S#75: Build a Fort
Step 1: Oust previous occupants of land.
Step 2: Build Fort (with awesome weighting and entrance facilities).
Step 3: Open skylight (somewhat easier with a glass-topped table like this one).
Step 4: Allow previous occupants to destroy your new home (it’s only fair). As happens ominously often, this rule applies equally well to either pets or children.
Step 5: Repeat as needed.
Play along at home: Self-explanatory – but this is one of those rare times being short (which I’m not) is an advantage. So if you’re under six feet, it’s your duty to yourself to BUILD A FORT next time you feel you could use some defence against the world.
Tomorrow: Seeing “Iron Man 2” (which I’m actually seeing tonight :P)
Thursday: Guest post
Side note: Under torture, my friend Ben confessed today that he discovered my acts of reverse burglary “like, two weeks ago” but he “just wanted to see how desperately obvious you would get.”
I’ve been got.
In other news, no – Secret # 6 has not yet been and gone. I am still waiting for a rather. . . specific (shall we say) item to arrive.
Yay for Auntie Flo (caution: mild female content)
Auntie Flo (aka the red baron, aka my “special time of the month” aka “the red shirts of my reproductive system” aka. . . you’re probably with me by now) arrived today.
It’s terribly exciting, because she arrived the EXACT day I was hoping she would – meaning my cycle is probably going to be extremely regular (extremely handy for both everyday life and for predicting my ovulation cycle, which will be super useful when CJ and I decide it’s time to breed).
I’ve always been a fan of the reproductive system – especially the female half, because men are predictably straightforward by comparison. CJ and I had the following discussion as I finished another book on what to do in preparation for (one day) having a baby.
Fel: “My egg is only viable for twelve to twenty-four hours. But it’s okay – the sperm can sit around waiting.”
CJ: “Typical. Men always have to wait around for women to finally be ready.”
Fel: “And if women wait for men they’re doomed to die waiting.”
I’ve always had PMS, but sometimes I get happy PMS. Strange but true. And for me, one of the symptoms of PMS is wanting to talk about it.
But since I only went off the pill two cycles ago (it wasn’t working super well for me, plus my being sick was making it less effective, so ultimately there was no point continuing), my last bout of PMS lasted a ridiculously long time. This time was fine, so I’m happy.
Today I have four hours of work, but there are four factors helping me cope with the extra hour:
1. Two of the hours are with one person (less driving is good).
2. There’s a big break between the first and second lots of two hours (I can fool myself into thinking it’s two days of work).
3. CJ and I are going to see “Iron Man 2” tonight, so I get an instant reward (it may backfire and turn into an extra source of stress, but oh well).
4. I’m eating some chocolate today (the good mood that comes wrapped in foil).
The fish are great. There are still some worrying factors (the tetras prefer Sherlock’s food to their own, and Watson has suspicious white splotches that he didn’t have before), but the tank as a whole has a wonderful balance to it. The plants need the fish’s waste to live. The snail needs the plants. Sherlock needs the snail eggs. The plants need Sherlock. *repeat*
It’s great visually as well, especially with Sherlock and Gandalf interacting with one another, and the perpetual beauty of the tetras.
S#74: The Old Fashioned Way
As you know, soup grows in tiny little tins on a soup tree. The tins ripen and turn metallic, and then they’re picked and sold in the tin-tree aisle of your local supermarket. Today I chose to make a different kind of soup – the kind from Actual Vegetables.
I confess I’ve made home-made soup before, but only since last year. As a result, the process still fills me with wonder. In this photo, you can see green lentils in the glass jar, and the result of adding them to soup in the glass lidded bowl: green soup (despite having a whole pumpkin in it). In a moment of foolishness, I bought a huge pack of carrots lately (Why? I don’t know). In order to get rid of the carrots, I bought all the other vegies you see here:
I was determined that THIS time, I’d have orange-coloured soup. So I used no green ingredients whatsoever (I used chickpeas instead of lentils, since both are a fabulous source of protein and I didn’t feel like red lentils). I chopped and fried the onion with garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander and tumeric. (Cumin and coriander are anti-farting ingredients, as I discovered during research for my children’s book “Farting my ABCs”. Tumeric is an extremely powerful dye, but you can remove it from benchtops with baking soda and white vinegar.) The stock needs to be dissolved in boiling water, so I did that and mixed it in before adding everything else and boiling it for over half an hour (the pot in the background is the chickpeas, since I bought dried ones and I like to hydrate them by boiling, but wasn’t sure they’d cope with everything else boiling in the same pot). Later on, I added a tomato too (why not?)
