Cabin Fever – and some link love

It’s been a while. I haven’t posted, because I haven’t had anything to write about it – literally. In the past week and a half I have left the house only to go to the doctor and supermarket. Otherwise, my time has been spent trying to keep warm, laying on the couch under a mountain of blankets and coughing. Violently.

Not exactly fun or wonderful. My mind is still buzzing with all sorts of ideas, but I can’t do anything. I want to see people, but it’s not reasonable to inflict this on someone else. So, it’s horrible, but it is hardly the kind of stuff I want this blog to be about. The show will go on.

In the meantime, here are some of the things I have been amusing myself with from bed:

• I want gradient tights! The Coveted has a very straight forward tutorial on how to do this at home, rather than paying $88+ for a single pair (I’m sure they are lovely, but with the lifespan of my tights, no thanks).
• Cornify is the best invention known to mankind. Rainbows, hearts, unicorns and sparkles make EVERYTHING better. Presenting.. me, cornified. It’s like Blingee for cool people. Or dorks. You decide. 

• Hyperbole and a Half has been amusing me to no end, especially this post on sneaky hate spirals! My favourite part: a man, throwing a stone at a bird, while screaming “stop taunting me with your powers of flight!”
• This Coca-Cola vending machine skirt is a completely ingenious idea by a Japanese designer, to help women ward off attackers. It’s based on the idea of a ninja disguising themselves at night. Designer Aya Tsukioka says, “These ideas might strike foreigners as far-fetched, but in Japan, they can become reality.” I love this – I wish that far-fetched, magical, imaginative innovations were realistic everywhere..

• Cheap Chic Weddings just announced the winners of their annual toilet paper wedding dress competition; I am so amazed. Here is a detail of one of the dresses:I only found out about the competition after it closed, but I would love to enter next year. It could be a really fun excuse to have friends over, make cupcakes and mocktails, and spend a day making dream dresses!
• I have been daydreaming constantly about Rupert; we finally get to meet him tomorrow, and the nervous excitement is almost too much! It is going to be a huge adjustment for everybody, and I’m really scared about the possibility of it not working out.. but I’m hopeful. I mean, look at this gorgeous little guy!
• Finally: Pip from Meet Me at Mikes is running a super cute project/competition – The Envelope Project. The idea is to decorate an envelope, fill it with a couple of pretty paper/crafty things and mail it to her – she will display the envelopes in her storefront and one lucky person will receive the contents of ALL the envelopes at the end. I’m definitely planning on entering.

What interesting things have you came across recently?

xx B

Not So Sparkly

Someone once described me as “sparkly” – I’m not feeling it so much right now. Instead, I’m feeling like my neck has been inflated with a bicycle pump, my sinuses have been injected with cement, my throat has participated in a razor blade swallowing experiment, my whole body has run a marathon instead of sleeping and my hands and feet have enormous weights attached to them. Nathan decided sleeping on the couch was a better bet than trying to sleep next to me, hacking and coughing all night.

Actually, I wouldn’t mind being stuck in bed all day if I had records, crayons and chipmunks saying ‘hello’.

There was an ad on TV last night that made me a bit sad – the tagline was “You are what you do”. It’s completely true, and a bit harrowing for someone who is currently doing nothing, therefore is nothing. So even though my body is screaming out for me to go back to bed, I’m going to do something. Or at least plan what I’m going to do. Baby steps though.

Today/tomorrow:

• Clean up the ‘sick-person-mess’ that magically appears when I’m sick. Empty panadol boxes, empty drink bottles, dirty teacups, piles of blankets and pillows.
• Make spaghetti. Eat real food.
• Wash my hair, put on some makeup and clothes. Not pajamas.

This weekend:

• We are hopefully going to look at a gorgeous little dog called Rupert on Saturday!
• I’m hoping we can fit in some time to plant some flowers in the garden for spring. I love peonies, and apparently they are not too hard to grow.
• I’m also hoping that I can set up my room too – it will be so nice to be able to paint, sew and make things again.

