It's Saturday night...

And we're off to some little random place in Brunswick called the Court Jester. Their menu looks great, all comfort food and warming, bulky dishes. Occasion? Crazy Elf's birthday. And I do SO enjoy celebrating other people's birthdays. The pressure's off me. I can pick fights with the other guests, drink as much as I like, wear whatever I want and I'm not getting any older.

Except I never actually do.

I have arguments (usually with myself inside the privacy of my own skull) don't actually like being drunk, and I am getting a day older like everyone else.

You'll notice that I didn't go near the wear whatever I want thing.
My wardrobe hasn't changed much since my uni days (I once wore a full-length cotton-and-tulle petticoat with a white bonds singlet (hand-beaded) and although I usually wear jeans five days a week now, the petticoat still lurks....

Unfortunately, the bohemian (a.k.a. the "we just rolled out of bed and put this godawful WHATEVER on right over the top of our pyjamas and these aren't ACTUAL pyjamas, you understand, they're the camo pants my housemate's GRANDFATHER died in") crowd tend to sneer at those who make sartorial CHOICES as opposed to wearing the thing with the least stains on it. I'm fine with that, I just choose not to participate.

Which means I will be wearing black rats (shiny AND warm) with other stuff. Haven't decided yet, but some kind of mishmash. Which I will probably pull from the heaped chair beside my bed.

*Oh god, I'm more bohemian than I realised.
My darling husband, being a computer geek in SO many ways, will ask me what he feels like wearing. I will tell him to wear whatever he wants before saying "Argh! No! NOT those jeans, they show your SHINS!" *Must remember to throw said shin-baring monstrosities out while he's next "recreationally programming".

Hi ho, off to the shower I go.

Wah-hey! Getting my hairt cut today on this beautiful sunny morning, then off to lunch with my mother-in-law (I'm VERY lucky when it comes to my inlaws) then work in the afternoon and down to Morno to support a ballet student in her band's first real gig. Huge.
Massively relieved no ballet tomorrow. Have been homeopathing it up with some Flustop remedy and the cold/cough/sniffly thing seems to be receding- Hooray!

Had great fun teaching yesterday with hands tied behind back (well, that's what it felt like.) Everything takes so LONG! Unbearable. Teachers who teach without their instruments are obviously crap.
Having said that, it's taken me a few years to say "I'm a violinist and Suzuki teacher" and acknowledge my training rather than saying "I teach violin". It' not a pompous thing, it just that I realised I don't teach violin. Well, that's not strictly true, but.... Don't have the wrist power to digress into that today. So, off into the wide sunny world I venture, clutching my postpaks, singing through my unblocked nose, and ready to have my head shaved (Oh I'm not THAT yogic!).

Pugs like wasabi

True! Lucy + wasabi crackers = MINUTES of entertainment (that's a factor of 60 times greater than all other foods).
It's the only time I've seen her look puzzled; clearly this thing is edible, my people are eating them, WHY is it attacking my mouth? Well, that's what her face looked like, anyway.
My wrist still hurts....dum de dum dum.
West Wing is going some way toward alleviating the agony.
Rereading Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted. It's so good. One story invariably causes audience members to faint at readings, and I entirely understand. It provokes the desire to read but not read, because comprehending WHAT you're reading might make your last meal spontaneously reappear. Not in a good way. Gaiman/Palaniuk. Who else might I like?

Booooooooooooooring

So today the physio says "You need to rest that for four days" before launching into a seemingly irrelevant rant about Steve Moneghetti and training runs and gym work (gym work?!) ... the lond and the short of it is that I have rather impressively screwed my right wrist and am not to play/demonstrate/write/feed myself with my right hand for a minimum four days. Argh.

Hang on, I hear you say. What for am I then blogging? Well, my cyberspatially challenged followers of randomness, I am blogging because I'm a little OCD and don't like missing a day. And I'm sneakily mostly typing with my (dexterous) left hand while banging the stationary fingers of my right up and down on the keyboard. Sometimes my ability to injure myself amazes even me.

Oh, and there's nine people on the right now. NINE! Sure, I'm related to one of them, and practically related to another, but that means I'm a little entertaining? Sometimes? Jeez, I don't think I have enough limbs to keep up with the spate of "Laugh at me as I injure myself yet again!" posts, but I do have a small dog with plenty of legs. (KIDDING).

Watched Neil Gaiman give a Google tech talk. When I grow up, I want to be Neil Gaiman. Possibly I won't dress quite so randomly (my leather jacket will be brown and have sleek motorcycle sleeves, not cuffed blouson monstrosities) but I'll happily acquire the accent, diction and devastating timing. Have a flaming desire to read Coraline after he said "Children are quite comfortable with it. Adults come up to me and say "I stayed up till three in the morning to finish that book and then had to get up and turn all the lights on. You're sick. And dangerous" "

It interests me that childrens' books have suffered a peculiar bout of sanitation. I remember being delighted (and horrified) by the "real" Bluebeard; recently my darling husband gave me Grimm's Grimmest. Yes, they're gory and could very well cause bad dreams; they're CAUTIONARY tales! If every little girl wants to be Cinderella, we haven't told them the right story!

