Scenting me, scenting you

Smell, like many things, is a bit personal, no? One man's rubbish heap of slowing rotting compost is another man's personal pile of gardening heaven - sniff that! That's the promise of vegetables sprouting, pretty flowers for the bees to caress in a sexual manner and hell, some people just like compost. Others like soap.

So, here's a list of things I don't much like the reek of:

Me after yoga
The tea cupboard at work
Toilets with air freshener.

Me after yoga seems obvious - I'm a barely moving, sweat glistening shiny lump of pink flesh that's dripping with all sorts of toxins I've just forced out of my skin. YUM.

The hot beverage cupboard at work is a mixture of teas: earl grey, English breakfast, herbal (mostly green and citrus flavours), and pretend sugar for those who can't quite give the stuff up but wish to at least make an effort towards their trousers being less tight. This cupboard is directly underneath the chocolate biscuit cupboard, which seems a bit cruel if you're one of the aforementioned fake sugar users. But back to the smell - all the teas are competing for olfactory dominance and the end result is a most unpleasant, almost musty combo of green, lemon and black tea and something else I can't quite distinguish but it's distressing me because, being the tea whore that I am, I'm opening that cupboard at least seven times a day. Is perhaps a little pathetic but I'm sensitive like that sometimes.

Toilets that have air freshener. Look, I get why there's air freshener - I think we all can appreciate that at some time we've used a toilet and thought, 'hmm, that's not so easy on the nostrils,' but trying to cover up the often robust reek of faecal matter with 'jasmine and avocado spring fling' does not make for a better scent. The two smells wage war on one another, neither dominating, both eventually doomed (thankfully) to fade but in the mean time, treating other loo users to the hideousness that is their unhappy marriage.

Good smells:

Me when clean (despite being told by several people that my perfume is a spot old fashioned and I smell like their mum - I'm catering for a special brand of man who fancies older women, obviously)
Chilli and garlic - what's not to like? Even if this combo might lead to you making a visit to the bathroom, resulting in use of the lavender and broccoli air freshener residing there. Totally worth it.
The beach. I walk along one every day. Envy me, bitches.

Other stuff: Travis and Una pass through. We eat a lot of cheese. So much cheese. I try to convince them to move here. You should too.
Nat and Georgia have a baby that at some point I'll get round to investigating and perhaps I'll return those books I borrowed off them six months ago. Maybe.
I have a barbeque. Where I make other people get the barbeque going. I was otherwise occupied with baking dessert. And Nic and Adrian quite obviously weren't doing anything - and I knew Nic was most like to want to eat most of what we cooked so it seemed only fair he make the darn firey apparatus go.

New job goes well - the nerd factor is HIGH.

Run Fatboy Run

I watched the last few minutes of Timmy doing the marathon in Melbourne recently. I can tell I'm going to be one of those embarrassing parents at school sports days, crying and pointing with pride at my child, because I came a bit too close to doing this with Tim.

Tim ran the whole darn thing. Points for him. After which he gave me a sound piece of advice: 'Never do a marathon'. I think we both knew the advice was unnecessary, but still, kind of him to pretend.

Melbourne was ace, there were drinks, vats of tea, chocolate, Debs talked me into riding a bike (sore lady bits the next day, thanks for asking), op shopping and being felt up by baby Spencer. For the record, having your breasts groped by a baby with Mike Spencer's face is just plain weird.

I finally moved into a new flat, which has impressive views and is still not far from big brother should I feel the need to be told off for something. The flatmates are older women and the one who owns the house has just two rules:
1: Rinse the dishes. Can do, I said with confidence.
2: No one night stands. I laughed. And laughed some more. And said 'can do'. Obviously my plans to have an extremely debauched summer will just have to take place elsewhere.

Summer's making a break for it in Sydney - although got wrestled to the ground and pummelled by the rain today. Which I got caught in en route to the bus. I was rescued by a man with a huge ... umbrella. If my life was a rom com then he would have been knicker droppingly gorgeous. Sadly, no, but the shelter was appreciated. Also - let's be honest. I don't look my best when dripping with both sweat and rain (had been lolloping along for the bus as was late - the mystery of the missing stockings will have to wait until this evening to get solved).

