Writing Up a Storm

Revision

2009-03-27T20:57:00.002+11:00

So, finally, finally the revision is getting very close to being done.
Oh, not the *final* revision - but the nuts and bolts - all my ducks in a row revision.
85% there in fact.
Hallelujah!

It hasn't really been so difficult - it was just not being able to achieve as much as I normally can due to feeling tired after work - but I've stopped working now - so going great guns.

It's wonderful not to have to schlep my massive stomach into work and waddle around there trying to look/sound/be professional. I can just mess around in my pajamas, drinking tea and being happy about things in general.

Hilariously, I was banging my head on the desk wondering WHY oh WHY all those words weren't piling up to something more impressive in the page count stakes, when I realised I had the manuscript on TNR in a small size. Upped it to Courier New 12 point and voila! I was MUCH further along than I realised. Which is just as well, because I didn't have a whole lot more story to tell.

More soon as I unclog my blogbrain.

Fluffy Bum, Fluffy Paws

2009-01-18T23:00:00.002+11:00

I'm a pushover for a fluffy bum. Be it a teddy or a puppy or in this case POLAR BEAR.

If I'd known just how cute a polar bear bum would be, I would've been looking out for one well before now. Giant bear, king of beasts, seal killer and .... sweet little furry tush and paws. Awwwwww!

One of the guys at work had it up on his 2008 BBC Wildlife calendar (no idea who the photographer was and google gave me nothing), and I'd giggle every time I walked past his desk. When he put the whole calendar in the recycle bin it was the highlight of my day. It just appeals to me. Look at those big paws and yet I'll swear that mighty polar bear is just paddling along. Imagine being the photographer and taking that photo - how awesome.

Damn towel. Damn sense of smell.

2009-01-13T21:22:00.004+11:00

It's hot here today. 39 degrees. The kind of hot where concrete radiates heat for hours after sundown, where we tip ice into the evaporative cooler and pretend like it's an air conditioner, where even having a lamp on makes it unbearable, where I have a shower because I can't stand it for another second.

So there I was having my 'can't stand it' shower. Popped out, wrapped myself in a towel that felt like it had come out of a hot box. Dried my face, breathing in, as you normally do after you breathe out.

But when I breathed in, the towel smelled just like my mother.

Not my mother's perfume, and not any bad smell, but the beautiful smell that was uniquely hers and no-one elses, warm, sweet and a little bit musky. Suddenly, I'm a child laying in bed, she's bending over to kiss me goodnight and i breathe her in.

I held my breath, hoping somehow to keep it inside me, knowing it was a trick of the mind and on my next breath it would be gone. But no, it was still there when I breathed in again, and again and again. I breathed it in until I felt stupid. I miss her right now, being pregnant and not having her here to tell me it's all going to be okay, that it doesn't matter if I can't breast feed or any number of the things I'm stressing about. I'd like to say that her scent in that towel (was it me? Do i smell like her and didn't realise?) made it seem okay for just a moment, like she was there with me and always will be. But the truth is that it didn't. It just made me miss her like it all happened yesterday.

New Year - Woot!

2009-01-09T07:32:00.003+11:00

Last week - bumper week. No work, just play play play all the time.Went to the beach, sat up late reading books and eating chocolate. Walked in the sand. Made/burned some banana bread beyond recognition. Got up early early to write while everyone else slept off their red wine.

Manuscript VERY happy with the love, care and attention given to it. By the pale morning light, manuscript says 'I forgive you! we're friends again, in fact, I think i love you'.

Words, if not flow, definitely trundle along in an orderly fashion. Feel joy akin to cartwheeling along aforementioned sand. Unfortunately, massive belly prohibits cartwheeling across the sand and instead lends itself to feeling like beached whale.

Listened to a few hours of Eric Meisel talking about creativity. Felt happy that I found this FANTASTIC NEW WONDERFUL way of building a creativity practice in the new year when everything is fresh and good.

UNTIL

Fast forward to this week.Back at day job. Blerk week for the manuscript with only a trickle of words every day. Manuscript wonders where I've gone, and how I could've deserted it so quickly after we obviously connected. Feel like a heel and send manuscript some flowers and chocolate.
Silence on the other end of the line.
Lifting head off pillow seems like gargantuan task, even without red wine.

Moral of the story - go and live at the beach.

Headlong rush into christmas

2008-12-07T19:58:00.004+11:00

Busy week, people, in which I:

Celebrated thanksgiving a little late with Matilda and friends. We made candied yams (!). Ate so much I had to take a day off work to recover.

Continued with reviso by getting up early and tapping on the spanking new laptop. Went back to the place with aniseed flavoured coffee, promising myself I'd just have a muffin, but habit kicked in and I ordered coffee. It was STILL BAD.

Deleted scenes from book thus reducing my books page count to a dismal number that feels like ten.

Worked. If you can call it that when all I seem to do is stagger from the coffee machine to the printer to my desk and back again.

