Coonundrums

There are lots of coonundrums in life. For example, how do you even spell the word coonundrum?


And, how do you address the issue of how awesome the current Desiguel Espana collection is, balanced against the odds that it will look much less awesome stretched over my post-Italy body?


Or that I’ve forgotten how the fuck to use Italian verbs conditionally?


How do you decide you’ve had enough of making the first, second and eleventy-billionth moves and if he doesn’t pick up the god damn phone soon, you’re going to emasculate somebody? Probably him. Definitely him! EMASCULATE!!!


Calming down again.


Coonundrums.


In the years since I’ve lived in my flat, I’ve had a few spider problems. There was the great spider crisis of 2009, when I couldn’t exit the flat because I giant huntsman lived over the communal exit. This was solved by a very nice Japanese exchange teacher who caught the huntsman and killed it. By literally catching and squashing it with. Her. Bare. Hands.


Oh I’m sorry, did I say nice Japanese lady? I meant nice crazy person, obviously.


Then there was the time I narrowly avoided death in 2010. I had to park my car across the road for two days because a giant, man-eating orb spider had built a web of apocalyptic proportions in the garden by my parking bay. It sat right in my usual train of trajectory, waiting to gnaw off my face. What’s worse is that my sister actually tried to trick me into its lair but I saw the spider looming in front of me, venom dripping from its giant, orby pincers. I suffered a mild stroke, but otherwise lived to tell the tale.


Spiders have been trying to give me heart attacks, so they can use my body as an incubus, for years. Barbie and I will never forget the gargantuan tarantula like creature that fell on my head when I was seven. It may well have been the same spider that came back to greet my waking self on my pillow when I was 18. Barbie had left me by then; she couldn’t take the pressure. (It was either that or somebody cutting off all her beautiful golden hair.) Spiders have followed me, stalked me, hunted me, every where I’ve ever lived. A wiccan witch once told me that this means I’m a kindred spirit to the arachnid kind.


Witches are stupid. Houses fall on them. The end.

And as for you, arachnids, if this theory is correct then you have not been paying attention to how much mortein I am packing! A whole can is necessary to eradicated the evil predators that lurk the closets, cars, toilets and bedrooms just as I’m beginning to relax.


And let’s not forget Biowatha. I can’t even talk about Biowatha.


Spiders must think I have more life insurance than I do.


Yesterday, it was the spider assault of 2011. After flitting about in my spring jacket all day, I took it off only to find a spider’s egg sac attached to the fabric. If I hadn’t caught on, I have no doubt I would not be here now to tell this story of my miraculous escape; millions of tiny spiders would eventually have emerged from that sac and feasted on me for their first meal.


Like that urban legend where they spill out of a pimple on some cousin of a friend of a perfect stranger’s face!


Except that my jacket is not a pus-filled pimple. It’s from Italy.


And now I will have to burn it. Sad face.


Spiders want to kill me, and now I have proof – look at this!

Well not if I kill you first, buddy!

Question: How do I kill all the spiders in the whole universe???

Coonundrums.

Tamsin the Terrifying Turtle

I am too tired to write today. That said, I will probably come back and edit this later, and it will become some epic tale about cupcakes and caterpillars on bicycles, and you will know my fatigue was just a temporary road block to successfully blogging.

The fact that I just rambled all that shit, however, probably proves how tired I still am!

I am intrigued by the idea of caterpillars on bicycles, however, and sense a new childrens' book is now on the cards. As has been discussed previously, I am now fully into writing stories for children. They have not yet been published either, but I find the heartache of spending eleventy-billion years on a full manuscript that will never get published FAR more gut-wrenching than 1,000 words. I am sure Tamsin the Terrifying Turtle will be the first picture story book to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Yep. Damn straight. Especially when it has illustrations like this:

This is Tamsin the terrifying turtle; she is a prima ballerina!

Isn't she terrifying?!!

No! Not in that way. Don't be rude!
I have the great idea that I could illustrate my entire text about Tamsin and her grasshopper friend, using Microsoft paint. You may laugh, but I will have the very LAST laugh, I am sure!

I am that good :-)


Shut up. You are not having any of my millions now.

This weekend I will draw Phoebe Grasshopper at the the Duomo. It will be molto meraviglioso! No, seriously.

P.S. This is Katie Katerpillar, who can't afford a good bike because she keeps spending all her hard earned caterpillar dosh going to Italy. Based on a true story, although some events are fictional - the real Katie would seize the opportunity to wear a lot more shoes :-)

Life in costume!