My friend Ann tasted it and said, “That’s not nearly as disgusting as I expected.” (Thanks Ann!) I should probably explain that she doesn’t like pumpkin soup.
And of course I put sour cream on top.
Definitely orange – yay!
Since I followed the soup with a ham, beetroot, avocado and cheese sandwich (and a mushroom), I had literally ten different vegies in the space of half an hour. That’s a world record in the life of Louise.
In other good news, I cut up the whole pumpkin without slicing myself once. Hurrah! For the weak/uncoordinated, I recommend butternut over regular pumpkin any day.
Play along at home: All you really need is a pumpkin and some stock (plus whatever else is lingering in your fridge – hopefully an onion). Boil, blend, and eat!
Coming super soon: Wear a tiara, sarcastic dream diary, build a fort. . . and more.
And one last mention of the reverse burglary saga:
Ben! Beardy Ben. Sarcastic Ben. Funny Ben. It’s you. Your sister let me in when I knew you were out.
Go thou and eat.
S#41: Wear a Mask
Masks scare me. Seeing someone in a mask scares me. Wearing a mask scares me. Sometimes, hearing other people talk about a mask scares me.
So tonight I went to a mask party. I borrowed CJ’s mask for this photo. . .
But actually wore this eye patch:
CJ made it look debonair.
Our host was suitably spectacular:
But his wife was the best. She wore her first mask for about an hour, and spoke not a word. The only sound she made was the jingling of bells as she moved – yet she still played hostess, and even re-introduced me to someone I haven’t seen since Year Four. It was one of the creepiest – and most fascinating – things I’ve ever seen. With absolutely no facial expression, she expressed herself perfectly. She wasn’t actually trying to be creepy, or to communicate so efficiently – she was just wearing a mask, and it took over.
They always do.
Each table had a white mask and paint to play with. We made this for the host, and he was confident enough in his manhood to wear it.
Somehow this mask was attached to balloons. For the rest of the evening, the air conditioning made it wander around the room – in absolute silence, of course. Oh, and the glitter stuck on the back made the eye-sockets glint in the artificial light.
I chose to paint this mask with red eyes. Because something that’s evil should look evil.
The weirdest thing of all is how good I feel, writing this after such a creepy evening. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s relief that the floating mask of death didn’t steal my soul, and my red-eyed mask didn’t come alive, and the hostess didn’t eat anyone’s unborn child. Who knows?
Play along at home: You can buy white masks at toy and trick shops, often with a selection of paints and a brush. Alternatively, you can just eat a whole lot of cheese just before bed (for even cheaper, easier nightmares).
Reverse Burglary – I think this picture was lost to the aether this week. My apologies.
Look at the jar, and read thy name (or not). If it’s a derivative of your name, then that very jar is in your TV cabinet right now (and the Blackpool souvenir stick is in your couch).
#144: Three days without junk food
As the minimally observant would have picked up by now, I have a weakness for chocolate. So this week I picked three days, and went absolutely without chocolate, lollies, or any kind of junk food.
(Most of this week’s entries were done a while ago, knowing “Three days without junk food” was coming up.)
I drank a glass of diet coke each morning to minimise the side-effects of caffeine withdrawal (headaches, shaking etc – seriously).
Within hours I was freaking out. I cried more than once a day – once in a public place. It was extremely difficult to keep myself from bashing my head against things. I made some odd decisions for no apparent reason. But I did it. And I’m going to do it again next week, and keep doing it until I am a little less weak, and can consistently eat chocolate in moderation.
This isn’t so much a moment of “Daily Awesomeness” as a much-needed lifestyle change.
PS: Today technically IS next week, and this week’s three days without junk went really well. It’s not easy or quick, but I have reached the point now where I can comprehend a life of moderate eating. That’s pretty amazing.
Tomorrow: S#41: Wear a Mask
#149: Alien Creatures (aka Go Fish!)
Getting fish has been one of the most expensive and traumatic things I’ve ever done, but it’s also been one of the most rewarding. On Wednesday I went one step further and bought two bottom feeders – one eats algae (not that I have any – yet) and the other eats snail eggs (which I have a disturbingly large amount of). This means that I have the beginnings of a genuine ecosystem, with some of my living creatures/plants getting eaten by others. How awesome is that?!?