Saw the new James Bond movie. Boy flick done - next up - girl flick AUSTRALIA. Hoping it won't be lame and that all that Hugh will make up for any atrocities.

Fell in love with a new puppy, and after much internal wrangling, decided I like it's new mumma too much to pop it into my handbag.

Started my christmas shopping. I can recommend bringing TJ along on shopping expeditions because not only does he carry all the bags, he stops you dithering and forces decisions like a Major General.

BBQ today at one of TJ's favourite people's place. No-one does a BBQ like a bunch of chefs. Once again, continued the theme of eating too much.

Have belly the size of a large watermelon.

I don't know how this works...

2008-11-23T20:03:00.002+11:00

No idea how it works, but if you plug in your blog address to typealyzer, it will tell you what sort of person you are after scanning your blog.

Apparently I am the gentle/compassionate/quiet Artist. It mentioned NOTHING about my love of donuts which is obviously some kind of malfunction.

What are you??

Image from Typealyzer

Nope

2008-11-22T00:02:00.002+11:00

The pot is in the bin. I think I almost made a diamond!
It was on its tenth life anyway, having survived the great scrambled eggs debacle of 2001.

My recipe for Balsamic Toffee (don't try this at home)

2008-11-21T20:22:00.003+11:00

I've got the crit group coming over tomorrow. We try and eat healthily between bouts of chocolate, so I'd decided on a roast pumpkin salad with fetta and pine nuts. And on top, a drizzle of sticky balsamic. Only problem was, I'd run out of the sticky and had to make a fresh batch (put balsamic vinegar in pot, reduce, voila).

Now they're a lovely bunch, the lulus, and not all that fussy when it comes to food. Keri has even been known to try 'green stuff' and survive.

However I think even THEY would baulk if I tried to serve this:

In case that photo doesn't do it justice, what you're looking at resembles hot volcanic rock, and when I took the photo it was still crackling and popping like it was about to spew lava at me.

I'm actually quite proud of it. I've never burnt something so thoroughly in my life. I couldn't help smiling when I brought the pot in from it's decontamination point outside the back door. Not that I should be smiling - I think I just killed over $200 worth of Le Creuset pot.

My gorgeous father in law said I'm more than welcome to blame him for it, since I was gabbering to him on the phone when the smell of beyond-burnt vinegar reached me on the sofa.

Maybe I can save the pot. I think it should've stopped popping by now and be safe to take to with a crow bar.

Monday Reviso update

2008-11-17T20:18:00.003+11:00

18 pages further along. Not as far as I hoped to be, but I did an extra reviso of 50 pages for my Golden Heart entry. I enter this little baby every year with the same sterling result of nada, but it's such a thrill to enter that I can never resist.

I managed two early morning cafe jaunts. I got totally burned at one by adding extras onto my breakfast, not realising they were $4 dollars a pop so that I had to work half the morning just to pay off my breakfast debt. Needless to say that misleading blackboard won't be getting my custom any more! AND the bacon was awful, the eggs were done on the griddle and the toast was mushy. I think that about covers it. Oh, no, and the coffee tasted like aniseed and I still can't figure out why. I'm all for a nutty coffee, but aniseed first thing in the morning? BLERK.

But still, 18 pages is 18 pages closer. Hopefully more to report soon.

What we do when revising gets too hard

2008-11-13T18:32:00.000+11:00

What do we do? Why take a break, of course.
And this kind of faffing is among my favorite kind and incidentally the sort that can suck HOURS out of your day.

Backstory: I bought my much anticipated and shiny new laptop last week. There it is to the left.

Pretty in all the right computer spec ways, but Oh My God, could it BE any more boring?

So off I went, in my best faffing fashion and found http://www.schtickers.com where they have lots of ways to pretty up your otherwise generic/boring/coma-inducing black laptop.

Of course it took me *some time* to chose a design. And then *some more time* to discover that I wanted to design my own. Then *even more time* (and to be fair I've been sick and couldn't do much else) doing some truly awful ink drawings of flowers and leaves before FINALLY throwing my hands up in the air and tonking on over to istock to savage some photos.

This laptop is all about the writing. There will be no internet, there will be no email. So I figured the skin had to be all about writing too. My brain (not functioning on all cylinders, but still hanging in there), took me back to a particularly special time in my history when I first realised I wanted to become a published writer. I was about seventeen. Picture it. I was sitting on the floor in front of the fire at home, curled up against my mother's chair, a spot that had seen countless conversations on everything under the sun.
Mum: So, if you could do anything in the world, whatever you wanted, what would it be?
Me: I'd be a novel writer.
Mum: (rolls eyes). Not pie-in-the-sky stuff. Something real. What would it be?

Of course then I had nothing to say because I'd really given the question some thought. It set bells off in my head and made me want to cry whenever I thought about it. It still does.

