A few new thrifty vintage finds recently prompted some redecorating in my little home. It’s come together so nicely that I thought it was a good idea to share a quick gallery with you all. It’s felt so cathartic to get rid of old furniture that didn’t suit the space and create a place that was really, finally, just for me (and Ripley, of course).
‘Til next time,
My, my, my. Not only is it suddenly 2018 but it’s suddenly February 2018 and, pardon me, where has the time gone?! I don’t know about you guys, but last year sure got away from me and to think we’re already well into the second month of a brand new year and Christmas was an age ago and summer is nearly over and there are Cadbury creme eggs in the shops and, oh ALL THE THINGS!
Hello. How are you? Nice to see you. Your hair looks bloody great.
I’d sure like to get back into the habit of regular blogging and recapping my January reading seems a good place to start. So, without further ado and in no particular order…
The Messenger – Marcus Zusak (2002)
After becoming something of a local celebrity for foiling a bank robbery, nineteen-year-old Ed Kennedy starts receiving mysterious playing cards in the mail, setting his uninteresting life into a cryptic and tumultuous spin. A mixed bag of self discovery, small town desperation and human connection, The Messenger could have felt cliche or contrived, but Zusak presents a story that is unpretentious and characters that are believable and raw.
Where Zusak particularly succeeds is in capturing the necessary ordinariness of his setting, tinging small town Australia with a kind of humble sadness that makes Ed’s journey as a disaffected almost-adult all the more poignant. Though certainly problematic in places, The Messenger made for pretty compulsive reading and was tricky to put down.
3.5/5 stars.
Strange the Dreamer – Laini Taylor (2017)
The big strength of Laini Taylor’s writing is how effortlessly she seems to blend vivid imagination, original storytelling and lyrical prose. It was what made the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series so enjoyable and what here sweeps the reader so fully into the fictional world of Lazlo Strange – daydreamer, orphan and librarian – to solve the mystery of the lost city of Weep.
The first in a planned duo of books, Strange the Dreamer feels part fairy-tale and part classical epic. Cleverly conceived and beautifully written, with good doses of adventure, conflict, gods and monsters, softness and light, it gets a whole-hearted two thumbs up from me.
4/5 stars.
Labyrinth – Kate Mosse (2005)
A $4 op shop bargain and veritable doorstop of a book, Labyrinth promised secrets, adventure and conspiracy all wrapped up around that old chestnut, the true Grail. With parallel storylines of medieval and modern day France, and two characters with a mysterious connection, Labyrinth, for the most-part, delivers.
On discovering two skeletons in a cave in the French Pyrenees, the crux of mystery resides with Alice in 2005 but following Alaïs circa 1209 is clearly where Mosse is most at home. Though highly effective as a sweeping historical narrative which paints medieval France with a deft hand, the story could have been 100 pages shorter and been no worse off. The main characters are well-realised and compelling, though some of the supporting characters felt under-done and largely expositional despite hints of potential for being interesting in their own right (Shelagh, for example). These quibbles aside, there is more than enough suspense and intrigue to keep the pages turning (all 700 of them).
3/5 stars.
‘Til next time,
It’s Sunday afternoon and my eyes hurt. It’s more likely caused by the smoky bonfire I went to last night than from watching Ghost Shark (2013), but I’m fairly certain Ghost Shark did nothing to help. Let’s jump right in…
Ghost Shark rates 2 out of 5 vengeful, translucent spirits.
‘Til next time,
First thing’s first: I’m not a Marie Kondo decluttering type. I have stuff, and I have a lot of it. I’m big on shopping and holding onto things for sentimental reasons and if I was looking for a way of describing my household style, I would (somewhat generously) say happy clutter. There comes a time though, usually about once a year, when I go on a decluttering spree of the wardrobe variety. I call it my Brutal Seasonal Wardrobe Clean Out and it generally coincides with realising all my clothes, when laundered, do not physically fit in my wardrobe and that I have started dressing from a clean clothes pile, normally strewn over my bedroom chair. It’s also sometimes a ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ scenario because, I am telling you, for everything crammed into the cupboard, I have nothing to wear.