Bottom feeders move quite differently to other fish, and I’m loving watching them, and the interactions between species. Sherlock Holmes is the carnivore. He’s a reticula pakistan (I think), and he’s about the same size as Gandalf (my fighting fish). He has beautiful golden stripes, and alternates between manic investigation of the front wall (with his nose-whiskers) and pretending to be part of our hollow log. Gandalf is an unusually sociable fish, and he finds Sherlock fascinating. Sherlock returned the favour, swimming around Gandalf and employing his whiskers to figure out what that blue blur was all about. The funniest part was Gandalf’s reaction. He wasn’t hurt at all, but was totally weirded out. Instead of jerking away (as he does when bitten – something that doesn’t happen any more since there aren’t any danios), he went very still. What I learned today: a confused fish is a cute fish. Here’s Sherlock near his abode of choice:
Watson is a tiny bristlenose catfish not much bigger than my neon tetras. He’s black with white spots, and is VERY good at vanishing. Some of the tetras got confused and deliberately swam into him to try to figure out what he was. The tetras are the flourescent ones, and Watson is trying his best to blend into the fake log (Sherlock appears again in the foreground):
Play along at home: If you possibly can, visit an aquarium. Or a dentist’s waiting room. Fish are SO WEIRD. Respect the weirdness.
AND THEN I WOKE UP (story so far):
5
I woke with my face in concrete. Wet concrete. Not concrete – meat. Meat and blood, and it was in my MOUTH! Yuck!
I sat up, spitting. Then I saw the bodies all around me. No-one else was waking up, like I had. But a few others, like me, had blood dripping down their chins.
Wasn’t I just in maths class? I shook my head, trying not to scream. Hysteria took over, and I said aloud, “Please, not the maths!”
6
I sheltered overnight in an abandoned apartment. The homiest part was the curtains (burnt) but I found an unopened tin of baked beans.
Evidently even apocalypse survivors don’t eat baked beans. Also there was no can opener. I began to understand my own cannibalism.
My body was different, too – not just thinner. With a mirror, I discovered I was now in my twenties. What!?! Did I go to the prom or not?
7
I watched through burnt curtains as a group of people walked slowly down the street. They walked upright, and they weren’t as thin as me.
My belly rumbled, so I broke a two by four off the bed for a weapon, and went downstairs to follow the tall ones.
8
One of the tall ones kept sniffing the air and pushing his child in front of him. He looked around, and almost saw me.
Perhaps the tall ones knew why I was ten years older, why the whole city was burnt, and why I couldn’t remember anything since math class.
“Mustn’t sleep,” I told myself. I had to keep watch. They had food! And bottles of water! I was so thirsty it didn’t hurt any more.
9
“Gotcha!”
My eyes snapped open but it was too late. The man had me by both arms. I struggled, but I was so weak my vision blurred.
Their leader leant over me. “Stop moving. We’re not going to hurt you.”
I wanted to yell at her but instead I whimpered, “He took my beans.”
“Give her beans back, Z,” she said, and he did.
“I’m Dell,” she said, “and who are you?”
“Fay,” I whispered, and clung to my precious can.
10
All night they fed me sips of warm water, and in the morning they let me have half an old banana. Where did they get fruit from?
I tried to stay awake, but I slept. When I woke up, there were three times as many people – hungry-eyed, bloody-mouthed people like me.
“We need water,” Dell said to Z, “or they’ll die here.”
He nodded, and he and the child went back along the windy street alone.
11
Z and the girl returned with water and jerky. Dell made us say a prayer before we ate. For the first time, I wondered where my parents were.
When I was strong enough to stand, I asked Z for my weapon back.
“What for?” he said.
I said, “To protect me while I look for my parents.”
“Riiight,” he said, and showed me his gun.
I blinked.
“Wait until tomorrow,” he said, “and Dell will tell you what to do.”
12
Dell stood on a dumpster and addressed us all. “Go,” she said, “as far as you can in every direction. If you find water, let off a flare.”
“East!” I blurted out. “I’ll go East!”
Z smirked at me: “Fine then. So will I.” He stuck three flares in his belt, and we started walking.
“I’m called Iris,” said the girl, slipping her hand in mine.
“Fay,” I said, “and I wasn’t much older than you when I fell asleep.”
13
We searched every building for running water. “Someone’s got to have their own generator,” said Z.
“My parents do,” I said.
Iris screamed, and I instinctively threw her behind me. A stranger burst out of a hole in the wall and made a grab for my empty bottle.