It took me some years to get back to my pie in the sky, but it's always been what I wanted more than any thing else.
So I made this laptop skin and hope that the good people at whatever Cafe don't laugh too hard at me. I reassure myself that they'll have no clue what it really means.

I also find it funny which is a bonus.

I figure when I get my first publishing contract I'll have it redone to say "eating pie in the sky since xxxx"

Or maybe I should've gone with those ink drawings after all....

In any case, I think I'll be doing these on a regular basis. It feels good for the soul for some reason.

Hairy for the Cause

2008-11-11T19:42:00.005+11:00

For the past week or so, I've been looking around me at the men at work thinking 'you look different in a kind of dangerous/porn-star kind of way, but I'm not sure why'.
Then, sitting in a meeting today and gazing across at the normally squeaky clean Jan, I realised 'IT'S MOVEMBER!'
I love Movember. It's such a good cause. Prostate cancer kills just as many men as breast cancer kills women (who knew?) and Beyond Blue do some fantastic work too.
And each guy has a different reaction to his mo. Some are embarrassed, some can't stop touching it while others send a picture to everyone they know with growth updates.

If a heap of guys growing facial hair for a month draws awareness and some well needed funds - then I'm all for it! I'll even try and grow my own Mo in a statement of solidarity. I'm sure I've got it in me. Or maybe I could just grow my armpit hair, or wear my bra on the outside for all of November.
Or just donate. That's a plan.

Update for Monday

2008-11-10T19:03:00.002+11:00

Revision Update:
Today, while sitting in a meeting where I served no other purpose than to make sure the web hookup didn't fall over, I wrote the end of my synopsis. Yay team Reviso! I'm sure they wondered what the heck I could possibly be writing when it was a Partner's meeting and let's just say I'm not exactly Partner material. More than one confused look was thrown in my direction, I can tell you that much.

Tonight: I have to proof it so I can send it through to the lulus in the lead up to our critique session this Saturday. So it's finished for now, I guess, because they always give me food for thought.

Strange happening of the day:
On my lunch break, I locked myself out on the balcony at work by mistake and had to wait for security to come unlock the door. It was the same guy who gave me a serve last week for moving one of the coffee tables so I could type on it. I think I'm his Dennis the Menace.

NanoReviso

2008-11-09T09:09:00.002+11:00

It's supposed to be Nanowrimo. Write a book, or 50,000 words of a book, in the month of November.

But now is not the time for me to start a new book. I have a perfectly good old book that's begging to be finished. So I've changed it to NanoReviso.

There are two hundred pages of manuscript that need rewriting/pulling apart/binning and if I do ten or so pages a day.....well it sounds easy. But it's been like trawling through treacle these past few weeks. Which for me normally means I've taken a wrong turn somewhere, or am writing something that would be better skipped. Time to move on to the next shiny scene rather than trying to link them together far too chronologically.

Or maybe I'm just nervous about getting to the guts of the novel where I've made some big but really cool changes in my head that scare the pants off me. Somehow I have to get the good stuff on to the page.
But hold on, just typing that sentence made me realize how monumentally stupid I'm being.

JUST WRITE THE FREAKING BOOK.

I think I need to go here and get me some pep talks from my favorite writers.

But for anyone who's interested - it's not too late to start writing your first novel!
Go here www.nanowrimo.org for details.

And stay tuned for updates on how I'm going with it.

Wicked Good

2008-10-23T19:51:00.002+11:00

You know you're excited about something when you start counting sleeps.

So I must have been really looking forward to going to see Wicked because I'd been counting sleeps ever since L gave me the tickets for my birthday. Yipee! Fabulous show. Yipee! Yummy dinner beforehand.

We had an amazing dinner at Gingerboy. It's only a tiny restaurant, sitting maybe 50, but the walls and ceiling are like a bamboo screen with a starry night behind it. I got lucky and took the bench seat, but TJ had to put up with the prespex wonder chair that did nothing for butt comfort.

This photo is from The Age because I left my camera behind.

We had big tall fruity cocktails to start with, followed by scallops with crumbly stuff and coriander on top, son-in-law eggs (battered and deep fried egg with yummy chili dip) and then a really good duck curry. Really good. I mean, I have a problem eating duck for the same reason I have a problem eating quail and lamb - they're so cute. I don't want to eat anything I would normally fawn over. But I'm ashamed to say, it smelled so good that gobbled it down and then chased coconut rice all over the plate trying to get that last little bit of fragrant sauce. Then it was onto the dessert platter and before we knew it, it was time to roll off to the theatre.

But no.

Wait.

How can I not tell you about the desert plate? I love this (now old) trend of a little bit of everything on the desert menu carefully lined up on a long plate and plonked down between the two of you. I can never choose which desert to have, and it only ever ends in a growly husband when I poach off his. So, on the plate:

1) sticky black rice w mango and jasmine tea icecream (7/10)

2) tofu cheesecake w crispy sugary thing on top (10/10). Both of us had read this on the menu and said 'blerk, no WAY are we ordering that' and yet it was divine. Smooth and cheesy in a way tofu should never be. Or should always be. One or the other.