Today the students came, for their last day, in costume. There was a little more to it than that, but this blog is about me, not them. It is possibly my favourite day of the year, and today I felt myself getting a little bit teary and I couldn't quite figure out why.

Then it hit me: how badly I would like to be in costume myself! Though some have suggested, harshly, that I should never wear hats (a point I believe I successfully myth-busted in Italy with my stunning array of beanies, berets and stunning stunning cappello!) I know I can pull off a bonnet like nobody's business!

I never did get to wear a dress with puffy sleeves – not that I’m dead yet, but the usual events where such a dress might be acceptable have either happened and not produced said sleeves, or have not happened. And may not.

(And let’s be honest. I have too many copies of vogue under my bed to actually wear them at my wedding. Hello!!!! I don’t pretend to be a fashionista, but I’m also not completely insane. Amen.)

However, this is me in my bonnet and period dress.

Note the puffy sleeves. They don’t really go with the pink bonnet, I admit, but the shoes and hat match and that’s what’s important.

I told you; I read Vogue.

As I was drawing this, I really got into the spirit of what my life would be like if I could indeed wear puffy sleeves every day, without being punched in the face for my impertinence. (I’ve already put my shoulder out this week; don’t want to do it again attempting to punch my own head in).

1. I would marry someone really rich, with a top hat and a pair of hunting dogs. I’m generally against hunting, but in my puffy-sleeved dress my opinions don’t matter as I am only a woman.

2. I would eventually become a suffragette and kill said hunting dogs. I don’t really like dogs either, to be honest. I might kill my husband too.

3. With my new found wealth (massive, massive life insurance plan) I would move out of the archaic, drafty family home of a thousand generations into something much more modern. I really like those colourbond roofs. And yes, I know it is Regency England, but I’ve just become a suffragette, killed my husband and his dogs and become an overnight bazillionaire; I think colourbond will happen, alright?

4. I want a house with a tower.

This is my house. If I can’t move to Italy or have puffy sleeves, can I pretty please have one of these? It also has window boxes with tulips in them!

Now, what would my theme music be? No Spice Girls please!!!

Cheers, m'dears!

Today is my last day with my year 12s.

Sad face.

Disclaimer: this is just a random sad face and not a self portrait.

As a teacher, most years I gladly wish my life away – in the sense that I can’t wait for holidays (not literally wishing my life away!!) – and am constantly looking out for the end of term.  Especially in those winter terms that never end and just go on and on my friend (sometimes you started singing it not knowing what it was ...)

Got it in your head now?

SUCKED IN!

This time last year I could have chucked in teaching and become a secretary.
Or a secret agent.
Well, ok, maybe not a secretary because I possibly don’t have enough working knowledge of anything technological beyond Microsoft word and Facebook (also tenuous at best). And I hate talking on the phone.
But as for being a secret agent, I've always thought that would be the way to go except for the following issues:

•  The application forms for ASIO are like, eleventy-billion pages long and the questions they ask are stupid and do not at all pertain to my vision of being Jayne Bond 007 with a super hot Astin Martin.
•  I'm not yet fluent in any other language than English and, let's be honest, sometimes even that's just gibberish!
•  You are required to pledge allegiance to living in Canberra, something I find so abominable it should be classified as in violation of my human rights. Seriously! 
•  Canberra is possibly the most boring city in eleven solar systems. Maybe even twelve. And they make lumpy gravy on their chicken schnitzels, so it deserves it's own bullet point. Amen.

But I definitely could have chucked it in.

We were told at uni that teachers can actually become anything in “life after teaching;” they have such diverse skills. And whilst I think our skills are indeed undeniable (also unrecognised and underpaid) what the hell else DO they actually qualify me for?? It is a something I’m yet to discover.

Luckily, this year, my quest to discover the answer to this question became moot: in 2011 I have really, really, REALLY loved teaching. It is the most exciting part of my working day.
(Obviously getting coffee rates pretty highly, too.)
This is not to suggest that I only like teaching in comparison to everything else I do, either; I genuinely get so much energy from going to class and sharing my enthusiasm for how spot on Hannie Rayson's views on asylum seekers are, and waxing lyrical about how marriageable Mr Knightley is. ("Marriageable," though not exactly relating my true feelings, is my attempt at embodying Austen's diplomacy. I want to marry him a lot.)

Yeah. I know he's not real. Shut up.

Let it be known to all and sundry that I have only taken one day off this year, because I want to go to class!

Also because I haven’t been sick. Lol.

