"Hey darl."

"Hey, what's up? I had a couple of missed calls from you today. Everything okay?"

"Oh yeah... I locked myself out."

"Shit. Do you have keys to get back in?"

"No, I'm fine. I broke in."

"...how?"

"I chopped the bathroom window off with a saw. I'll put it back later. I just didn't want you to think that someone had broken in or anything."

"..."

My housemate, guys.

Back in 2008 and 2009, while I was living in Ascot Vale and doing Honours, I didn't have much time or patience for cleaning.

But I did have a big, red, cardboard box. When I wanted to clean my room, I'd just throw all those pieces of crap that don't belong anywhere in the box and at that point, I could no longer see them and that meant that the room was clean. Right? At some point, I threw a container of fabric softener in there.

I moved house and moved house again and all my things went into storage at my parents' place for about nine months before I moved to the evil house of death and rage in Footscray in June 2010. I shoved this box of things I hadn't touched in almost a year on top of the wardrobe and left them there. The fabric softener leaked at some point and the bottom third of the box got ...slimy. But the Christmas decorations, ice pack and torch were fine and I only needed those once every few months, anyway. There was always some good reason why I didn't need to deal with the rest of the box. (Like being busy. Or procrastination. Or the fact that the box was slimy and disgusting and I'd do it later.)

By May, the evil house of death and rage in Footscray had gone ... bad. Very bad. I moved out of my nice indoor room into the bungalow in a bit of a hurry one Saturday. I didn't have time to pack so I just swept everything into a box. (Everything. There were light bulbs and cake tins and tissue boxes and a porcelain doll and packets of pegs and so on.) I didn't unpack the box, because I moved out entirely in early July.

On arriving in North Carlton, I discovered that the box might have once contained light bulbs but it now contained merely a fine dusting of powered glass. So I put it on top of a shelf with the box of slime, the box of ancient computer stuff and the box of uni notes. I then ignored it all for ten months.

Today, I threw out all the old computer crap I no longer need or want, all the uni notes I no longer need, the slimy rubbish from that box and rescued those items not covered in powdered glass.

I feel so organised.

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself. From <lj user="shinyandnat">

six year olds Six year olds are ...complicated. You can't understand what half of them say and there's this huge gulf of vocab and language they don't have and skills that they're still learning about things like sharing and dealing with minor things that go wrong. Half my grade is working on counting to 35 right now and reading numbers and half don't know all their letters yet. They're exhausting, everything is a huge emergency and a drama with them. But, at the same time, they're awesome: you can impress the hell out of a six year old with a piece of playdo, they love silly little games (indoor hand soccer!) and when things aren't going wrong, they're fun to be around. They're just ... less cynical than adults, even when you don't quite think the implications of a lesson through and um. you're doing dinosaurs right, and there's this cute little game you found where you drop a cartoon dead horse in different places to see if it will become a fossil eventually and animals eat the remains and uh... The thing you have to remember about six year olds (other than that they really can only do one thing at a time) is that they're not cynical, so they were very concerned about the dead cartoon horse for a while but now all they want to do is play "the dead animal game" again where "you get to make the horse rot and things ate it." The other thing you need to remember about six year olds is that one of their favourite games right now is called "Zombie Bite".

cider  I like the idea of cider but I find I can't drink more than about two pints of the stuff - it just gets too sweet. I'm not too big a fan of Rekorderling or perry but I like regular ciders.

driving  I like it. Mostly. Um. Except for driving downhill. I don't like that much. I don't mind driving in traffic, either, as long as no-one is either going less than 50 in an 80 zone or doing something mindbendingly stupid around me. I got off my P's the other day and I'm still stunned that I made it all the way through without any fines for driving offenses (um. we don't talk about my parking fines here) or hitting anything.

live music  I adore live music. It's something about the volume and the vibe. I just love it. Of course, I'm also busy as all anything so I don't see nearly as much as I'd like to.

sewing You know how some hobbies require you to be careful, do things mostly properly, redo the things you didn't do properly and not be half arsed about it all? (In other words, things I find very hard). Sewing is not that hobby. At all. I am the queen of half arsed. And yet, I really kind of like sewing.

drawing It's just - it's relaxing. It's something I just do, automatically, if you put a piece of paper and some sort of writing implement in front of me and try to make me listen to something. It's something I wish I was better at and something I don't think I'll stop doing any time soon, even if I really don't post most of the things I do draw or finish anywhere near the number of pieces I start when you give me pen, paper and ask me to listen for half an hour.

dream house It has polished floor boards, a new bathroom, a small courtyard garden with lush plants and stepping stones. It's a little, red brick place, maybe with an attic. Right now it maybe looks a little <a href="http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses/b53/">like this</a> or maybe like a two bedroom terrace.

