Food for thought

I gave myself mild food poisoning - mushrooms, why must you turn on me like that, cruel - yet oddly attractive because I know smurfs live in some of you - little bits of fungus?

Since the departure of Nic'n'Kajal, we have tried to use their room as a brothel but no one would come - I think our surf nerd theme, complete with authentic sand and sci-fi/fantasy novels of the non-erotic kind may have not been sexy enough actually. So we allowed a Canadian to come and stay. His name was Ian, which actually makes up part of Canadian, so we just called him that: Canadian. Possibly not very friendly of us, but we made up for that by drinking all his beer. In return he cooked us dinner. My personal favourite was rasagne. Lasagne that needed another layer. What better than leftover risotto? And it was really good, so, hey, I probably shouldn't have mocked it so much. However, he also introduced us to clamato juice, which isn't necessarily a beverage I will be rushing out to buy if I ever make it to Canada, so maybe the rasagne mocking was for the greater good.

Canadian left, and our livers started to recover. Until we let the Chilean move in. Likes a drink does the Chilean. He also cooks well. He made a sort of shepherd's pie, although with hard boiled egg under the mash, which I thought was both odd and disgusting because I see no purpose for hard boiled egg in a perfect world. However, the rest of the pie was delicious. But when I took a piece, the Chilean did tell me that I could add either salt or ... sugar.

Sugar and hard boiled eggs make poisonous mushrooms appear quite attractive.

Less OMG, more OMP

In yet another thrilling example of how I am that much better at just living the dream* than most folks, but especially you, dear reading audience of seven, I have managed to burn myself - which I realise at first may not seem spectacular BUT - I now have a somewhat wonky and 10% incomplete letter P burnt into my left hand. I have no idea how I managed to do this but I am in no doubt as to it being proof that even when I fuck up - I come up trumps.

Also, new informative thing - don't fill up a water bottle in the dark. Because you will burn yourself and then have to go to bed with a both a hot water bottle and a tea towel full of ice, which sort of cancel each other out.

* I am actually not sure I want to live the dream after last night's one where Fi's brother Gary accidentally killed someone by throwing a spade at their head and then we all had to help hide the evidence.

Zombie chick lit - coming your way soon to eat your brains

Nic and Kajal have buggered off to London because they're massive fans of Wills and Kate and they NEED TO BE THERE, MAN. Also, Nic is meeting the family for the first time. Nothing to worry about there, we're a charming family, whatever all those wankers say, and any other family would be overjoyed to have us join them. It saddens me, though, this absence of brother mine and Lady K, because they are a large part of my social life. They are in fact half of my social life so Harriet and Karen need to up their game plan.

However, we can keep in contact via the magic of le phone, and Nic has already expressed his horror at a book topic through this very medium. Book synopsis: About to break up couple go to therapy only to find she has been infected and is a zombie. They must survive and learn to love each other again.

If ever there was an OMG moment, this is it, people. O M G. Where O is not for awesome.

Sweet and very sour

Yes, yes, I know. Two posts in two days. I must be drunk. Or ill. Probably ill because I have just eaten the most godawful biscuit. Two salty crackers with lemon icing placed squarely (no human applies icing in that manner) in between them.

And I only ate it because some utter wanker in my office ate my breakfast Tim Tam and I need my early morning sugar injection and I was pretty desperate. I concede that if I didn't want the last biscuit in the pack to be eaten by anyone other than me, then perhaps I ought to have hidden the Tim Tam until such time as I deemed it necessary to smash said oblong of Not Good For You into my slavering biscuit embracing unit.

It just didn't occur to me when I left the office at the terribly late hour of 5.10pm last night that anyone would be so foolish as to eat the last Tim Tam after that because I have become infamous for eating them first thing in the morning. Clearly the Tim Tams would not be replenished before 8am so what the hell was the Tim Tam taker thinking?

Upside down and inside out

So, as no doubt many other 33-year-old adult women did today, I got to work and discovered my knickers were on inside out.

And then there was a fire drill which was pretty much an excuse to stand about outside in the sun discussing what the different coloured hats on people's heads meant - which is probably not such a good sign given they are the floor wardens/first aid wardens. I should know that stuff. There's just so much stuff to remember as a grown up. And apparently I can't even remember to put my knickers on the right way round which makes me, gosh, I don't know, a really honest dunce?

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.