Cat-astrophes

I'm demonstrating my protest from home. Teachers have a stop-work meeting today to discuss industrial action. To be blantantly honest, such politics really don't interest me at all (even though it does concern my job...) BUT there is no way I am going to school to babysit a bunch a ravenous children who are going crazy because their teacher is away.

I simply don't get paid enough for that kind of stress. SO...instead, I woke up at 5 (as usual) with the sun peeking through my window, and went back to sleep (not as usual) until 5:30. By this time we had the makings of a beautiful day. I spent the next hour reading in bed with the sunlight now beaming in through my open window.

6:30 Best Friend rang. Her tyre was flat. Leapt out of bed to the rescue.

7:30 Went fruit and vegie shopping. Mmmm nectarines....

8:00 Had breaky...toasted turkish bread with ham, baby spinach, sundried tomatoes and swiss cheese.

8:15 Checked email and wrote an entry. You know...I could get used to these mornings off - and school hasn't even technically started yet!!

I'm going to go have a shower, go to the bank, the Post Office and the RTA (the three places I can never get to...) Then maybe dawdled towards work.

Oh yeah...and to the little punk who keeps pinching my P-Plates...'P-off' haha...P... oookay.


xxx

Fun Food Day!

I decided to say 'sucks to colourless food' and have a fun food day. It began at breakfast. A cooked meal on a week-morning?? What was I thinking? I say people should do this more often. It put me in a jolly mood for work. What better way to start the day with pancakes, ice-cream and berries laced with mixed berry coulis. All freshly made of course (I milked the cows myself... okay, maybe just the pancakes and coulis were 'freshly made')


Then...after work and before salsa - a berry smoothie! What a delicious purple it was (phone cameras do no justice) and 97% fat free...


...SPEAKING OF PHONES AND SALSA....
last night we learnt something (that I can hardly pronounce, let alone spell) which is a close-contact step. That is difficult enough - what with my own little 'white-girl hips' and a whole lot of men you really don't want to be dancing closely with (please guys...some deodorant and a breath mint would go a loooooong way!) but to top it off....some creepy man was sitting at the sides taking photos of my friend and I with his mobile during the dips!!

Now...someone please tell me what the etiquette is there...am I entitled to demand to see and ask the photos to be erased? It's all just a little too creepy for my liking.

Anyway...back to the food.

After that little episode, I needed something to get me happy again...the remedy? Ice cream (God bless that stuff) with berries and kiwifruit sauce. YUM.


And what a gooey green...

So...here's my challenge - Cream your food with colour. It makes for a most enjoyable day.
(Sad when I get my kicks out of food...)

xxx

I was reading Nick Woolsey's 'Poi: Unravelling the Mysteries of Motion' - a kind of theory of the practice of poi, and came across this little gem...

"To my delight, I discovered that poi are amazing movement exploration tools. They are guides. They are teachers. They are like Yoda, only smaller and on strings."

Haha! Love it. Except now, I imagine yoda, on fire, spinning around my body.

"Hot it is, burning I am."



xxx

For some reason the pink is annoying more than usual today. I don't think I've mentioned my animosity toward the colour pink before...well, guess what? The girl with the sickly-pink blog hates pink. But enough of that.

My real reason for typing is this. A rather interesting ode to a spider courtesy of Fireland. I could spend a rather scary amount of time here sifting through 10 years worth of blog entries. Josh (author) has an intriguing spin on the world.

Now to close my windows before the rain gets in...

xxx

I got up at 5, looked at the clock and went back to bed. It is a Saturday afterall.

I got up at 6, took something to sedate the gorilla still residing in my stomach and went back to bed.

I got up at 7 and took my monkey for a walk. The ape doesn't seem to want me to sleep.

I went on a cleaning spree at 8, and the gorilla has finally gone to sleep.

Shhh...don't wake him up....


xxx

There's a gorilla in my stomach knitting gloves. Every now and then he drops a stitch, gets angry and pounds his fists. When he doesn't drop a stitch, he gets excited and knits faster poking those silly needles all over the place.

Anyway...I just had to share that today is Friday.
Fridays are the best invention known to man. Unless you have to work Saturday.

Fridays can be spent making your week bigger and better by looking for more shanannigans to fill in your time. OR they can be that much-needed down-time to a week that was really more exciting than it should've been.

I'm opting for a happy-medium. Quiet shanannigans.

Happy Friday
xxx

I adore chocolate and mint. They just go together in perfect harmony. Lately, Cadbury's 3 Wishes gone from pink, to yellow to GREEN! Yes, good move Mr Cadbury. Though there is something bizarre about green chocolate.

I think it brings me back to my youth. I once decided I was going to make peppermint chocolate. I lined up my favourite milk block (Lindt extra creamy) with a bottle of peppermint essence and green food colouring. The recipe was fool-proof in my mind...

