having more of a life when asleep

Dreamed about visiting a deranged Snow-White-style witch-crone who likes to play her loud and scary phantom-of-the-opera organ.

She was teaching me Art and Textiles, but I felt I had to mention the ear-shattering noise her "piaforteforteFORTEEE!" was making.

My witchy teacher responded by throwing a hand-woven afghan rug over my head, much in the same way someone would use to quiet a budgie.

I'm still not sure whether she was taking me seriously or not.

yeti feet and other stompages.

We put out some new quotable cards in the newsagents yesterday.

One in particular caught my eye:

MEN ARE LIKE A FINE WINE.
THEY START OUT LIKE GRAPES,
AND IT'S A WOMAN'S JOB TO
STOMP ON THEM AND KEEP
THEM IN THE DARK UNTIL THEY
MATURE INTO SOMETHING YOU'D
LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH.
- ANONYMOUS

It's a point of view I haven't really considered before: that guys are there to be stomped on.

Tortured so that they end up in dark mental places, yes, but actually stomped on, no. It's something to think about, I suppose.

Stompage would be best done in yeti boots.

I can't do that without looking like a copycat, though. Someone at work already has dibs on the abominable-snowman-impressions.

You know it's a casual workplace when the company director wanders around the office in uggies.

my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I dreamed that I went ballroom dancing and ended up with a head injury.

a little bit of late-night snarflage never goes astray

Went to Stoker's for dessert with K after the dance class last night. I'd forgotten how nice it was, but Auntie Yvonne hadn't. We eventually found Stoker's, despite only remembering that it was somewhere on Heidelberg Road.. somewhere. ^-^

Memory has now been nicely refreshed.

Stoker's golden syrup with butter pancakes are THE BEST PANCAKES EVER.

I'm having such a good run of tasty things lately.

I love the gooshy salty butter and syrup, it's so perfect. Salty and sweet, but without the grossness of the savoury pancake. And topped with ice-cream? Totally blissful yum-ness.

..Or maybe I just really like butter.

Mmm.

that freshly-squashed feeling, it just doesn't go away

Went to a cuban-dance class with Karen the other night, rather than going to see UU play soccer ^-^

It was fun and all, but I don't think I've got the coordination, rhythm, or spirit for it..

And my legs were still twingey from netball on Tuesday.

Hah. Netball. I never want to play Wing Attack EVER AGAIN.

My kidneys are still protesting. (Are your kidneys supposed to hurt?? I didn't even know you used your kidneys in netball. Egad.)

I don't know how Mands and Anita do it. There's just too much running, ducking and weaving.. it's like running the gauntlet at rock star camp.

going through phases like a transdimensional parrot

An email today made me think about the various phases I've gone through in my life, on my journey to becoming a real person.

1. Pre-kinder: Mud-child & frog-catcher.
Had a puppy's love for dirt. And once I discovered that our backyard stepping stones were a perfect disc-y cake-shape, this slowly evolved into a penchant for "baking" mud-pies.
Digging around in the dirt also meant that I would encounter a small froglet or two, which I would then dutifully keep in an old ice-cream bucket with water & mud for a day before setting it free.

2. Kindergarten: Climber of Trees.
And Destroyer of Dresses. Although clothes these days may be slightly hardier than the ridiculous concoctions I was made to wear.
If you've never had to go out in public wearing a maroon velvet dress with cotton-laced frilling accompanied by stark-white wool stockings and little black t-bar shoes (and a bowl-haircut on top of all THAT), count yourself supremely lucky.

3. Primary school: Slacker Brain & Penguin-freak.
Apparently bright, but lazy as all hell, unless it was something to do with art or penguins.
My teachers would read my test scores and cry.
Or tell me off and threaten detention. Which we didn't even have in primary, as I recall.
Played rounders and lacrosse for the school team. Whatever happened to lacrosse?

4. High school: Flake, Jock, & Reader of Pratchett.
Became highly scatty, possibly due to amount of sugar in system, or some delayed reaction to food colouring eaten in primary school. Went on quests for band-aids when a friend cut her finger. Preferred playing Mr Scribble rather than drawing sine curves.
Discovered the Discworld of Terry Pratchett, as well as classic shows like GNW and Red Dwarf. (I owe so much of my current weirdness to Cheli, the ex-Venturer and Scout. Camberwell Showtime, YEAHHH!)
Also got pulled into school baseball, hockey and athletics teams, despite being an unco wonder-klutz. But I was real good with a stick ^-^

5. Uni: Anime-watcher (The Not-Quite-Otaku).
Being a Multimedia student meant a lot of "independent study" time.
Which was mostly spent either at the caf, in Readings, in Coles (go figure.. my friends and I went food-shopping in between lectures.. haha.. I remember Nic bringing strawberries & chocolate fondue to one lecture.. mm, that was good..) or watching anime in the club room.
Discovered a nice little anime boutique at Box Hill Central, and from then on, started building my own library.

