Tsk, Tsk

Hello blog. Hello ridiculously snowy northern hemisphere. Here in Australia we do not feel your pain, we only feel heat and refreshing breezes. On our dinner table are crayfish picked straight off the murky ocean floor by a mate of Josh's and succulent, sweet blue crab. Yum! The weekends have been filled with body surfing at the beach - sometimes with painful and scabby-kneed results. Josh finds it funny when the wave idly tosses me onto the shore and all he can see is my legs flailing helplessly in the air. He always waits to make sure my head resurfaces, laughing all the while, no doubt. I make my retreat, stumbling, defeated back to the safety of our dry towels and wonder if maybe I'm getting too old for body surfing and how long it will take to get all the sand out of my swimsuit and bodily orifices. The air is filled with dragonflies drifting aloft on the evening sea breeze as the sun casts it's warm glow across the Indian Ocean in a final farewell to another day then quickly and quietly sinks below the horizon as if to say, "See you tomorrow. Goodnight." Then it's off to start the day over again in another part of the world.

Missouri is in our hearts and minds for more than one reason. We watched True Grit last night and Josh said it made him want to go back to the States because some of the scenes reminded him of my parents backyard. Nostalgia certainly set in for me while watching the movie. Not only were the scenes familiar, but I was reminded of my grandpa George, who, my mother often remarked as I was growing up, loved western movies. I thought he would've liked True Grit. Coincidentally, today I got a letter from Texas. It was from my aunt, not the Texas ranger from the movie. It brought glad tidings and pictures of a soon-to-be new family addition - my cousin's son. Which brings me back to Missouri. A baby was born this week in Boone County. Welcome to the world Carissa Lee! Then, of course, there's the snowfall which has blanketed so much of the United States in recent weeks. Photos of my parents snow-plowed driveway and crisp, white lawn play on repeat as my screensaver at work. I keep hoping the more I watch the screensaver slideshow that the feeling of icy, cold snow will wash over me and save me from the oppressive summer heat. That, combined with the chilly air-conditioning at work, might actually be working.

My gin and tonic is working its magic. Hello weekend. Here I come!

Last weekend recap

This is what I did on the weekend --}


I sat on my balcony enjoying the morning sea breeze and my new bistro table and chair set that we got for Christmas from Josh's sister.

And I did this ... BEFORE

and AFTER. Aren't you loving the retro 70s wall tile and non-matching vanity?

And this... BEFORE

...AFTER - I bet you couldn't tell there was a table runner on this table before.

BEFORE... these are low fat mind you...

...AFTER - nothing a little gym time couldn't fix. This was me tonight after my first night back at Body Balance looking more frazzled than balanced.

Finally, something cute and fun - this was my Christmas wrapping paper.

Dont' you love the koalas hanging from the Christmas ornaments? I felt like such a foreigner when I bought it, but also completely triumphant at the coolness that I found it.

There's so much catching up to do and photos to show that I didn't have either the time or patience to put any more photos up tonight.

Valentine's Day. What's that?

I was looking at one of my favorite web sites tonight, Etsy.com, and noticed a link for Valentine's Day gifts. And I paused, then I clicked and clicked some more to find more links to other Valentine's gift compilations. Then I thought to myself "Valentine's Day... what's that?" Followed by another thought to myself, "did I really just think that?" then I realized I haven't experienced a hyped up commercialized Valentine's Day in a very long time. I mean, it has been almost a year since the last Valentine's Day and I seemed to forget in the meantime that Valentine's Day existed at all. Until tonight. When I saw the link. And I got a little sad because the clerk at the grocery store was hanging up a display of Easter egg chocolates the other day while another clerk exclaimed that they couldn't be hanging Easter stuff out yet because it's not for a couple of months. There wasn't even the slightest mention of Valentine's Day. There were no red, pink and white displays or roses or teddy bears or heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. There was nothing. It was forgotten. Or left uncelebrated because it is a trivial holiday that American cardmakers have over commercialized to capitalize on yet another relatively insignificant holiday.

But still, how could I, an American to the core, forget this most loving holiday of all holidays? Shame on me.

Now, down to business. It's 10 days into the new year and I have finally gotten back to the blog armed with photos and a strategy. I got this great idea from a friend - thanks, Gina! - to keep my blog up to date. I will take a photo of something from each day and post it to my blog with a blurb/anecdote of something that I did or learned or happened to me that day.

A few of life's little moments from the past few months that have stuck with me :

• I met a baby who's middle name was Possum
  
• My desk at work wreaked of patchouli when I got back from vacation and I still catch a whiff of it now and again
  
• The other week when I visited a house for work the owner told me her husband left in September. I thought she meant he left for work and she and her two young sons were moving to join him when she explained her husband had a mid-life crises, bought a sports car, and told her he needed his space. She had these two adorable little boys and the older one, who was four-years-old, insisted they stand in the doorway and wave to me as I drove away. What kind of person walks away from that? Argh!


