In the Dry

I'm feeling less fuggy today cos I've cut down on the pain medication for my sore back.  (Having a sore back was really awful, by the way.  Another one of those things that I never understood how awful until I felt it for myself.)  To celebrate the renewed spring in my step, I went for a little walk outdoors.

My goodness are we having a dry dry

 season this year!  Dry grass and bald rocks everywhere!  This is actually my favourite kind of Australian scenery.  I just love it - I can't tell why.

Unpredictable

I'm really sick.  Or something.  I'm constantly exhausted and forgetful all the time (eg, where's my cup of coffee gone? Oh, there it is, stone cold after sitting on the bathroom floor for hours.  I wonder how it got there?) and I'm having real trouble stringing these sentences together.

But lucky for me, I'm pretty much unemployed (there's always a chance I'm totally unemployed - it's hard to tell sometimes) and I've got a good book to read.  Amazon has finally sent me Eileen Cook's first novel, Unpredictable, and so far it's ridiculously funny and nice to read, like a lovely piece of cheer-up cake.  Not chocolate cake ... more like a delicious almond and citrus sponge.  I'm trying hard not to finish it too quickly.

But when I have, I'll be back here with a proper review.  Probably.

Meanwhile, under my desk

my new winter slipper was being shredded!

I'm reading this book about how to raise a happy cat, and it's always describing the terrible scenarios and dangerous situations in which cats can risk their lives; e.g. who knew that Christmas could be such a traumatic time?  apparently kittens are always getting thrown out with old wrapping paper, strangled by tinsel and trodden to death by visiting relatives.  The book advises me to keep a current photo on file so I'm always ready to put together a 'lost kitty' poster should the need arise.

Do you think this one would do?

The Hungry Girls

In a recent rash of ordering books over the internet (what? my winter interests have been kick-started.  As mentioned in the post below it’s time I turned to creative things, like cooking, gardening and cosying up our little home) I ordered this:  The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook Volume 2.  

At the time, I was mainly wanting to have a look at how they’d hand made the book - I think I was vaguely hoping it would inspire me to make my own.     It didn’t inspire me that way - it’s too nicely done for me to get that ‘hey, I could do that too’ feeling.  But it did inspire me to cook, so in some ways it has achieved what it set out to do.   It’s got just twelve recipes in it, and I’ve made two of them so far - Carrot Fritters and a Quick Spanish Dinner of mixed up potato, capsicum and chorizo.  And they both turned out delicious.  I’m seriously looking forward to making the Nepali Dahl with Eggplant Pickle.  It’s ages since I’ve eaten a lovely comforting blandish dahl.  It’s a craving I get every so often, and our local indian takeaway makes it just too damn thick and tasty.  Sometimes I’m after something with a whole lot less impact.

Anyway, I highly recommend The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook.  It has a simple cardboard cover and it’s bound with string and staples, and the book itself has a beautiful soft smell.  Its something like green tea, and it makes me think of hanging out at Jan’s place.

Telling the Truth

Is it just me, or does this bread look delicious?  Like I’m really living in my rustic farmhouse fantasyland where I make everything beautifully and effortlessly by hand?   As I was cutting and spreading it, I was wondering just how GOOD and SATISFIED I'd be feeling if I’d made the jam myself too, like, a year ago and then kept it in the cupboard with a little label on saying the kind of fruit and the date.

I made the bread using the same sourdough recipe that worked so well for me last year.  The weather here has turned delightfully Autumny (the Townsvillians are talking about “winter”; it was a story on the news when three French backpackers got lost in our local rainforest and spent the night on a rock ledge "while temperatures plunged to 12℃”).  I started up my sourdough starter a while ago, and last week I made a terrible loaf (not concentrating; put in twice as much water as I should have) so I was really pleased with how this one looked coming out of the oven.  I rapped it on the bottom, and it sounded hollow.  Good sign.

