The Tim Tam or the faux Mellowpuff?

I think I'm almost back to not being exhausted. Turns out a weekend in Melbourne for Skyke's wedding (bloody gorgeous, cried through the whole thing) catching up with a truly ludicrous amount of people and their babies and drinking a very pleasing amount of champagne and whiskey, along with the drainingness that is turning 33 whilst realising that Japan is going through some truly terrible times that I watch on the telly while quaffing pricey booze like some sort of capitalist bitch will totally and utterly shatter me and make me remarkably incompetent at work on Monday.

I followed that up with a weekend of houseguests and our flatwarming/belated birthday spinster party. Which, whilst being terribly awesome, primarily due to the hot French dudes walking around in jeans and my leopard print leotard, as well as the cucumber sandwiches and asparagus rolls and sherry punch available for quenching thirst, was also somewhat tiring. But our houseguests - Debs, Clare, Kruse, Adrian and Steffen - get points for being very, very able with brooms and dishes, and for displaying agility after swilling booze from tea cups. Steffen perhaps gets the most points for waking up at a different house and calling us to say said other house had very nice ferns and he'd be home as soon as he worked out where he was.

Kruse gets slightly less points for making roast lamb because he also beat me at Scrabble. Debs gets no points for winning Scrabble. Adrian can have one point for showing me his third nipple. And Clare can have a few more points for turning up to a party, where she knew no one, gamely wearing scratchy old lady nightwear and actually enjoying the sherry punch - both acts that require a fair amount of bravery.

So, 33. It seems to fit. It also seems to be making me tired and prone to making purchases of items such as sewing machines and food processors. I can only imagine that by the time I finally get to cougar age (only seven more years!)I will have reached my goal of owning 100 cardigans - I currently only have 15.

33. And still eating chocolate biscuits for breakfast.

Home sweet homie

Having just spent two weeks in NZ I have been pondering what home is and whether or not it's greedy to have more than one. Homes, I mean, not houses. I wouldn't mind having a couple of houses to suit my different moods. Somewhere dark and cold for grumpy Penelope to hide in as she sulks and kicks the furniture. On the surface, Palmerston North would probably fit that bill - except it was all lovely and sunny when I went there (I can hear your gasps of amazement from here) so I'll have to find another place to practise my Eyeore impersonation.

But, PN is home. And so is Wellington. And now so is Sydney. Manly, really. Mantown. Where wearing Speedos down the Corso is acceptable. London was home, but it always felt a bit short term. Ditto Xiamen and Homeashil-Dong (I don't think I've spelt that right but it's so bloody small I can't find it on a map). And working backwards we eventually wind up in Christchurch. Home for three years and I when I left I said I could never live there again because we were a little incompatible despite how good we looked on paper - and while that still holds true it didn't stop the tears after the quake. Or the guilt. Having had the good fortune to have flown out of Chch the day before, the feeling of total helplessness and worry has not gone away, despite having received cheerful emails from people there. Who all seem to be making the most of their dwindling booze supplies.

Anyway - NZ is home but once again so is Australia. For reasons I can't explain and cannot be arsed even bothering to look into, Sydney has grabbed me like Melbourne didn't - and I loved Melbourne. Mocked Sydney. It would be rubbish. Like Auckland (another place I'd prefer not to live again - I am picky, no?) but it's not. Oh how my taunts have fallen into tiny little puddles of embarrassment. Although, given I live in Manly, someone is bound to try and drink them.

I was asked if I would move back to Wellington and the answer is of course yes. Because it's, um, home. But I couldn't say when because Sydney is home. But if I have kids would I want to bring them up here, and sweet baby jesus, deal with them having true blue Aussie accents? Which probably suggests that much as I love Sydney, perhaps it's not quite as much home as I think it is ... will learn to embrace the accent eventually I'm sure.

As is no doubt obvious by the nonsensical babble above, I got back to this home from visiting my other home a bit sad and confused. However, I was cheered no end by getting to my new place with Nic, Kajal and Ratty at 10pm to discover the girls had made my bed for me - which given they moved houses without me as well, seemed awfully nice.

However, there is one small snag to our nifty new place - the combination of our wooden floorboards and the baby downstairs. We've been told off twice. Given we're not holding parties, playing footy or using our drum kits, I'm not too sure what we can do about this. We'll get rugs, yes, but basically, four people in an apartment make noise. Maybe I shouldn't have put the washing machine on at 7am this morning.

Birthday this weekend - and I'm spending it doing what spinsters love to do best, aside from eat stale crackers and drink sherry out of tea cups. I'm going to Mike and Skye's wedding. I asked Skye what she wanted for a wedding gift and she replied 'get shitfaced and misbehave'. She's pretty much the perfect bride. Although, as her mother-in-law is my Sunday School teacher, I shall be on my best behaviour - which means I shall try very hard to only talk about polite things (which will be hard as I just read this article about Japanese toilets and I want to ask people about it). I'm pretty sure the other guests, which include my brother, Kruse and Bibby, can provide plenty of excitement though.