pretty (or needs a sweep)

The front of our garage:




.

postprandial sedation

I have learned that roasting a turkey on a 37^oC-ish day in an un-airconditioned haus is not the most sensible thing to do.

Still, it was delish! We should really repeat these sorts of meals at a more suitable seasonally appropriate time.




Not quite enough bread stuffing, so sealed with 1/4 lemon (the rest of the lemon was fisted in with the stuffing).


Pre-carving. Normally I'd brown and cover with foil for the last part of the cooking, but teh internets persuaded me to do the reverse and they were right!


Table. We really do need a bigger one for all the fam.


My plate. Mmmmmm faux thanksgiving.

It's all about the simplicity rather than the perfection these days, so we decided to take it easy on the side dishes. Originally we'd planned roast potatoes, but realised timing would be an issue, given that the turkey took up most of the oven, and so settled for the more traditional, and it turned out much more excellent, mash (unhomogenised jersey milk and organic butter FTW).

In thanksgivingal conversation I mentioned the delightful Jano's menu and Don was dead-set on giving maple glazed sweet potato a bash. While he loved it, I'd have to say that for the rest of us, while we found it super-tasty, our un-American palates really did not care for the extreme sweetness with a savoury meal - we felt that sweet potato and maple syrup were much more suited to a pie - served with lashings of cream and icecream. I cannot even imagine what sweet potatoes would be like with the traditional marshmallow topping.

This afternoon Don tranformed the carcass into stock, which made for an utterly wonderful turkey soup.



Still a wee bit left for turkey sambos though, which is as it should be.

.

perfect

What adorable and thoughtful children I have!

Birthday gifts in order of receipt:


Earrings and bracelet made by Bessie


Murder, She Wrote Season 3 and 4 and Euro super-plus tampons(!) from Joan.



Yes, the tampon thing might seem somewhat peculiar, but one cannot obtain such things here and I often bemoan this.

.

purging and rewards

I spent a great deal of yesterday waiting for the salvation army truck to come and take away a table and Joan's giant old dresser as part of our multi-staged garage clean out. The dudes wouldn't take the table because it had a couple of (small) chips in the veneer (being that I'd guess that it is over 60 years old, you'd expect a small bit of wear and tear). I pointed out that I had seen stuff in infinitely worse condition in salvos stores, but they were un-moved. They are apparently now taking much more of a hard line with collections, which I'm a little baffled by, because you don't go to the Salvos to acquire furniture in mint condition.

They were also initially reluctant to take the dresser, because I'd removed the mirror to make carrying easier and I pointed out there was a chip in the glass at the bottom. I had to do a great deal of persuading that the chip could not be seen when the mirror was attached. We also managed to offload a box of books, old sewing patterns, a vcr and other assorted miscellany.

I think we're going to have to put the table on the street and call the council to remove it. Hopefully someone will take it and love it in the interim.

So after the Salvos dudes had left, I ventured out into the quite dreadful heat and walked to St Vinnies, where I found something I have been looking for for YEARS and have not been able to find anywhere in Australia - a sweater dryer! Vintage in original packaging!


Thanks universe!!

I also grabbed stuff for my newest project - which is to expose myself to a variety of reading material that I would not ordinarily choose for myself - everything is fair game. The book also has to be inexpensive, I should pay no more than $5 a book.


$4 worth of books, including a pre-1965 schoolgirl novel for Joan's collection.

Kicking off the project:
Judith McNaught: Someone to watch over me
John Grisham: The Client
Peter Høeg: Miss Smilla's feeling for snow
Roger Moore: Roger Moore as James Bond (an account of the filming of Live and Let Die)

.

6x7

It's that time of the year again:





And what a very thoughtful and awesome surprise gift from my darling spousal unit.

.

nomenclature

After many years of utterly loathing her blog name, Dfkan will be quite pleased to henceforth be referred to as Joan.

This is based on her resemblance to the Mad Men character - what with the ranga-ness and the curvaceousness and the m4d secretarial ways.


No, I will not be going back and replacing all instances of Dfkan over the past couple of years.

.

4.37 kg

This evening, in preparation for the thanksgiving/belated-carol-birthday feast on Saturday, we acquired a turkey.


We were all about buying a fresh one, but Don and I were both at work quite late this evening and the poultry store was closed when we went to do our shopping. So, in desperation (and not wanting to spend $50zillion at DJs, frozen it is!

I'm planning to ignore the "self basting" label, basting is half the fun of roasting.

Now for the 3 day defrosting in the fridge!

.

random snaps in lieu of content

---

In crazy neighbour news, The Manifesto has grown. There is occasional re-arrangement of the documents. She appeared to have thrown a chair through her flyscreen on Saturday.

.

15cm long

My darling husband received his first biking injury on the way to work last week.



Some fuckwit opened their front passenger door at traffic lights and caught Don's thigh while he was riding past. Fortunately it was right onto his leg and not right in his path, as there may have been a quite spectacular and painful head-over-heels tumble.

We're so proud, truly, Don can now be called a cylist.