It feels like it should have words but IDK what words... Words? Are hard. It also *really* needs that first panel redrawn or something. Fucking perspective. Why is it a thing?

( NSFW comic panel )

(Originally posted at Dreamwidth Link | comments | Leave a comment)

"You look good. Have you lost weight?" "You must have lost weight. You look good." "Are you losing weight? You look good right now."

You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and your horrible backhanded compliments. Fuck you for making it clear that the only reason you think I look acceptable right now is that you think I've lost weight. I guess that if my weight goes up a little over the next week or two that I'll once again move back over the line into 'excessively fat. does not look good' territory. Or is this some kind of encourage the fatty situation? If she loses enough weight, she'll actually look good and not just... you know, for a fat person.

But of course, my ability to look good can't be removed from the fact that I'm fat. Fat people aren't attractive. They're blubbery, flabby, disgusting, lazy, walking (except that, of course, fat people don't walk) heart attacks on legs. They can't (I can't) really be considered to look good unless they're (I'm) acceptably thin.

So, once again, fuck you. I'm a twenty-something fat, attractive, woman. I look pretty damn awesome some days. (Other days, I look like I've been hit by a bus made of small children, clag and whatever that is on my jeans.) My ability to look attractive is not predicated on whether or not you think I've lost a couple of kilos recently or I'm wearing some top that "flatters" me (makes me appear marginally thinner, in the right light.)

So next time, why don't you pick up on my hair or my dress or hell, simply acknowledge that I look good without the implicit "but yesterday, I thought you were too damn fat to be attractive"?

Go on. I dare you.

(Originally posted at Dreamwidth Link | comments | Leave a comment)

Right.

I am home from work and have obtained dinner. (There was also meant to be desert but it came out of the packet and was mouldy. Bah.) SO.

Now I just need to do my maths term overview;
plan... at least tomorrow's maths in detail (the rest of the week can wait till my APT time on Wednesday), because maths is a clusterfuck if I don't;
draw monster parts for crafts, to go with the ones I've downloaded - I'm light on bodies, wings, spiky bits and so on;
Dishes;
Go for a walk;
and be IN BED, READY TO SLEEP by 10pm.

On Thursday, I made 80% of this dress in a navy with a small flower pattern. I just need to trim the seams and hem the neck and sleeves. I learned a very valuable lesson in making it, when I forgot to enlarge the back, despite fixing the rest of the bodice. And okay, yes, I fixed it but I'd have saved myself about five hours work if I'd just sucked it up and bought another metre of fabric and recut the back. Um. I will do that next time, because I'd like to make the halter neck version, too.

I drove to Canberra on Friday, collecting Rossi from Wodonga on the way. It was a nice drive, marred only slightly by the sauna-like temperatures within my car and the deeply annoying moment when we missed the Canberra turn off because the single, solitary big green sign telling you to leave the highway now was. not. there, necessitating an annoyingly long detour on realising that we'd overshot the exit by half an hour and 70 kilometres. (Seriously, though, a couple more signs reminding you about the Canberra/Yass exit would have been helpful at some point during the 100 kilometres between Gundagai and the exit.)

Then there was much longed-for beer, sausages and good friends. Saturday involved dress shopping (I'm ordering this, as the one I tried on was a size too small. There's a couple of others I'd like, too.) Also, napping and the spa.

Sunday, there was dinner in Wodonga as Nat and I dropped our passenger off and every time we got out of the car on a 35 degree day (that's 95 degrees in American) we'd go "Oh, it's so nice and cool out here. Please don't make me get back in there again."

Today, I went to school and did things to my classroom. I'll do that tomorrow, too, when I get my computer login and so forth. (but I don't have my amazing teacher number yet so I still cannot lease a laptop or have email or get paid.)

Tonight, I'm going to clean my bathroom: the bath was once white and is now striped with a disturbing combination of vivid orange soap scum and black ick. I feel that I should demonstrate that I am a less disgusting person than that bathroom implies I am.

(Originally posted at Dreamwidth Link | comments | Leave a comment)

It's possible that I'm not that good at following instructions or reading small print. That would be why I cut out four "sleeve B" size 14 pieces, four sleeve B size 16 pieces and four sleeve B size 18 pieces. I'd just started on size 20 pieces.

It also explains why I was so incredibly confused about how the sleeve fits together and why it needed so many identical pieces.

Actually, I started drawing it about a month ago but got totally sidetracked by the need to scan the original pencil sketch and then there was the death cold and...

Well, anyway, it's finally finished.

(Originally posted at Dreamwidth Link | comments | Leave a comment)

Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.

F Choose from 很大， 很凶，很可爱 to describe the cartoon figures in each picture.

Ni Hao 1 Student Workbook

Yeah, I don't even...