Super Kawaii Mama is writing a fantastic series of posts on how to be glamourous for every occassion, even when it’s freezing or you are cleaning the house. Very inspiring right now – I’m not sparkly right now, but I’m going to put on some blush and hopefully it will get the ball rolling.

xx B

The Price of Curls

… is burning a chunk of your hair with a curling iron 5 minutes before having to run out the door, leaving you with this choice: a) look lovely with shiny, styled hair and one fried piece, or b) hack off the damage with a pair of blunt scissors and spend the night being awkward so that nobody ever sees the back of your head.

I went with second option.

I could give you a blow-by-blow account of the party, but that would be boring, so here is something infinitely more fun:

I drank twenty beers and got in a fight. Nath unveiled a teleportation device he’d been working on for ten years and was awarded prizes and given giant cheques by girls dressed up like Texan beauty queens. The engaged couple got kidnapped by pirates. Our baby niece suddenly revealed that not only can she talk (despite being less than 6 months old), she actually has ten boyfriends and is head of an illegal car theft operation. And there were monkeys.

xx Bunny Florentine

Catastrophe Magnet

What a trash
To annihilate each decade

–  from ‘Lady Lazarus’ by Sylvia Plath

At midnight, in the park near Croxton station, while it was raining and huge bats were gliding above our heads and screeching in the trees, Audrey and I hung out and talked for hours the way silly teenage girls do – mixing up everything into a sort of mutual confessional with a hope for some sort of validation or understanding. Boys, travels, school, friendships, regrets, love, hate, family, skeletons in the proverbial closet, people who untag themselves from photos on facebook out of spite, how not being racist in conversation can make you appear even more racially preoccupied than someone who is overtly racist, grandmas, mean teachers, people with no personality, and the fact that in Buenos Aires, you can have ice cream delivered.

It was nice. I think we both needed it tonight.

But after everything, I was left with a question that totally destroyed any attempt at sleep. The concept of ‘sorting things out’… what if there are some people who never get things sorted out? As much as they long for a calm, comfortable, contented feeling of “everything is okay”, will some people just never get it?

A lot of not so great things have happened recently. A lot of them are still happening. However, things were looking up. Dad called from London and said he and Linda would be back in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon. Which means that Nath can come get me and all my stuff, and I can move back home. Which means things even basic sources of happiness like being able to sleep at night (Stuart and his quasi-girlfriend are practically nocturnal and have no understanding of ‘inside voices’ or the idea of not yelling at each other right outside someone’s bedroom door at 4am), eat properly (rather than living on iced tea, Le Snaks and nutella) and actually have a desk to study on. Getting to see my boyfriend and my puppy are perks too, definitely!

So, in that regard, two big things that have made me a bit miserable are finally being alleviated. I’m not quite sure then why the universe has decided to get me back for daring to feel optimistic about things.

1. Nathan has been enlisted to stage manage an amateur musical, which is a relatively huge commitment. Which means that all this finally-actually-getting-to-see-each-other time I had been looking forward to is suddenly pushed forward a few weeks. He’s already a major grouch at the best of times (unless he’s on holidays), but the sudden extra lack of Nath-time and sleep is likely to make him pretty unpleasant for the hour or so I might get to see him on any given day. Minor annoyance/frustration/disappointment in the scheme of things, but it just stings a bit after being apart for long to realize that what we have looked forward to is still weeks away.
2. But this one is the worst, and it’s not even happening to me. Something is majorly wrong with my Mum’s back. I have no idea what it is; neither does she yet, but it’s bad. The plan (my plan, rather) so far involves me going to her house, looking after her and my little brother and sister (who are actually not so little, but neither can cook, therefore are nutritionally helpless) so she can stop with the martyrdom, accept help and admit that she needs to rest and heal.

Once again it is proved – I am the catastrophe magnet. It’s probably not particularly rational to hold a hope that things will get ‘sorted’ or everything will one day feel alright; maybe my tolerance for disaster will just rise. Maybe. Right now, I just hope that all goes to plan for Dad and Linda and they arrive home on Saturday. I hope that production week runs smoothly enough so that Nathan gets out theatre at a halfway decent time. And I really, really hope that my Mum will be okay..

xx Bunny

PS: I spotted a pair of rainbow lorikeets eating fruit from a tree down the street today – lovely, unexpected and an incredibly welcome sight amongst all the doom and gloom going on.