Still waiting for Fishpond to send me my Pygmy (that's a book, not a small person) and have high hopes that it may arrive in the next ten days before I board a Jetstar flight to Japan. The best thing about a stupid wrist: no washing up. Hooray.

Merry Tuesday!

CHUUUUUUUUUGGINGTON!
Seriously, isn't this sweet? It's a welcome-to-my-house gift (I think) which is now blutacked above our phone. Uh-oh...must be getting clucky.....

Anyone who's spent too much time watching http://www.weebls-stuff.com and episodes of On the Moon will know exactly what I'm talking about. Don't you just love those semi-surreal days?

Yesterday no blogging. Turned out that while I was enthusiastically waving the garden-shears-made-for-giants about I jarred my right wrist or something.

So after teaching I casually wave my swollen appendage (wow, THAT sounded wrong) in front of my husband.

Him: OMIGOD! What happened?

Me: (casually waving wrist about. I AM the clumsiest person I know; these things seem to happen an awful lot)
Oh, I think I strained it or something. Impressive, hey?
(offering other weedy wrist for comparison)

Him: Did you bang it on anything? Could you have broken it?

Me: (with massive eye-rollings...I love my husband dearly, but I've just spent the last three hours teaching. Which means playing violin. Which means USING said wrist to manipulate bow. Which means I would have spent said three hours screaming. Or something.)
I don't REMEMBER banging it on anything (meaningless) but I think I jarred it.

Him: Well, that's very impressive. You should go to the doctor.

Me: Um, no thanks.

So after several days of whinging about my sore leg (that fell through the decking) which is now black but less painful to touch, my wrist is the new bane of existence. I've got to get better at this whole co-ordination thing. GOT to. If only so I don't have to make double treks everywhere (now that I can only carry things in my left hand).

Trashy chicklit is helping to dim the pain in my wrist by creating pain in my head....

On the upside, my Monday teaching is over for another week.
I love all my students, but the kids I see on Monday afternoons seem to need the most love.
Or tough love.
Or something that just doesn't come naturally to me.
I was very nearly very rude to a parent yesterday (you may laugh, but that IS unlike me) on the topic of writing things down and working WITH your child at home. This is a partnership, people! And sometimes I'm tempted to have that tattooed on my forehead, but having a fringe and all, that's probably a massive waste of ink. Hm.

Spent the morning (after E's lesson) editing music. 3 minutes is a sweet time to parade children in front of their adoring parents. And the cuts are all good and happy now. I thin that's some kind of record. Week 2, music DONE. I'm brilliant.

Eleven days till Japan and I'm getting a little antsy about flying with Jetstar. I'm enrolled in Summer School, I have a train pass and accommodation, even the fact that I speak minimal Japanese doesn't actually worry me. I figure this is all to the good. If I focus all my anxiety on the flight I won't have any left for the trip and this is a good thing. Right?

Time for left-handed lunchtime. Shepherd's pie.
(Husband on topic of shepherd's pie: Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning. Red sky at lunchtime, shepherd's pie.)
Me on topic of husband: Highly specialised intelligence. Also high ability to make me laugh out loud before thumping him.

I finished Lullaby.
Damn Fishpond for running out of Pygmy stock.
I read Four Blondes today ....meh..... and plundered the garden (so demoralising I can't even articulate it right now) and have drunk WAY too much tea and eaten WAY too many delicious little men (COOKIE MEN).

On the bright side, have not fallen through the deck again.
And had a lovely visit from good friend and her very nice fiance (well, he talks to us, so I guess he like us. Perhaps? No really, I'm sure it's all fine.) and their Fredichi puppy dog.

Dog logic: We have a WHOLE backyard and most of a house to play in. Hey, let's play under the dining table where our peeps are drinking tea! We can wrestle and skid madly around the floorboards and why oh why would we want to play in the BIG OPEN SPACE outside???

But they're cute, so mostly we forgive them.

And last night hung out with cool people. I like these people. They're proof that brain cells DO work after kidlets. Not sure if I passed the "reading bedtime story" test...may have to work on delivery a little. But seriously, vintage story...from the day when "wireless" referred to radio... and for a whole five seconds I thought internet, and wow, the main character is giving a podcast! That's so cool!
Ah, yes.
Maybe the REALLY good choc-banana pudding went to my head a little. Couldn't have been the wine. One glass. I'm SO off form.

I'm going to bed with a little man now. (A COOKIE man. Sheesh, some people....)