Share a Coke with Laura

Today is Anzac Day; I commemorated our fallen soldiers by staying in bed with The Gameboyfriend until 11am, & then eating vegemite & cheese on toast after he demonstrated why he really deserved breakfast in bed. The jar of vegemite we’re using at the moment is one of our Australia vegemite jars.

If wars weren’t fought for the freedom to be safe at home & lazy, then I don’t know what for.

I’m spending this nice day off doing my henna again (it’s been over six weeks, quelle horreur!), doing another wardrobe clean-out (shoes as well, this time) & washing my clothes. It’s very chilly, so The Gameboyfriend has lit the fireplace, & my clean clothes are now steaming in front of it.

I found a pair of Pyjama Jeans at Anglicare (a charity second-hand shop) for $7.50. That’s more than I would normally pay for pants at an op-shop, but they really do feel like wearing track pants while looking like jeans. The Gameboyfriend said “So like jeggings?” (aw bless, the man knows what jeggings are) but they’re boot-cut, so not quite. I enjoy slobbing around the house in comfortable clothes, but I like to feel stylish while doing so. I normally end up wearing tights around the house under nice but comfortable jumper-dresses, & ripping holes in them on the edges of things (this is why I threw out The Gameboyfriend’s coffee table while he was at work one day. That & it was rubbish). Or I refuse to wear pants at all, & The Gameboyfriend & Auntie Vera go O_O

I do however now have room to actually store all of my shoes. This is the majority of them. Ages ago, Mum had shelving built around all the walls of her study (which she immediately filled with books & spilled over into my old bedroom), so she gave me her old bookcases. The Gameboyfriend suggested I have a shoe-case. & so it was done.  I do indeed have three identical pairs of Sportsgirl boots standing next to each other. Two are even the same colour, although they’ve faded to slightly different shades. They are the best boots ever, & I try to pinch them on eBay whenever a new pair is listed. I’m bidding on a grey pair right now This is a practical investment, because they are incredibly comfortable, watertight, good quality, & they go with everything.

I need to find some blu-tac. I have some cards a woman from work gave me that I want to stick up on the wall above my computer desk, oh nevermind, I found some. It was in a kitchen drawer, who ever would have thought of putting household items there?! Anyone who gives me cards that say “FUCKING FANTASTIC” & “KEEP CALM AND PASH AND DASH” is a genius though. Obvs.

I won a case of wine in a game of heads or tails at Marrickville Golf Club trivia the other week! I was so excite, bringing that home on the train was about as much fun as you can imagine though, I’m surprised all twelve bottles made it home in one piece. Although there’s only ten bottles now. The Gameboyfriend also surprised me with a case of Jolt Vanilla Creaming Soda. It is so delicious; it tastes so mellow & vanilla-y, the way you imagine vanilla essence tastes before you actually try it.

I googled the phone number on this missing pet poster – it turns out that’s the new Pizza Hut phone number now that they’re no longer 9481 1111. I posted on the Pizza Hut Facebook wall asking why they’ve taken the missing unicorn hotline number, & a Pizza Hut staff member kindly informed me that they work out of the same call centre. Well done.

(15:21) DUDE: fuck i hate customers like this
(15:21) DUDE: make me sit on the phone
(15:21) DUDE: on loud speaker
(15:21) DUDE: while they fumble around
(15:21) DUDE: babby’s first online payment
(15:21) DUDE: fuck off

Cokes shared with Laura today: 1, with myself, but The Gameboyfriend offered me a chocolate.

Today is 100 years since the Titanic left Southampton on it’s maiden voyage. I loved the shit out of the legend of the Titanic when I was little. I had all the books & watched all the documentaries, & my mum & I went to see the film when it came out. I cried; I was nine years old & had to wee so bad after four hours of sitting in the cinema, plus it was a fucking tragedy. Mum buys me Titanic memorabilia whenever she goes to Ireland, where the ship was built.

“How can you enjoy it when everyone dies?” I thought it was so sad & romantic & terrible & beautiful. I don’t know what else to say about it, but I was so into Titanic when I was little I can’t let a century of the voyage go by without saying something.

* * *Sad should be followed by happy.

A lovely lady from work surprised me with this stamp – so appropriate. She also got me a mug, post-it notes from the sexy desk of myself & greeting cards with adorable things on them. I was like ‘whoah I love you’.

This blimp was a lot more bizarre when it was floating directly past my fifth-storey window only a few metres away. I showed Auntie Vera & he was like, “what blimp? I see a white van, but…” Then I spent the rest of the afternoon looking up air ships on wikipedia. I said the word dirigible later in conversation & got weird looks.

