glory day

Strange and sort of creepy. And December.

Yesterday I was at the hairdressers having the back of my head dyed purple, as you do, and I noticed another customer staring at me.  She told me she had finally worked out where she had seen me before: in the crowd at a really busy trade fair back in April.

Seriously, what?  Trust me I am not that memorable, and to have someone describe what I was wearing nearly a year after the event sort of freaked me out.  Strange.

~~~~~

When will I remember that I never get anything done in December?  I can successfully get the presents organised and pack myself off to wherever I need to go, and the rest is more luck than good management.  Having a to-do list is pointless after November!

~~~~~

A propos of nothing, here's a photo of a choker I made years ago:

 

Why I get nothing done

I didn't know I was so fascinating until we got a cat.  A cat who follows me everywhere and watches my every movement.  Which is quite cute and all, until we get this:

CLAWS DO NOT GO IN FABRIC AAAARGHHHHH.

THAT was deeply unpleasant

You will be surprised to hear that surgery was NO FUN.  They were running about two hours late, then the anethetist spent the best part of 20 minutes trying to find vein in my hand - to no avail. 

By that time I was just so over it I started crying, and the darling receptionist held my hand while the doctor mined my forearm for a better vein.  I swear I gripped her hand so tightly that something broke (so I'd best bring some peace-offering muffins next time I go).

After that things got done fairly quickly and with the help of my trusty Panadeine Forte I've had a fairly drift-y time ever since.

My face is all puffed up like a wee chipmunk, and - worst of all - my speech is pretty unintelligible.  Why does virtually every word I need to say have an 's' in it?  And I have a huge bruise on my forearm.  I have to say I'm not at all thrilled with how things look at the moment, although I know! I know! I have to wait til all the swelling goes down.  Just, you know, not so happy right now.

A Tale of Blue and Gold

Here is a picture of the lovely irises De bought me when I got home:

and look!  My Dianella longifolia flowered:

I feel so proud.

~~~~~

David has been a complete star throughout this whole process, from letting me rabbit on about the process to picking me up to making sure I have chocolate Sustagen on hand at all times.  I'm not quite sure what I can do to show him how grateful I am - is this maybe a situation for a hand-made shirt?

Maybe I'll go shoe shopping on my way to surgery

~ 2½ hours to go ~

Some things, briefly, to stop me dwelling on my impending surgery:

I helped to co-ordinate our op-shop's involvement in the Under the Blue Moon festival last week.  I'd been bringing bags of clothes and things home for the past few months, and here is everything washed, ironed and packed ready to go:

I must admit to feeling a tiny bit daunted at that point.

We had two days of really hard work - Friday setting up, Saturday working the shop - and while there were some stresses [we work for the same organization, quit your bitching] everything went really well.  We got a good crowd, the shop looked great and the lucky dip thingie totally went off (who knew?).

Obviously the best part is that we raised nearly $1600, which is a) the first time in well over a year we've hit the 1K mark and b) believed to be an all-time record for one day's takings.  So yay.

~ 2¼ hours to go ~

A whole heap of the work done for the festival wouldn't have happened without De, who was just a phenomenal helper.  Everyone at the shop loved her, and really I couldn't have done it without her.

And you know what else I couldn't do without her?  Listen to my new iPod Touch!  In a moment which rendered me speechless De and J gifted me the iPod Touch J had won at an event - isn't that just an amazing thing?  And I was actually speechless, and you know that doesn't happen very often.

OK, 2 hours to go.  I'm going to go get it over with.

And full of woe

I have tried twelve gazillion times to write this, but I can't seem to do it right.  So here is what is.

The [very few] teeth I still have in/on my top jawbone are coming out.  One has been falling out for the past year; the other one came out (with all roots attached, no blood and no pain) when the dentist was making an impression for my denture.

Yes, my denture.  After 12 years of worrying about the worst that could happen, the worst has happened.  All the teeth from my top jaw are coming out.  Full denture.

And I know it's a first-world problem and all, but for me it's dreadfully, dreadfully sad.  No top teeth.  No pretending the problem will get better any time soon.  Gone, done, over.

Next Friday they all come out, then the next part of my life starts.

There has been much crying (the ugly. snotty crying) and railing against the world.  I know that losing all your teeth is not really that bad in the scheme of things, but for me it's really, really sad.

I am really, really sad right now. 

I always seem to get sick in August

I've had the most brutal head-cold for the best part of a fortnight and I would be seriously quite thrilled if it stopped right about now.

De gave me 'get well soon' daffodils:

which not only look gorgeous but make our downstairs rooms smell amazing.

It's funny, I could swear I do pretty much fuck all most of the time but I seem to have missed a whole pile of deadlines/obligations/meetings/whatever.  And I'm still not 100% well so even doing fairly little things leave me wiped out and kittenish.

Mutton shaved as lamb

Look at what my hairdresser did to me:

I am unaccountably delighted!  I had never pictured myself as the sort of woman who would shave designs into the back of her head, but I think it's marvellous - I feel like an All Black!

Surfers Paradise

De, Ke and I have just returned from our weekend in Surfers Paradise, although none of us are, in fact, in any way surf-y.  This was the river view from our hotel balcony:

and this was the city-side view from our hotel balcony:

which while much less pictuesque was perhaps more useful.

Surfers Paradise seems to be a town which attracts a great deal of groups looking for organised entertainment, such as hens/bucks night groups (of which we saw many) and post-season sporting groups.  For that reason I didn't really enjoy the town - there wasn't a sense of friends meeting up together so much as associated individuals coming together to get smashed and behave badly (David *quite* snorted when I told him that, as he feels that is the perfect description of De, Ke and I together, and I have icily informed him he has missed my point).

We had a great time together (as always) with much laughter and chatting and wine and food.  We went to SeaWorld on Friday, and it turned out to be the perfect day to go - on the off-season so the crowd was small, and the weather wasn't too hot.  We saw pelicans, dolphins, turtles, penguins:

rays and polar bears.  We went on a glass-bottomed boat in the shark reef and saw sharks, rays and many different types of fish, including a very pensive yellow fish:

After dinner at the Hogs Breath Cafe we went and got surprise! piercings - Ke got a labret piercing, De got a new nose piercing and I just had my nose jewellery changed.  Piercings for all!

The rest of the weekend was market shopping, lunch next door, walking along the beach, watching the All Blacks win (win!) and then coming back home to my partner and my cat.  Its always fantastic after a lovely weekend away with my girls to come home, it reminds me of just how lucky I am.

And tomorrow we shall lunch nicely

RUGBY:

Last Saturday we went to watch Uni play at North Sydney Oval.  The weather was perfect for rugby and NSO is such a pretty ground:

Uni dominated from the beginning of the game, and wrapped it up at 69-3.  Still top of the table.  Here are Norths on attack in the second half:

which sadly (for them) came to naught.

Rugby season is very difficult at the moment as I'm following the fortunes of Uni in the local Sydney competition, Otago in the Air NZ Cup competition (and a Shield challenge this week!  fingers crossed!) and the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations competition.  The AB's lost last week as predicted; until the coaching staff changes they are destined to be woeful, I'm afraid.

SEWING:

A whole pile of banded tops and overdue mending, not exciting enough for a photo.

MR PUSS:

He is currently yowling his head off downstairs, because he has just had dinner and isn't that a good reason to yowl?

Photographic proof that he once played with something!  (He does not "play".  We think he finds it demeaning).

LOOKING FORWARD TO:

De comes back from the States tomorrow, hurrah!

And there are lamb shanks for dinner, so that's good too

SEWING:

I finally finished the handbag I started about a month ago:

(You're right, it is a bit uneven, but it's not as bad as the photo would have you believe).

LOVING:

My new haircut.  I'm so used to having longer hair which only needed cutting every two months that it didn't occur to me that a short hairstyle needs cutting more often.  That's OK, lesson learned.

LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Decluttering ~ getting the house clean ~ buying some more jewellery ~ North Sydney Oval to watch Uni ~ All Blacks hopefully to beat Springboks ~ maybe cocktails ~ maybe Hive Bar ~

BEST NEWS OF THE DAY:

Kees Meeuws has returned to Otago rugby!  Perhaps we shall have to go over to watch an Air NZ cup game!