• Lying in the cool grass under the shade of a Norfolk Island Pine in King's Park with my man on my birthday

Below are a series of photos that begin with some local Christmas light displays. It may have been hot, but some people still get into the spirit of the season... National Lampoon style.

The one at the right made the front page of the newspaper the week before Christmas. The display comprised a leaning Tower of Pisa, Eiffel Tower and Sydney Harbour Bridge over the driveway. Donations were collected to raise funds for a local charity.

The house at the right is by the beach. It's big. These people are just rich.

Tomorrow, see what I got up to on the weekend!

Packing... again

Hello. I'm back again. I can't stay away from the blogosphere or Perth. Just when I thought I'd had enough of blogging something new and exciting happened and brought me back here to my blog. I've been back in Perth for only three weeks and I'm already packing my bags again and moving on. On to a new job, new city, new life... at least for the next eight or nine months. Tonight I am off to the moderately sized seaside town of Bunbury to start a new job as the Real Estate Writer for the Southwest Times newspaper. It was pretty serendipitous that this job was advertised in the Perth newspaper the day I was returning to Oz. My loving and ever eager bf came across the job advertisment as he was already on the lookout for a job on my behalf prior to my arrival. It was the perfect thing and one of the first things he mentioned when I got off the plane. When the call came that I got an interview we literally jumped for joy. It was the 'big break' that I have been waiting to happen.

But with any new and exciting situation comes a handful of changes. Change that I am not looking forward to. I HATE change! I've never been good at handling change and already my nerves and emotions are rising to the surface. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't having to handle the first week in a strange city at a new job on my own. On top of that I have to find a rental house to live in within the week. The company only puts me up for a week in a hotel. I know, I'm such a baby. But having some familiar company would make the process 110% better. My loving bf is staying in Perth to finish his uni exams this week and travelling two hours each way just isn't going to work. I'll have to go at it alone. I guess it's nothing a little beer can't cure... hopefully.

An hommage to Melbourne Cup Day

Hello all! It is Melbourne Cup Day today in Oz. It's known as "the race that stops the nation" because most Aussie's will be tuned into the racing events throughout the day. From their office cubicles they will be watching it on their computers or listening to it on their radios. Some will take longs lunches or the afternoon off to watch the races at a pub and place their bets on their favorite horse. I, on the other hand, will be doing other things with my time. I partook in the event last year. The horse I bet on came in 2nd or 3rd. It's not only a sporting event, but a fashion one too. Big hats and fancy frocks are what it's all about for the ladies, mostly young women. The papers will be posting race results alongside photos of the young women in all their finery as if it were a red carpet event. As an hommage to MCD, I am inclined to post a list of a few of my favorite things about Australia:

• Electronic bill pay, also known commercially as Bpay. This is the ingenious all electronic way to pay bills in Australia that everyone uses. So convenient and no paper trail!
• EFTPOS. Another ingenious electronic banking development, eftpos is an ATM card that also works to pay at stores not just to withdrawal cash from ATMs. People haven't used checks in Oz for years (unless you own a business).
• Paying less than $60 for four tops from Target, but that's just an I Love Target thing.
• Getting paid a 'living' wage. I can work as a PART-TIME receptionist/ waitress and actually support myself off my earned income.
• Mailboxes. I realized how conveniently designed the mailboxes were in Oz. They simply have slots that the mail is put into. The 'posties' don't have to spend time opening and closing the box to put the mail inside. I was thoroughly appreciating this fact yesterday as I was taking outdoor furniture flyers around the neighborhood for a friend yesterday and putting them into mailboxes.
• As always, the weather. Can't leave this one off the list. You will hear no complaints about the weather from me these days as it has fined up nicely and the sun is almost always shining.
• The men. This one was SM's suggestion. Seriously, I think Australia produces some of the finest looking dads in the world. In other words, there are some serious DILFs living in this part of the world.

There you have it. I'll leave you to it as I go out and enjoy this beautiful day... {still looking forward to spending Christmas in cold Missouri!}

Dear Julie Powell... and 2 seconds of spring is simply not enough

I'm back. I lost a bit of focus in the last few months. I started a receptionist job about six months ago and have continued waitressing on weekends at the French restaurant. Once I took the reception position (at a hotel) I took a hiatus from my job hunt and my blogging. I had hit a wall, but only a temporary one. My blogging spark was reignited yesterday by a wonderful movie I saw called Julie & Julia.

The movie Julie & Julia is based on 'two true stories'. One story is of a young woman named Julie Powell (Amy Adams) who is working in an unfufilling job and feels lost with her life and ambitions (that has me written all over it). The other story is of a young Julia Child (Meryl Streep, who could be better?) who also felt unfulfilled in her role as a houswife to an American diplomat while living in Paris in the 1950's and is trying to find SOOOMEthing to do with her time. Throughout the movie it feels as though the two ladies are living parallel lives, however, Julie Powell's life converges with Julia Child's as she embarks on a year-long quest to cook all of the recipes in Julia's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writing about it in a blog. It was quirky and tender and so relatable for me as an aspiring writer who blogs. At one point in the movie Julie tells her adoring husband that Julia Child saved her because she was 'drowning' before her blog became a hit. I knew exactly what she meant.

