Mental Note

Even though the local Pizzeria's Hot Prawns pizza, with king prawns, hot chilli, garlic & herbs seems like a good idea at the time of ordering and consumption. It is never worth it, due to the bathroom agony experienced the following day. All of you remember that!

Flat

Do you ever have one of those days when you feel like doing absolutely nothing? When no matter how much you try to set yourself up to do something, prepare yourself with coffee, lining up all of your folders and writing your to do list, you just can’t seem to begin? I am having one of those days, when it seems that I can do everything else in the world but anything constructive. I have to pull myself out of it, how, how, how do I do that? I just feel…I dunno…flat…very flat…extremely flat. I can’t explain it.

That was earlier today…now I am feeling much better. See all that has to happen is that you get half of your Christmas cards done, enveloped and addressed, whilst feeling super efficient, as it is still November! Then your fabulous husband comes home, notices that you have had a sh*tter of a day, takes you out to dinner and gets you liquored up, cheers you up with great conversation, and then you feel even better. Aaah, I love my man.

Public Urination

I have started going for a walk everyday, for fitness and also to have a bit of a look around this new city. I have been choosing new directions each day and it’s been a great way to examine all of the areas that we do and do not want buy into in the future. On Monday I went for a great walk, lots of beautiful streets and houses, great weather. Which all ended with me walking down the road and some old guy showing me his winky, and then proceeding to do his business! Yeah! I am not lying, it was the most disturbing thing I have seen in a long time. You think he could have just found a bathroom rather than scarring the 100 or so people on the street.

I know it happened on Monday but it took me a couple of days to be even able to come to terms with the fact that I had seen something that looked like a prune, before I could then expose you to the horror.

Bambino or Bambina?

I received a message last night from on of my girlfriends back in Perth, that her lovely little baby was born yesterday evening. When I read the message I got tingles all over! It’s so exciting to think that she has brought this gorgeous little bundle into the world, and how much it will change her and all of us for the better. Congrats love, on a b_e_a_utiful healthy baby. I can’t wait to see the photos.

(P.S Is it bambino or bambina for a girl? Or neither? Was trying to get all international on your a*ses, but have possibly failed miserably)

The morning I had a visit from a Cherry Picker.

As I type, there is a cherry picker parking outside our apartment building and orange traffic cones being spread around it to stop traffic. You know why? Well when we moved in there were several cracked windowpanes in our little 1920’s windows and these guys, they are here to fix them. I thought that maybe they would come in the apartment and fix them from the inside as it seemed like the obvious course of events. But noooo, apparently there are three guys and a cherry picker required. They are not yet on their way up, probably packing the panes of glass into the picker part of the cherry contraption.

So this post will be a live post, well not posted live, but written live as opposed to my regular posts reflecting on the day. You’re in for some fun!

Oooh, it’s coming up! Yay! (Can you tell that perhaps I have been a little starved of human contact?) Wow they have blocked half of the pavement too, must be to prevent people form being showered in glass and suing the bajeezes out of them.

Oops, fell behind a bit, was setting up presentation boards. Ok, so there is glass all over kitchen, lots of banging, and new panes going in. All I am thinking right now is that those guys had better bloody come in and clean up my kitchen, I can’t even look at it right now as my head may in fact explode.

Thank god, they just came to clean up, and they have just left, and I have new windowpanes. The thing is when boys clean up, they don’t really clean so it’s crystal clean, so there are tiny glass shards all over my kitchen and all over the window sill in the lounge. See Boys, a dustpan and brush don’t really cut it when you are dealing with teeny tiny shards of glass! Didn’t your mother’s teach you anything! Vacuum cleaner time for me and I have had enough of the live writing business, doesn’t give me time to think of anything witty.

P.S Did I mention the glass boys were cute? But they can’t clean very well, so sorry all you single gals, that makes them a no go zone, then again they would come in handy in the event of a glass breakage. They were not as cute as my husband of course.

Jaded

Today at 2pm in the afternoon a man walked down our street ranting and raving, yelling ‘f’ this and ‘f’ that, yelling at imaginary people, as you do. Me, being a killer for drama rushed out onto the balcony to check it out. I looked down, and he was in fact yelling at no one in particular, mainly just the people in his head. The interesting thing was that all of the surrounding people just walked right by him, as if nothing was happening, as if this kind of behaviour was something they see everyday. Heck, in this neighbourhood it is probably something you see everyday.

