Resolutions for 2010:
1) I will finally get my act together and formally change my name to married name on assorted paraphenalia. (After over a year). It is too confusing having a driver's licence in one name and a passport in another, an email addy in one name and the signanture block another. Also, the dual signatures are too hard! So the resolution: name commit!
2) Eat breakfast each day (am currently a shocker for just grabbing a coffee at work)
3) Cook dinner at least once a week (as spending far too much money eating out constantly... but so much nicer to have others cook for you!)
4) Start sewing more so that I can branch out from baby clothes into items for individuals old enough to complain if the seams are shite :)
5) Find a form of exercise that I like rather than view as a chore
6) Clean out my clothes. It is absurd to have too many to fit in a large chest of drawers. The Salvos will have a better use for them. Also, then I can shop!
7) Finally get act together and become properly qualified Girl Guide Leader, rather than futzing about and continuing to be an assistant.
Hmm.
That is a lot.
I suppose we shall see as of February if any have been achieved!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Monday, December 21, 2009
Visit to the USA
October/November saw MrLaurie and I take off on a grand adventure, travelling to New York, Washington DC, San Francisico, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The whole tale would take quite some doing, so here are just a couple of highlights:
Unexpected things:
1) I completely loved what I saw of the USA. It was way way down my list of places to visit, but I'm so glad I went.
2) Not withstanding the above, I was shocked that I was bored witless in Washington DC. How is that even possible for a politics nerd like me? Must have been the rain and the boring hotel in a boring bit of town. The Washington monument was pretty cool though.
3) LA was actually kind of awesome. Santa Monica in particular was brilliant.
4) LA had useable public transport. Huh.
5) Las Vegas was a strange bizarro world where you can drink on the street at noon and seem quite restrained, as unlike many, at least you didn't start at 9am. It is also where pole dancing is a public event. In trucks. On the main street.
6) San Francisico is utterly beautiful and amazing, but oh my gosh, the people must have calves of steel to handle those hills.
7) Baseball is actually kind of interesting. American football remains a slow mess of a game.
8) The cutest halloween costume was a little kid in a bumblebee outfit, following her mum around the supermarket. The weirdest was a girl at the party we went to, who went as 'Octomum', and proceeded to give birth to eight small dolls every half an hour.
9) The most irritating part of New York was the uber-wealthy part where there were no cute shops, and lots of nannies pushing small children wearing shoes more expensive than I will ever own. The best part was a tie between the Blue Note jazz club and the Trailer Park bar in Chelsea.
Geeky highlights:
1) Dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History. T-Rex! Stegosauras! Triceratops! Eeei!
2) MoMA. Van Gogh, Cezanne, my school books coming to life.
3) The actual return module from Apollo 11.
'Place' highlights:
1) Looking over the Golden Gate Bridge from high on the cliff on a gorgeous sunshiny day, with the sailboats bobbing about the harbour.
2) Standing on top of the Empire State Building on a clear cool night after 27 hours of travel. Wow.
3) Sitting on Santa Monica pier drinking margaritas and just contemplating the gorgeous wide beach.
*sigh* I want to go back!
Unexpected things:
1) I completely loved what I saw of the USA. It was way way down my list of places to visit, but I'm so glad I went.
2) Not withstanding the above, I was shocked that I was bored witless in Washington DC. How is that even possible for a politics nerd like me? Must have been the rain and the boring hotel in a boring bit of town. The Washington monument was pretty cool though.
3) LA was actually kind of awesome. Santa Monica in particular was brilliant.
4) LA had useable public transport. Huh.
5) Las Vegas was a strange bizarro world where you can drink on the street at noon and seem quite restrained, as unlike many, at least you didn't start at 9am. It is also where pole dancing is a public event. In trucks. On the main street.
6) San Francisico is utterly beautiful and amazing, but oh my gosh, the people must have calves of steel to handle those hills.
7) Baseball is actually kind of interesting. American football remains a slow mess of a game.
8) The cutest halloween costume was a little kid in a bumblebee outfit, following her mum around the supermarket. The weirdest was a girl at the party we went to, who went as 'Octomum', and proceeded to give birth to eight small dolls every half an hour.
9) The most irritating part of New York was the uber-wealthy part where there were no cute shops, and lots of nannies pushing small children wearing shoes more expensive than I will ever own. The best part was a tie between the Blue Note jazz club and the Trailer Park bar in Chelsea.
Geeky highlights:
1) Dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History. T-Rex! Stegosauras! Triceratops! Eeei!