3) pear and cinnamon pancake with red bean icecream (3/10) - This was my choice if I had an individual dessert, but it was very ordinary. Sue me, but redbean icecream should be a redder, and beanier. Don't give me Asian Lite!!

4) vanilla and apple dumpling (4/10) Was Tony's individual choice, but again, was a little disappointing in a chewy, apple wrapped in dimsum pastry kind of way.

5) white chocolate cold pudding (8/10). Really a pannacotta, so as such, very yummy. However don't make the mistake of saying to the waiter 'the pannacotta was nice' because their reply will be something like "it's not pannacotta because that's not asian. It's a cold pudding."

To which *I* say - if you simmer up cream, sugar, vanilla then add gelatin, you can *call* it whatever the heck you want -- it's panna cotta. I almost wanted to kidnap the 'cold pudding' and take it back to its Italian heritage at Pelligrini's, but then their creme caramels might have taken offence. So I gobbled it down instead.

So as you can see, it was piglets anonymous and tight trousers after the Gingerboy adventure, even after the waitress told us we'd been 'circumspect'. I'd hate to see indulgence!

Then onto Wicked, which was fabulous. Clever use of the original story and I was entranced the whole way through. We had amazing seats that only L knows how to source (how does she do it?) and the night zoomed by.

Go see it!

Go eat at Gingerboy under the starry bamboo sky on a clear perspex seat. You won't regret it.

The new mantra for the treatment of characters

2008-10-13T21:02:00.003+11:00

So I'm stuck with my darling beautiful book and I can't seem to move through it. Every paragraph feels like a page, every page a scene, every scene a book of war & peace proportions. You get the picture.

And I *love* revising my manuscripts, too much, really. Improving my sucky first draft is often more rewarding than getting the pages done in the first place. But right now, ack, I don't know, I'm bored.

And initially I'll blame anything but the scene. It's daylight savings and being unable to get up and do my pages. It's my desk, which is an old kitchen table and has never felt conducive to writing, it's the headache I can't quite seem to get rid of or maybe it's work and the fact I'm so tired when i get home that all I can do is beg TJ to make my dinner and pop me into bed.

But eventually I realise what I'm actually bored with is the scene. Ho hum, they're in a carriage. Ho hum, they arrive at a beautiful London townhouse - blah blah blah - haven't I read this a hundred times before? Yawn.

So could somebody please send a note to my characters and tell them they have to start spicing things up or i'm going to fall asleep at my keyboard? And if they could do a few things that are just WRONG, that would be good too. I don't want them treating each other all nicey nice. I want them to arrive at the London townhouse and find themselves in quarters little better than the housekeeper. I want my heroine to arrive in London only to witness the one things she's most frightened of. I want the long anticipated visit to the dressmakers not to happen, but for them to get a wardrobe of cast-me-downs that don't fit.

Hold on! I feel less bored already. Excuse me while I go write.

Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen. I have found my new character mantra.

Hanging my hopes on a zucchini

2008-09-06T19:27:00.003+10:00

I'm sure I knew how to cook. There are recipe books with pages that stick together to prove it.

I think.

I seem to remember loving cooking and adoring whipping something up for T for dinner.

Didn't I??

Hard to say, because my cooking mojo has been gone now for so long that I think a toasted cheese sandwich is 'special' effort. Nothing is turning out right.

Most dinners look like I have attention-deficit-disorder. Just look at them and you *know* I wandered away from the kitchen and got distracted by shiny things. Meat is overcooked, vegetables grey or just non existant. And everything is boring. Boring with a capital B.

Maybe it was the Tasmanian adventure. Maybe it was the kerfunctness of the fridge on return and complete lack of dollars to replace it (hey, paying a mortgage and rent is HARD). But recently I can't cook to save myself.

This has been going on for months.

Then last night I'd had enough. We had our monthly crit meeting and I'd said I'd bring a cake. Big chance to step up to the plate. The cake plate that is.

So I remember the lovely Keziah telling me about a foolproof cake recipe that everyone LOVED at her place recently. So armed with a zucchini and some mixed spices I tried to save my cooking career.