Today no one has shared a coke with me, but Auntie Vera did buy me a bottle of pink V, & The Gameboyfriend bought me pizza for dinner (I have a cheese-burst crust from Dominos with alfredo sauce, mozzarella, bacon, feta, garlic olive oil, spinach & a tomato sauce lattice). I also have such great hair, I’ve taken like fifteen selfies to capture the magic of freshly washed hair with a little body & wave from being clipped up at work all day. I took my hair clip out in the lift & did the ‘smouldering temptress’ headshake in front of the mirror when we left work today, Auntie Vera just shook his head & told me I was so vain. I said I bet I think this lift is about me & he wouldn’t speak to me after that until we got the train station.

It’s been a month since my first excited weekend when I decided I would BLOG E’ERY DAY, & a month since I last henna’d my hair. I’m getting roots (there’s a definite 8-9mm of brown & white hair close to my scalp), & I’m not even going to deny that I am Very Lazy. I kept meaning to tell everyone the wonderful things about my day, except.

Sadly, the kittens are no longer with us. The Gameboyfriend loaded them all in the car in a washing basket & took them to the Yagoona RSPCA, to be chipped & desexed, & adopted & loved. We raised them to be friendly, so they should make good pets. That was a few weeks ago & now I can hardly remember what it was like to have them, although The Gameboyfriend & Auntie Vera haven’t yet let me forget that I did try to eat one of them.

Now if only we could get rid of the fleas they infested the lounge room with. We’ve bombed the house twice & I think they’ve finally gone. Last night The Gameboyfriend came home with a present for me, which he proudly presented me with after strewing his clothes all around the house & leaving his shoes right in the walkway between my desk & the couch, where I always trip over them. His present was a nit comb. I had to comb his hair for ten minutes before he finally believed me that he does not have fleas (he doesn’t).

A few weeks ago I (re)read The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic series (visit Readathon 2012 to view this year’s reading list) & found myself utterly appalled at Becky’s spending. I buy a fuck of a lot of clothes, e’ery day, & I get almost everything from second hand shops (cream silk dress, brand new with tags from a young Australian designer, $9.90? Fuck yes.) so I don’t pay a lot per item, but reading Becky’s fictionalised & OTT addiction to shopping made me wonder if I buy too much. That led to the wardrobe cleanout of March. Everything in that enormous pile hadn’t been worn in over a year, & a vast proportion of the clothes had never been worn by me.

I filled nine garbage bags & an enormous cardboard box with perfectly good jumpers, jeans, dresses, cardigans, shoes, boots, sandals, tops, everything. I buy so much rubbish because it’s $4 from the op-shop, or it’s green, & I hardly have any green (or red/pink/blue/orange/grey, everything except purple really, I hate purple), or it fits perfectly, & how rare is it to find a black pencil skirt that fits perfectly even though I’ve already got four at home that I don’t wear? Only I can’t throw them away because one day I will need a black pencil skirt/grey knitted dress/red singlet/pink elbow-length cardi, & I need this one because the one/five/nine I’ve already got might be too tight, too short, too long, not sexy enough for the outfit I find myself needing it for.

ENOUGH.

The clothes I kept still don’t fit in the space I have for them, & I don’t even store my clothes in our bedroom anymore. I used one of the spare bedrooms as my dressing room, with a built-in wardrobe, & it’s also jammed full of extra chests of drawers to store my stuff, & I had to justify long & hard to keep the clothes I did.

An example, I kept two almost identical long grey knit jumpers. They are exactly the same shade of dark grey, & the same shape – clingy tube. One is long enough to wear over opaque tights or leggings as a dress; the other is a few inches shorter & is definitely Not A Dress. (I am beginning to accept the limitations of Office Work and Things Which Are Not Dresses.) I should donate the shorter one to the Salvos, because I prefer longer jumpers that I can pretend are dresses because I’m quite short, but it has adorable little buttons on the sleeves, so I like it better than the longer jumper.

Really what I should do is cut the buttons off, sew them onto the dress-jumper, & donate the jumper-jumper back to the Salvos where I bought it. But they both only cost me about $6 & one jumper won’t make that much of a difference to my drawers so why can’t I just keep both? Only I over-analyse EVERY PIECE OF CLOTHING I OWN. Like hoodies. I don’t even like hoodies. They no longer fit my aesthetic, & I feel unsuitably casual when I wear them. Last year I wore a hoodie twice, I think, & once was because my old boss told me I always looked too nice to work for him. But each winter, when it’s cold, I find another adorable hoodie in an op-shop for $4-6, & I buy it because One Day I Might Want To Wear A Hoodie. This is why I own seven hoodies that I can think of. When I got home & go to my wardrobe, to my hoodie shelf, I bet I’ll find at least five more I’ve forgotten about.

I keep buying red things, because even though I hate red, & look terrible in red (I’ve a very pink complexion), one day I will think ‘this dress would be perfect with a red belt/cardigan!’ & I will need this red item of clothing, & I will hate myself for not buying it. Come on, it’s only $7, & I brought my lunch to work yesterday & today so I deserve it, for being so clever with my money.

