Smokey the Magnificent

I went ice-skating today! It was my first time, leaving aside an inauspicious incident in my youth; given which, I feel I did quite well. By the end of the session I had developed a relatively efficient method of kicking off with my right foot - purists, I am told, use both, but it turns out I’m astonishingly non-ambidextrous and my non-dominant leg just couldn’t take the limelight - and was beetling around the centre of the rink like a fish. A gimpy fish. With a bruised knee and probably shattered coccyx.

I wanna do it again! As soon as my knee heals up, that is; I can’t be oosed taking a photo of the bruise right now, but it made Helpdesk Man go “whoa” and my family treat me with unaccustomed respect. Sunset hues, sunset hues…

Virtuously domestic tasks accomplished today:

• Dropped a large number of egg cartons off at a daycare to use for crafting or research.
• Dropped a large number of plastic bags off at a hospice op shop, as per the politely-worded sign.
• Vacuumed.
• Vacuumed up a sock.
• Fixed vacuum cleaner (woot!)
• Baked mandarin cake.
• Baked excitingly-shaped cheese straws.
• Cleaned microwave (hoo boy!)
• Cleaned stove
• Took snortlepig for walk, incidentally meeting and socialising with in-laws in the park. No bad thing, as it is psychologically boosting to run into in-laws while romping around picturesquely beneath tree, as opposed to answering door blearily in ill-fitting pyjama pants uttering lame and transparent lies about having had a late start that morning.
• Cooked roast chicken with Helpdesk Man for Bnonn and Smokey Night.

Less domestically virtuously:

• Read entire funny mom blog that spanned 2 1/2 years
• Read 8 pages of Cake Wrecks
• Googled tips on learning to ice-skate
• YouTubed tips on learning to ice-skate
• YouTubed clips of Torvill and Dean
• YouTubed John Denver
• Wikied John Denver
• Wikied Roswell UFO incident
• Wikied alien autopsies
• Wikied Coraline
• Googled appropriate eras for Gibson Girl hair styles and Anne of Green Gables
• Googled Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is man” speech
• Read with intense interest approx. 45 pages of threads on Mothering.com discussing issues entirely irrelevant to self, such as dealing with the food allergies of an eight-year-old or the machinations of a toxic ex-spouse
• Read Empire review of newest Harry Potter film, which interests me very little

Have had an interesting few days. The Swedish-girl-who-turned-out-to-be-Danish - she hasn’t given me permission to use her name on my blog, so we’ll call her Hamlet - turned up yesterday and she, April and I went out for dinner. Sans pig. It was marvellous.

Then today, being one of Hamlet’s last days in New Zealand and her first time in our glorious city, was dedicated to sight-seeing… and our glorious city being what it is, we tactfully put her in the car and drove elsewhere. To Tirau, as it happens: a small, quaint, whimsical town mostly consisting of homeware stores, Kiwiana and a giant corrugated iron sheep. It’s not the Taj Mahal, but it’s better than our glorious city. So we spent most of the day shopping and eating, then returned to our gl. c. to visit the public gardens and take photos of our hair.

That isn’t as odd as it sounds: Hamlet belongs to a long hair forum April and I belong to. It’s customary at such meets to post pictures of the rear view of oneself and one’s friends and show them to the rest of the community afterwards in a gloating way… which doesn’t make the proceedings sound any less odd, now I come to think of it, so pay it no heed. Suffice it to say that trying to set up timer shots and dash to put our noses to artistic backdrops so our hair could be seen in all its glory, while members of the public gave us curious looks and the snortlepig kept dashing down paths, was quite an experience. Then at the height of it all Hamlet rope-braided my hair with April’s and took a photo of the resulting two-toned conjoined braid… who says one needs hallucinogenic drugs to have fun? (Hamlet’s hair was about a foot shorter than ours, or we could have attempted a French braid; but what’s the bets one of us would have lost a head in the detangling process?)

Anyhoo, what with all these larks and high spirits it’s been a sort of messy week, and my points have suffered accordingly. Helpdesk Man has been sick for the past two days, too. So assuming he revives during the night (which would be financially savvy, no pressure to his languishing system or anything), I intend to spend tomorrow being virtuously domestic.

Also, answer me this: Would you accept a million dollars on the condition that you never have a shower again?

