Looking Nothing At All Like Christmas

You know, hot Christmas is beginning to be a problem.  And I think it's getting worse.

Each year I add more crafty blogs to my link list, and each year I get new ideas from them for Christmas preparation - the cooking, gifts you make rather than buy, and of course the decorations for your home.  I love all that stuff and I come away feeling full of inspiration, but I find that I have nowhere to direct it.  These Christmas-crafty people seem mostly to live in the northern hemisphere, where they make hearty meals and big fruit cakes, cosy soft decorations and generally create warmth and bright to banish the cold and dark outside.

We in Townsville get more than enough warmth and bright from the sun each day, and what we need most of all is to not manufacture any more of it.  This causes a problem with the Christmas decorations.   Our shops, of course, go nuts with the tinsel and the songs about sleigh bells, and there's enough of an ick factor there - hot and flustered car parking, shops overrun with bogans and really too many bodgy tattoos on display - to put me off entirely.  (The other day I had to get Hayden to drive us home from the pool a different way, avoiding the Christmas Carols in the park, because I couldn't look at another insufficiently-dressed inked-up person - man or woman - climbing down from the family 4WD.)  When I get home, I need to be cool and calm.  Instantly.

I did manage a bit of Christmas crafting in the end.  I really liked this idea from Posy Gets Cosy for a quilted table runner ~ quilted, of course, to hold groaning platters of hot roasted meats and big casserole dishes of vegetables.  But instead of using warm Christmassy red and green, I stuck to coolish blues and pistachio.  And I quilted it only very lightly - more to stop condensation rings than scorch marks on the table.  

So, OK, it doesn't look very Christmassy.  Don't think of hot roast turkey.  Think of the cool and delicious glass of golden sauvignon blanc I'm enjoying right now because my Christmas decorating is done.  

Hair Disaster

I'm so irritated right now.

I was at the hairdresser's, right, which is in the middle of one of those disgustingly large shopping malls.  I'd just sat down in front of the mirror and was leafing through an old copy of Australian Hair, they hadn't put the black cape around me or anything, when an alarm starts going off and we're instructed to evacuate the building.  Hmph.  The hairdressers promptly close their front door and usher all us customers out through the back into the carpark.  The comical part was how they kept cutting hair all the while, and finished off a couple of cuts while we were standing around waiting in the sun.  The less funny part was how everyone - the hairdressers naturally, all the other customers and Christmas shoppers and staff of other shops, everyone except me - all lit up a cigarette at exactly the same time.  I'm sure even the children were smoking while we were all standing there squinting and sweating.  It was disgusting. 

 

I really wanted my hair cut, and I really didn't want to hike back to my car which was of course parked on the other side of the mall.  But how long could I put up with that second hand smoke?  No-one was offering to do my hair out there, but I waited and waited until finally the chief hairdresser told all the other hairdressers that they could go home.  As we were standing in their staff carpark, they all just hopped into their tiny cars and sped off out of there.  Ugh.  I was left to begin my circumnavigation of the enormous building, and I got crankier and crankier with each hot step.  I could feel my skin burning in the sun.  I tried to take a short-cut through the covered part of the carpark but I was told by an official that that was forbidden.  It was a bomb threat, and it had to be taken seriously.

I'm home now, but I'm still cranky.  If I ever find out who phoned in that bomb threat, well, I'm going to ...well, I don't know.  But I'll think of something.

Flying Home

Don't you love the little guys on these placemats?  I found them in our 'special things' cupboard, and I believe they once belonged to Hayden's Grandma.  They're different birds of New Zealand including, of course, the kiwi (that's the New Zealand Little Spotted Kiwi in the middle there).  This year it's Hayden's turn to have Christmas at home, and we'll be flying to New Zealand - just for a week - on December 23.   I wonder if there will be space on the Christmas table for them?

I am a bit sad to be missing Christmas in Brisbane with my half of the family, but I have to say that Christmas in New Zealand is pretty good too.  For one thing, it's often cool enough to enjoy a big warm lunch on Christmas day.  And for another thing, well, our last Christmas trip there did turn out to be really, really good.    

Ipod Pocket

Recently I made this little felt pocket to keep my ipod safe while it's languishing in the bottom of my handbag.  It gets pretty knocked about in there when I'm rummaging around for my keys/phone/money/lipgloss/a pen.   Now I know that my ipod is the soft and furry thing in there, it's also much quicker to grab when I need it. 

I highly recommend such a thing for anyone who's still wrestling with three devices in their bag instead of one. 

Hayden/Santa, you know what I'm talking about.

Rise and Shine

Ahh today I'm feeling fresher and better.  Yesterday, Wednesday, was hard and hot and slow.  The day started badly because I wanted to sleep in but I knew I had to get up.  Wednesday is the day the yard guy comes to cut the grass, and though he seems a nice friendly fellow, and though he does an excellent job with our yard, he doesn't have the common courtesy to pretend he can't see us through the window while he's out there working and we're standing in the kitchen in our skimpy summer jammies.  So Wednesdays, whatever else happens, I'm up and dressed by 6:30am or embarrassment ensues.  (The worst is when I think I've got time to skip out to the washing line to collect some clothes to wear ... but I meet him coming in through our front gate on my way back inside.  He always wants to stop and chat.  Either he can't sense my embarrassment or he maliciously enjoys prolonging it.)

Last week at aquarobics I heard about a Townsville court case from a couple of years ago, in which a man was arrested for indecent exposure while inside his own home.  His nakedness was espied through the window by a passing pedestrian.  If I was that pedestrian, I would be careful about what kind of feud I started.  It might come back and bite me on the arse.

Big Workload

My in-tray is completely overflowing.  Remember how small and manageable my workload used to be?

I'm not getting very much of anything done today.  I've been sleeping poorly recently and that makes me super-cranky during the day and leaves me with a very low frustration-threshold.   It's enough to make me want to toddle down to the video shop and get a movie that Hayden wouldn't ever want to see, watch it at home with the aircon on full bore, my feet up on the coffee table and a bowl of ice-cream on my lap.

Come to think of it, it would be a complete waste of the day NOT to do that.

Seeya later.