Marie Kondo has one thing right: letting go can feel cathartic and freeing, so filling the first bag or two with clothes to donate is always easy. These are filled with the obvious items to cull. It’s getting down to the nitty gritty that can be tricky. We want to avoid decision fatigue, whereby everything feels like trash and then three days later you regret donating that pair of soft pink mary-janes and that one dress that was old but was actually still awesome. To a hoarder like me, being brutal is vital, but so is making considered assessments. It’s a slippery slope.
Items I bought without trying them on.
Everyone knows that sizing varies wildly from store to store, and a medium from here may be comfortable but a medium from there may only fit one leg. We should all know better than buying without trying. But you do it, I do it, and occasionally time is of the essence and you just have to guess, right? Oh hello, unflattering mid-calf length knitted pinafore dress. And you, frilly off-the-shoulder shirt. We tried. It didn’t work out. Let’s move on. You’ve hung, unloved and unworn, oftentimes with tags still attached, for long enough. Verdict: cull.
Concert t-shirts.
Oh, how frequently have I handed over my hard-earned $40ish to say YES, I WAS HERE AND IT WAS GOOD. More often than not, my concert tees washed poorly and shrunk and now languish in the drawer, a monument to experiences past serving only to take up much needed space. I have moved them from prime drawer real estate to a sentimental box at the back of the cupboard. I have occasional thoughts of stitching them all into some sort of quilt, but I am not known for my craftiness so they will probably stay there still, until I next review the whole wardrobe sitch. Verdict: keep, for now.
Trend items that are no longer on trend.
Let’s consider the speed that trends move. It’s logical that some pieces won’t stand the test of time that staple items will, but do you hang on to them hoping they will re-emerge or do you let that fleeting moment remain consigned to the annals of history? I’m remembering a time when I wore red and yellow tartan pants with a beret, but that is worst case scenario. Look at velvet and skivvies. Who knew they would be seeing the light of day again? What goes around comes around might be true, but it could take its sweet ass time. Trend items, in my view, are here for a good time not a long time. Verdict: ditch.
The maybes.
The maybes are a tough bunch. They are the much-loved, well-worn items that parting with is such sweet sorrow. You know the ones. The cardigan from that first time you decided you were adult enough to splurge on proper quality expensive-as-hell knitwear and it lasted for years but is finally, devastatingly, starting to show its age (pilling, am I right? BASTARD). The favourite dresses and jeans that fit a pre-pubescent body but can’t quite handle hips or boobs or, dare I say it, all that pizza. The old leather jackets and that one pair of boots. Verdict: tough call. I sometimes move my maybes to a separate box and if I haven’t worn them or thought about them by the next wardrobe clean out, they are instant goners. Sometimes wardrobe catharsis comes in stages. What can I say?
‘Til next time,
I’m home sick at the moment, trying to work up the energy to go to the supermarket for green tea and a fresh supply of paracetamol. I’m wearing new knitted bootie slippers that I never want to take off and this ancient bobbly jumper that is too big and well past its prime but that I can’t part with for personal reasons (top of the list right now: it’s super cosy). So of course, in the spirit of the-couch-is-my-home-now procrastination, here we are. Hello, blog. Long time, no see.
Neglecting my blog reminds me of one of my worst habits: starting things that I don’t finish. I am surrounded by half finished projects, deserted at the mid-point because I turned magpie and (probably) got distracted by something shiny. Writing projects are chief among them, as is my Masters in Communications. (See also: cleaning out my wardrobe). There is no excuse, really, and no amount of frustration over these looming incomplete demons seems to prompt me to action. Oftentimes I just assume I will get back to it. Therein lies the problem: most of the time I don’t.
Recently during a clean up I found and re-read two such projects. One a very incomplete manuscript for a classic sword-and-sorcery style fantasy novel (which I am sure I imagined being a trilogy, because that is the done thing, right?) and the other a complete first draft of a humorous vampire novel, both written by me some years ago. Both have major failings and neither do anything revolutionary or of spectacular merit, but somehow I had forgotten how far I had gone with them both. How many hours did I spend on these for them to end up in a drawer? Achievement unlocked: English major with unfinished manuscript in drawer. Wait, two unfinished manuscripts. Do I get a patch for that?
I think a part of me assumed I would finish one if not both of these eventually, and then my reading grew more diverse and I wondered if there was much merit to what I was writing and whether launching it out into the world was worth it. In short, was sword-and-sorcery fantasy or funny vampires really what I was passionate about? I’ll admit: for a time, yes it was. There is process and there is end point. The process, at the time, must have been enough if the product of so many writing hours was locked away with little thought or use afterwards. I try to claim that it bugs me, and on some level it really does. Reading a solid chapter with a brief middle section that reads “plus more here to link scenes” is just annoying. Past April, how could you?