But.  However.  It tastes ...only fair to moderate.  I cut the first slice right off the cooling rack, spread it with butter and then something out the window caught my eye.  Maybe a bird, or a colourful butterfly.  I had made it all the way out into our front yard and was looking up in a tree when I realised that I had been munching on the bread all the while.  The taste of it had not even intruded into my consciousness.   When have you ever eaten bread fresh out of the oven and not even realised you were doing it?  I should have been thinking "MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmMMM ... delicious!" but instead all I was thinking was, "yes.  It is bread that I'm eating.  Chew #1.  Chew #2. Swallow?  OK, yeah, swallow."

What a shame.  Maybe if I was a better blog-liar I would have had you believe that it tasted just as good as it looks.  Time to work on that perhaps?

Tulips

I bought these tulips for Hayden and for me, because we've both been working hard lately.  I've been working like a whirlwind on my biggest writing assignment yet.  And I know I'm hard work for Hayden when I'm all tired out and stressed.

This morning I handed in my draft, so it's rest time for me until I receive the next round of comments on my work.

What am I going to do with myself, now that there's no wedding to plan in the meantime?  What would you do, if you were me?

the iCat

Over the last couple of days I've been making the somewhat painful transition into new Mac ownership.   It's really worth it, I think - for me anyway, but don't worry, I'm not going to get all evangelical about it to you.  

The best part is  ... hm, I can't decide. 

Is the best part the huge screen? or the fact that Lily doesn't know where the off switch is?  Back on my greasy old Acer laptop, her favourite place to nestle was on the delightfully soft warm flat keyboard.  And she managed to push some of those buttons; including, more than once, the off switch.  So irritating, to have your computer turned off in the middle of typing.   One time we came home and she'd been sleeping with her nose on the enter key.  She had navigated her way through all the steps to reach this question:  Would you like to delete all the files in this folder, yes or no?  It was the programs folder.  I quickly hit 'No' while Hayden gently lifted her off the computer.

She's not such a fan of this iMac keyboard.  I'm so relieved.

Literary Meme

Katherine, my sewing mentor and bookgroup friend, has tagged me to do a meme.

1.Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

OK, here we go:

Madame de Gallardon was in a very spiteful mood because some gentlemen who were with her had thought they should bring up the subject of Oriane: “I’m not in the least anxious to see her, she had replied, I caught sight of her just now, in any case, she’s beginning to age; it seems she can’t come to terms with it. Basin himself says so. And I can well understand that, because, since she’s not intelligent, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and has a bad way with her, she certainly feels that, once she’s no longer beautiful, she’ll have nothing left at all.”

It’s a classic piece of Proust bitching. Most of this book, Sodom and Gomorrah consists of aristocratic French people sitting around at dinner parties, at the opera, before the theatre, etc, bitching about each other and who was invited where by whom; who no longer speaks to whom; who is in a secret gay relationship with whom. It sounds like the most boring thing that you could ever read, and I’m sure to some people it is; but I really love it.

I’m not going to blather on any more about Proust – I feel I’ve definitely done enough of that here (but if you want to have a long Proust-loving private chat please phone me up and we can talk for hours). But I do have one more thing to add: if you’re wondering when we’re going to start having children (since we’re married now it seems like everyone wants to know) it’s definitely not going to happen until I’ve read Proust VI. I’ve heard that in the first year of your child’s life it is nigh on impossible to finish reading a single book, and this is one series that I’m not going to read interrupted.

Now, all there's left to do is tag some more people to read to us from their books. I tag Claire and Mr E, Hanna and Drue and Gilbert.

Lily at 11

Last week was Lily's 11th week. Just recently, she's transformed from kitten into fully-fledged miniature cat. Oh, she still does kittenish things like chasing string and playing soccer under the dining table with little screwed-up bits of paper. But now when she sees us watching her she'll stop, get self-conscious and sit up tall and neat.

Here she is in my in-tray, waiting patiently to be attended to.

Wedding

That’s it. We’re married. All the fuss is over.

We had such a wonderful day, and we’re so grateful to everyone who made the trip north to be with us. Thank you.

