#252: Tattoo War
Ever woken up on New Year’s day with a champagne headache and half a dozen pirate tattoos?
I know I have.
It started off so civilised. I put a pretty thing on my sister’s ankle.
I put another on the arm of She Who Must Not Be Named*.
CJ “volunteered” for a pirate flag.
And then I picked what I wanted, and CJ and I had a long conversation about Are You Sure, No Really I’m Being Serious About This, You Want To Do This? and, You Do Remember That We’ll Be Going To Church For Your Niece’s Dedication, Right? and, Okay Just Remember That I Asked.
My sister graciously helped me with it, which meant the cloth we used was extremely wet. It was rather a lot like standing under a waterfall, with my head held in a vice.
Worth it!
Also, I discovered I could make it dance.
At that point we still had heaps of tattoos, so I did the only logical thing: I slapped a treasure map on my sister’s leg.
She retaliated by putting the remainder of that sheet on my chest.
I struck back with a pirate ship on her neck (making sure plenty of cold water dripped down her shirt).
She gave me upside down skull drool.
And then, finally, the battle was over and it was time for dinner.
It was the slowest, wettest war ever.
As promised, here is my real tattoo which I had done on my belly to mark the year I gave up my dream of moving to Indonesia permanently (where tattoos are more difficult for Upstanding Folk to deal with).
It’s quite high up on my belly, in hopes that future pregnancy won’t utterly mangle it. If I remember (in however many years’ time), I’ll post another photo of it after I’ve had a kid or two.
It didn’t hurt all that much – the difficult part was lying on my back and thinking more and more about how the whole reason I was there was so the nice man could cut into my flesh. And then when I was finished, they put some cling wrap over it to catch the blood that kept running for the next hour or so.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but cling wrap doesn’t actually cling to skin.
But it’s all fine now, and fun whenever I wear a bikini top.
Today is 1/1/11, which is cool. It also means less than three months remain of my Daily Awesomeness experiment (not that I expect to stop being awesome anytime soon). Here’s the few remaining items from my SteffMetal.com list:
10: Trim (aka clothing attack)
8: Glow in the dark stars on a friend’s ceiling
19: Bells around my ankles
32: Seven days without TV or internet (two down. . .)
94: Pay off debt
89: Dinner and a movie. . . by myself
93: Collect something interesting
86: Starry night at an observatory
79: Karaoke (uh oh)
80: Sparklers
99: Mmm. . . sprinkles
28: To the theatre
12: Healing Stones
2: Sushi
95: Paddle pool
39: Learn Braille
4: Share the cookie wuv
73: Get away from it all (ie, go on holiday with CJ)
77: Go to a deserted beach (ditto 🙂 )
76: Up in the air (hot air balloon ride!)
And naturally, there are plenty of the infamous Ben suggestions coming up.
As always, feel free to make your own suggestions and I will almost certainly do them (especially if they’re free).
*That is, my mum. She’s a priest at a nursing home, so she was Concerned About Her Reputation and asked me to be sure to cut off her head. Which I did.
#248: Heifer, anyone?
For today’s awesomeness, I joined literary-stuff blogger http://blog.nathanbransford.com/ who is pledging $1 for every comment on his blog, giving it to the charity http://www.heifer.org/. Any charity that gives people a goat* is one I like.
I’ll be giving $1 for every blog comment from this instant until Christmas Eve (up to $500, to be paid in January, when CJ and I are back to buying groceries and such again).
And I haven’t forgotten I promised to review Scott Westerfeld’s “Leviathan” and “Behemoth” YA steampunk books, either.
On Christmas Eve, I’ll be posting my sarcastic Christmas letter – with pictures this time.
And I fully intend to climb a tree this week, for “Secret Squirrel”. Wish me luck. . .
*or a cow. Or a camel. etc
S#36: Metal Green Thumb
My mission was to get a weird plant – “a deadly nightshade or venus flytrap or sarracenia or nepenthes”. I got this:
Look, I admit it. The plant is downright pretty. I’m not very good at this heavy metal thing (despite my pirate credentials). But let’s take a closer look.
I’ve repotted it and put it with my other plants, and it definitely isn’t dressed like the in crowd (all of whom are wearing the new black*). It’s a begonia, which sounds a bit like a drunken lout yelling, “Begone, ya *#%@!” Also, if you squint real hard, it looks like it might just be DRENCHED IN BLOOD.