I wonder if it would give me a hearty sense of accomplishment to try and finish either of these projects, just to prove I could. Truth be told, it has been so long, I quite enjoyed reading the pair of them. What if it wasn’t desertion or failure, but just a lull? It’s tempting but I think I know that neither of them is right for me now, and anyway, we’ve established that one of my worst habits is failing to finish what I start. Maybe the process, this time, really was enough.
‘Til next time,
Valentine’s Day is approaching, you guys. I’m not a fan and never have been, but this is not a rant about Valentines’ Day being commercialised / made up / lame / a Tuesday. If it’s your bag, more power to you. It’s not mine but it’s not that hard to just chuck all the jewellery catalogues in the recycling instead of complaining about it. Go forth and be loved, lovers, and bask in your I-got-flowers-delivered-to-work smugness when I see you on public transport. Good for you; you deserve it.
It does seem timely though, to use this opportunity to talk about dating and romance, so here we are. Don’t know what it’s like to be a single girl negotiating this whole dating landscape this day and age? Well, pull up a chair, bucko, and let me take you on a journey…
You’re a bit confused at the moment. Because obviously you are a sucker for cute boys with nice arms who laugh at your dumb jokes and are sweet to their mothers. It wasn’t a ‘thing’ though, even if you wouldn’t have minded it being so. What can you do? Sometimes people don’t people very well and it sucks. You can only be you and you’re not everyone’s cup of tea.
So you feel a little deflated, until you pick up Aziz Ansari’s excellent and hilarious Modern Romance at the airport, which fills you in on how this whole thing is legitimately HARD FOR EVERYONE, not just dorky introverted girls like you, and people are BAD AT IT, as backed up by a swag of research data. Evidence, you guys! In your face, people who reckon this stuff is easy.
But then you’re on a plane reading a book about dating while this perfect hipster poster-child couple (long hair / straw hats / sketch books) start madly pashing in the seats next to you and you start to think that if your life was a sitcom this would be one of those moments when the laughter track kicks in.
So you think now is the time to just branch out. You don’t have to be looking for anything in particular. Just find some people to go on dates with. At best, you will meet some nice, interesting people. No big deal.
And then you find yourself on Tinder because it’s quick and easy and no one can bother you unless you’ve matched with them. And this happens:
You go on a turbo swipe-left marathon and then:
You’ve rejected everyone in town. Good for you.
I kid, I kid. You matched with people. It’s not all doom and gloom.
Your bestie hits you up to say a former colleague has asked after you, seeing as how you’re single and ready to mingle and all. They seem to be forgetting that THEY HAVE PREVIOUSLY MET YOU and you did not particularly get along. Hooray for the information age. Just use the damn app and leave my mates alone.
You realise your conversation skills might not be quite up to snuff when you find yourself chatting with a guy about the weather. The weather?! You don’t care about the weather. You are capable of talking about so many other things. (Sorry, Thomas. My bad.)
The point is, it doesn’t matter. Not in any real way. And it’s hard because people are hard. No one has a clue what they are doing. Look as much or as little as you like. Message, don’t message. It is no big deal. The only person you are going to end up with forever is yourself. So buy yourself some goddamn heart-shaped chocolates for Valentine’s Day, and cut yourself some slack. You’re a pretty sweet deal.
‘Til next time,
I work in HR and I think reference checks are balls. There, I said it. I’m sorry. I know it’s an unpopular opinion. Send the HR police. I will surrender my badge.
In places I’ve worked before, ref checking has been treated in turns as anything from a box-ticking exercise to the ultimate be all and end all. The intent is of course to verify the truthiness of the candidates skills and experience. But here’s the thing: no one with half a brain is going to list a referee who is going to give them a bad wrap. And if they don’t have half a brain, how the heck did you miss that in the early stages of the recruitment process? That’s on you, kids.
The best referee, in a lot of cases, will be a candidates current manager – especially if they have been in that role for a long time. That might obviously be awkward: not many people want their boss to know they are looking to throw in the towel asap. So right off the bat, I’m speaking to someone whose knowledge of my preferred candidate’s work performance could be 4 or 5 years out of date.