I came home and promptly looked up Julie Powell's blog. Upon Googling her name it came up with her current blog called What Could Happen? Julie's original blog about her cooking quest was nowhere to be found and having been posted during 2002 it is probably lost somewhere in the vastness of the blogosphere by now. I read her current blog anyway. In the blog Julie writes about the triumphs of her book becoming a movie and the 'surreality' and glamour of the press surrounding the movie. She is charming, innocent, and refreshenly real... just like her character in the movie. She's just your average girl-next-door who has gotten really, really, lucky. If you are female GO SEE IT as soon as you can!

Dear Julie Powell,

I wish I were you.

Sincerely,
Kirsten Haydu

My other topic of today is springtime. My favorite season, but a very short-lived one here in Oz. I've been taking walks around the neighborhood and smelling the lovely flowers as their perfume drifts upon the afternoon breezes. I've never known a place with a more fragrent spring. Probably the best part about Perth in the spring is the smell of flowers everywhere, even driving down the highway with your windows down you smell flowers. It's amazing. It makes me want to stay in Perth... but then spring is gone as soon as it comes. Within a few weeks it seems like the weather has turned hot and sultry. Or it's cool and windy. The weather is fickle and can't make up it's mind what it wants to do. Should I leave the doona on the bed a few more weeks or put it away? I've taken a few photos of the flowers in my garden to try and savor spring a little longer. Everyone has roses in Perth so it was no surprise when we moved into this house that there are eight gorgeous rose bushes along the white picket fence at the front of our lawn. Here are a few of the roses:

And an illegally transplanted wild Kangaroo Paw flower that as you can see is evidence of how quickly the spring passes. It is already fading away. The colors when they first bloom are a magnificent ruby red and emerald green, now merely a washed out red and dingy green.

And in my blogging absence I have also been crafting a Mizzou scarf for my friend Gina's birthday.

It's been one of those days... or weeks... or months

Today I was making a mental list of all the things that have frustrated me lately. My cooking skills, for example, are at an all time low. This could be because I'm under pressure to cook a decent meal for someone other than myself now or it could just be that our oven needs to be serviced because it's not heating up properly. Yesterday, I whipped up some nachos for dinner. Chosen for its relatively easy preparation, one would expect a good outcome. I used a taco seasoning recipe from a friends blog, but due to a lack of measuring spoons I guessed at the spice measurements using regular utensils then proceeded to spoon two large tablespoonfuls of the taco seasoning into the meat. BIG MISTAKE! It was so spicy hot that we could barely eat it. I had obviously mismeasured the cayenne pepper and probably didn't put enough of the other spices into the mixture to offset it's spiciness. I had also decided it would be good to whip up some homemade guacamole. It was ok, but a little on the garlicky side which SM kept emphasizing. I had to run out to the shop to buy more tortilla chips and sour cream to offset the spiciness so SM could finish eating his dinner. As SM just verbally volunteered, "I didn't mind the taste, but my bum did."

Aside from my cooking misadventures, I've also had trouble starting my new knitting project: socks. Socks are complicated to knit. They require the use of four knitting needles instead of the usual two. I found an online knitting tutorial to walk me through the steps of knitting socks - great... but before I even get started I have to knit a swatch to check my gauge so my socks don't turn out too big or too small. That's where the trouble is. I've knitted several swatches and have not found the right sized knitting needles to achieve the right gauge yet... and I'm getting sick of knitting swatches. I just want to get started on my socks already! Finally, I think I've found the right size needles I need for one of the pairs of socks, but I can't locate the size needles I need in any stores. So I'll be ordering them online and that may take a week or more to get them sent to me and I need to have them finished to mail to the States in a few short weeks!!!

Last on my list of frustrations is the internet. We've only had our internet set up for about a week and I'm already angry with it. We can't seem to set up a wireless home network on the service we've had installed. It's one of those things where no one seems to have a solution for you that doesn't involve spending more money to get what you want. I spent most of my day off trying to solve this problem and still haven't found a solution.

On a high note, the weather the past few days has been beautiful and I managed to get outside to enjoy it yesterday. SM and I hiked to the summit of Greenmount - the hill we live at the base of. We walked about 5 kms up the hill and back. The view from the top was gorgeous and you could see for miles. Looking out we could see the airport and city....

... and our neighborhood (our house would be somewhere in the far left of the photo).

Greenmount was very aptly named as everything was really green and there was a beautiful trickling freshwater stream which SM had a drink out of.

I've also finished a few of my first knitting projects. The scarf for Charity's birthday....

... and daisy kerchiefs for her three little girls.

I was so happy when she emailed me to say how much she liked them. I knew I had chosen the right person to send my first knitting projects to.