So, on the day “my girls” finish, I want to say a silent thank you. You’ve been a real treat, and I feel that someone must be looking out for me in the karmic universe for things to have turned out the way they did! We worked, we laughed, and you’ve never once made me raise my voice, so I can still sing in the shower as well as ever!!!!

This is what you’ve made me do on a daily basis:

(This is my real self-portrait. You will note the likeness. Or I will punch you.)

(And I do love my year 10s too – naughty little munchkins!)

Random Ramblings

A task (used with students):

Go to the following website, and gather a random list of words from common to uncommon nouns to prepositions.

http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx


Here is my list:

Chuck Identical Gulf Load Under Help Less Amidst Bravo Livid Cunningly ploy Cinch Implicated Skinned Trillion Mask Unscrupulous Sounded Compromise Pop Hence Until Thwart Breakfast

Now, write a story using ALL of these words, to form a fluent and sophisticated (I like to think!) piece of prose. That will one day become a best selling novel. Or at least a short story I can make a few hundred dollars off. Or just praise and acclaim from nearest and dearest :-)

Here we go:

Chuck was helpless. He stood, petrified marble, amidst the haughty conceit of the less-than-average street thugs, so used to being implicated their demeanour was identical - an orchestrated nonchalance that had seen them get off a trillion times before. Bravo! Chuck half whispered under the terrifying spotlights. This should be a cinch for you! Such a gulf between the brute with Diesel threads, faded in a way only three hundred dollar jeans could be, and the fraying ends of pants that had seen a decade since they were rescued from a load of cast offs in a community seconds shop – before being passed from his father to Chuck.


Wrong place, wrong time? Like all the other times and places?


Sticks and Stones will break your bones, kiddo.

No. This was just the wrong school.

The principal’s face was smooth under a mask of congeniality, a ploy cunningly contrived to thwart their rational insecurity. He would lull them, until, with a pop the terrifying head of the raging beast would emerge. It was Chuck’s derelict word against the full-fee paying toffs of the inner east. Innocence buffeted within his skull, protests which sounded but could not be realised. There would be no compromise: Chuck would either admit, or condemn; lie, or be killed. He’d never even taken so much as an overdose in Panadol, and yet now his locker was full of drugs. About to be given marching orders from the only school in Melbourne that would take him.

Hence, Chuck was well and truly skinned.

*

The gavel swung down with a momentous thud. Self Defence. The judge ruled. The alleged victim was truly the perpetrator of this malicious act; the alleged accused actually a hapless casualty of his environment.

A long sigh of relief was omitted from the gallery as judgement day was realised to be not so bad, after all. Justice was served! Pizza for the jury! And ten million dollars in compensation for every year of time already served.

In reality, what was got was a new blazer a livid shade of red and a train ride to school that seemed to take barely half as long as the school day itself. Kicked out of one school only to be fed to another and with little time for breakfast. Waiting outside the gates like a Roman ruffian knowing he would be fed to the lions just inside the colosseum. Life is unscrupulous, Chuck thought as reality hit him with the full force of a tonne of brick shithouses. If life handed you lemons you couldn’t always make lemonade.


Sometimes, you were just fucked.

Why I am not a textiles manufacturer: the ugly truth.

This weekend I had a most splendidly relaxing weekend hanging out with some of the people I love the best (Mia Sorella, you didn’t show up in time, so you missed out!). However, whilst said weekend was wonderful, there was also some sadness:

R.I.P. to my favourite t-shirt.

You have to understand that I bought this shirt in America. It’s the softest, most flattering, perfectly fitting t-shirt I’ve ever owned, and only its colour stopped me wearing it every day of the last two years! It was bright pink, so I don’t really know what I was thinking when I bought it, but I was high on life when I was travelling in America two years ago.

And eating lots of hamburgers releases endorphins!

However, when I went to put on said shirt last week, I noticed I had spilt bleach on it. Either that or my sister’s cat, who likes to get into my drawers, had pissed on it. (Can cat pee bleach clothes?) However, I do have a love affair with bleach that has seen me ruin other items of clothing in the past. Not wanting to simply throw away my prized possession, I decided to dye it. I also happen to have a love affair with black, it’s a pink shirt; how hard could it be? My biggest concern was getting dye on my hands - I was sure the colour transfer of black to pink would be a cinch!