.

i don't have any pants fitting that description though

Google Reader has been suggesting some quite excellent blogs lately, of course it has been suggesting plenty of ghastliness too (often the same ghastly blogs over and over, despite my repeated clicking "No Thanks". "Dear Google, I really don't want to subscribe to the news limited feed, no really..."), but I digress.

This post is about one of the excellent blogs I have found and loved, and which, more importantly, has revolutionised my sartorial vocabulary.

Imaginary internet friends, I give you the extremely dapper An Affordable Wardrobe and the Go To Hell Pants.

I've latched onto this description like ... well, like a thing which latches on. I have "go to hell" dresses, shoes, and in particular several pairs of "go to hell" underwear (one with rainbows).

And apart from the excellence of that phrase, this blog has just confirmed that America is indeed a thrift store utopia. I really need to take a couple of giant (empty) suitcases and foist myself upon Phil and Smilla or Mom. I'm convinced I could clothe us all for the next couple of years for about $56.73.

.

when it is too hot to think of a title

We have wee creatures who hide in the kitchen in late spring/summer, and on very hot mornings, they come out to explore:

---

I'm really getting on board with the messy desk at home too.


Flowers a spontaneous present to myself on the way home from work.

.

<3

Heart on the footpath.



Part of an occasional series.

.

Hutterites

Like most right-thinking Australians, I utterly loathe Telstra (I loathe them so much that I will not even link to them). I loathe that I am dependent upon them for my rarely used telephone service, just so we can have ADSL.

So when I saw that our awesome ISP was offering naked DSL + $10 of voip + 50gb download for the same price as we are paying now (with less of those good things), we were raring to go.

Sadly, there was more Telstra hate involved, as we discovered when we went to transfer to naked. We are on shared spectrum (which is a Bad Thing) and the only way to get naked is to cancel our existing service and sign up again.

Which is cool and all - except we would be without the internets at home for 2-4 weeks.

Strangely Don is freaking out at the prospect much more than I am.

We've not yet decided on a date, but if it is 4 weeks, our lifestyle will be revolutionalised! For four weeks anyway.

.

completion date: sometime in 2036

I fear my sore forearm may have been the result of too much knitting, rather than (or in addition to) too much mousing, so am trying to ease off on both, much to my annoyance. The back of Don's jumper is almost complete and was causing not a little angst with all the wool it was consuming - there was no way I would have enough to complete it and was toying with a vest. Fortunately I had the brilliant idea of visiting alternative Lincraft (the City store being all out of the desired colour), and much to my joy bought the last four balls in stock, which (hopefully) will be adequate to complete it. This may now be some time with my self-enforced down-time.

While we were out and about buying wool we visited Space, which I utterly adore and afterward was quite ready to ditch all of our furniture onto the kerb and redecorate. Unfortunately, I do not possess the vast amount of cash such an endeavour would require.

---

Impromtu Japanese last evening. Although I would die for gyoza and think that anything in tempura batter is delicious, it's not my fave asian cuisine (that'd be Korean or Vietnamese), Don adores it though, so I try to force myself to step outside my comfort zone.

.

blogging my crazy: 2

I have been (unintentionally) rather quiet about my recent visit to Iman and, as the next one is tomorrow, this is a quickish summary.

I spent a fair bit of time in the session chatting in a meandering way about various things: about how a single small incident or thought can make me worry disproportionately - and then I brood and brood (and generally harsh on myself) and end up in a terribly unhappy state; about how I feel everything has to be ordered and perfect, otherwise I am a worthless and bad person (for that special bit of craziness I hold my dead-to-me mother solely responsible) and generally about me being a hyper-perfectionist. I expressed my extreme frustration that intellectually I know these things are completely ridiculous, but emotionally I just can't seem to stop the deluge of negative thoughts.

We talked about how my internal (and external!) dialogue is super-negative and judgey and how I might stop myself going into these awful downward spirals (as opposed the awesome downward spiral).

At the end of the session, I got some photocopies of 23 year old exercises about mindfulness and self-talk to read (hopefully not do, because I haven't done them) and three homework tasks(!).

Task 1: I must leave a corner of my work desk disordered
Task 2: I must not rush into the kitchen and tidy up after the babies tidy up after dinner
Task 3: I must let some housework slide

Then I had to sit with the discomfort and emotions, which was ... discomforting (but not quite so hellish as I had anticipated). Although I did have to kind of organise the workspace into slightly less disorder, as I couldn't find anything I needed - so to compensate, I put my stationery in disorganised places.

I also was tasked with improving my self-talk - which has actually been not too difficult and quite pleasant.

So, I've had a quite mentally healthy two weeks. Worrying things did happen and my thoughts did not devolve into the whole "you are a bad person" thing. Yay!

What has really made a difference (apart from the above) is seeing quite dreadful things happen to various people on the periphery of my life, ranging from the nightmare-ish to the depressing - which sounds a bit deranged and evil, but it is more of a "Fuck, life is so fleeting and short, why the hell am I wasting my energies thinking so badly of myself?".

