Thursday, September 29, 2011

Goings on and on goings.

Four goings on round here.  Firstly a while ago I decided to use my two suitcases in which I keep paint and sewing stuff and other craft type things as a side table between the two chairs. I am still pretty happy with it. Secondly last night I made a pork pie for dinner for Chris and I. Thirdly the other tree outside our house is now in blossom. Fourthly I have to watch lots of Vampire movies for a class I am taking so I made a huge bowl of popcorn and spent an afternoon being mildly afraid.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Keegan's Package


Chris and I got a package in the mail today, it was from Keegan who has recently been in America. He sent a tube of yum jelly beans, with cherry flavour. I really love American cherry flavour.


Also a packet of dark chocolate dipped orange jelly confections. (This is a picture of breakfast, I really fell off the rails with the trying to improve morning eating.)


He sent Chris a Lego model of the Seattle Space Needle. He put it together whilst eating candies.

Flickr Favorites September

151/365 bales

Click on images for sources.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Fifty-Two Things I Like

1. Taking a clipping of a plant and watching the roots grow through the glass
2. Picnics
3. The sound of rain when in the shower
4. Jars of lollies
5. Sitting with my feet on the oven door when it is cold, watching the golden glow of something baking
6. Listening to a favorite song on LP for the first time
7. Elderflower cordial
8. Taking Polaroid pictures and watching them appear like magic
9. Kisses in the snow or rain
10. Taxidermied things
11. Clean sheets that smell of sunlight and washing powder
12. Suitcases
13. Old book stores with ladders and dust and clutter
14. Illustrated stories
15. Cracking walnuts in the sun
16. Overhearing great conversation
17. Board games
18. When bath water seems a blue/green duck eggish colour against the white enamel
19. The idea of stamped self-addressed envelopes
20. Blowing bubbles with old cotton reels
21. Gumboots
22. Doing the washing on a cold day and burying self in freshly dried laundry for warmth
23. Framed butterflies
24. Cracking the top of a creme brulee
25. Hot chocolate made with real chocolate and with Cinnamon and chili
26. Waking Chris up early
27. Road trips on hot summer days, with the windows down, music playing, the seat belts so hot the nearly burn when you put them on
28. The bookish smell and cool hush of libraries
29. Bottomless coffee
30. Fruit that is so fresh you just picked it, and warmed from the sun so when you take a bite the juice runs down your chin.
31. Children's annuals form the 40s, 50s and 60s
32. Buying flowers for no one but me
33. Being hugged from behind when I am cooking or cleaning in the kitchen
34. Hammocks
35. Being tickled
36. Scones with cream and jam
37. Finding swings in unexpected places
38. Kisses on the eyelids
39. How soft and light hair feels after a haircut
40. Making paper boats and launching them
41. Fairy tales
42. Receiving mail
43. New underwear
44. The weightlessness of swimming
45. Bubbles filled with smoke
46. Making daisy chains
47. The colours red and green together
48. Blossom petals that fall like snowflakes
49. Stealing Chris' socks
50. Scarves
51. Novels that seem perfect from start to finish
52. Managing to peel an apple in one continuous spiral

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Some Books I Have Been Living With

These are a selection of the books I have been involved with lately.


I finished The History of Love this morning, it had some very beautiful passages. For example;

7. THERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY MOTHER THAT NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN

In the fall, my mother went back to England to start university. Her pockets were full of sand from the lowest place on earth. She weighed 104 pounds. There's a story she sometimes tells about the train ride from Paddington Station to Oxford when she met a photographer who was almost completely blind. He wore dark sunglasses, and said he'd damaged his retinas a decade ago on a trip to Antarctica. His suit was perfectly pressed, and he held his camera in his lap. He said he saw the world differently now, and it wasn't necessarily bad. He asked if he could take a picture of her. When he raised up the lens and looked through it, my mother asked what he saw. "The same thing I always see," he said. "Which is?" "A blur," he said. "So I will know what I've been looking at." (38)


I started Norwegian Wood this morning which I got from the university library in two very small volumes. So far it is good, very poetic, quite unlike what I normally read in style.


This book arrived in the mail for me today, I have read it before, but it was one I longed to have my own copy of. Anne Fadiman writes these wonderfully buoyant essays about her life and who she is and her love of books.They are very life affirming and funny. I absolutely recommend them to everybody.
On being a night owl:
George [husband] is an early riser, a firm believer in seizing the day while it is still fresh. I am not fully alive until the sun sets. In the morning, George is quick and energetic, while I blink in the sunlight, move as if through honey, and pour salt in the coffee. When we turn off the light at 11:30 - too late for him, too early for me - George falls instantly asleep, while I, mocked by the bird that slumbers above my head, arrange and rearrange the pillows, searching for the elusive cool sides" (62).

