Smokey the Magnificent

On Sunday I decided it was Friend Day and I would rank my friends according to their pleasingness on that day. By lunchtime Helpdesk Man was down to -8 points and the snortlepig was in the lead with 1. Then I decided to invite some Friends over for dinner and make a Friend Day cake, so I did (chocolate rum cake with caramel icing and “Happy Friend Day” piped on the top; also a pigeon, which I designated the official bird of Friend Day), and bullied my Friends into bringing cider and bacon to add to the festivities. (Not all of my Friends. Only two. I have more friends than that, but there wasn’t much chicken.) Strangely, Helpdesk Man ended up with the most points, but only after he found out he could win a chocolate pigeon. It was a nice day. The end.

Also, I made a cake. A different, nother cake. Here it am.

Also, I decided this week that I would not surf the internet at all. It was supposed to make me productive, but then the dishwasher broke and my psyche became paralysed with horror and languor and a general all-pervading sense of swimming in treacle, and the table got all covered with dishes so I couldn’t get out my sewing machine and make the cunning skirt for the pig that I was intending to whip out in an afternoon, and then the pig started saying things like “I’m SAAAD, I want to DIEEE” in full-on tragedy voice, so I decided Enough was Enough and went to town to buy some L-Tyrosine, and while I was there I went to the library and got out a bunch of books, so I have spent most of this week reading them. Which is probably an improvement on surfing the internet, at least. I got out a book about adoption and a very bitter memoir by a fat lady about being fat, and some others I haven’t read yet about Celtic Women in Myth and History and a woman who had a face transplant. Also the Usborne Book of Castles, but that was for the pig.I thought she should know about castles so when we go to Disneyland she will be groovy and au fait with Sleeping Beauty’s.

I took the L-Tyrosine a few hours ago, but I don’t feel any more zingy. Well, I made some muffins. They had rum in them, but I’m not convinced, even though Alison Holst doesn’t usually steer me wrong. Hopefully the aminos will kick in in a day or so and I can post photos of myself taking salsa classes atop a mountain at dawn.

Also, we are potty-training the pig. Mixed success. She just throomed on the couch…. for instance.

1. It’s MOD PODGE, people! Not Modge Podge! I will slay your ancestors!
2. That last episode of Doctor Who was freaking awesome. I cried. Up until that point I was wavering on the season as a whole, but blimey. Epic, yet without sacrificing intimacy. And a corking line. And a fez.
3. I do not like the term “the menopause”. I know it’s technically accurate - well, I don’t, actually, but I assume it is, otherwise why would vast hordes of otherwise unpretentious people emit such a poncy phrase? - but anyway, it gives me the screaming heebies. Enough with ominous articles. I also dislike “an herb garden”, for similar though not identical reasons.
4. I decided on Sunday that my challenge for this week will be to complete one project per day. So today I made a grey skirt - actually I started it in a frenzy late last night, and it even hung overnight to allow the hem to droop correctly. Aren’t I coming along? Anyway, I finished it today and felt v smug, but then realised that all my other projects will take more than a day to complete. I started painting cardboard letters copper in order to stick them on the pig’s steampunked-up whiteboard, my (possibly) next project, but then realised there was no way I could actually paint it and make the fabric baskets all in one day, and then I thought about how many press-studs and little pearls needed to be hand-sewn onto my arm warmers, and how long it would take to learn how to do double-welted pockets in order to make my utility skirt, and then I started wondering if I could count cleaning out the pantry as a project, and then gave up the idea when I realised it just wasn’t gonna happen, and now I’m not sure what my challenge for the week is, but it bothers me unduly that I don’t have one.
5. My sister-in-law is expecting another baby. I will have to knit it something, maybe.
6. Gibbous-inspired clothes just never look as good as the real Gibbous ones. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but they look junkier. It might just be the lack of incredibly arty photography, but I don’t think so. The skirts have too much fabric and not enough deliberateness of structure, mebbe. Anyway, I’m tempted to try it. But the only event on the horizon which justifies such an outlay of time and vintage lace is practically my only sister’s wedding in November, and I’m not sure if she’d appreciate me turning up looking like a post-Magimix Helena Bonham Carter. Also, I’d have to look at the photos in twenty years’ time, and even now I suspect I would snicker. And that is never a good sign.
7. Flowers for Algernon is not a good book to read if you are even mildly moop. It will make you lunge for a knife.
8. Is not this practically the awesomest thing ever? I want to make one, maybe for Disneyland. Then when we wanted to ride the Grizzly River Run I could just pop it on, and we could oose into DCA and ride it and then go back and romp at the HoJo’s water park. Except I don’t know where I’d be able to buy a towel that wasn’t made in a sweatshop, and one would not like to make it with a used towel. So it might not be doable. Still, I spent a good half-hour today pondering it. This is why I never get anything done.
9. I was playing poker on Sunday with a large, smallish group of semi-manly men, and asked them all “Would you rather have your own unicorn or a hundred sheep?” And they all instantly said “UNICORN!”, and it was awesome.
10. Would you accept a million dollars from a genie on the condition that if you ever said the word “migratory”, you would die instantly?