PPS: Yes, it is 7am. Yes, I did stay up all night fretting and feeling miserable and powerless. Blergh. But I promise, next post, I will snap out of this malaise. Even though there are frustratingly time-consuming commitments and horribly painful back injuries, there are also rainbow lorikeets and fairy bread in the world..

Princess Bunny

Well, that was certainly an experience.

For a lark, I decided to audition for Tokyo Disneyland – they were doing an international audition tour to find singers, dancers, aerialists and character look-alikes for the resort. I rocked up for the character audition; they were specifically looking for characters including some that I sort of resemble (Ariel, Aurora, Alice in Wonderland, etc), and a lot of people have previously described my demeanor as very “Disney princess”. So I figured I’d go along and try my luck. But the audition process was a bit of a LOLfest – this is what I learnt:

• just because you are not auditioning to be a dancer does not mean you won’t be hit with an audition dance component
• when you question this, prepare to be patronizingly told by a fellow auditionee, “It’s not a dance, they are just going to teach us a combination“
• a ‘combination’ entails being able to execute a sequence to music with almost no practice, while someone barks at you, “Chassé! Balancé! Pas de bourrée! Step, pivot, present , wave to the right for 4, wave to the left for 8, and… POSE!”
• standard attire for a non-dance audition seems to be leotards, tights and ballet split-soles
• this can be accompanied by a full face of stage makeup, if you like – false eyelashes and clashy red lipstick, yeah!

Shrug. I don’t know –  with the dance component, it just seemed redundant to pretend that it was based on something other than our looks.

Oh well. After the audition, I ate an almond croissant, had a wander through one of my favourite furniture stores and went home for an afternoon nap, before coming back to Nathan’s for spaghetti and a night on the couch watching Extras– so whatever… I think in the way I spent the rest of the day, I out-princessed everybody anyway.

xx Princess Bunny

I am the reverse Princess and the Pea

Without the pea. For those who aren’t grasping my brilliantly obscure and totally defunct literary allusion, I have a million blankets on top of me. If I were reversed and a pea was somehow involved, the comparison might not be total rubbish.

Yes, feverish delirium has set in. This will probably be another one of those posts I apologize for in the morning.

But in the meantime; I’m awake, overtired, struggling to breathe and really wishing I could just dissolve into time and space. Or I could trawl the interwebz on my ridiculously expensive mobile broadband, laughing at parents and researching Pelle Yngve Ohlin (‘Dead’ from Mayhem) like some morbid marauder. Yup, I chose the latter two.

UPDATE: I found some cold and flu tablets. Maybe I’ll get some sleep after all. So now… in dot point form!

• This article makes me angry. Cohesive examination of the quarter life crisis from me (someone who is actually there) coming soon, but really: it has so little to do with money in the scheme of things – it’s a quarter LIFE crisis, not a financial quarter crisis. Jerks. Do they not know anything?
• Why are these tools still scuttling around the house at midnight? Why are there even people here at this time? WHY IS THIS STUART’S NIGHTCLUB?
• Lady Gaga on Friday. I have nothing to wear. I may as well jump off the Westgate.
• But nutella exists. May as well live a second-rate existence solely for the purpose of consuming hazelnut spread.

Drowsy, finally! So, in light of recent blogging tragedies – I hereby solemnly swear to get some sleep, not let this turn into pneumonia, restore brain function and actually have something interesting to report!

xx Bunny, from Deathville

My Imaginary Puppy

Somebody knocked on the front door for the sixth or seventh time today, and I totally ignored it. I should make a sign: “This is not Stuart’s personal nightclub.” There are all these randoms coming in and out of the house I am supposed to be looking after, and I apparently have no say. It’s frustrating too because I am supposed to be responsible in all this, as the designated housesitter. Woe. I would have left already if I thought the animals would get looked after at all if I weren’t here.

Nath just played a particularly cruel joke on me. The house phone rang, I answered, and didn’t expect him to be calling me on that number nor did I recognize his voice (my head is so stuffed up, everything sounds as though I’m underwater). This was our conversation –

Nath: Hello.
Bunny: Hello.
N: … hi.
B: Oh, sorry, this is L’s partner C’s daughter Bunny, who is housesitting while they are in Europe. Who is this?
N: I’m one of C’s friends, from university. Would you like to buy a puppy?
B: Um, what?
N: Well, actually, you can have it. I’m going overseas.
B: Sorry, why are you calling? Who is this?
N: I’m friends with your Dad and I was just calling around to see if anybody wanted my puppy.
B:…. how old is it? What breed? How long do you have to go overseas for?
N: She’s about 9 months old, pomeranian. I’m leaving permanently.
B: (just about dies of happiness) Oh oh oh! I am super interested! Um, I actually have a maltese-pomeranian who needs a playmate! Does she have a name already?
N: Ummm… yeah. Po…. Possum.
B: Possum? Um, okay.
N: Well, you better call Nathan and ask him then.
B: (has one of those “the call is coming from inside the house” moments)…. how do you know his name?
N: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA etc

Then in my imagination, I punched him in the face and broke his nose. In reality, I burst into tears.

To be fair, he was extremely apologetic. But no forgiveness tonight. If he magically found a way to teleport here with chicken noodle soup, panadol, Posie and this imaginary puppy, I might change my mind.

There’s no place like home.. except overseas

So, Dad told me that daylight saving time ends today.
It does not.
Thanks Dad.

The dog and cat I am looking after while he is away seemed confused too – waking me up at 6:30am to be fed. RUDE.

So, yes – wishing that I could fast forward these next few weeks; being here in my Dad’s house and essentially under his command (despite him being overseas) is making me realize how much I like to do things my way, how much I miss my own space, my own things, even just the ability to feel comfortable in my own space. All of my books, films, music, everything.. it’s all in boxes in my Mum’s garage right now. Probably getting eaten by mice and bugs. Gah.

I like eating toast over the sink because I am too lazy (some would say smart) to have to wash a plate afterwards. I love the juxtaposition of an oriental tea set and a life-size facehugger from Alien as an interior decorating choice. I like drinking gin all night and then making videos of Nath dancing to theme songs from 70s Italian B-grade dinosaur vs hunter flicks. I love 3am trips to Kmart because I simply need to watch Independence Day or Dante’s Peak or Twister, right now.

Mope, mope, mope.

Catty is off to Europe in.. gee, a few months. I am v. jealous x 100. So I am planning an imaginary trip for me. Imaginary in that it probably won’t happen, but planning it because it might. I would love to go to Taiwan for a few weeks, maybe take Nath and show him where I grew up, visit people I haven’t seen in a million years. I’d love it – roaming around Taipei, never sleeping, doing all the things I wanted to do when I was little but didn’t, going down to Taichung, visiting Sun Moon Lake and Taroko Gorge, etc. I stalked my old house on Google maps and found that it is most probably uninhabited now – the swimming pool is empty and full of dust, the garden is totally unkempt. It’s sad; I would honestly buy it if I could.

xx

Fairy Bread + Guinea Pigs

via 0xo

Damn. You know in films like The Butterfly Effect there is one crucial thing that could have changed everything? I was going to make fairy bread for lunch on Friday, but events changed and I ended up deciding that walking five minutes to the supermarket for sprinkles and bread was just TOO HARD. So no fairy bread.

I seriously think it could have made all the difference.

After work on Saturday, I fainted.
Weep weep.
Probably exhaustion, total and utter depression, stress, not eating or sleeping or receiving the recommended daily dose of cuddles from a puppy. I wish I could marry Posie sometimes.. but pretty sure Nath would fight me for her.
Pretty sure if it were a fist fight, I’d win.

xx

Vortex

via Perry Bible Fellowship:

(it is too big for the column, which refuses to stretch, so click for full size)

Also, I had fruit loops. At 6pm, shortly after waking up. I guess this makes them dinner and breakfast.

xx