In three weeks, I’ve bought one yellow dress, which I’ve challenged myself to wear to work one day each week. I’ve worn it to work four times now (twice in the first week, once last week & today), & changed up the shoes/belt/cardigan/handbag each time. It cost me $20, & so far it’s equaling all of those $5 sundresses I’ve bought from the Salvos, worn once & forgotten.

I’ve bought two pairs of black leggings, because I ripped open my two old pairs of black leggings irreparably on the same day. I bought a mustard yellow neck warmer (like a scarf, but less dangly & confusing) from a woman selling her hand-knitted wears for charity, because I appreciate hand-knitted items & for $5 it was a bargain. Not Buying Stuff is so hard, but at least I’ve given myself some leeway.

I bought the yellow dress because it’s very work-appropriate with a sensible skirt length, high neckline & cap sleeves, so I know I can put it on in the morning when I have eight minutes to get dressed & not worry about my tits or arse hanging out. I am allowed to buy Quality. I spent three days checking on the same black shoes in Wittner each lunchtime ($130, black leather flats with leather lining & arch support, & soles that won’t get soaked through if I have to walk through the rain) before deciding that even if I adored them, I wouldn’t wear them because the vamp was too high (sad, but true.), & that even though I’d cherish them for being expensive & not shit like all my Rubi & Payless black flats, I didn’t love them enough to justify spending $130, so it would still be a waste of money.

Why am I still talking about this. LAURA YOU DO NOT NEED ANY MORE CLOTHES.

Today is Henna Day, which means instead of wearing clothes I’m wandering about the house like a lost soul in a sports bra & a maxi skirt, & my head is slathered in mud. Fragrant mud.

I enjoy wandering around the house dressed madly, & this is the comfiest dress ever (even though I usually pull down the straps & wear it like a skirt). Once I’ve found a good spot in the house to rest a camera I’ll take outfit shots.

Everything is secured up with one of those mesh headbands that were so cool in like, 2002.

I really like the smell of henna. Before I first started using henna in November of 2010, I read that it was one of those polarising things, like coriander – either you love it, or you hate it. Fortunately, I love it. It smells like grass, only more pleasant, which is great because I fucking hate grass. Grass exists solely to make your shoes soaking wet in the one metre of nature strip between your front path & the road, & to allow your boyfriend to claim he does a lot of housework because he mows the lawn (I’d chop my toes off again if I ever tried). I HATE GRASS. Incidentally, The Gameboyfriend is mowing the lawn right & now & it smells just like henna, which is quite nice even if it is drowning out the vanilla essential oil I’ve got burning.

Off that tangent, as I’ve said today is henna day, which means I’ve got to spend between six & twelve hours marinading under this stuff. I always intend to do the whole twelve for the maximum dye penetration but it feels like I’m wasting my weekend sitting at home watching telly like I do on weeknights. The Gameboyfriend thinks henna smells gross so he won’t let me sleep with it in, which is fair enough I reckon.

Because I am trapped inside the house today, Auntie Vera & I have been taunting the kittens, putting them inside boxes & things & teasing them with a bell tied to a bit of yarn. Once we managed to find them, anyway. That was a task & a half.

The kittens spend most of their time in the loungeroom, since it’s cozy & full of places to hide, & they’re not allowed in the bedrooms. They weren’t on the couch or inside any of the bookshelves, & I couldn’t find them in the kitchen.

So of course it turns out they were wedged into a gap between that old PC & bookcase there.

We discovered that kittens love cardboard boxes & The Gameboyfriend’s shoes.

“KITTENS KITTENS gotta get down on KITTENS”
“If you sing that again-”
“FRIDAY FRIDAY”
“I’ve lost what little respect I had for you.”
“You had no respect for me, why lie for.”

Just what I need! Another social platform!

Web-designer friend (see the Introduction page here) & I are arguing over whether or not I am to refer to him as Auntie Vera. I think I am inclined to do so. He does not agree, but he hasn’t given me anything better yet & I can’t just refer to him as The Person With Whom I Am Currently Arguing because that will cease to be the case & then what?

This evening we all (The Gameboyfriend, Auntie Vera & I) went to Bunnings & bought shelving for the kitchen. Then we came home & all got on our computers so it looks like the shelving is going up tomorrow instead of today. The Gameboyfriend also promises that tomorrow he is going to clean the shower & mow the lawn, as well as put away the clean washing of his that has been sitting in the loungeroom for six weeks now, but we’ll see.

I also went through my wardrobe today, to chuck out some stuff I don’t wear anymore. I have an entire room for my clothes, & I still have to pile stuff on the spare bed because all the shelves, drawers & clothes hangers are full. Well fuck dat. I chucked out a bunch of stuff, & it filled seven garbags. Then when I went to put the things lying on the bed away, there was still too much to fit it all in the drawers.

On Thursday I bought a hat, because it looked so damn good with the dress I was wearing when I tried it on on Saturday. It doesn’t look as good now, but being it cold, rainy, inside & night time might have something to do with that.

Cokes shared with Laura today: 0