Along with the new flat is the new job. Which I start next week. So I'll say something about that then. By which I mean in another month when I can be bothered updating.

Signing off with the news that once again I learn the hard way that too much fresh pineapple gives you a hurty tongue.

Invisible bacon gets the X-Factor

Caesar salad has bacon, among several other things. Boiled egg sometimes creeps in, and it should be kicked out and across the restaurant. Soft boiled or poached, thank you. But back to the pig - no bacon makes for a sad Caesar. One that has lost its toga and laurel leaves. And this was the state of my salad last week. Heavy on the lettuce, big on the evil boiled egg and massive on the invisible bacon. Rome has fallen, I thought.

But I perked up on Saturday because we had a dress up party to attend. Full of reedeeculous Europeans with great hair and hilarious accents. Sebastian, or Sea Bass as we fondly call him - I think he just thinks we're mangling his name with our antipodean accents - informs Nic that the theme is bad superheroes. At about 5pm we decide we should probably do something about costumes. And panic because we have, of course, left it a bit late to do any more than come up with stuff from around the house. Sometimes though, the best costumes are those you source from under the kitchen sink. In this case we managed to come up with Super Mario, Poison Ivy and Mexican Wrestling Barbie. What? You don't have a pink wrestling mask squirreled away at your house? Odd.

Anyway, we swan off to the do, feeling pretty chuffed with our free and awesome costumes. We arrive. Everyone's in costume, some in very weird costumes, and we get some strange looks, but hell, these people are crazy French and German and Finns and whatnot, so whatever. One woman appears to have a giant snail attached to her back ...

We meet some other Kiwis, who have LAME costumes. A straw hat does not a costume make. Apparently this chap is farmer. We look puzzled. It's a Kiwi hero, no? I guess - I mean, my dad is a total hero. But he doesn't wear a straw hat. And this joker can't even do a farmer's squat. I have to show him how, but in pink platforms it doesn't quite have the effect it ought. And he asks what we are, and we inform him proudly of our radness and he says, 'I thought the theme was bad heroes from your own country'. We look at Sea Bass. He nods in a reedeeculous French way. We glare at him and protest that this is NOT what he told us. There is, as you may have guessed, a small difference between a general bad superhero and one from your own country. But several of the costumes make more sense now.

So I just tell people that a Mexican Wrestling Barbie won NZ X-Factor. Apparently this is quite plausible because they nod. As for Ali, dressed as Poison Ivy? She's English - we're sure she can pass for a WAG. Nic as Super Mario does pose a problem but he's having such a good time with his fake moustache that we just leave him to it.

And, in final news, I get an Oren tomorrow. Luke's floating about this country somewhere and Karen gets back on Monday. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, some bacon would make this day perfect.

Naming and shaking

I had a dream this morning that I was dating former wrestler turned actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson but had to break up with him because I loathe the name Dwayne. (This seems fair, no?) I was trying to ask if he had a better middle name. But then my dad discovered both a diamond mine and a Lego mine in the garden, so all my attention was taken up on that. A Lego mine – how awesomely hilarious would that be.

Christchurch = earthquake central. Somehow I thought Wellington would have gotten a big shake up first. Mother Nature, oooh she's a cunning one. So predictable with her winter/summer/spring/autumn games and then she tries to mix it up a little with ridiculous results. I, for one, shall be writing a letter of complaint.

Bend me, shape me

Nothing says 'I am a sophisticated 32-year-old woman and you should definitely respect me' like me fixing the broken zipper on my skirt with a bulldog clip.

In other news I attempted hot yoga. Yoga and I have a chequered past, mostly because I either suck at it (possibly true) or the teachers have been useless (probably less true). Hot yoga is somewhat more painfully enjoyable. I'm still not very good at large chunks of it, but boy can I touch my toes with enthusiasm.

Which brings me to my next point - is there some sort of flatulence etiquette in yoga?

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.