And it was YUM. No strange lumpy foreign pieces in the middle, just a dense spice cake with a lime dressing that I could've downed a whole bowl of. So THANKS Keziah and thanks Delicious Magazine...

zucchini & pistachio spice cake with lime frosting
Serves 10-12

¾ Cup (185ml) sunflower oil
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup (75g) unsalted pistachios, finely chopped, plus ¼ cup (35g) slivered unsalted pistachios to decorate
½ cup (60g) almond meal
2 cups grated zucchini (about 3-4)
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ cups (225g) self-raising flour
½ cup (75g) plain flour
Lime frosting
180g unsalted butter, softened
1¼ cups (200g) icing sugar, sifted
250g cream cheese, softened, chopped
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 170°C.
Grease a 22cm springform pan and line base and sides with baking paper. Using an electric mixer with whisk attachment, beat the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla until thick. Stir in chopped nuts, meal, zucchini and spices. Sift over soda and flours, and stir to combine. Pour into pan and bake for 70 minutes or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool in pan for 20 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack and cool completely.
For frosting, use electric beaters to beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With motor running, gradually add cheese, beating well between additions. Add zest and juice and beat until smooth. Using a bread knife, slice the cake into two rounds and set aside top. Spread a third of the frosting over the bottom half, then replace top and spread cake with remaining frosting. Decorate with slivered pistachios.

From delicious magazine February 2007.

One hour later

2008-08-29T20:29:00.002+10:00

USB of Great Suckiness

2008-08-29T19:39:00.005+10:00

Dear USB stick,

I did love you.

A friend gave you to me and she had taken great effort to personalise you.

I put a ribbon on your arse so I could find you easily. It was aqua blue and I used to cut the small fraying inches off the end so you would always look glamorous.

You had a Gb of memory, more than enough for my pesky briefcase of writing back up.

I always treated you well, pushing that stupid ‘safely remove your hardware’ button to stop you freaking out.

I fretted over you, often driving back home to make sure you were always with me.

So WHY, WHY?? did you have to kamakaze from my handbag to God knows where? And I say God knows because i'm sure He watched me tear the city apart looking for you.

Where you are not:

Under the bar chair at the casino where we drank champagne last night
In the car
Floating in the Yarra
Still plugged into my work pc
At the convention centre
At the Royal Rose where we had birthday dinner with Freya
On the street outside her house
Chewed by Oliver
On the 5^th floor of the car park in the spot by the elevator

I know you did this on purpose. I have any number of crappy lipsticks in my handbag, much the same size as you, that NEVER go astray. After much soul searching, I can only come to the conclusion you are a faithless piece of hardware. My love was enduring and strong – while you just took the chance to leave me behind for greener pastures. I hope you find what you're looking for - mp3s, DivX, .jpgs - all those things I never offered you with my boring pile of .doc files.

I am sorely disappointed in you. I thought you were different.

Robyn

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway....even if you ruin your mascara

2008-08-26T22:02:00.005+10:00

It was conference time again for Romance Writers of Australia! Fun fun stuff, with the always inspiring Barbara Samuel, all time favourite Jo Beverley and new favourite Margie Lawson. I had excellent light bulb moments in Anna Campbell's deep POV workshop, and hung on every word of Jennifer Kloester who has to be one of the foremost authorities on my favourite subject - Georgette Heyer.

But I didn't learn as much as I normally do because I was busy stressing about the fact I was MC at the awards night. Wrap me up and call me scatter brain, but I couldn't string a coherent thought together until Sunday morning, and by then it was frankly too late.

When the conference co-ordinator asked me to emcee my first reaction was unadulterated fear. But along with it was the kind of excitement that I know always means I’m on the right track. That bubbling joy and ‘this is going to be fun’ feeling. I really love the awards night, celebrating everyone’s hard work and the beautiful stories they create. We sit there like a big family that hasn’t been together in a year (probably because we haven’t been together in a year) and talk and laugh and generally have the best time. So if I could be a bigger part of it, then all good.

At the end of the day, emceeing is a really simple job. But boy did I plan my little heart out for it. I’d covered for every little thing that could go wrong. Luckily I didn’t need to use any of it, but having it there made me feel better. And after some jitters at the start where my biggest fear was that I’d succumb to ‘little lamb’ voice, I really did have the time of my life. The bubbling joy and the ‘this is going to be fun’ feeling had not let me down.

There was only one little problem I didn’t foresee. Because I’m so unco with mascara and the more makeup I put on the closer to Krusty the Clown I look, I’d asked the lovely Mia Hawkswell to come do my hair and makeup for me. All good. Looking fantastic, made up to the wazoo and feeling glamorous.

And then my crit partner Carolyn Comito won the Emerald. She’s such a talented writer and her manuscript ‘Her Majesty’s Spy’ is absolutely brilliant. I admire her in so many ways. She’s dedicated, she’s focused and she deserves not only this award but the big fat book contracts that should follow. And when I think about much she deserves this and how her two beautiful children and husband are at home waiting to hear how mummy did – of COURSE I start crying. And all that smoky and glamorous eye makeup starts to puddle up.

Then and editor came and plonked herself down next to my other crit partner Chris (who won the prestigious Romance Writers of NZ Clendon Award last week). Without a pitch or query letter in sight, the editor asked Chris to send in whatever work she has. I cried even more because Chris writes books that wrap around you like a warm blanket and we know that, and we’ve known it for years, but it seems now that everyone else is catching up and her future sparkles like a sparkly thing.