Last night I tore off my frumpy sixteen-months-post-partum-and-still-a-bit-dubious-around-the-midriff housewife mantle and decided to give myself a henna tattoo. ‘Cause I’m hip and with it. And ’cause Helpdesk Man had agreed to watch the baby while I hennaed my roots, and I was keen to savour the joys of standing naked in the bathroom under the heat lamp in blissful solitude. ‘Cause I’m hip and with it.

So with a nonchalant ease born of much cake decorating I terped my henna, constructed a cone out of wax paper and freehanded an attractive Art Nouveau design on my upper arm - curlicues, accents and little flowers. Very Rivendell. I was pleased. I wrapped the resulting artwork in gladwrap (harder than it sounds, incidentally) and settled down - with green eyebrows and a plastic bag over my head, ’cause I’m hip and with it - to watch Smallville with mein famille.

Then the baby decided with characteristic swiftness that she needed the milks NOW, and that the best way to get my attention regarding thus was to haul herself up by my arm and headbutt me in the face. Then later, she was coming through a doorway in the arms of her father when she decided to fling herself backwards, and in the resulting distress she burrowed her forehead into my upper arm and rubbed it back and forth.

By the time I got back to the shower, my curlicues had degenerated into a lumpy, misbegotten midden of doom. My left-hand bicep now looks like it has been infested with fake-tan fungus. Worse yet, the hot water ran out as I was halfway through rinsing the henna out of my hair and Helpdesk Man had to boil the kettle and rinse off my scalp in the sink - an intriguingly powerless experience which engineered childhood flashbacks of myself wailing “Mummyyyy, it’s going in my eyyyyyesss!”.

Even then, I was hip and with it.

Yesterday I forced Helpdesk Man and the piggie to accompany me into town on errands. It was productive if not soothing. I now have a music folder, a new pen (one of life’s most small and exquisite joys), two books of sheet music from the library for choir, and a packet of henna. The latter is necessary because tomorrow I will be meeting a Swedish girl from a long hair care forum I used to frequent, and I can’t very well meet her with roots, now can I? In fact, I should probably start panicking about how to do my hair… it ought to be a style which demonstrates accomplished long-hair-savvyness without looking ridiculous, perhaps a lace braid rose bunned at the back? I shall consider.

This morning I ingested a spot of Culture, going to my small sister’s piano competition. It’s a pretty stiff gig: the snortlepig was not invited and the usherette made very sure that the double air-locked doors didn’t open until clapping was heard. The contestants sat as if on death row at the front of the auditorium, waiting during the painful six minutes between performances for the judge to finish composing her scathing haikus and ting a little bell. I was scared. And it didn’t help when a sharply-attired Asian lad of apparently immense talent, who my mother whispered was rumoured to be the Next Big Thing, suddenly stopped in the middle of his piece, sagged on his chair and exited. He was 13… if he reaches 14 it’ll be a miracle after today.

Anyway, despite being the final performer my small sister held it together remarkably well and achieved third place: no mean feat, as her competitors looked like the types who had had Bach piped in in the womb. When I left she still had two songs to go, spread out over the next eight hours; in between performances they hold the contestants’ feet over open flames to build character. I think I prefer being a mediocre pianist; it’s relaxing.

Right, anyway. Plans for today. I gotta go to the pharmacy and pick up photos of the snortlepig to send to Grandma; wrote and post an accompanying letter; obtain, through fair means or foul, $3 to fund tomorrow’s Mainly Music session; make bread and chicken soup for tonight; do a wash; email the chappie who’s making my spice chest; eat lunch; feed the chickens; and finish up a Suite article on 19th century hairstyles. Oh, and bake… Helpdesk Muffins, multi-grain bread for Helpdesk Man to take to work, and something nommable to feed the Swede. Fun fun fun. How people manage to run a household while having a job constantly stumps me… then again, I also remember entering eerily into the point of view of the main character in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, who lived a life of leisure and couldn’t understand how people had time to go to work and take baths. There just isn’t enough time in this life to live in any sort of holistic fashion, balanced yet fostering passion. I mean, one could easily spend two hours a day merely being really good at clothes - sewing them, shopping for them in a canny fashion, learning about pattern adaptation and fabric types, oiling one’s sewing machine and sponging one’s suits… and at the end of that one would only be dressed, let alone fed or having done anything useful. Same with home decorating, or growing your own food, or hair care, or whatever… one just never has enough time. It mystifies me.