So maybe my candidate lists someone else. The number of times I have played phone tag for two days with Dave, only to find out that Dave wasn’t Melanie’s manager at all – he was just a colleague. Nice chatting, Dave, but you’ve been no actual help.
And obviously there was that whole thing from last year when Hamish and Andy asked a random guy to act as a referee and he actually did a pretty good job of faking it. They called him ‘the best bloke in Australia’ while HR peeps and recruiters cried quietly into their coffees.
So if everyone is only listing good referees, or non-manager referees, or even fake referees, is there really value in the reference checking process? Are they a waste of time? Maybe. Are they going away? Probably not.
And that’s kind of sad, because it can be a very time consuming process that, if your questions aren’t effective, may yield very little reward. I know plenty of candidates who received glowing references and then turned out to be problematic or unproductive employees. I think value would be better added through more stringent screening processes and better interview questions which really probe for detail. But ref checking doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
With that in mind, if you are an applicant, there are a few things you can do to make this step in the process a smooth one. Help me out, you guys.
‘Til next time,
Full disclosure: I did not complete all 12 items on my to-do list. Gosh darn it, you guys. I KNOW.
After the success of the first six items, I was keen as mustard to crack on. And then… I didn’t really crack on. I made moves towards completing all the remaining items but didn’t get any of them quite over the line, which is disappointing. But [partial] credit where [partial] credit is due – I had a lot to try and squeeze in. The key message seems to be doing something/anything/a bit is better than doing nothing. Right?
Item #8: Invent own cocktail and serve to friends
Why was it on the list? I had visions on Tom Cruise-esque shaker-flipping and fancy-pants colourful drinks with punny names and high alcohol content which I could whip up and serve with a flourish along the lines of “why yes, this is my signature drink, the Gin Weasley”. Or, in other words, I don’t really know. The ‘serve to friends’ bit was important, because it meant the drink had to be drinkable and not just a random mix of whatever spirits happened to be in my cupboard.
Achievement? I admit I gave this one a red hot go. I researched cocktail making, learnt about a thing called ‘the golden ratio’ that is apparently key to cocktail flavour success.
I turned a little bit mad scientist and got really, very drunk in ‘the lab’ (my kitchen).
I did not nail the cocktail. At all.
(They were all terrible).
Item #1: Go horse riding
Why was it on the list? Duh, because horse riding is ace.
Achievement? Research only. I know where to go, what is costs, and what I need to do to make it happen – I just didn’t get it done by year’s end.
Item #11: Take a short course
Why was it on the list? Learning is fun.
Achievement? Turns out December is not the time to try and do a short course of any kind. Who would have thunk it, right? Partial credit though, because I will be knocking this over in the first couple of weeks in January. I’ve got plans.
Item #9: Play cricket in a park
Why was it on the list? I’m what you would call indoorsy. This seemed a good excuse to get outside. Preferably with a side of picnicking and beers.
Achievement? Purchased cricket bat from op shop. Did not use.
Item #10: Road trip
Why was it on the list? Road trips are the best.
Achievement? Created road trip playlist. While that is important, not much progress here at all. Trying to squeeze in a road trip and a bunch of Christmas catch ups simultaneously is not easy. Perhaps if I had driven somewhere slowly? Like, really slowly?
….
Item #12: Walk Lofty
Why was it on the list? God knows. Do I want to walk up a mountain? No, no I don’t. But I feel like I have failed as an Adelaidean by having never attempted old mate Lofty.
Achievement? I could say the Christmas heat wave thwarted this one, but that would be a half truth. I had tentative plans to smash this out with a friend, and weather and scheduling did prevent that, but in all honesty, the catch up was always more likely to be beers than mountains. Sigh.
Beer > Mountains
So there we have it. Not quite a success, not quite a failure.To be honest, the best lesson from the entire exercise was that there is time. There is time to start, to try, and to complete a lot. 6/12 is better than 0/12, and the remainder will probably (maybe) be polished off early this year now some of the wheels are in motion. If you know anything about cocktails and can save me from myself, the Gin Weasley still needs to happen.
‘Til next time,
The year is as old as it will ever be, and I am glad. Glad to see 2016 end, because what use is there dwelling on another year of peaks and troughs, yeses and nos, wins and losses and everything in between? But glad also because somehow, even though at times it didn’t seem it could, in my little sphere of existence the year is ending in a (mostly) positive way and there is much to be glad for.