So CC's crying, Chris is crying, Keri's crying, Freya was all teary too so what the hell hope did I have?? So I’m dabbing away at my eyes with my napkin (sorry Langham, there’s one you’ll have to turf) and hoping my voice doesn’t warble.

It was a great night and not because it was the first time I was brave enough to get up in front of a hundred and fifty people and be myself, but as the night Carolyn and Chris made me so proud I almost burst out of my little white bustier.

In my news from the conference, I pitched my book to an editor and was hugely excited/relieved to hear she thought it was an original concept and would love to see some chapters. Woo hoo! Not only that, but she went above and beyond and gave me some ideas on how I could ramp up the conflict. Editors! We loves them! Revisions we loves them less because they make us sweat but if I get a better book from it, i'll roll up my sleeves and do the dirty.

We should've burned stockings not bras

2008-08-17T18:30:00.002+10:00

I have SO had enough of pantyhose. I know, I know, all the injustice in the world and I reach boiling point over a layer of sheer something I use to cover my legs. It seems wrong somehow. Shallow. Inconsequential. But I am reserving the kind of loathing for stockings that I usually have for animal cruelty and the girl that comes into work each day with a different fur item on (no, I do NOT care if they were your grandmothers!!!!).

But back to pantyhose. Firstly, they do NOT keep you warm in winter. Not even vaguely. I'm not sure if this was ever used as a selling proposition, but my mother always used to tell me to go put tights on because I'd freeze otherwise. Newsflash Mum - I'm still freezing. Yesterday i stood at the tramstop completely certain I had tucked my skirt into my pants, so cold was the arctic wind up my leg tunnel.

Secondly, what in the history of fashion do we pay so much for for so little return?

Monday - buy stockings - ladder stockings by my second coffee

Tuesday - buy stockings - rip a massive hole in the butt of them yanking them up. Figure I can get away with this and wear them anyway, even though hole gets bigger as the day progresses

Wednesday - Wear a pair I picked up at the Bonds Factory Outlet for 3.95 (marked down from 19.95, which is my only excuse for not hearing the alarm bells). Put stockings on. Think to self 'hmmm, these are a little inflexible." Stockings look lovely on the leg, but unfortunately only cover half my butt. As the day wears on and I make the fatal mistake of walking around, the stockings fall down...
down...

further...

until I am forced to penguin walk to the toilets before they drop to my ankles.

Thursday - figuring there has to be a better way - go to specialised stocking shop and invest in a pair of thicker denier fishnetty numbers. Feel very sexy and urban until I realise my massive calves turn the fishnets into something more akin to a fish trawler. Unsexy. But at least they last the entire day with no mishap.

Friday - get smart and wear pants.

Really, 'get smart and wear pants' should have happened on Tuesday - but nobody every said I was a fast learner.

The Winter of my Discontent

2008-08-03T20:48:00.003+10:00

BLOG: Roooobyn! Come and play with me.
Me: Who is this??
BLOG: It's me, remember? Your blog. I've got pretty butterflies and you are supposed to come and talk complete and utter rubbish about the unco things you do.
Me: I have a blog???

Hey I have a blog!
How could I leave something that's so much fun for such an extended period of time?
I could blame my new job taking every ounce of creative energy I have through its sheer boringness, but that wouldn't be fair, because the more boring the work is, the more hyperactive little writer brain becomes and let me tell you - there is one totally HOT rewrite of my book that's going on at the moment.

But in a nutshell --
I'm back in Melbourne and it feels strange. It's not that I'm pining for Launceston, because well, it's freaking freezing down there and there are only two movies showing at the cinema at any one time, but Melbourne is leaving me less than enchanted too. And I love this place, so I'm waiting impatiently to fall back in love with it. Maybe it's just winter. The winter of my discontent.

Although just last weekend, it was the winter of freaky snowstorms, hair raising driving through mountain ranges and feeding pademelons with apples when T and I celebrated our anniversary by going to Cradle Mountain Lodge. We flew over and hired a little hyandai Getz, that probably would've been fine if we hadn't encountered SNOW on the way there.

At first, climbing over Mt Round, we were all 'oh isn't this the most beautiful thing EVER.' because the snow floated around the car like we were in fairy land. I have never seen anything so beautiful and unexpected. Enchanted, would be a good word to describe me.

Stupid would be another.

Ten kilometres into the hundred kilometre trip I started to get worried. The road was disappearing and icy. I had to drive this tiny crappy car in other people's tracks, my heart beating like a wild thing whenever the tracks disappeared completely or I had to round a sharp corner.

In short it was the most harrowing drive I've ever done. I counted down those kilometres until we got to zero and there was still no lodge in sight.
Road signs LIE!! Who knew?

It was about then that we heard an ominous THUMP THUMP coming from the back side of the car. Flat tire goodness. It's lots of fun changing a tyre in the middle of a snow storm. At least the car was so small you barely needed the jack. TJ is a tyre changing genius.

And I am SO not a snow driving genius. When the tracks disappeared on my side a few kilometres past the flat tyre, I said "to heck with it, i'm going on the wrong side of the road" where the tracks were clear and deep.

Cue on-coming SUV.

I slide (really, the car slid) over to the other side of the road where in trying to slow down and not lose control of the car and land in the ditch - we completely stop. On a hill. Still in the blizzard. SUV couple kindly stop and PUSH us up the hill where I limp the extra few km to the lodge. Up the final tiny hill to the lodge, anyone close by would have heard my gently cajouling the little blue car:
"Come on sweetie, you can do it, come on, a little bit further darling, you know you want to you @#EE#_ hunk of @$U%R" junk!!!"

But here's what we saw when we got there. Pretty and drop dead romantic. Almost worth ditching over a cliff for.

After a few stiff drinks my hands stopped shaking and I was ready to sit by the fire.

We took Lonnie Bear with us, who we caught out frolicking in the snow instead of taking our bags to the room like he was supposed to.

So having been let down by the bear - T had to lug the suitcase up through the snow.

Then it was fun all the way, with wine chilled in the snow, good food and staring aimlessly into a log fire for hours on end.

And by the time I had beaten the pants off Tony TWICE in Scrabble (I have never beaten him before) the snow had melted like it was never there.

Where I am

2008-03-14T13:31:00.001+11:00

http://tasirenoadventure.blogspot.com/

for a few weeks. Renovating up a Dust Storm.

Cleaning - Why Bother?

2007-12-01T08:38:00.000+11:00

My house is a disaster zone right now. Stuff dripping from every surface and threatening to topple, so i thought I better clean up a bit cos there's nothing on this weekend, and if i leave it as it is, they might have to use GPS to find me after I collapse under the weight of all my crap.

Anyway, I'd just finished making the lounge room sparkle with cleany goodness and stood back to survey my handiwork when a thought struck me. 'Hmmm," I thought. "Wouldn't it be good, if i could just move my bookcase like an inch to the left?'
GIRL - LEAVE YOUR FREAKING BOOKCASE WHERE IT IS. I mean, what sort of person thinks about shifting a bookshelf at 7am when they should be SLEEPING IN?
Anyway, this is the aftermath of what happens when you try to shift a bookshelf 'just an inch' while the books are still in it.

Man. I mean that bookshelf had *way* to much in it to start with, but it looks like so much more when it avalanches itself onto the floor. Also take a gander at my circa 1991 tv. You should see my microwave - it has a DIAL and I'm sure is emitting enough radiation to light up all of Melbourne if it chose to use its powers for good.
But of course even this piece of tosspottery has a silver lining. There I was putting them into the neat piles you see before you, when I start slowing right down, saying 'wow, there's that copy of P&P mum picked up from a bookstall in Cornwell in 1983' and 'cool, who knew I had that Pan version of 'Beauvallet?'
Sad sad book girl.
So now I need coffee. I mean, you can't expect me to clean up that kind of mess on no coffee?
Kosina this morning. Because they will give me eggs or pancakes too.
We loves them.

Breakfast Bungle

2007-11-17T14:17:00.000+11:00

After last Sunday's horrendous breakfast bungle in which TJ and I spent an HOUR trying to find somewhere open before nine, forgetting half the places we love and ending up siting outside Filter in Fitzroy doing much griping and groaning, I have decided to list all my favourite breakfast places HERE, in a spot where I can't misplace the piece of paper where I scrawled it all down.

So,

Filter - 285 Brunswick St Fitzroy.
Corn cakes...mmmm. Coffee...double mmmmm.
ICI - 359 Napier St Fitzroy.
Organic kickass coffee and the best brioche french toast in town.
Fandango - 97 Errol St North Melbourne.
To die for coffee (even the skinny), and the poached eggs with beetroot & fetta relish is SUPREME.
Apte - 538 Heidelberg Rd Alphington
Yummy, scrumptious menu. Wish i could go past the banana bread with labna for once in my life.
Kosina -2 Napier St Essendon
Pancakes, thick, luscious, often embedded with blueberries - droolworthy.
Mart130 -107a Canterbury Rd Middle Park - Good all rounder.
Circa the Prince - St Kilda - for the mornings we feel more spiffy and presentable (doesn't happen often).
Fruits of Passion -188 Bellair St Kensington.
Recently revamped in very chic modern country style, meaning for a brief few weeks during the reno, I had to find an alternate coffee dealer. Still some of the best coffee I've ever had. Seriously. Orgasmic. My fav off the menu is the eggs benedict defying its name by being served on a hash brown. The muffins fresh out of the oven and still in the tray rock too.

Trotters - 400 Lygon Street, Carlton- if only for those amazing lemon ricotta muffins. The home made hash browns are pretty special too.