2) MoMA. Van Gogh, Cezanne, my school books coming to life.
3) The actual return module from Apollo 11.
'Place' highlights:
1) Looking over the Golden Gate Bridge from high on the cliff on a gorgeous sunshiny day, with the sailboats bobbing about the harbour.
2) Standing on top of the Empire State Building on a clear cool night after 27 hours of travel. Wow.
3) Sitting on Santa Monica pier drinking margaritas and just contemplating the gorgeous wide beach.
*sigh* I want to go back!
Blog paranoia. Sod it.
Okay, so I abandoned the little blog just as it found a reader or two.
The thing is, I got self concious.
I started freaking out about people reading my inner thoughts, and linking it back to me, as MsLaurie is hardly the most impressive bit of pseudonym. Not only have I been using it for years (I have a very stable online identity, which all of a sudden I'm not so sure about), and for some reason, MrLaurie, who blogs in real-name territory, insists upon linking.
Not to mention, writers block and being utterly convinced that I had nothing of import to say!
So I've been feeling a bit exposed. Also, what really gets me ranting about politics is health, and as I work in that area, I don't feel like I can rant in a public space about it!
Hence, a bit of a blog abandonment.
Strategies I've considered to re-vamp:
1) Abandon the blog entirely, start a new one not quite so MsLaurie linked.
2) Stop blogging (but how unfun, and I do so love reading other people's blogs, it feels greedy not to share back)
3) Suck it up and move on.
Assessment? I'm sucking it up.
So! I hereby annouce a return to blogging, at least semi-regularly. Although given my new misgivings, I suspect it will be less big-P political than I originally imagined.
The thing is, I got self concious.
I started freaking out about people reading my inner thoughts, and linking it back to me, as MsLaurie is hardly the most impressive bit of pseudonym. Not only have I been using it for years (I have a very stable online identity, which all of a sudden I'm not so sure about), and for some reason, MrLaurie, who blogs in real-name territory, insists upon linking.
Not to mention, writers block and being utterly convinced that I had nothing of import to say!
So I've been feeling a bit exposed. Also, what really gets me ranting about politics is health, and as I work in that area, I don't feel like I can rant in a public space about it!
Hence, a bit of a blog abandonment.
Strategies I've considered to re-vamp:
1) Abandon the blog entirely, start a new one not quite so MsLaurie linked.
2) Stop blogging (but how unfun, and I do so love reading other people's blogs, it feels greedy not to share back)
3) Suck it up and move on.
Assessment? I'm sucking it up.
So! I hereby annouce a return to blogging, at least semi-regularly. Although given my new misgivings, I suspect it will be less big-P political than I originally imagined.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tram Tales. Woohoo!
To the tune of 'Duck Tales', of course. I did love Duck Tales.
Last night - sudden showers in the bright sunshine. Crazy dark clouds above with the sun coming in at the horizon line. Amazing.
This morning - Turns out that a fancy-looking fifty cent piece with the corners sort curved off isn't much use in the ticket machine. On the upside, this did mean that I had a perfectly legitimate reason for not getting buying a ticket - and a spare $3 to buy an emergency coffee!
Last night - sudden showers in the bright sunshine. Crazy dark clouds above with the sun coming in at the horizon line. Amazing.
This morning - Turns out that a fancy-looking fifty cent piece with the corners sort curved off isn't much use in the ticket machine. On the upside, this did mean that I had a perfectly legitimate reason for not getting buying a ticket - and a spare $3 to buy an emergency coffee!
Monday, August 31, 2009
A Good Wife
Late last year, I married MrLaurie. Up until about six weeks before the wedding, we had not lived together (a complicated and multi-state long distance relationship. Virgin Blue made an absolute fortune off us).
And from the moment we moved in together, for some reason, although we had both been very independent until that point, I found myself immediately wanting to be a ‘Good Wife’.
In three and a half years of living alone I had not once planned meals a week ahead, or managed to drag myself to a farmers market for vegetables. I had certainly not looked up recipes online and written shopping lists (my shopping style trended more towards moseying around the supermarket where inspiration took me).
I would often go weeks without doing laundry (benefit of having too many clothes), and my cleaning was scrappy. I’ve always been the sort to do a panicked rush around when people were coming over, and tend to feel that a place is not home if there are not five pairs of shoes sitting in the middle of the lounge room floor.
But since getting married, I somehow care about the groceries. I’m planning menus. Days in advance! I care whether we’ve had the same meal more than once in a week!