If that’s not br00tal, I don’t know what is.
Coming soon: playing guitar, hunting up a bargain in a junk market, decorating two Christmas trees in one day (see last entry), and. . . other stuff.
For those interested in my personal dramas, I was so distraught at gaining weight last week that I have a new plan. Today I binge eat and binge write – I’m aiming for 12,000 words (and have done 5,000 so far – it’s 3pm). From tomorrow I go into absolute no-chocolate-no-lollies-no-junk-food mode for three weeks. At the end of three weeks, I weigh less.
One tiny problem (other than the lack of chocolate making me instantly and uncontrollably psychotic): I have five Christmas parties in the next three weeks – and four of them are with family.
Wish me luck, my tr00 peeps.**
*which is to say, green.
**dear metalheads and/or gangsters: please do not kill me for that.
#222: Kidnap Your Date
You know it’s gonna be a good date when you take your partner in the car looking like this:
I took a circuitous path to the secret location, and CJ was soon lost.
My cunning plan was to walk him onto a certain island at just the right time, leaving the blindfold on until a certain sound happened, when he’d suddenly know where he was. Sadly, the route I’d taken was too circuitous, and we were about five minutes late. CJ didn’t mind. He realised where we were the instant I opened the car door.
Yep, the National Carillon. It’s usually playing from 12:30-1:20 on Sundays (pause as Louise casts a subtle eye toward the followers of this blog who have brand new boyfriends*). They played, among other pieces, “Yellow Submarine”, “The Addams Family” and the strangely appropriate “He Had It Coming.”
I’ve written about the Crillon before, sometimes even for money (go on, click the link!)
The island itself is beautiful, and we walked all the way around (something I didn’t dare do by myself, since there’s a strong possibility of stumbling across a pair making out in one of the dozens of semi-secluded spots). Along the way we spotted a Mysterious Rat-Like Creature (sleek, furry, and about a foot long – not including a presumed tail) diving into the water. That was definitely a highlight. Was it an otter? Was it really a rat (it didn’t appear to come back up)? An escaped ferret? A secret governmental water camera?
Inquiring minds want to know (but never will).
I did at least get a photo of this guy, who obligingly posed for about twenty minutes. Sit, Bobo! Stay!
We passed three patches of rose petals. I’m pretty sure that if CSI wanted to, they could analyse the rate of decomposition and work out exactly when the weddings occurred. Then they could analyse the level of sweat on the petals to determine how stressed the bridal party was, and extrapolate that into predicting whether the marriage will succeed or not.
With SCIENCE!!
CJ and I found a nice patch of grass, ate our lunch, and watched pleasure-boats pootle by.
I apologise for the above photo, featuring the High Court building. Lake Burley Griffin is surrounded by beautiful and/or intriguing buildings, and that’s just dead ugly. CJ said it was a product of its time – and that’s certainly true. There was a time when sheer naked concrete was considered special. But this is not that day. THIS IS NOT THAT DAY!!**
I feel a little sorry for those who paid to go on a ferry and meander past all these gorgeous islands without the fun of being able to dig their bare toes into the cool grass.*** Suckers.
Once we’d had lunch, CJ promptly and picturesquely fell asleep.
Tomorrow’s awesomeness is a reader suggestion – “Go entirely barefoot for one day”, which I’m actually still doing today. I’d forgotten that the island of the National Carillon is built entirely on duck poo and prickles.
The things I do for you people. And CJ and I are going out again after dinner.
So tomorrow’s blog will include pics of my death-defying Carillon island tree climb, and a fashion shoot of how dirty my feet end up after all our adventures.
Coming soon: Tomorrow is also when our initial ebay time runs out, and we may or may not (probably not) get money. I’ll let you know. Also coming soon: Archery. ZOMBIE WALK!! Watchwords. Facebook friends. And more.
In completely different news, here is an article on modern piracy (the kind with cellphones, governmental corruption/weakness, and weapons that kill innocent people). Modern piracy costs around $13 billion a year.
http://www.criminaljusticeusa.com/blog/2009/10-shocking-facts-about-modern-day-pirates/
*Two, that I know of.