In other news, my points system is still ticking along. It’ll be a while before I can buy my dieselpunk bodice though; my first order of business is to pay off my spice chest, which I need to do soon so the guy can start building it. So I’ll probably be paying myself back, points-wise, for the foreseeable future. A tad depressing, but one cannot just give up when the going gets tough. Bad Horse wouldn’t have - I mean Gandhi. In other news, I have yet to earn myself a single point by eating a piece of fruit. I think I have a pathological aversion to it. Carrot sticks are delicious, but one’s expectations are different - an apple always runs the risk of being tart, which is a thought that chills my very marrow. Odd, no?

So, I’m writing the Great American Novel. So far it goes like this:

_________________

The Skeezels

A weasel, a Cheezel and a sketchbook got fused in a horrible explosion. And into its eyes were placed blazing jewels.

_________________

Thoughts? Personally I think all authors should begin their stories that way, but YMMV.

Saw Coraline last night. It was good. It was very, very, very good. Impeccably paced, visually stunning, strong and quirky characters, thematically deep, technically accomplished, you name it. I would even have enjoyed it if I weren’t such a wimp… as it is, I heartily recommend it to all those cinephiles valiant enough to contemplate sewing needles and eyeballs in close proximity.

This week is likely to be busy - a girl from a message board I used to frequent is coming to visit and possibly stay overnight on Wednesday, and I’m hoping to go to Mainly Music again with the pig in hopes that she’ll actually click that her singing and dancing skills might be put to good use there. I also need to write a bunch more Suite articles. I got out a bunch of books on Victorian fashion from the library which I should be able to glean for hairstyles. A fascinating topic, historical fashion; I never really got into it, but I’m starting to. Learning how to sew makes it more interesting, I think. It’s hard to believe that an entire nation of women adopted the centre-parted-hair-dropping-down-into-dog-ears-by-the-cheeks look for years at a time, but they did…. and those bizarre dresses that dropped from the shoulders to give a hunchback impression. Most odd. I wonder if I’d have dressed more elegantly if I were born a hundred years ago, or would I still wear faintly gimpy and anachronistic clothing? One always thinks of women at the past wearing identically tasteful, contemporary clothing, but that’s just stereotyping; presumably there were geeky women back then too, who wore bustles eight years out of fashion in girth or inappropriately large crinolines because they were to busy pretending to be Anglo-Saxon warrior maidens, or something. I mean, I know today’s culture is technically a good one in which to foster individuality and subcultures and subvert the fashion norms, but if Victorian women could wear Elizabethan ruffs or faux-Grecian draperies (and according to my Illustrated Guide to the 19th Century, they did)…

The dump turned out to be slightly disappointing. Apart from the faintly creepy, exciting aura of death and typhus surrounding the goods it was pretty much like any old op shop, and even those elements were not as foreign to the second-hand process as one might wish.

Spotlight, on the other hand, was as exciting as any place is when one has a gift card to spend in it. I ended up buying several hmm-that-should-be-enough quantities of tulle, chocolate brown pinstriped fabric and slippery cream-coloured stuff in order to construct a semi-steampunk skirt and petticoat combo. It’ll be a sort of rockabilly-Victorian-hints-of-gothic-Lolita crossover object… I will be very interested in the result.

Helpdesk Man is off work for a few days and home due to a cancelled conference, so today we dropped the snortlepig off with his sister, who happens to be pregnant, and went out for lunch. I think we may have put said sister-in-law off parenthood for life: the pig apparently spent most of the visit wailing until she fell asleep on SIL’s knee, and when we came to pick her up SIL was pacing the driveway with the pig in a sling, waiting for us. Oops.

So anyway, do any of my Gentle Readers have a handle on the articles of war? ‘Cause I was pondering tonight with Helpdesk Man the ethics of assassinating Hitler - back in the day, obviously - and it came up. Is it considered kosher for a civilian to kill a non-civilian in a time of war? Say, if one were a good English Mrs Miniver type and Hitler turned up at your door wanting bacon and eggs: would it be considered your civic duty to clobber him with a frying pan, or would you be arrested (however half-heartedly) for murder if you did? I understand that military folk killing civilians is frowned on, obviously, but the other way round? It seems vaguely like terrorism to have non-military people killing military ones, but then, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing, innit. At least not in the case of Hitler. But then there are a lot of things which only seem to become ethical when applied to Hitler, and that is perhaps problematic. And what if it wasn’t Hitler himself, but a fresh-faced wet-behind-the-ears German soldier? Should he go into battle expecting housewives or farmers to shoot at him unexpectedly from behind mangold-wurzels?