If you’d like to see more photos of us, you’ll find us all over our official photographer’s website: lizzysawdonphotography.com.au. We can’t believe it’s really us on there.

All Happening

Almost a year and a half since this happened, it's nearly time for Hayden and me to go and get married!

We leave for our Wedding Destination on Thursday, to be ready to greet our small but highly valued group of guests on Friday. By the end of Saturday, we shall be married and on Sunday we'll go straight to our honeymoon on Hinchinbrook Island.

So far, the preparations have gone pretty well - barring my eyebrow crisis of two weeks ago (Me: Can you please make my eyebrows look good for my wedding? Beautician: [peering at me via the scary magnifying mirror] No...No looking good will not be possible for you. Your eyebrows are naturally assymetrical. But come and see me every week up until the day and I might be able to perform a miracle .. of course I cannot promise anything). That aside, I have been very pleased with a couple of last minute additions to our little big event, including an antique cake knife from my Grandma.

Yesterday, however, the brakes of my car decided to pack it in which is really hampering my ability to race crazily all over town for last-minute necessities. I shall have to sit calmly at home and see what I can organise over the phone.

Ms Lily

When we arrived home from New Zealand, those cats were waiting for us at our front door like they had read our flight itinerary. As we took the mother cat and the father cat back across the road to where they are supposed to live, we were already deciding that we would keep one of the kittens. We kept the smaller, fluffier one. We've called her Lily.




Of course, she is already queen of all our house.

Black at the Beach

Sorry if you were wanting to hear me talk about anything other than plants, but well ... I just wanted to show you these black frondy things that gave this gentle beach just south of New Plymouth such a nice old-timey feel. This might sound dumb, but they kind of transported me to a long-ago childhood caravan beach holiday fantasy, and for the first time ever I began to understand why New Zealand's national colour is black. Before this, it seemed much more like a blue and green kind of country to me.

Not Matching

OK, so the garden picture in the last post was mostly by way of an introduction to this one, from another of the special gardens in Hamilton. This one, the Indian Garden, by the way wins Best Small Garden I've Ever Seen 2008.

I didn't mention it in the last post, but also on that day - after our delightful outdoor lunch but before meandering through the Italian Garden - I made Hayden traipse around the shops of Hamilton with me to find a few more key bits and pieces for our wedding.

The unexpected thing I've found with organising this wedding is the number of headaches I've given myself, squinting and turning my head on its side trying to work out if the item I'm holding in the shop matches the outfit I've been carefully and secretly constructing at home. Actually I've found out that I'm not that bad at it (my shoes and bag match perfectly) - but it does require concentration to a degree that often brings on a headache.

That's why I just loved the Indian Garden. I just love the way that there's every different bright colour of flowers growing on top of each other. Indeed, why would the flowers need to match? Completely free non-matching is so much better! What a beautiful relief!

Special Gardens

You know how I really like gardens? (Oh, you didn't know?) Well in Hamilton the botanical gardens, where Hayden and I went after a delightful outdoor lunch at Iguana, have these special sections done up in different styles of the world. This is the Italian one - and as you can see they've put a stack of effort into it.

You can't see it in this picture, but just off to the side there is a fig tree laden with late-summer fruit. I loved it for reminding me of my favourite time in Tuscany, eating figs fresh off the tree after a long hard day in the sun.

Back from NZ

Feeling pretty rusty at blogging, so I think I'm going to do this bit by bit: I'll show you one piccy every day until I'm back in the swing of things.

This shot is from one of my favourite days on our trip: we (Hayden, his sister Kirsten and I) took a little stroll on the base of Mt Taranaki. It was such a beautiful day.

I love it when I get to see new parts of New Zealand. I think I'm going to make a new rule that every time I go there I'll spend at least part of a day on one of their lovely tramping trails.

Absenteeism

Voting. I do enjoy it. Not just the thought of, you know, participating in our great democracy; I really like the actual act of voting. I like going down to our local school on a Saturday morning, waiting in line, putting all the numbers into the little squares and then posting my form into the big cardboard box. It always makes me hungry, so it's great when there's a sausage sizzle afterwards, too.

This week I got to learn a new pleasure: absentee voting, or voting at one's kitchen table. Townsville is electing its new mayor this weekend, but I'll be missing it because we're going to New Zealand. We're going for one last play down on Hayden's family farm, which is being sold on May 1st. I'll be sure to bring back some photos.

X miaow

So we had to give the kittens back to our neighbour. That was the main thing that happened this week. We were due to give them back on Tuesday, a day when I had to start work at the coffee shop at 12 noon. It was raining, all morning, in a very heavy monsoony way, and I was sad all morning because of giving back the kittens, but there was no sign of our Neighbour who was going to come and pick them up.

I remembered how on the night the kittens were born, it was raining then too and our Neighbour didn't want to walk over the road to see them because it was too wet. Instead she came two days later. I didn't want that kind of procrastination to happen again - it was all too sad-making - so when the rain stopped I gave her a call and said "please come and get the kittens now." By the time I'd put the phone down, it was raining hard again.

At last our Neighbour drove her car through the rain over the road to our place, and came in our door carrying a plastic washing basket with a towel in it. She knew where the kittens were, so she went straight to their box and snatched out first one kitten and then the second one and put them in the basket. The kittens' mother came bounding across the room to see what was happening, but she was too late - when she got into the box, the kittens were already gone. She started to make a very low growling noise.

Our Neighbour carried the kittens out of the room, and I leaned down into the box to pick up the mother cat. She didn't even protest, she just hung limply in my arms. It was so sad. I hurried to catch up to our Neighbour, so I could show the mother cat that her kittens were safe in the plastic washing basket. When she saw them, the mother cat jumped straight into the basket with them and began to check them all over for damage.

Then I handed our Neighbour an umbrella and an extra towel to put over the basket to protect the little kittens from the rain. Our Neighbour took the kittens in their basket out our front door and put them in the back seat of her car. Before she drove away she gave me back my old towel, but she didn't give back my umbrella.

More Cats

Well, those two little kittens just keep getting cuter. Meanwhile, their mum has become much more protective of them ... so no more photos of them at this stage.

Mum has also become quite restless. She's bored of being cooped up in our house and I know she just wants to go out to play. Instead she just waits for her man to come and visit her in prison.

Ahh, here he is.

He's a pretty dedicated prison-visitor. He comes every day, and if she doesn't come to the door to see him, he'll sing her a really loooong looooud song.

Update

Well, there's one thing I can update for you:

This cat, who's been hanging around our place for a while now, not discouraged by us and actually allowed to look all over our bedroom, in any draw that takes her fancy:

She's had her kittens! She had two. And even better, she had them at our place, not in a draw but in the box that we had prepared for her with old towels and flannelette sheets.

As I think I mentioned before, we were pretty sure that she was getting close last week, and on Friday when I came home from a meeting (at which I was given more writing work to do - yay!) she was waiting for me at the door. She beat me inside and went straight to her box and waited there very quietly.

I sat down at my computer, but soon decided that I needed to go out and buy some paper and/or get a takeaway coffee before I could get right down to work. I peeked into Kitty's box to tell her that I'd only be gone an hour or so, and I saw that she was having her babies.

Hayden and I are both so stoked that she chose to have her kittens at our place, after weeks and weeks of secret encouragement on our part. I was feeling slightly bad for Kitty's real owner, our neighbour across the road, until we phoned her on Friday and she said that seeing as it was raining she wouldn't come over and meet the new kittens until after work the next day. Eventually when she did come and meet the new kittens, she asked us if we could keep them here for at least a week.

We're really loving having them, and we weigh them on our kitchen scale every day (that's not something their owner asked us to do). It's amazing how they're putting on weight - like 10 - 15 g every day between morning and bedtime. That's 10%, like a person putting on 7kg between leaving for work in the morning and coming home at night!