Z drew his gun but the man kept fighting me. I remembered what my Mum taught me so long ago, and kneed him in the groin. He howled and fled.
14
I had a nightmare that I opened the door to my parents’ flat and found nothing but burnt curtains, a tin of baked beans, and two corpses.
We waited all day for the man to attack us again, or at least come back, but there was no sign of him. “Let it go,” said Z. We kept walking.
I found my courage. “Who did all this, Z?”
“People invented a way to make others into puppets. Be glad you’ve forgotten those years.”
PS Still not sure who the reverse burglary victim is? Scroll down to the large picture of the candy shop candy, and read the brand name on the jar at the back. That’s his/her name!
Secret # 6 will happen some day, but not anytime soon (there’s a certain. . . item. . . that isn’t in stock at the moment). I’ll let you all know!
How to not be manic
I handled yesterday’s workload quite well, although I’m exhausted from not sleeping right (this morning I woke almost two hours early and couldn’t get back to sleep). I feel cold (the heater is on) and hungry (despite eating plenty) and my eye is twitching at a rate of about once an hour (yesterday it was twitching every fifteen minutes while I was at work).
Today I don’t have students at all, so it’s a great opportunity to stop being manic. I’m tempted to do heaps of stuff – write, do something big from the awesomeness list, swim a kilometre, or clean the house – but instead I’m going to do nothing.
No washing. No dishes. No cooking. No exercise (I have one day off a week – may as well make it today). No writing. No new awesomeness (unless I really feel like it, and it doesn’t involve leaving the house).
I’m going to watch no-brainer TV, tease my cats, and take photos of my fish. And probably have a nap. Hopefully after this I’ll be safe to drive again (I tend to crash – literally – when I work too much).
As of this morning, I’m allowed to eat chocolate again. But I’m going to try not to binge again until I’m well inside the healthy weight range. My rule now is to stick to 50 grams of chocolate, plus whatever I’m offered (so I can eat at parties, etc). That’s a maximum, of course 🙂 (Or 100 grams lollies, because they don’t metabolise into fat as quickly as. . . well, fat.)
After three days with absolutely no chocolate or junk food, I now weigh 80.5. It could be a lot worse. I’m waiting for Auntie Flo to visit, then after that I’ll launch a major offensive. I stumbled across a patently incorrect BMI calculator that said I only need to weigh 78 kilos to be in the healthy weight range, so that’s what I’ll go for in this offensive. Two and a half (or three) kilos in three weeks should be achievable.
Oh! And I’m getting a new student in about a fortnight (which is great timing, because I’m about to lose three-quarters of my income due to my two adult students finishing their courses).
I’ll post fish photos over at http://twittertales.wordpress.com as soon as this entry is done.
————–
I just (after writing the above, then falling asleep) heard back from Publisher A (who I thought might be sick of me now, but who I emailed to ask if I could send them “Farting My ABCs”). They said,
#108: Take someone on a date
My husband and I celebrate our monthly anniversaries. It’s one day a month where we have to do something awesome together and/or I get an excuse to forget about dinner plans and dishes and just enjoy food that appears like magic on the table in front of us (and he gets to not do as many dishes).
Last night we went to the ANU film club (anyone can be a member – you can pay as little as $15 for a week of movies http://anufg.org.au) and saw “Away We Go”. Because we buy membership at the beginning of the year, this was a “free” event.
We also ate an entire pack of Mars Pods. Mmm. . .
I always nibble off the biscuit then enjoy the weirdly-shaped chocolate and filling. It’s possible they’re the best lolly ever. But I digress. . .
Outside of the ANU Film Club program, I’d never heard of the movie (despite the fact that Maggie Gyllenhaal and a few other familiar faces were in it). It was described as an indie comedy-drama, and it’s about a couple that gets pregnant and travels around visiting friends and family in search of the right place to bring up their child. There’s a lot of extremely odd people (this is NOT a PG film – it opens with a funny sex scene – although they don’t show any visuals), and some heartbreaking tragedies. But mostly it’s incredibly funny and warm. It has lines including:
-That doesn’t make you look crazy at all.
-Would it be wrong to tell my daughter her mum was murdered?
-It’s all about the three S’s: No separation, no sugar, and no strollers.
No. . . strollers?
I love my children. Why would I choose to push my child away?
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2642135/away_we_go_movie_trailer/
I really, really enjoyed it.