**And duck poo.
***Ask Aragorn. He knows.
S#26: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
If the rain in Canberra continues much longer, we’ll all drown. The sky is bleak and the wind is cold. So much for Spring. All my instincts are telling me to get back into bed, avoid all possibility of exercise, and eat nothing but chocolate. But I won’t. The next-best option is sitting on the couch watching “Gilmore Girls” until I have to go to work, which is fundamentally what I’m doing (I already went for a swim, and am now able to VERY CAREFULLY get in and out of the pool without flashing anyone via my velcro fly) – with one exception: Awesomeness must occur.
Today’s awesomeness was to ride on a swing. Brilliant, I thought. It’s free, I can walk to a playground from here, and it’s a little bit like flying. This will be the best “play along at home” ever!
I forgot one tiny thing: I’m too big.
I shoved my bulk into the swing with considerable difficulty, and swung cautiously so I didn’t fall over backwards. The swing I chose is overlooked by a block of flats, with about a hundred windows pointing toward the overweight girl with unbrushed hair and crocs. I’m pretty sure the chains on the sides will cause bruises to flower on my legs over the next few days.
And then I walked home. If I wasn’t newly confident of my journey into the healthy weight range, that would have been horribly depressing.
But it was still worth doing. 99% of awesome activities make me feel happier, regardless of whether they’re successful or not.
If you’re a writer, you’ll know that your main character must be proactive, or the story flops. It’s something hardwired into human nature. Whatever it is that makes us need proactive heroes also makes us feel better after the simplest activities – going for a walk, buying a Christmas present early, or stealing the neighbour’s flowers. Try it, and see if it works for you.
In the meantime, from concurringopinions.com, a semi-realistic pirate:
Coming soon: I’m kidnapping CJ and taking him to a secret location on Sunday. Also, hopefully selling some jewellery on ebay on Monday (but it’s not looking good). Archery (hopefully the non-fatal kind). And more.
S#55: Make Music
Imagine the scene: You’re at school camp and have eaten the food, but you and your friends are all still at the table, nursing your orange cordials and wondering how best to mess with the teachers without leaving your chairs. Someone starts tapping out a rhythm on their upturned cup. They teach the person next to them, and so on. Eventually you have dozens of people pounding out a rhythm, passing cups all around the table.
I recreated this with some friends at my house (filmed from underneath the glass table). They described it as “strangely zen”. As you’ll probably observe during the video, there was minimal training involved. The reason I’m giggling is that the person next to me copped a cup in their lap and managed to continue.
It’s a 4-4 rhythm, and it goes something like this:
Start with a cup to your left, upside down. With your right hand, lift it (1) and place it (still upside down) in front of you (2). Hit a brief rhythm on the base (left right left – 3-and-4). Clap (1), pick it up (2) and place it (still upside down) on your right (3, and 4 is a pause). Clap (1), then grasp it sideways with your right hand (twisting your wrist so your thumb is close to the table on the near side of the cup – 2), hit the open end against your left palm (3), the bottom against the table (4), then place the bottom of the cup in your left hand – twisting your wrist a little, and switching hands (1), hit your right palm against the table to your left (2), and the upside down cup on your far right (3, and pause for four). Then repeat but using the cup that has just been placed at your left.
I definitely recommend playing along at home, but not with Mum’s best china (or her second-best glass for that matter – we used plastic cups).
And here, continuing “Killer Robot Cat” month, is my oh-so-sweet Ana killing a yellow smiley face*
*Training. . .
Coming soon: How to annoy your neighbour by accidentally making a diet coke and mentos rocket that shoots over a 2-storey building (DON’T try that at home!)
Bubbles! With your hands!
Sculpture Garden
Bad movie night (during which I thought some of my guests might turn violent – and I sympathised)
and, as always, more. . .
#187: What’s in the box? Part 1
Some are born awesome. Some achieve awesome. And some have awesome thrust upon ’em.*
My mum likes to be mysterious. She sent me an email a few days ago saying she’d “had an idea” and I should “drop in so we could talk about it”.
Things are a little crazy at the moment, so I didn’t take the bait right away.
Today, however, I became utterly convinced she’d bought a kitten.** Yes, a kitten. Therefore, I was incapable of waiting any longer. I grabbed CJ and we went over there – just now, at 9pm at night.
Remember how my mum recently had my sister and I take out huge boxes of cr– treasured items — from her attic? Today there was more stuff. This time, it was from the depths of her newly-renovated cupboard.