It would seem that in primary school I must have failed primary and secondary colours 101. In fact, I can’t even remember if secondary colours are what they are called! I know that red and yellow makes orange, and blue and yellow makes green. But equally, I assumed that black with anything just makes black. It does with hair dye. Back in the day – and by the day, I’m only talking a couple of years ago – I used to dye my hair black all the time, and the beauty was that it didn’t matter what colour you started with, black trumped all. If your hair was light brown, it went black; if red, it went black; if brown – I assume you are getting my point! At one time, I had to get my hair stripped, because it was so black it looked blue. That, and I hadn’t realised there was such a thing as blue-black, and had mistakenly bought that shade. So, the only colour that trumps black is maybe blue and I looked like an emo! Epic fail.

This is a picture of me with blue-black hair. Unfortunately, Clairol has a better colour palette than the Microsoft paint application. I like to think my drawing is an attempt at Manga. I also know that it is yet another epic fail – but I do like the dog collar!
(N.B. I have never, and never will in the future, worn a dog collar. Or been emo. Note the matching shoes to dog collar – this is in no way an emo trait.)

After soaking the t-shirt in the dye for about three times as long as I needed to to ensure the colour stuck, I washed it and dried it and was horrified to realise that pink and black, in fact, makes purple. PURPLE! It’s quite a nice purple; I’d be more than happy to wear it. If it wasn’t for the small issue of black and bleach stain equalling BLUE. My best-favourite t-shirt is now purple and BLUE! It looks like a giant bruise. It's a giant assault on my eyes, and I'm devastated!

How could this happen?!! My hands are still completely flesh coloured, and yet I must now consider whether or not to dye the entire shirt purple, or blue. I wonder if that will make it turquoise? This would be a real issue as I'm not wearing turqoise until I'm at LEAST fifty five.
Methinks I should just dye it in Clairol!

I love weekends

Today is really just writing for art's sake - and I mean, quite literally, art. My monkey:

This weekend, I did not do much writing, it is true, but I did go and see The Phantom of the Opera. This has long been my favourite musical. When the chandelier goes up over the crowd, my spine tingles. Though some have commented (so meanly!) that it's three and a half hours of my life that I'm never going to get back again, I would quite happily go and see it ten more times - if it didn't cost $25 a ticket!! Still, a cheap way to see Phantom. This illustration is the little masquerade playing monkey - otherwise known as lot 665. I was going to draw the chandelier, but I'm just not that good yet!

Imagine all the things I will be able to practice drawing as I practice speaking Italian in Italy!!! My turtle story is set in Florence - sort of. This time I will not only come back fluent, but a grand Italian master as well - and then I really will illustrate my children's picture book!!! Plan for this week: to write ten thousand words of my novel. Easier to re-write hastily written crap, than re-write thin air, me thinks. I will see if that theory works out for me! My first competition deadline is 30th Novemebr - 30,000 words! 30,000 words that have to be 1. written. 2 Thrown away and rewritten, and 3. Rewritten all over again. Already, my nymphomaniac antogonist has become not a nymphomaniac and merely misunderstood, and is now back to being a nympho. Maybe with a drug addiction. She is the antagonist, after all! Time to stop drawing monkeys and get cracking!

Freakish Fun!

Ok! Google-image the word “disgusting” and see what comes up.
Choose the first pic not involving people, post the image to your blog and then describe it. Yes, it is very late and I cannot sleep. Might as well write!

Um. Yuk.

The dead man’s head protruded from its porcelain grave. It wasn’t immediately clear how it had come to be there, or even its gender for, in the weeks since death the tissues had liquefied and a thick film of gelatinous goo pervaded the entire structure; it looked like an alien egg sac threatening to hatch. It appeared momentarily possible that the owner of this severed head might simply have drowned in his own bowel movements, but the stench of fetid cabbages begat a far more sinister ending. The wall and bowl were graffitied with the spray of excrement; a once slushy concoction that had been sharted in fear all over the bathroom walls, and then left to drip down in quiet terror until it hardened like putrid clay.


I was never going to be able to sell this house.

A Grand Kardashian Krock!

But how could I not watch one of the biggest events to hit magazines since Katie became a princess?

Yesterday, I did not manage to do any writing. Sad face.

But it was not all grim news. After the chest pains subsided from being at work, and I managed to avoid having an apoplectic seizure on Hoddle Street, I was treated to the emotional joys of grand, especially heartfelt, genuinely legitimate wedding celebration.

What. A bunch. Of fucktards.

Look, I'm sure they are all possibly the world's nicest people, but if they are they should try to look less like emotional fuckwits on their "reality tv" show.