Unfortunately I wasn't aware that when you mix melted chocolate with water it 'freezes' and becomes such that it will not melt. Not only did my chocolate end up chunky, but the green food-colouring gave it a...well...interesting tinge. I'm sure you could think of a few things a greeny-brown colour that shouldn't go anywhere near the mouth...

Thankyou Mr Cadbury for making it easier on us all. (And sorry for my teachers to whom I gave odd-textured, suspiciously-coloured Easter Eggs to that year...)

Before I go...just to let you all know that I'm going to see the Cat Empire in November and I'm excited. So excited I'm going to go celebrate with a hazelnut and cinnamin latte. In a pair of dark shades of course.

xxx

I have to admit I LOVE The Princess Bride. Love it. Ell-Oh-Vee-Ee it. So much so, I'm sharing one of my favourite passages. Buttercup in all her ignorance reminds me so much of myself here (maybe not the confusing imagery, but in regards to 'never hearing') Anyway...guys, you have a lot to learn....

He couldn’t believe it. “Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. If your love were-”

“I don’t understand that first one yet,” Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love for you is the size of a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images just confuse me so – is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.”

“I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased with a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids….is any of this gettingthrough to you, Buttercup, or do you want me to go on for a while?”

“Never stop.”

“There has not been-”

“If you’re teasing me, Westley, I’m just going to kill you.”

“How can you even dream that I might be teasing?”

“Well, you haven’t once said you loved me.”

“That’s all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.”

“You are teasing now; aren’t you?”

“A little maybe; I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm Boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard, and you never heard.”

*sigh* I love it.
In Case you haven't read the book by William Goldman, do it. The movie, though warm and fuzzy in its own 80s way doesn't quite capture the words as the novel does. Just that passage alone makes my heart flip about in crazy ways...and it isn't to be found in the movie!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...what girl wouldn't want to hear 'As you wish' from a guy with a sword?

Goodnight... xxx

Mr Ex just called. He asked why I hadn't kept in contact (um....because we aren't going out anymore???) and when we can get together (um, how about NEVER?). I'm shaking my head in bewilderment.

To give you some background knowledge, Mr Ex decided it would be best if we cooled the relationship and tried again a bit later. I responded by saying it's either on or off, and the way he was talking, it was best to call it off.

We went our seperate ways, I was happy.

However, he still wanted to be buddies. I let him know that I just couldn't do that. A big mess resulted, finally we came to some conclusion that a breakup is just that, and I let him know that 'friends' was just not possible (he wanted basically what we had without the label).

So now I've moved on. There has been a few other guys ask me out since (obviously no fireworks) and I have to be honest and say I'd almost forgotten him.

Until today. So why do guys think they can keep a line in each pond and hope something keeps biting? This little fishy isn't falling for it. I politely let him know that I'm quite busy at the moment, thankyou. He said he'll email me to organise something. He can organise all he likes. I'm not going to dance around an Ex when Mr Wonderful is still out there.

xxx

PS. Any similar experiences? Please share!

Another night of fun and games...
Fire...I love it. I love it more when it's spinning all around me. Last night I was twirling at a party...but it surely was a night of firsts! Let me mention that I've done a number of shows. Mostly smaller private parties, a few larger functions - even one on a rooftop in the middle of the city (Fan-sparking-tastic!)...but this was the first time in about a month I'd picked up my staff and poi.

Everything began smoothly enough...I warmed up, did a simple single staff routine to a chorus of 'oohs' and 'ahhs' that always make me giggle. Then I lit up the poi. Now they look absolutely spectacular (I love it. Love it a lot) but are Soooooo dangerous. Especially when you have heavy-duty chains with chunky-layered cathedral-fold wicks. Very weighty flammable devices indeed!

Began with a few basic moves and all was going well, so stepped out into a few more show-pleasing ones. All went smoothly. So I decided to get a little acrobatic and attempt my floor routine. Keep in mind it has actually been 3 months since doing ground-work...I think you can see where this is going! I ended up getting stuck on my back on the ground giggling away with fire all around me like a real pyromaniac.

The crowd were great! They let out dramatic screams and shouts of 'Where's the fire extinguisher?!' By this point I had managed to sit up on my butt...still laughing mind you, with the poi still going in perfect momentum.

So I've now had my first show (major) stuff-up. I finished off with a few more crowd-pleasers, but didn't get back on the ground again. The most exciting thing though was that I received my first real burn! Yes, in three years of playing with fire, I hadn't given myself a decent burn until last night. Ironically it was after the fire was out too - I burnt myself on the hot chains. Silly me.

Regardless though, of feeling like an idiot, the crowd seemed to really appreciate it all. A few enthusiastic individuals tried to pick up the staff and have a go, but soon realised it is a little more difficult than they anticipated. There was one natural there though, and we're going to trade off staff lessons with drumming lessons (one of my life goals...yay!). Marvelous.

xxx