6. Working Life: Serial Cookie-baker & Game-addict.
Mum brought home a cookie recipe from one of her workmates, and things have never been the same since. Snackage is, I feel, a rather important element of life, and so it is now my duty to keep the family cookie-jar well-stocked.
Dad attempted to make cookies last week, for Mother's Day. Tasted lovely, but had all the texture of dwarf bread. Which, for the unPratchettised, means freaking rock hard. (Beware, beware, all ye with teeth, for they will shatter and crumble to the gummies beneath.)
I soaked a cookie in a glass of milk, and it resolutely stayed rock-like despite my leaving it there for ten minutes. Bloody amazing.

Am still suffering DQ withdrawal due to mother hogging lounge room tv. (Would you believe she still hasn't finished the stack of dvds she brought back from Hong Kong.)
There's just no use playing PS2 on the other tv, which has an itty bitty screen with the ability to cause squinting in gnomes.

i'm seeing little sparkly things moshing round and round my head.

My eyes feel like they have a hangover.

Maybe I should have listened to them when they started protesting at 1am - they wanted sleep, I wanted to read Terry Pratchett.

Didn't get home till 12 - after bubble drinks, went to the arcade with Karen and Peter the newly-ferretless. Had a blast playing Pop'N'Music with three players instead of the intended one player for 9 buttons ^-^ We button-mashed like crazy people. I have never had so much fun with buttons in my life!

Also had a rousing game of Point Blank, followed by two rounds of the-game-that-looks-like-parapara-but-isn't (according to Peter and Karen, who are, of course, arcade-game experts compared to me).

I finished off my Honeydew Blended Ice while watching them flail around wildly like mad disco chickens. (Chomping on Green Apple Jelly makes me happy and inclined to calmly accept anything odd I might be seeing at the time.)

Then dropped Peter home, and Karen as well, before heading back to my nice little orangebrick house.

Instead of going to sleep like a normal person, I was tempted by the book hovering just in reach.

Now have reading-hangover to rival Greggely's alcohol-fuelled one.

slush never tasted so good

Honeydew Blended Ice with Green Apple Jelly is the BEST BUBBLEDRINK IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

It is SO green, but so yummy.

Nicer than Karen's choice, which was Mango Blended Ice with Green Apple Jelly. Which was still good, but mine was better ^-^

I hear that Jade Empire is going to be released for PC soon. Which makes me happy, because I really wanted to play it but didn't want to buy an Xbox just for this one game.

So now I have even more incentive to buy myself a laptop, because our home PC (which is shared by the whole family) is fast running out of space to store things.

I want my own little entertainment centre in my room.

I already have books aplenty - it's like my own little (messy) library - 3 walls of books. Everything from sci-fi, fantasy, crime, comics, manga... and my textbooks.

It's a silverfish's paradise.

Now all I need is a laptop to play games & dvds, and I'll be set.

people find me. how do they do this?

The boho-looking "I think you're very beautiful" guy has a name.

Shannon.

He's only been in Melbourne for a few weeks.

what do you do when the words aren't there?

My best friend's dog died, after being unwell for some time.

I don't really know what to say about it.

It's hard to watch your pet deteriorate from old age or illness.

Budgie Ricky went the same way. I felt so helpless as he slowly got worse.

I did everything I could think of. I gave him fresh water every morning and night. Gave him some extra vitamin-supplemented seeds. Fetched some fresh seedgrasses for him to cleanse his system. Kept the cage cleaned, and took away the paper lining in case it was making him sick. He got regular exercise.

I looked up budgie-health books and nothing matched what was happening to him.

He moved around slowly. Let Nattie groom him and take care of him.

Eventually it got to the point where he didn't want to move from his perch, and he was fluffed up in a ball.

I stayed with him for an hour before bed, petting him, talking to him, and I rearranged him comfortably so he could lean on the ladder as he slept.

He died before I woke up in the morning.

I was sad, but mostly relieved for him.

Is it bad that I didn't feel worse? That, in the end, I didn't have a lot of feelings about it besides relief?

This is why I don't know what to say.

pigeons and crumbs, kittens and houseplants

a pearl of wisdom from bobby:
"if you don't want your kitten to eat the plants, chase her around the house with the plants."

this sounds much like my approach to disciplining Nattie.

as a result, he is deathly afraid of teatowels and spraybottles.

you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Thursday 4th May

I felt so rebellious this morning.

I'm determined not to be a sweet person today.
Because being sweet has cheesed me off greatly in the past.

So, today, I am defiantly ignoring someone's birthday.

Not that he'll notice, but hey. It makes me feel better.

"I snub you even though you won't know or care that I snub you!"
Does this thread of logic make me somewhat mental?


..Oh! In other news, I caught a bug on our ceiling this morning at home.

It looked like it was the mongrel child of a cockroach, a silverfish, an earwig and a cricket.

I trapped it in a plastic takeout container and left it on our front bench for my family to enjoy and admire when they get home before me tonight.