I’m worrying about laundry – for some crazy reason I care that his collars are stained, and somehow decide that I need to fix this immediately. So I’m scrubbing in the ‘made into a paste’ napisan early on a Saturday morning. This is ridiculous - who even sees the inside of the collars of his workshirts?
I’ve started planning dinner parties. And worrying about his health (has he made a doctor’s appointment? No? Should I make it for him? – Talk about infantilising). I’m caring about how often he calls his mother (for some reason apparently I think this reflects on me!). I’ve started buying Christmas and birthday gifts for his family ‘from both of us’, where last year I would have firmly declared this was his problem. I’ve even sewn on his buttons, rather than taking the time to teach him, which I’d previously insisted was the only way it was happening.
Admittedly, its not all one way – MrLaurie does tend to clean up the kitchen after I’ve destroyed it through cooking. And he does put loads of washing on much more often than I do (although his attempts to hang the washing afterwards are… artistic). And we have sensibly agreed that we are both terrible at mopping and vacuuming, so we’ve hired a cleaner. (I never knew floors could shine that way!)
I just don’t quite know why it is that I find myself wanting to be A Good Wife. Capitalised. Fifties-style.
What is it about the gender relations that I’ve picked up so comprehensively that I want to prove that I have traditional house-wifely skills? Why after years of simply assuming that he must enjoy my company due to wit and smarts (not demonstrated to date on this blog, but I would like to assure any readers that it really is there, somewhere) have I suddenly moved towards trying to impress with how much I can be like our respective Grandmothers?
Clearly, the patriarchy has some seductive charms. But I’m going to have to do some serious conquering of this trend before we even start to contemplate little ones running about, or I’ll be straight back to 1956.
And from the moment we moved in together, for some reason, although we had both been very independent until that point, I found myself immediately wanting to be a ‘Good Wife’.
In three and a half years of living alone I had not once planned meals a week ahead, or managed to drag myself to a farmers market for vegetables. I had certainly not looked up recipes online and written shopping lists (my shopping style trended more towards moseying around the supermarket where inspiration took me).
I would often go weeks without doing laundry (benefit of having too many clothes), and my cleaning was scrappy. I’ve always been the sort to do a panicked rush around when people were coming over, and tend to feel that a place is not home if there are not five pairs of shoes sitting in the middle of the lounge room floor.
But since getting married, I somehow care about the groceries. I’m planning menus. Days in advance! I care whether we’ve had the same meal more than once in a week!
I’m worrying about laundry – for some crazy reason I care that his collars are stained, and somehow decide that I need to fix this immediately. So I’m scrubbing in the ‘made into a paste’ napisan early on a Saturday morning. This is ridiculous - who even sees the inside of the collars of his workshirts?
I’ve started planning dinner parties. And worrying about his health (has he made a doctor’s appointment? No? Should I make it for him? – Talk about infantilising). I’m caring about how often he calls his mother (for some reason apparently I think this reflects on me!). I’ve started buying Christmas and birthday gifts for his family ‘from both of us’, where last year I would have firmly declared this was his problem. I’ve even sewn on his buttons, rather than taking the time to teach him, which I’d previously insisted was the only way it was happening.
Admittedly, its not all one way – MrLaurie does tend to clean up the kitchen after I’ve destroyed it through cooking. And he does put loads of washing on much more often than I do (although his attempts to hang the washing afterwards are… artistic). And we have sensibly agreed that we are both terrible at mopping and vacuuming, so we’ve hired a cleaner. (I never knew floors could shine that way!)
I just don’t quite know why it is that I find myself wanting to be A Good Wife. Capitalised. Fifties-style.
What is it about the gender relations that I’ve picked up so comprehensively that I want to prove that I have traditional house-wifely skills? Why after years of simply assuming that he must enjoy my company due to wit and smarts (not demonstrated to date on this blog, but I would like to assure any readers that it really is there, somewhere) have I suddenly moved towards trying to impress with how much I can be like our respective Grandmothers?
Clearly, the patriarchy has some seductive charms. But I’m going to have to do some serious conquering of this trend before we even start to contemplate little ones running about, or I’ll be straight back to 1956.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Late winter turning into spring
Finally some pretty flowers for the little blog:
Geraniums
Daffs
HelleboreAfter months of a little tiny garden all grey and brown, with the only colour the bright green of the persistent weeds, its lovely to have some flowers.
I especially love the hellebore - its so delicate.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
stargazer: 14th down under feminists carnival
I is smug. One of my (very few) posts was featured in the stargazer: 14th down under feminists carnival!
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