Balzari - 130 Lygon St Carlton. Excellent brekky.
The Boathouse - 7 The Boulevard Moonee Ponds
Absolute riverfront on the Maribyrnong, excellent views, beauuutiful food. Coffee pretty ordinary. But a very chill spot.

See, and I know there are so many more!!

Oh, wait on.

The Commoner 122 Johnston Street, Fitzroy.
What a place. Feels like sitting in someone's kitchen eating while they cook. Love their work (and their coffee, and those wicked good pancakes).

Oh, God, that place near Newmarket Station that is in the old Hygienic Library. Their coffee and breakfast is beyond good. The name will come to me. TJ's not so impressed because it's an egg heavy menu and he does love a good serve of french toast/pancakes.

And GAS in South Melbourne, although I hope they're getting over the middle eastern poached egg thing. If i have to eat another egg with dukkhah sprinkled on top, well, I won't be responsible for my actions. But great coffee.

I'm just going to have to keep on adding to this as I remember places, because this is the EXACT problem I ran into last Sunday.

Much love sent to Jeremy (no, i don't know him, but by God I owe him BIG TIME) of the breakfast blog for continually pointing us in goodly breakfast directions.

Mum - a poltergeist flipped my bike!

2007-10-31T18:32:00.000+11:00

I've just spent the last half hour wandering around the house looking for a drink i poured.
I swear there are gremlins in my house. Can't find it anywhere and I'M REALLY THIRSTY AND IT WAS THE LAST drop of that yummy stuff Freya brought over the other day.

And who put the celery in the *pantry* last night, so that when i went to look for it to make my risotto, all hell broke loose.

All of this = me going slowly crazy.
or there are gremlins. One or the other.

I've been doing Dream Incubation (whereby you think on a problem before you go to sleep and your dream self provides the answers). It normally works a treat, and I'm getting more and more into it, so you can imagine my surprise when I asked my dream self 'what is going on with all my clumsiness lately' and the dream answer i get?
Poltergeists.
Wow. Thanks a bunch dream self. Really insightful.

So in the tradition of what I'm now going to call The Elephant Files in honour of that most auspicious time I fell off an elephant in Thailand - we have today's story, which was actually yesterday's story - but my hands hurt so bad that I could barely type after the incident.

Here goes:
The Elephant Files 2

Or

How I flipped off my bike onto my head.

So here was the thought process. "Hmmm, I have a day off work. I need coffee, I have a mountain of drycleaning, and yet I have an ass the size of Tasmania. What should i do? I know! I'll bike ride down to Cosina for my coffee, dropping off my drycleaning on the way."
Tick
Tick
Tick.

So after the usual fifteen minutes of faffing to find my helmet get my gear on, off i went - putting the motherload of drycleaning into my basket on the front.

Okay - you can stop laughing now, yes i really do have a basket. No, it does not have flowers. No, I do not have streamers from my handlebars although yes, if i find some I WILL buy them.

(in an aside, just found my drink. I left it in the laundry) (????)

Now the bike ride was going fairly well. Thighs were working, I actually seemed to have the whole gear change thing going on for once and I was feeling pretty confident. The backroad I was on sloped wonderfully downhill, and I prepared to coast all the way to Buckley Street. Which I'm sure would've worked a treat if it weren't for two things:

1. Speed hump
2. Basket

I hit the speed hump just fine, but the shock combined with the sheer TON of drycleaning was too much for a girly girl basket. It came loose from the top, but still miraculously attached to the bike down at the wheel. So it's creating sparks off the road while I'm screaming something that sounded like 'duck' but was in actuality 'f*ck' in rapid succession.

Finally the bike runs over the metal basket flipping me into the air like a freaking pancake to land firmly on my
a) hands
b) head
c) butt

My drycleaning drags on the ground (which is something I've longed to do to my pin-stripped suit forever). I bounce off the road ending up in a glorious fetal position where I stay like a limp kitten until three, count them, three separate young men pull over saying 'you right, luv?'

Who said chivalry is dead?
That person obviously didn't have a mangled bike basket and cracked helmet to get things moving.

Anyway, long story short, Stefan helped me up, inspected my gravel rash hands, unscrewed the remainder of the basket with a set of keys (!!), put the chain back on and sent me on my shaky way. I called him Macgyver, which he probably didn't realise was the highest compliment I could humanly pay him.

So I sat by the side of the road for twenty minutes wondering if after a bit of an accident, I was the kind of person who would forge on to finish my task (coffee/drycleaning/writing) or would i be the kind of person who ran back to the nest licking her wounds.

Then the little voice inside me, that **might** sometimes sound like Melanie Scott, said 'you have gravel rash, go clean your gravel rash IDIOT'.

insightful soulful moment over.

Worst part? Uphill all the way home with bleeding hands that couldn't grip the handlebars properly.

Poltergeists. Sniff.