See this is how you can tell that I am not Sydney born and bred, because we would react to something like that in Perth, we would stare and then run, or cross the road at least. Here they just continue walking right past the guy, even bumping into him, and he doesn’t even notice, he just keeps on yelling at the people in his head.

It’s interesting what we get used to in our lives that we no longer even see anymore. I have been picking up on a lot of that kind of stuff lately, as I seem to notice everything here, cause it’s all new to me, whereas everyone already here has seen all this and worse. I suppose someday I will become as jaded as they are.

Our interesting weekend…

Our Saturday began with a lovely sleep in, a stroll and great coffee and toast from our new haunt. I bought the paper on the way home and read the first section of it, the Sydney Morning Herald is huge so I like to attack it one section at a time, and after each section I generally need a break.

The Saturday had started well, then we decided to go to the shops to get groceries, window shop (e.g. look at things in fancy shops that we can’t afford). The problems began on the way there, the traffic was hideous due to the nearby markets, and also that it was perfect beach weather. The hubby got so frustrated he debated turning the car around, but I was able to calm him and we kept going. Retrospectively I wish I had said nothing and that we had turned around. The shops were fine, but I was over the window-shopping pretty quickly, we were looking in a lot of electronic shops and I was dragging along my lime green granny trolley, so I kept bashing into things. We were however looking for headphones for me to use Skype, so I was in no position to complain.

We got to the groceries in the end and things were looking up, we had found a Woolworth’s so I was back in my element. All the products I used to get in Perth were there, the prices were cheaper than Coles, and I knew where everything was, the only difference was that the range was much bigger, which was, well fantastic! (Yes, that’s me, getting excited about grocery shopping!)

Baah booww…the joy did not last for long. We lost the car. Well, we didn’t lose the car, we just forgot where we parked it, which was somewhere under possibly the biggest Westfield shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere. It was ok though as he had a plan, I was to stand with the trolley whilst he scoured the floor where we thought we had parked. See, they have these little codes, but we had forgotten ours a little bit, kinda half forgotten, and there were no distinguishing features about the car park. As in, I thought ‘Hang on a tic, I remember that corner and that sign, but hang on a tic there is another one just like it, and another, and another. Holy Potato everything down here looks the same!’ We did eventually find the car, but not before the husband had scoured 2 levels of the car park.

When we finally got out of the car park, we were side swiped by a taxi, who decided to mount a curb so that he could gain one car length on us. (Shall we bake a cake and write “Was it worth it?” on it for you Mr Taxi Driver?) After he scratched the side of the car he proceeded to drive away, no swapping of details or anything. Lucky I am the bag lady and carry notebooks and pens with me. We spent the rest of the afternoon feeling decidedly sorry for ourselves and our poor little car, and then we made police reports called the taxi company etc etc.

The car scenario was the real low point. I made a roast for dinner which would have been great except I am used to a cool oven requiring a very long cooking time, and the one we have now is much hotter, hence I over cooked the roast. There is nothing I hate more than over cooked meat, that dry texture is horrible. Hubby loved it, though he may just have been saying that to cheer me up.

Sunday was much better, though we both still felt a bit out of sorts due to our run in with the crazy that is, the Sydney Taxi Driver. It involved completing the enormous read of the paper and the movies. We saw a strange one called Children of Men, a great film filled with action and emotion. Check it out.

Aaah Sweet Broadband

Aaah sweet Broadband, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1. You don’t leave in a constant state of desperation by disconnecting every hour.
2. You take less than 5 minutes to load a web page.
3. You allow me to be on several different sites, msn and email giant files all at the same time.
4. You are wireless, with no messy strings attached.
5. I can sit on the couch, in bed, on the floor on the dining table, maybe even in the stairwell and still have access to the net.

I love you broadband.

Now that my pathetic spiel over my inability to deal without broadband is over, isn’t it interesting that such a together woman can fall apart when she doesn’t have a fast and continuous Internet connection? My life seems to depend on it, and in terms of business and earnings it does. I wonder what would happen if there was a nuclear bomb and there was no internet, I suppose that wouldn’t matter as my concern would be the fact that I may no longer be living…ok enough of stupid internet talk, it is going no where.

In other news, the weather here has been absolutely loopy today. I felt like I was living in Antarctica except for the snow and ice part. It was so d*mn cold and the wind was so strong, I thought the apartment windows might explode. Did I mention that I was wearing leather boots, a scarf and a jacket with a hood and it’s November! November People! The time when I should be lazing on the beach, wearing pluggers and singlets.