For 2017 I wish for myself so many things. I wish to be better, and nicer, and kinder, and stronger, and braver and more open. Mostly though, I just want to be me. Just me. Not someone else’s version, but my own. I am accountable to myself and a new year is as good a time as any to own that.
So be kind. Be useful. Be brave. Bring wine.
‘Til next year,
Whoa-oh!
Lizard on a chair
^ I’m so, so sorry, but this has by far been my favourite meme of 2016. I couldn’t resist. Well played, internet. Well played.
So, not to boast or anything but this list business is going swimmingly. I admit that after my last post on the matter I felt like I may have bitten off more than I could chew, but so many people have got behind the idea and have helped me figure out how this whole adventure can work. And suddenly, I’m actually halfway there!
Item #6 – learn to play a musical instrument
Why was it on the list? As a kid I was relatively musical. I didn’t have much talent, but I loved making music and had lots of lessons in various instruments. And then I stopped, and that makes me kind of sad. Late in 2015 there was a brief foray into the ukelele which involved lots of you-tubing and one fairly mediocre triumphant cover of that 3-chord classic ‘You are my sunshine’ but the cheap, multi-coloured uke I bought refused to tune properly so now sits on a shelf, a monument to half-realised dreams.
Fortunately, my friend Jess is musical, with a background in piano and song and even a history of teaching people like me how to make the ol’ black-n-whites play a tune.
Cut to: item #7 – learn to use chopsticks
Why was it on the list? Because it’s a life skill and has been on each of my annual goals lists since oh, forever. It’s what I call a rollover goal and anyone who has been to Sushi Train with me knows the struggle is real. How embarrassment. But for this one I sort of cheated reinterpreted. Item #7 became:
Item #7 – learn to use chopsticks
So I give you this…
Yep. I was harbouring a secret musical gift. Who knew.
Item #2 – go to outdoor cinema
Why was it on the list? I was super bummed that I missed the moonlight cinema sessions last year (and the year before, and the year before) because it’s stacks of fun. As luck would have it, my mate Rose stumbled upon a free outdoor screening that the City of Unley were putting on at the Capri Theatre on Goodwood Road. Free, you say? Sold!
The best part about outdoor cinema is packing a picnic and let me tell you: when we picnic, we picnic hard.
The screening was Eddie the Eagle, a film I would not normally have seen, but its schmaltzy sentimental (and apparently historically loose) vibe was good for picnicking and made for easy watching in a outdoorsy setting. I wouldn’t want to watch anything that required too much concentration at outdoor cinema anyway, so this suited me just fine. So, is ski jumping on the list for 2017?
No, thank you.
Item #4 – go rock climbing / abseiling
Why was it on the list? Honestly? I have no earthly idea. I can’t remember why this made it onto the list at all. Probably I saw it on tv and thought it looked cool. I do know it’s something I have never tried before, so maybe that’s a good enough reason.
Rose and I hit up Magpie Springs at Willunga – a cute but jumbled sort of hippy / yoga / cafe / gallery / winery set up which Google told me also had a climbing wall that it seemed would fit the bill. It’s not a huge wall and, no kidding, we mocked it. This was going to be a piece of cake. Well.
That shit is hard.
Item#3 – go on a wine tour
Why was it on the list? Um, because wine tours are awesome and visiting cellar doors to chat with the winemakers is always worth it.
Since we were down that way, it seemed a good opportunity to hit up McLaren Vale for a self-driven mini wine tour. We took in Alpha Box + Dice, had a pit stop for pizza lunch at Pizzateca, and finished off at Samuel’s Gorge.
Boom. Wine tour. Done.
Item #5 – write and post a handwritten letter
Why was it on the list? Letter writing is a bit of a lost art. It’s rare, but personally I love getting mail that doesn’t come in a window-face envelope and knowing someone has thought of me enough to take the time to write. I thought sending a personal letter to a friend would be a nice, thoughtful, old timey, heartwarming thing to do.
And really, it was the quickest and easiest thing on the list so there is no excuse for not knocking this over sooner.
I don’t want to overshare the contents but I wrote the letter and loved the process. Handwriting brought out a different style of writing than email or text and jeepers does my penmanship need a little love.
TLDR: current tally is 6/12.
‘Til next time,
April All Year 