Listing

It’s Friday! Let’s have a list.

Things I have learned the hard way this week:

Buying very pricey stockings doesn’t make them any less immune to runs and holes.

You can get chocolate hangovers.

If you don’t feed Karen’s cat, it gets quite antsy and will stick its claw in your eye at 5am.

If you have dinner with a Finn and they open a new bottle of vodka, you may not leave the table until said bottle is empty.

Where the Coke machine is at work. I didn’t need to know this until this morning when I felt somewhat less than ideal after dining with a Finn last night. And then the need to know was very urgent indeed.

I am the walrus

Maybe Turkish delight for breakfast followed by a great many sultanas was not such a spiffy idea. You can't see me but I'm slumping and feeling more than just a little bit ill. Who would have thought sultanas had the potential to create such havoc in my belly?

This follows on from me eating possibly the equvialent of merely my left leg in cheese on the weekend. It was Karen's fault. Every time I hang with that woman, I leave with a distended stomach. And she remains as svelte and pixie like as a ... well, a pixie. Hateful little forest dwellers.

Will, Sarah and Tim graced me with their presence - there was a trip to the Hunter Valley, where Will proved he knows his onions in regards to wine, and I proved to have the worst adjective of the day when it came to describing wine. Beige. That's right, wine can be beige.

Must be time for a list - we all love lists.

Things I had thought to get this year:
A better laugh
Exercise

I have failed in achieving the above. I am now scarred on both the inside and out after the running = falling over and getting hurties on my kneesies so exercise is obviously going to be shunned forever now. And the laugh - I was thinking a ladylike trill would be nice. But no. I still have a distinctly unladylike cackle.

New flatmate's catch phrase: 'I'm heading out to get my creep on'. You go, Anton. You go. Better or worse than old flatmate's 'I'm heading out on a cock hunt - you want to join'? You be the judge.

You can never get too much cheese

So I'm an evening cat sitter this week - Cheese and I have a bit of a routine that involves me lying on the sofa, with the heater on full blast, with Cheese lounging majestically on me, hogging most of the heater. Although, last night when he realised that he was taking up all the heat, I witnessed an impressive act of generosity by a cat - he moved a whole two inches so I'd get a little bit of the warmth.

Staying at Karen's who lives smack bang in Sydney city, to be both her backup flatmate and evening cat sitter, has its advantages, in that I can walk to the place I'm temping at this week, and its disadvantages, in that her shower is fierce. Waterblaster fierce. Good for sore shoulder blades, but feels like tiny, sharp pixie needles assaulting your nipples.

Anyway, I did my NZ dash, and Ruthie's wedding was pretty fracking good and I only blubbed a wee bit during the ceremony. Mum got a bit teary during my speech, which should give you some indication of just how good a speech I can give when the subject is my oldest friend who has given me permission to describe her husband as Irish MacGyver.

I saw a lot of people, lost a sock (a thigh-high woolly one, much to my fury) and a much loved item of jewellery but I'm sure they'll find their ways back to me. Bloody better. I really liked that sock. I got back to Sydney utterly exhausted and very poor and so very happy to be home. I am also blonder and minus a lot of hair, thanks to Bran and his magic scissors. I tried something new this time and bribed him with carrot cake. Which James ate a fair bit of. Possibly as revenge for us making him watch some terrible movie starring that Jolie bird and the McAvoy chap where bullets can curve round pig carcases.

I got home to the news that we were being evicted - stupid home buyers. So I'm moving back into Nic's - into an actual room this time, as he leaves the country for a month to gallivant round U-rope in his lanky nonchalant manner.

And this weekend I get a Will and a Sarah and a Tim - and the Hunter Valley. Voltron, people, it's going to be Voltron.

Back to basics

I am ashamed to note that I haven't talked about Manly's public toilets. This is remiss of me. With my bladder, knowledge of where the public can legally relieve themselves is of utmost importance. And Manly is coming out tops. Loos all over the place. And they seem to always have toilet paper. I heart Manly and you should too.

I had dinner with Amanda and Greg on Friday night, fully intent on coming home at an early hour. I sort of did. If by early I meant 3pm the next afternoon. I'm not sure how but somehow soup and mulled wine morphed into sofa, Motown, tales of South America and a 6am crash out time. In my defence, their sofa is very comfortable. And their mulled wine most drinkable. And the walk home the next day completely cured the headache I had managed to pick up somewhere in the night.

However, Amanda did dream that she was punching me so, perhaps I shouldn't make a habit of falling asleep on their furniture. Perhaps this is where my headache came from.

Oops, I did it again

I tripped again. With witnesses this time. Reopened knee wound and got another. I am a champion.

Nothing says sophisticated like a 32-year-old woman with sticking plasters on her knees and elbows. It does also rather suggest carpet burn, which might have been a much more pleasant way to get these injuries. Better luck next time, maybe.

Exercise is bad for me.

Taking it hard and fast

Hugs I have had recently that I have thoroughly enjoyed:

Karen
Nic
Harriet
Ruthie & Ian
A whole bunch of people at the pub the other night.

Hugs I have had recently that I have not enjoyed at all. No, siree.

The pavement.

So, in a moment that in retrospect was clearly drug induced, so insane was the action, I decided to go for what most might call a 'run'. However, is unfair to actual runners to describe it this way when in reality I stop, walk, chat to cats and tie up my shoelaces a great deal. And now I can add falling over to my list of 'running' accomplishments. In my defence, it was dark, the pavement was next to a cemetery so probably the broken up concrete I tripped over was zombies trying to escape and not me being clumsy, but whatever - I tripped and fell spectacularly. Fortunately, my beautiful face was not marred -I used my less-likely-to-be-seen-by-the-public elbow, knee and palm to take the blow. And then I lay, sprawled on the pavement saying just the one word over and over. This word could probably be found in the Oxford dictionary with 'obscenity' next to it.

And then I got back up and like a trooper I kept on going because in the dark the injuries looked a bit pathetic. Yes, I am indeed very brave.

Of course, when I got home, I discovered my leg was covered in blood, as was my shoe, thanks to Mr Knee. Disappointingly, there was no one home to appreciate this sight or offer me pity.

Our house is up for sale and on Saturday, just twenty minutes before the real estate agent arrived with the first lot of eager home buyers, my flatmate Kev put his foot through the floorboards in the hallway. We don't want the house to sell but Kev assures us his manoeuvre was entirely accidental. Apparently skipping like an elephant is part of his daily routine that just happened to coincide with a very weak floorboard.

Taking the pith

Today I wasted a good minute pondering how many hours of my life I have spent waging war on pith. For it is an ongoing battle and one I'm not even entirely sure that I shall win.

But I hate pith. Creepy little tendrils of horrid taunting me by clinging to the delicious flesh of mandarins. Inhaling it by accident is like eating cobwebs discarded by particularly vindictive spiders - a boobytrap that I must circumnavigate with all the cunning that Indiana Jones would utilise if he thought that the Orange Orb of Succulence was a religious artefact the Nazis were keen to steal in order to gain both world domination and freedom from scurvy.

It appears that summer is no more in Sydney. Instead we've had three weeks of rain and I have made myself very unpopular by admitting that I like it. Locals tell me this much rain is not normal. Coming from Wellington, I do find it normal and am delighted by the fact that despite the rain, it's still warmish and there's very little wind.

A sad fact must be faced though, and that is that my tan is no more. Yes, I really am that shallow.