In The Case of Only Having One Hand

I went second hand shopping today. I got two the hat boxes which were $4 each, the pair of shoes were $6, the suitcase was free, four soft cotton scarves 50c - $1 each (one of which is on the suitcase handle) and not pictured is a plastic coated cotton tote bag with a cute pattern of birds and butterflies for $3, which I will use to protect my lap top when it is a bit wet out. An extremely successful shopping trip.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Eat, Strip, Pray You Don't Get Caught Stealing Herbs to Eat Again

Chris and I decided to have a fun day today, he worked the whole weekend so it felt like we had barely seen each other.

We started it off at Drexels, I had my usual; two gluten free blueberry pancakes and real maple syrup with bottomless coffee.


Then we played strip poker in the sun on the balcony until it got less sunny and much too cold.

 After that, a walk to find some herbs for dinner.


Dinner was baked salmon steaks with lemon and fennel on scalloped potatoes and a side salad, we even ate at the table like civilised people!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

On Fear

I have been told that I am a person with a disproportionate number of fears, or had as much implied with incredulous looks upon disclosing them to a friend. And yes, I admit it, I am afraid of a relatively large amount of things. As a child these centred on, but were not exclusive to, things that made loud noises.
       My fear of the vacuum cleaner was equaled only by the cat's. The toilet flushing, the bathtub draining - with that high-pitched squealing noise over the last few cup fulls - the hair dryer noise and the sound of a car back firing; which had me assuming someone in our quiet neighborhood had been shot, were all unconquerable fears. But oh! Most torturous chore assigned me! The closing of the garage door. The thunderous sound, projecting out into the silent dark, made me feel like that 'fool of a Took' who awoke the drums in the deep. All of these noises seemed to provide ample opportunity for someone to sneak up behind me and do grievous harm, of what kind I never let my imagination stray too far into. Under the cover of noise the terrible multitudes would materialise in all their malicious intent.
      But I have moved on to some extent from these fears (I still cannot be in the room while the bathtub drains and I am sure if garage door duty was again mine I would elicit a considerable shudder as the great metal door rolled down) and now fear things which more befit an adult. As Francis Bacon surmised; 'Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so too is the other'. And I would say much of my more current fears are ones which relate to my, or those closest's mortality. For instance I always check the stove is off twice before bed because I have been told that smoke inhaled in sleep will not wake you up. No! Quite the opposite in fact, causing one to burn up very much alive, but unable to take any action.
      Movies provide me more than enough fodder for fear, with no need to stray into the realm of the real, as I, unlike most of my male friends, have a reduced ability to identify fact from fiction. So I avoid horror movies at just about any cost and can think of nothing worse than being forced to watch scary movies for a day. I believe it was Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, who first wrote; 'The thing I fear most is fear itself'. And I really do too, I reserve a considerable amount of energy for fearing I will be afraid. You may think this diminishes the other fears, but really it is more of an expression of just how seriously I take them.
      From a more positive point of view, my imagination must be considerably disproportionate to support such terror. Indeed I wonder how many other children actually believed the lights in their vision from staring too long at a naked light bulb were fairies dancing across their walls - I would say relatively few.
      Mark Twain once said that 'courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not the absence of fear'. From which I will deduce that I , with my many fears, have a greater capacity for courage than the average person. And so, with this in mind, I will now courageously scrape the dead spider I brutally murdered in fear yesterday off my wall and continue to avoid the sound of the bathtub draining.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Saturday in Pictures

10 am: I took a picture an hour today, the idea for which I took from possibly my favorite blog Niotillfem. I had breakfast in bed and worked on an essay for uni.

11 am: Still working on my essay and hanging out in my room with Mesha, he is being quiet for once.

12 am: Hello sailor. All up and dressed.

1 pm: I biked out to the Woman's Expo which is on this weekend and had a nice but brief lunch with my aunt who helped organise it.

2 pm: On the way home I couldn't resist stopping to buy some daffodils.

3 pm: Checking out my Expo goodie bag!

4 pm: Comfy pants and a little more work on my essay.

5 pm: Started making dinner; pasta with a creamy mushroomy sauce.

6 pm: Chris came home from working and had dinner with me, he kept making funny faces!

7 pm: We started watching True Blood.

8 pm: Still being couch potatoes and watching TV snuggled up on the couch.

9 pm: I made us some hot chocolate, it was pretty amazing, with cinnamon and chili. Mmmm...

He gets me my drinks for free, and he's quick with a joke and he'll light up your smoke, but there is some place he'd rather be, he says "Bill, I believe this is killing me."

So I hear consuming food in the morning is good for you! Huh. Who would of thought it? Anyway I'm trying to start eating breakfast again. And I am not a breakfast kind of person, so it is a hard task. My breakfast of yesterday; gluten free muesli, organic mango yogurt and green & elderflower tea.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

There is an abundance of his type..


I watched Glorious 39 tonight, and whilst the storyline could have been better the movie was very beautiful, the sets and costumes exquisite. It is set in England at the start of WWII in the context of many political big wigs thinking that war the with Germany could never be won, so trying to make a settlement with Germany and eliminate the people who stood against them in their own country.