I don't want to go to India and meditate in an ashram for 2 months. I like drinking cider and watching silly Hollywood movies, I like dyeing my hair and turning on the heater all the time in winter. I don't put myself out there ( A statement I never understood but I believe it to be something like prostitution if your single and quite like prostitution if you're trying to find an interesting job) 

What is it like wanting to fly far away and try new things all the time and constantly push yourself out of your comfort zone? Cos as far as I can tell that's what I'm supposed to want if I want a 'real' life. The kind of life rebels have. I'm supposed to be more of everything as far as I can tell.

Just thinking about it makes me want some cake and a lie down. I think I'll pass actually. I think I'll have the fake life that means I don't do the things right. That mean I get to lounge around with my kitties and NOT be brilliant at craft and watch the right films and read the right books and eat at the right places.

In fact I'm going to start a society. An appreciation society. Perhaps we can call it 'Infinite Wednesday Club' and we can get together and do nothing, and be very dull and rebel against everything with our passivity. 

Let's bake cakes and not know where the latest bar is. Let's read books we love again and again, in fact let's have a book club where we only read books that we've read before. Let's never see unhappy german films by that director who made Funny Games. Let's wear lots of clothes because we're cold. Let's grow our hair because we want to put it up in a ponytail, not because all the Frankie girls are wearing it long. Let's not ride cute vintage bikes and let's not buy oversized non-prescription glasses. Let's never talk to people like we're waiting for someone cooler to arrive. Let's ask questions about each other and really want to know the answer. Let's not just communicate using Twitter. Let's have pets and stay in the one house for years and years. Let's travel to the places we want to go too, rather than the ones on Lonely Planet's Blue list. Let's build tree-houses and let's not go thrift shopping. ( Maybe op-shopping...) 

Let's just be. Usually on a wednesday. 

Ten things in Twenty-Ten

Resolutions are for suckers. Let's all get that straight, resolutions are the drunken promises you make to stop smoking, run a marathon or in the immortal words of my friend a few years ago, I'm going to get a tattoo of a moose head butting another moose over who is a better dancer. I've yet to see such emotion captured in a tattoo but I live in hope.

So anti-resolutions we are. Most decidedly. But I do love a plan, oh yes, plan city here in Miss kitty land. Perhaps a leetle problematically, there may be cold-sweats, awake at 3 am, massive heart palpitations if there is no plan. I don't do well free forming, I am geeky, specific and quite like clean feet. ( Actually I've noticed something about myself lately, if i get a text that uses abbreviations, C U L8er, etc, I feel the need to wash my hands. Travesty of language.)

So this is in the theme of plans ( not resolutions ) and lists, which are a really marvelous way to disguise plans, plus you get to check things off. 

Ten things in Twenty-Ten, a plannish List by Miss Kitty that freely welcomes failure and disgrace.

1- Dance. Oh, yeah. I love dancing. It makes me feel spesh. So I think 20-10 is the year of dancing. 3 different kinds by the end. Yes, sir.

2- Get through master's confirmation. Without the nervous breakdown I am imagining for my pretty little self.

3- Get my License. I am tragically old and unable to drive. I am very scared of cars and am convinced that I will end up in a fiery spectacle on the news one day.

4- Eat like a healthy ninja. I figure ninjas must have fairly good diets with all the sneaking and killing they do, so I'm on board.

5- Read some PG Wodehouse. Small goals are highly important too.

6- Floss my freaking teeth. Small box of floss, $3.50. Root canal, $1700.00. Kay?

7- Write book for the children. Grown-up books suck. I'd rather write stories for little people with dragons and ninjas and chocolate cake for tea.

8- Love my self. I'm just so lovely and darned good looking. Must become more self-absorbed.

9- More with the cooking. Must expand cooking repertoire. First on the list, pizza's grilled on the bbq, all smoky and delicious. 

10- Be calm, be mindful, be here. I need to practice this. I want to spend the year living more and worrying less. Breathing and appreciating these moments for what they are. (And if anyone has figured out how to do that yet, can you let me know? Or the Dali Llamas phone number?)

Sounds delightful to me. I've already got a list for 2011 too, which is full of excitement. Yippee.

Oh and I forgot...

(11- Keep more lists!)