If one thing was clear after watching 4 hours of the Kardashian wedding, it was that having that much money and breast implants seriously inhibits your mental and emotional capacity. But it was like a train wreck – I couldn’t look away!! It got to a point where we were rating how much they loved each other based on every time they kissed; it was usually a number in the minus. When Kim Kardashian kissed her mother with more passion than she ever kissed the aptly named “Kris” I knew that this was:

a) Either a very disturbing relationship that she has with her mother, or
b) Not real

I’m going for not real. And here are my reasons:

1. Early on, Kim makes the comment that she bets Kris didn’t know she wore a retainer. Only several weeks before their wedding. The only reason for this can be that they have never spent much time together, specifically at night.

2. There was a very weak-willed, strangely defensive claim from Kris that they’ve had sex. I would hope so. And yet, combined with the aforementioned number one, this all becomes highly suspect.

3. Everyone in the whole show, regardless of who they are, has a key to Kim’s house. Except Kris. And they’re getting married. And he claims to live there when he's not living in Minnesota. Which actually seems to be most of the time. Weird.

4. His name, and his sister’s name, both conveniently start with a K.

This last fact is almost too convenient, and here is my theory:

I think that Kris, who, by the looks of it no longer has any other career to speak of, was hired by the show, and the Kardashians, to carry on the plotline of their highly organised, pedantically scripted life/lack-of-reality show. The fact that his name started with a K and was now poor sealed the deal, and this is also why they’re all so worried he’s going to steal all of her money.

OF COURSE HE IS!!

Aside from which, I’ve never seen a couple who seem to hate each other so much. SHE EVEN SAID SHE HATES HIM!!

Absolutely killer dresses though!

This is my impression of how the Kardashian-Hump marriage will turn out:



This is supposed to be a broken heart, not a conjoined foetus. Though if this thing really was for money, the broken heart thing is probably completely bogus in theory as well as illustration!

I do enjoy a trashy slice of Kardashian reality!!

Time to Compete!

Now that I’ve got my writing mojo back, I have decided it’s time to embrace the world of writing competitions. Apparently, should I ever actually finish what I start (ie. one of the two novels I currently have on the go), it looks much better to have actually shown some writing success in the past.


The fact that I wrote an award winning story about two hats who were separated from their milliner’s shop and had to face a life of heartache without each other – they were deeply in love, you see – in the Mitchell shire writing competition probably doesn’t count.


I was nine.


Besides which, hats who are in love is just stupid. But it’s interesting to see how cynical I was about relationships even then!! (Note – I wasn’t really. They eventually found each other on the heads of two geriatrics in a nursing home, and were able to live side by side until their owner’s deaths. Which I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually write, but I’m far more morbid now and have read a lot of Shakespeare in the two decades since my triumph. In the unwritten sequel, they definitely ended up in two separate op-shops far, far away from each other. Or incinerated in separate cremations, a-la Romeo and Juliet!)


Anyhow, writing success is important on a cover letter. Because when you send in a manuscript, you have to have a cover-letter that sells your previous achievements. And my previous achievements are that I have completed a couple of degrees, made money from selling stories to magazines – admittedly, quite a lot of money, but I don’t think quantity of crap cancels out the fact that it is, indeed, crap, and not quite managed to finish anything that I’ve started. I'm sure it doesn't actually look awesome that I wrote 50,000 words of crap that I never did anything with. I never do anything with anything!


(Here is my updated picture of a grasshopper, just so you get my point: yesterday’s triumph is also yesterday’s news!)

Oh Dear Lord!

(However, I am having a lot of fun with the pain application on my computer, and think this could be a super-fun addition to my semi-regular blogging!)

Now, competitions ... what on earth can I write about? MOJO? Where are you???

A terrifying idea, and a turtle ...

Last night I wrote a children's story.

Don't get me wrong - there are NO pictures involved, except for the ones in my head, because I am honest enough to accept my failings as an Archibald prize winning artist:

This is my portrait!




So you can imagine, I don't really want to sully the reputation of my writing skills with any attempts to draw turtles throwing tantrums, and grasshoppers who like spaghetti. But it's a children's story nonetheless. The first I've ever written.

And, like Phoebe Grasshopper found about things she'd never tried before: it was so much fun!!

I spent 5 hours drafting and re-drafting a story that's not even one thousand words long. I'm obsessed with my little tale about about an ignorant and prejudical turtle who won't accept others the way they are.

Remind you of anything? The last entry into my blog might give you a clue! But I don't want to spoil my story with politics - children should not be spoiled by politics! It's at the heart a really special story that's actually helped me look at some things from a new perspective. Temperamental turtles need not ruin my life!!

Now, how to market a picture story book to a publisher when my best efforts at drawing a turtle look like this: