Archives for January 2005

In a moment of madness two weeks ago I said to my mother’s group that I would host it next time – today. I had yesterday off and I tidied the place up – inside and out. And I also made some cupcakes which Jaycee Junior helped me ice this morning and he chose the pink food colouring.

So I made the cupcakes for nothing. I hardly ever bake any more because I would tend to eat nearly all the goods and my body doesn’t need it so I don’t make bake except for occasions like this and home made cooking is so much better than bought stuff.

Not only did I go to the effort of cooking, but having people around like this means a general tidy up around the place. Not that my place is a pigsty but putting things away that have lingered on tables for a little while is a necessity I feel for a number of guests like this. Mowing the lawn and sweeping the pergola area is also a job done in readiness for mother’s group, dinners and barbeques. And as I am the only person who does these jobs they aren’t necessarily done just for the hell of it but usually done in times of need.

So when I got the phone call from the second to last person who couldn’t make it I called the only other mother who was going to come and told her not to worry about it if she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to so it’s been postponed for a week or two.

Instead of sitting out the back looking at the kids running amok and trying to chat with the mothers I got on the computer instead and tried to figure out how to burn a CD so I can view the pictures from my digital camera as a slideshow on my DVD player. I haven’t yet figured it out so if anyone can offer any solutions that aren’t costly I’m listening.

I have to comment about a movie I saw the other night – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I hired it on DVD and after putting the kid to bed poured myself a drink and started it. After 15-20 minutes I was just about ready to turn it off but comments I’d heard on the Movie Show kept me going. I think it was Megan Spencer who’d said it was one of her favourite movies for the year so I stuck with it.

I’m so glad I stuck with it as I thoroughly enjoyed it and could be heard muttering to myself, ‘I get it now’. The timelines were a bit confusing at the beginning – like Memento – but it gelled more and more as the end came nearer. I enjoyed Memento and this was one step beyond that I think. Memento was about memory and like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starts at the end, telling the story to the beginning – so the beginning of the story becomes the end of the film. It’s a confusing way of seeing a movie and this was all the more confusing because you see the couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) meet twice which completely threw me at first.

As the film neared its conclusion I was liking it more and more and empathising with the relationship in its first throes of love and the sourness towards the end but also wanting Jim Carrey not to have his memory completely erased of his love.

Where Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did it for me more than Memento though was the consequences of having your memory erased. I know that memory erasion was not done on purpose but rather through a medical condition in Memento, so it is slightly different. It gives credence I guess to that saying, ‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.’ As most of us know relationships can be hard work and they don’t always go very well and can end up in bitterness but you learn from your mistakes. But how can you learn from your mistakes if you have them erased from your memory?

It’s now a week since I saw the movie and I’m still thinking about it. To me that’s a good movie experience – unlike seeing Garfield which was a total waste of the money I paid to see it at the cinema.

I don’t want to be at work today. I’m not in the mood and I’m not motivated. Just thought I’d share this.

I went out on Friday night as I mentioned earlier and I also went out on Saturday night – free food and booze. Saturday night wasn’t a real late one and I even got a sleep in in the morning. That’s if you can call waking up at 6.30am as normal, then going back to sleep for an hour a sleep in.

I then had to pick up Jaycee Junior who was half an hour away and we stopped off at the beach on the way home to walk the dog and get wet. Once home we got ready for the next outing. I’d won tickets to the Tropicana festival on in the city. I went to my friend’s place in the city to pick her up (she was my date for the day). After we had a commiseration beer (her lovelife is leaving nothing to be desired) and a swig of vodka and walked to the festival location neither of us were feeling festivally. I also had a grizzly child on hand and I knew there would be trouble if he didn’t sleep.

We ended up offloading the tickets and my friend’s daughter and walked back to her house via a food stop with my son sleeping in his pram.

Last night after I’d packed him off to bed I put Goldmember on to watch and couldn’t really get into it. I don’t mind a fart joke but this was a bit over the top I thought. I do love the costumes though and wish I could have borrowed Mike Myer’s costume when he arrived in Club 69 dressed as the pimp. Well he looked like a pimp – fantastic.

Slept well last night and arrived late at work today but am only at work for two days this week. We have a public holiday mid week and I’m taking the Thursday off too. Yippee!

I’d organised babysitting last night to go out and see a band reunion of some old friends who haven’t played in this band for a long time and this was definitely their last gig. I must have spent a fortune in phone calls organising who and where to meet and plans kept falling through. It finally turned out that I met a friend at her housesitting place in the city, had a drink there, then drove her and two mates to a pub in the city where I dropped them off. I then proceeded to pick up a girlfriend and just as she got in the car we got a phone call.

‘It’s sold out, we’re all at the Grace Emily’. So we went there. It was nearly 11pm by this time and we should have arrived at our initial destination at 9.30pm to get into see the reunion gig. Luckily we saw them at their practise gig last Saturday night at a party.

We went to the Grace Emily where a bunch of other friends were, either with stamps to get into see this gig, or not. I didn’t want to hang around at the pub just chatting, I wanted to see a band thank you very much so my girlfriend and I walked back across town to where I’d originally dropped off my other mates and saw Spencer P Jones and his band. I’d seen them a few months ago and was a bit disappointed with them last night compared with the first time. It was probably partly to do with the disappointment of things not going according to plan. The last time this happened, I ended up meeting my sons father but nothing similar happened last night – or perhaps it did and I don’t know it yet.

We stayed for the band and then decided to walk down to where we’d orginally planned to go and as we arrived people were pouring out so Where’s the Pope? had obviously finished. As we walked up the stairs it was clear that many people had vacated the space as we could feel the sweat and heat. Well we’d made it in, too late though, but in time to see two of our mates dj’ing. By the time they finished it was 2.30am and definitely time to go home.

I’m going out tonight to a dinner I don’t have to pay for, and no, it’s not a date. Jaycee Junior is fast asleep due to his late night and early morning and I just finished reading a book that I sobbed for during the last part where a main character dies. Even though I knew she would die I still cried. Can’t remember sobbing that much for a book since Storm Boy.

I bought more clothes today. I vowed at the end of last week after a few splurges that I wouldn’t buy any more clothes for a while but I bought a pair of 3/4 length pants and yet another a-line skirt. I know in previous years I haven’t bought that many clothes because I hated the fabric or the cut.

This season I love the cotton a-line skirts. The last few summers the fashion seemed to be polyester or other man-made fabrics and the skirts were quite figure hugging and looked quite appalling on me. I’ve got one sitting in my wardrobe and it’s pretty hidden because I usually choose the comfortable cotton a-line skirt before this one.

Back to the a-line though. For a girl with a waist and a, I quote, ‘…arse with a mind of its own’ the a-line skirt is my friend. It hugs my waist which still isn’t too bad. I would like to diminish the little overhang that’s beginning above my belly-button, but apart from that my waist is not too bad. And the a-line skirts skims nicely over that arse with a life of its own. I figure I’ll buy up on the cotton a-line and next season when the straight cut skirt comes back (it’s gotta come back some time) I won’t need to bother cause I’ve already spent my wardrobe budget. Perhaps once the trend is over I can spend my clothes budget (what’s left of it) in op-shops buying someone elses last season’s clothing.

The other thing I like about the a-line is I can buy a size smaller than I would normally because my lower half consists of two dress sizes, only because I don’t fit the mould of a stick figure but have a waist and an arse.

On the other hand there are the low waist pants – the bane of my life. In some cases I can’t even pull em up to my low waist region. Because I have that arse with a mind of its own, and these pants are made for the stick figure, a size that should normally fit me and would if it was my friend, the a-line skirt, doesn’t cover my arse.

I’ve realised that these pants that I can’t pull up are mainly in the shops where an extra large is in actual fact a size 14. This does nothing for my self-esteem. Being mostly a size 14 makes me an average sized woman in Australia and probably most of the developed world and a lot of shops are telling me that I’m not average but extra large. To me, extra large is obese and I don’t consider myself obese, just curvy.

Why is it that ‘women’s fashion’ is made for a young and skinny girl who is an impossible size 8? What about the real and more mature woman (not necessarily more mature though) who is the average? I’ve said it in the past and I’ll say it again here, there has to be a market for decent, not too expensive clothing that flatters a woman with a bottom and a waist, and also women with the waist and no bottom. And I won’t even begin on women with large chests because that’s not me but I’m sure it’s hard for them to find well-fitting and trendy clothes.

Can I say to the younger woman, who is not the skinny size 8 that clothes manufacturers would have us be, who wear low-rise pants and not cover much tops that bit that hangs out in the middle is not very attractive at all. Another little anecdote while I’m on my fashion police bandwagon – I saw a woman one day hop into the lift who’d obvioiusly just had a baby, and she (the woman) was bearing her midriff and showing all of us her full-on stretch marks. There is no need for this.