Also I saw this guy today who looked exactly like Lenny Kravitz, except I think that this guy way gay. He had the whole stringy fro, black jeans, leather jacket, cool boots, buggy sunglasses thing going on, he was totally hotttt! Hee hee looksies only I promise.

Ok, chicken time! Hungry belly demands food.

Four seasons in one day… that’s definitely true

Today Sydney has fulfilled the prophecy stated by Crowded House all those years ago. This morning, it was warm and sunny, then midday it was pouring with thunder and lightning, currently (afternoon) it is lovely and sunny again! What the! I am only glad that I don’t have to leave the house otherwise I would have had huge issues with what I put on this morning, Sounds nerdy, but I always tailor my clothing to the weather, but you can’t tailor outfits to this kind of weather, it’s just impossible!

Speaking of clothing, if I have to go to Bondi Junction Westfield one more time and stare longingly at all of those pretty clothes in the windows, I just might die. I wish I could take a photo for you guys, but they would probably arrest me for taking photos is a shopping centre, I could be planning an attack on Dangerfield for Christ’s sake, in order to spring myself this seasons hottest jeans! The thing is, I have found it a little difficult to compete with the fashion-istas over here, for some reason my little gold ballet shoes, no brand jeans and stripy t’s don’t seem to cut it here in Syd-o-ney, because they are soooo last season daaarrhhling. At least I haven’t been hanging out in Double Pay (oopps I meant Double Bay) otherwise I am sure that I would be feeling even more self conscious about now.

See gals, this spring it’s all about dresses, dresses and more dresses! Oh dear god, soon I have to go to an Xmas function, I have nothing to wear, best go get me one of those spring dress numbers.

My hands hurt…mine hurt more

Last night after eating our delicious Satay Beef, we popped together two of our new storage cabinets for the lounge. Well, ‘pop’ might be a little bit of a lie, perhaps ‘struggled’, ‘moaned’, or ‘blistered’. In fact, we haven’t even finished the second one, the doors still have to go on, but we looked at each other and new that we couldn’t go on.

Let me clarify that my husband in fact did most of the work, I just tightened screws, because he has done so much building over the last few days, putting together the dining table and all the chairs, that he can hardly move his hands. Poor Love.

I will eventually get the photos up on the web of the whole moving in fiasco, perhaps tomorrow. I started back at work yesterday, and it was insane! I logged on and had about three thousand emails from 5 days away from my computer. We haven’t got the internet up at home as yet, so I am down at the café down the road till my laptop battery dies. I come down here twice a day and send and receive email, and hopefully have enough battery at the end of it all to read my daily dose of news and dooce. I am looking forward to being able to curl up on the couch again, or in bed with the wireless internet though, it’s comforting to be able to flip open the laptop in the morning and know that you can find out anything that you want to just by typing in two little words…google.com

First Day at School

This morning I dropped of my husband at the train station for his first day at work. He seemed very excited and although he doesn’t seem to be nervous I don’t think he slept as well as he normally does. I can still hardly believe that we are over here in Sydney now and our new life over here has begun. The last 5 days have been a blur of unpacking, buying fridges and furniture, unpacking, eating out, unpacking, cardboard, packing paper, unpacking etc. You get the picture.

There have been emotional ups and downs, though there have predominantly been ups, despite the fact that we have been living in a tornado of paper and boxes which has been hard for my OCD cleanliness side to deal with. I have been able to keep the kitchen, bathroom, and our bedroom spotless however, so this has helped me to deal with the fact that we are still surrounded by boxes in our living room, and have to lay on the ground to watch Scrubs.

A few of the emotional downs have been that my uncle described our area of choice to live as nice, except that we are surrounded by prostitutes and people who spend their life with the Ice Fairies. Oh dear…another was that this morning in the paper there was a story about a serial rapist who climbed into a woman’s window during the day and assaulted her. This was in a different area to where we are, but you can imagine my concern working from home during the day. Thank god that we live on like the 4th floor of a secure building, which is impossible to climb up. Can you see now why I can’t watch scary movies? I end up going through all of the terrible things that could happen to others or me after I see them, and then don’t sleep for days!

The emotional ups for today are that we get our new red couch delivered and all of our funky new lounge room cupboards. Finally, some place to put all the unpacked items. We will spend the entire evening putting together storage units! What fun!

Images of boxes, unpacking, and copious amounts of packing paper coming soon...