Play along at home: Pick someone – anyone – you love, and go on a date with them. I recommend taking one of your parents (because you probably don’t spend much time just talking to them – especially not just one at a time).
I just – literally this moment – discovered that yesterday’s post didn’t publish. I’ll take care of that immediately after this.
Bottom Feeders Rule
On Monday I went to a fish shop to see if they had a fish that might eat the ominous white fuzz that’s been growing in my tank. Their main comment was, “Woah, that’s WEIRD, man!” which wasn’t super helpful. I asked to look at a sucker fish, but they were clear that the sucker fish only eats algae, so I reluctantly left it there.
The thing is, that sucker fish was BEAUTIFUL. It was a bristlenose catfish, and in Gollum’s immortal words, “I wants it!”
Algae-eating fish are generally recommended, so I figured I’d wait a bit (to make sure the white fuzz wasn’t killing everyone), and then probably cave in and get one.
Yesterday, as I mentioned, I had a lot of work (preceded by a day of even more work). Shortly after writing yesterday’s blog I felt my mania beginning to fade, and decided on Ae Cunning Plan – to buy a bristlenose catfish, stat! This is a fine example of mania leading to over-sponteneity, over-optimism, and selfishness (since this lot of fish haven’t even outlived the last lot yet, so the chance of death is high).
So I went to the Belco Markets Pet Barn (my favourite fish shop, definitely) to buy a bristlenose. (I’d called earlier that day about the white fuzz, and they suggested it might be because of overfeeding, but they weren’t sure.) Bristlenoses also need special food, and special wood (plastic wood just doesn’t cut it). I bought a beautiful wood-with-plant arrangement, and a tiny, perfect catfish. Before I left the store, however, one of the staff arrived back from lunch – someone everyone else described as “the fish guru”. So I asked him about the white fuzz, saying I had neon tetras, a plant, and a fighting fish. He asked several questions, then made a startling declaration.
It’s snail eggs.
I have a tiny snail that came in with the first plant (I’d noticed it, but never suspected it of foul play). Apparently they breed way more efficiently than rabbits.
“But there’s this really cool fish over here,” he says, and shows me another bottom feeder, a pakistan, that eats snail eggs.
So I bought two cleaning fish – one that eats bad plants, and one that eats bad animals. Brilliant!
And because they’re semitropical, they’re beautifully shaded. The bristlenose is shaped like a comma, with a fast-flicking tail and beautifully-drawn tiny white dots all over his back. He likes to suck on the glass with his sucker-mouth, which is just as bizarre as I could hope for. Every so often he’ll actually swim a little way, then THOOK! he’s flat against the glass again, like a cartoon character who’s just run into a brick wall. Here’s some bristlenose pictures (not mine):
The carniverous one has beautiful leopard spots stretched into stripes. My fighting fish is a similar size (perhaps three cm long), and is utterly fascinated. The new fish alternates between hiding/peering out of our fake hollow log, and rushing about, madly sucking at the wall.
I spent considerable time thinking about how to name them. They’re so incredible, so naming them after a person should be flattering – but “bottom feeder” is such a negative term. What to do?
I considered calling them Flollop and Buck (after the way they move), Jack and Jill, Gollum and Smeagol. . . or naming them after politicians. In the end, and based on the carnivore’s manic behaviour and the catfish’s ability to disappear so completely at least three hundred times a day – we named the carnivore Sherlock Holmes and the catfish Watson.
Someday I’ll get a picture of whatever breed Sherlock is.
And now for something completely different.
I stumbled across a brilliant writing competition. It’s run by Publisher A (who still hasn’t replied to my email inquiry, but this could be a way to get back into their good graces – assuming I have indeed used them up), and the prize isn’t money or publication – it’s editing. But of course the chance of publication is much improved by the process, since it’s THEIR editors working with you – and for a whole week. The best book for it is “Waking Dead Mountain” or “The Monster Apprentice” (“Sol the Sea Princess” would be good except it needs a rewrite of the opening chapters), both of which are tied up with publishers.
But just in case it helped, I emailed Publisher E. They replied, and said they hadn’t been able to open the file I sent it with, so they’d asked me to resend it. . . last year. (FYI: This is the third time one of my books has been lost – and by three different publishers.)
It doesn’t particularly matter whether they stuffed up or I did, the important thing is that I can send a beautifully polished and ready manuscript to this great competition – which closes next week. Time to send my publication attempts in a new direction.
Felicity Banks 