Tricky thing, war. Still, a lot of very good songs came out of it.

Does it ever occur to you that your life is extremely small? That isn’t a threat. I met a girl the other day whose father was a diplomat, moved them round various exciting countries every three years and kept an extensive household staff. But it didn’t take that to make me realise that fame, fortune and groundbreaking political events aren’t exactly popping out from under my tea cozy. Allow me to illustrate.

1. We’re going to the dump this week and I am eagerly looking forward to it. I’m not sure why. By all accounts the shop at the dump is just like your common-or-garden op shop, no more likely to be dripping with pearls and silver (or, more to my tastes, antique Singer sewing machine tables) than the average Salvation Army thrift store. Perhaps it was watching The Iron Giant which conjured up images of futuristic piles of (tasteful, sombrely-hued and appropriately sanitary) junk… or maybe it was WALL-E with its bleached-out images of peace and rest. Not that “peace and rest” was probably what the Pixar bods were trying to convey, post-apocalyptic dystopia and all… but then, they aren’t Aspie. Or are they? It’d be odd if they weren’t, sort of, but they always seem so darn social on the Making-Ofs. Anyhoo. When my excellent mother asked me where I wanted to go for the day trip that is her birthday present and I said “Oo, the dump”, she sort of snorted and said we could do that as a freebie. So woot. I wonder if I’ll find a pianola?

2. I was out running errands today for four hours and it nearly killed me. At barely twenty-three I have reached the age where half a day’s shopping causes me to take to my bed with lumbago and eau de cologne. “Young mothers have more energy”, pish.

3. During said errands I went into an op shop and bought a fairly unpleasant pillowcase so I could cut the wooden buttons off it. For $2. I was proud.

You see how it is?

I also went to the library and borrowed a bunch of books, having finished Middlemarch and not being able to muster up the requisite enthusiasm for the Road Code. I was sitting on a bench in town noisily slurping a thickshake and sniffling over Queen Victoria’s letters to her daughter when my mother-in-law surprised me from behind. Why does she never come across me in town when I am successfully negotiating peace treaties or being hailed for saving a dog from a taxidermist. I’ll tell you why. Actually, we had quite a pleasant chat, even if I did little to re-establish my street cred by announcing in response to her “What’s up?”, “I’M going to the dump!”. Turns out her mother has been, but that was to dump things, which I imagine is an entirely different experience.

Hokay, so, conundrum. Would you rather keep your current wardrobe (the clothes, you clot, not the lion-the-witch-and-the), or have the monetary value (market price) of all the clothes in it so you could buy more, but not get to keep any of your current clothes? And you had to spend the money on clothes, you couldn’t do cunning things with op shops and buy a golf cart.

I think, upon reflection, I’d rather keep my current clothes. Which is nice to know. As lacklustre as much of my wardrobe is, I do have a few bits of clothing I’d sadly miss. Two hats, a skirt and a coat, at least; and they are not nothing, they are something. Plus, rebuilding one’s wardrobe from scratch would probably require a vasty deal of mental effort, like building your own house. Think of T-shirts as doorknobs - the ones you have might not be ideal, but they serve the purpose and if faced with an immense catalogue of them and the pressure to choose the perfect ones, you might develop a stress bunion behind your eye and have to undergo a horrible lancing procedure. Plus, buying all your clothes at once makes you run the risk of getting a whole lot of super-trendy items which quickly become dated and miserable, or of letting a brief fashion fad influence your clothing choices unduly. (F’rinstance, if I had to rebuild my wardrobe from scratch now pretty much everything would be dark chocolate brown and/or steampunk. Which would be super, actually, but I imagine limiting in the long run.)

Then again, if you chose an entire wardrobe at once you could probably do arty matchy things with ensembles and actually get your colours done and work the whole thing out scientifically, which has a certain OCD appeal. So I leave it to your conscience.