One of my grandmothers left all – literally all – her jewellery to me when she died. She had a brain tumour at the time, so I interpreted the gift as more of a “caretaker” role and sat down at the time with my family to see what everyone liked. The rest I kept – 99% of it in the back of mum’s cupboard, since I’m not big on jewellery.
As you can see from the picture above, Grandma’s biggest weakness was jewellery. Let’s look a little closer, shall we?
See that box? It’s inscribed – to my great-grandfather, a banker, on his retirement on the 31st of May 1930. It’s silver.
See those rings? There are only two kinds of gemstones I can recognise with certainty: opal and jade. There are four opal rings and a jade ring there, on top. The bracelets are silver – you can tell by how tarnished they are. I dunno what the rest is – glass? plastic? zirconia? Haven’t the faintest! One of the rings in one of the individual boxes was originally bought (twenty years ago) for $250. Another is still in its original box from the jewellery store – so those two aren’t made of glass. It’s perhaps interesting that the other bracelet – the one made of some kind of yellow metal – isn’t tarnished at all. Or perhaps not.
But here’s the thing. See that really BIG box at the back? The one that looks like a pirate’s treasure chest, bound in brass?
Can’t open it.
We’ve collectively lost the key. My parents have tried several keys without success. CJ had a go at it too (with tools).
Still can’t open it.
It’s full, and quite heavy (although to be honest, that’s mostly the box).
So what’s in the box???
I really hope we all find out soon. (And yes, I’ll be paying for a jeweller’s kid to go to college when they value all this.) I hope it drives you as crazy as it’s driving me.
To ease your contemplatory torment, here’s a soothing rainforest pic from flickr.com:
Coming soon: Finding out what’s in that box. Finding out what it’s all worth. Maniacal laughter and cries of, “I’m rich, I tell you, RICH!!” Also, patting a lizard.
. . . and chatting to Charles Darwin. And the final Three-Ingredient Thursday. And I’ll be flying to Melbourne on Friday for a whole lot of high-calibre schmoozing.
*three points if you know who I’m misquoting – be precise.
**I could take you through my train of thought, but it’s way less interesting now I know I’m an idiot.
#175: Was it REALLY that bad?*
My brother is almost two years older than me. I have many childhood memories of sitting around bored, begging him to play “Risk” with me, and then enduring a long and torturous defeat. And then repeating the whole familiar pattern, over and over and over.
There are two curious things about these memories. First is the strange appeal of all those tiny pieces moving about on the pretty pretty board. Second is the sheer debilitating horror of drawn-out defeat.
Sadly, it’s the first part of my memories that stuck with me. So, after begging various people to play with me, CJ caved and said yes.
This is him reading the rules. (Is it fun yet???!!!)
This is him turning to drink (is it fun yet?!?!?!?!) before we actually started (my drink – who else would put a margerita ring of pink sugar on a frangelico and milk cocktail?)
And this is him (blue) conceding defeat to me (yellow). Is it fun NOW?!
No it is not!
Even though I won the game (very possibly for the first time ever; certainly for the first time in almost two decades), I still walked away sick to the stomach with despair.
What is it that’s so awful about Risk?
1. You never gain anything without the other person dying (unlike, say, Setters, in which you mostly just build stuff and say, “Yay”). Also, it’s surprisingly disheartening to lose an entire country and/or continent. Just ask Hitler.
2. Dice are mean. Life is arbitrarily awful enough without games to make us feel helpless to control our own fate.
3. And of course, the thing everyone remembers (even me, if I’m honest): The winner is decided pretty early on, and 90% of every game is spent slowly grinding one’s friend into the barren sands of defeat.
The unique geography of the board is also strangely off-putting.
It’s good to know my horrific memories of this depression-inducing game are 100% on the ball.
In happier news, Sawi has survived yesterday’s boar attack, and is probably looking at a view similar to this one, from Flickr.com:
Coming soon: Alphabet! Three-Ingredient Thursday! Go shopping in an antique shop in a small town! Silliness with a pirate ship! Other stuff!
*yes
#172: Macabre Expression of Love
Cast your minds back, if you will, to the year 2007. It was a gentler time, when global warming was only just invented and Kevin Rudd was super exciting.