A Sad Thought: I don’t know how to tie a noose knot. It distracted me in that awful scene in Once Were Warriors, where I should have been bawling and clutching my hanky, and I was a bit, but I was also secretly a little impressed at the girl for knowing how to do it as a mere stripling of a lass. If I ever wanted to off myself, I’d have to Google it.

A Happy Thought: I just discovered Sock Dreams, an awesome site, and because I very badly need some socks, all of mine being either holey or Helpdesk Man’s, I bought five pairs as a birthday present to myself from the piggie. Upon being told of her generosity the piggie stared at her own feet in great perplexity for some minutes and then dismissed the matter. Four of the pairs are stripy. And as I very rarely make impulse purchases online, I feel giddy and daring. They’re even anti-sweatshop.

A Sad Thought: “How to Make a Noose” brings up 276,000 Google results.

A Happy Thought: My worthy mother has given practically my only small sister permish to come along for our trip to Disneyland next year. And my other practically only sister who lives in London is meeting us there for a week as well. If I do not have them both married off before we exit the Haunted Mansion, it will not be my fault.

A Sad Thought: I am worried that I might come over all phobic at Disneyland. I do not like animatronics, and while I hope this is because I’ve only ever met creepy cheesy fake ones like at Rainbow’s End, it might not be. And Pirates of the Caribbean is in the dark and on the water, like the log flume at Rainbow’s End which totally gives me the screaming feebles, because there are OBVIOUSLY killer whales slinking beneath the surface, and it has animatronic pirates and skeletons, one of which I happen to know is real. It’s an E-ticket ride. I can’t not go on it. It’s supposed to be awesome. And it’s 15 minutes long. And I do not want to spend that quarter-hour with the stench of abject terror oozing from my armpits, head burrowed into Helpdesk Man’s pancreas, frantically singing “You Are My Sunshine” and batting wildly at the air above my tender exposed neck. Also, Indiana Jones has an animatronic python that looms at you. And we won’t even talk about the Storybookland Canal Boats.

A Happy Thought: “How to Save a Life” by The Fray is an awesomer song than I initially thought. It has a poignant backstory and surprisingly good lyrics, and by “surprisingly” I mean that I am out of touch with Modern Music and generally assume anything I hear on the radio to be shallow and soulless, a thoroughly obnoxious tendency which I ought to combat, although I did hear Jason Mraz’ “I’m Yours” on two separate occasions in the fabric store and liked it and considered asking the lady what it was, but the second time I realised it was on the radio, not a CD, so the nice radio man told me (not personally, acourse) what it was and it turned out it had been playing in every store every four minutes for the last several months, but I don’t get out much, but at least it proved I liked the song on its own merits and not because it was drilled into my head by insane repetition; and also, incidentally, for weeks this was the only song that would put the snortlepig to sleep.

A Sad Thought: This couch is covered in smeg.

A Happy Thought: I bought two rolls of brown paper today. I ran out of the last lot and its replacement must have fallen out of the pram when I was bringing it home, so I have been without a roll of consoling brown paper for months now and it has been preying on my calm. But now I have two, so I can make the twofeenth and final version of my underbust corset pattern on it, and it will go with my new skirt, and also the arm warmers I plan to start making tomorrow.

A Sad Thought: I was conned into giving a cake decorating demonstration on Thursday to a bunch of Young Mothers, and I have no idea what to show them and will be revealed as a sham and ceremonially stripped of my fondant layer.

A Happy Thought: Singing group now. Bye.