It was a time when CJ and Louise fell in love. (Well, CJ did. I was WAY ahead of the times.)
To celebrate the fact that we’d been dating for a WHOLE two months, CJ and I drove down the coast in a car that has since gone to the garage in the sky*.
Along the way, while driving on the King’s Highway between Canberra and Bungendore, CJ delightedly pointed out dozens of teddy bears attached to the trees. Some were nailed on. Others were attached by the neck. Still others were wedged into narrow cracks between branches. All wore fixed expressions of delight.
My newly-awoken heart went pitter-pat. “Ah ha!” I thought quietly to myself. “I will return to this road someday, with this man in tow, and nail our love to this highway in the form of a slowly-disintegrating soft toy! In this fashion our love will endure, like a mutilated bear, and grow like rust forevermore. Our future progeny shall be carried carefully to this spot, and made to look in wonder upon the lasting glory of their parents’ strange love.”
Time passed, and we two were wed.
Last year (one year, one month and one day ago) we gathered in our hands:
our love
a good strong hammer
a bear
a marker
a length of wire
and several large nails.
Gazing rapturously at one another (while also being careful not to nail CJ’s fingers to the tree in a bloody reminder of our special day), we did this:
Today is the 18-month anniversary of our marriage (also roughly three and a half years since my original Notion of Bear). So on our way back from another coast trip, we went on a BEAR HUNT. Thanks to CJ actually having a memory, we found the bear. Our monument of love lives! (In fact, if you like microorganisms, it lives more than ever before.)
That red glow in my eyes is the glow of TRUE LOVE (and. . . um. . . so is the green colour in CJ’s eyes).
Play along at home: Nail a bear to a tree.**
Coming soon: Lighthouse! Waterfall! Alphabet! Food! Etc!
And here’s a picture of where CJ and I will go when we die (it’s from Bookshelfporn.com):
*ie, in Fyshwick
** I do not recommend using a real bear.
#78: New job
This entry is PG for moderately bad swearing (at the end).
One of the best (and worst) things about my day job – private tutoring – is that things are constantly getting shuffled around. I’m about to take on some new students, so I get all the thrills and spills of a new job without losing my old job.
Here in Canberra we divide ourselves into the North Side and the South Side, and my relationship across that divide (with CJ) was considered exotic and strange from the beginning (despite the fact that it takes around thirty minutes to travel that distance). When we married, I said tearful goodbyes to all my Northside family and friends, and moved to CJ’s side of town. I’ve been slooooowly evolving my tutoring schedule ever since, so perhaps in some distant future I won’t have to go through the Glenloch Interchange two to four times every single work day.
To me, the improving schedule is terribly exciting. I even have a few students that I teach from home now (something that wasn’t possible pre-marriage, since I lived in a series of underage-drug-addled/surreal/excitingly overcrowded/peeping-tom-prone share houses – when I wasn’t living in a non-bathroomed garage or a fungus-infested hovel without drinkable water).
Tutoring is where the art of scheduling reaches its most adrenalin-fueled highs. That’s right. I said it.
I have a (highly blue-tacked and thus adjustable) schedule in my room, with different regions in different colours. You’d think colourful stationary was enough – you’d be wrong. The REALLY exciting thing about the tutoring schedule is that my ideal workload is three hours a day, and the key tutoring zone is after school but before dinner – which is to say, 4-7pm. Which means that in order for things to actually work, I need to travel instantaneously. Yes, that’s right! The future is here!
Sorta.
My schedule is pretty tight at the moment, but I reckon I have room for two more students. So the game is on to find them. What will happen next? Will someone from the far end of town tempt me out of my new zone of employ with delicious afternoon tea and an angel-faced student with absolutely no grasp of maths? Will I find another young face for my cats to glare at every Thursday afternoon? Will I find a mature-age student I can actually teach during the day? Will my existing families get so annoyed at yet another schedule adjustment that they fire me?
I’ll let you know!
Coming soon:
Guilty pleasure
Write your own alphabet
Three-Ingredient Thursday: Snack
Visit a freakin’ waterfall!
Midnight Snackage (with my sister and bro-in-law, who are visiting, yay!)
. . . and more
As usual for July, here’s a pretty pretty picture tangentially related to “When Good Libraries Go Bad”. This is from http://www.llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/images/
Felicity Banks 