.

placeholder

Well, I did do one more very small thing before I downed tools/keyboard last evening:

Ta da! The still extremely embryonic ... carolbaby.

I'm not entirely sure if I have a plan for it.



.

there's quite a long post in my head

Which will hopefully make it's way here tomorrow. I've been scrolling far too much with the mouse this weekend and consequently the forearm is acting up a wee bit yet again. Definitely needs a rest before I'm in agony for months (again)..

Meanwhile, be madly envious of the brekkie the babies made:


French toast (Bessie) and honey-cured bacon (Joe/Frank).

What lovely wee poppets!




Typing one/left handed is hard.

.

productive

Well I did accomplish something today.


Old lady shoes in bin.

.

where i did not a great deal

It's been a dismal, rainy kind of day, weather-wise today, just begging to be filled with indoorly activities.

After taking Bessie for an early haircut (having spent TWO HOURS last evening combing the most ghastly tangle from the back of her head, after which she decided that the length was just too much to manage) and a quick bit of shopping while I was waiting (dvd, new work shoes and chillis), Bessie and I settled in for a lazy afternoon of Top Design Season 1 watching, knitting and pie cooking.

---

Our pie was super-quick and easy. We used the leftover pastry (which froze exceptionally well) from kitchenette's fabulous apple pie of death filled with lightly stewed raspberries, blueberries and strawberries.







Verdict? Perhaps not the prettiest pie, but a superbly delicious one.

---

I'm now a fair way through the back of Don's jumper, slightly frightened that I may run out of wool and there is no more in Lincraft or online ... fingies crossed.



I've had to resort to using stitch markers, because I kept screwing the k2p6 pattern up (because the other side is all knit and not p2k6 as you might expect), they have made everything quite a good deal more satisfying and less hair-tear-out-ing.

Still not sick of it yet, but there is a great deal left to do.

---

Despite the post-art-and-car-purchase-money-saving kick we are supposed to be on, I desperately needed a new pair of shoes for work (and, naturally, feeling ridiculously guilty for doing so). The standby black old-lady pumps (for when I am not wearing boots &etc) which live under my desk are incredibly dowdy and becoming quite uncomfortable (no surprise, given that they are at least 5 years old and were not new when I bought them).


Not a particularly great shot, but I like the wee buckles very much.

Black old-lady pumps go in bin tomorrow.

Definitely need to talk to Iman (the MHP) about my complete inability to spend money on myself without feeling angsty, as, I've mentioned here before, I delightedly throw ridiculous amounts of money at art, at kitchenware, at Don, at the babies, but am an utter scrooge when it comes to me. Needs to stop, as I am setting a horrendous example for the kidlets.

---

Don has spent the majority of the weekend making phở from scratch, using this recipe. He's even made the accompanying chilli sauce.

It's actually quite fabulous, well worth the effort expended and time involved (especially as my participation primarily consisted of enjoying the results):





He's a pretty excellent cook, that husband o' mine.

.

yet another addition to the family

As I mentioned yesterday, Don ventured out to collect the newest addition to our art collection. Given that it wouldn't fit in GerryScotti (despite Don's best efforts), we briefly considered hiring a maxi-taxi to collect it, but then decided on a ute from Balmain Rentals, which ended up being much cheaper than a maxi-taxi or a courier.

I should probably back up a bit and talk about the latest unplanned art acquisition (although, to be honest, they've all been unplanned). After last year's success (or eXtreme eXtravagance) at Art Sydney, we again bought tix to the opening night, with the intention of Not Buying a Single Thing - what with the cultural fund (we set aside $100 per pay for such things) being completely and utterly bare after the last purchase

We watched a rather good programme on ABC2 a couple of weeks ago about the crash of the art market and the crash was totally in evidence on opening night (slightly delayed GFC, obv.). Certain galleries (including those we bought from last year) were definitely conspicuous by their absence. Some of the paintings we recognised from their appearance last year. The minimum price was around $100 ($800 last year), average was about $5K (was circa $15K last year) and the highest price was much, much less. Let us not even go into the commercial turn the event has taken <shudder>. Last year, you truly could not move for people, this year was sparse by comparison - alcohol ran out by 7.30pm last year, this year still loads left by the time we left (I guess, maybe 8.30pm). Loads of art-sluts last year, while there were a couple of art-sluts in 2009, most people were accompanied by babies (definitely the accessory of the season). Anyway, all this goes to say that last year and this were definitely a study in contrasts.

So, we were definitely sticking hard to the No Art Buying plan, until my lovely husband fell in love with Jeni Saeyang. The more we went back to check her work out, the more I liked her too. And a comparative bargain compared to what we've paid for our other art. How could we resist?


Don, for scale.
Yes, I know it is derivative (abstract expressionism anyone?) but I really do like it quite a lot. And Jeni is totally gorgeous. I love meeting the artists I buy from.

Now we have no walls left. We either need to buy sculpture (so much heinousness out there and not a lot of the good, unless we want to go Over seas (so wonderful) or move to a new haus if we want to continue the acquisitions (or, more sensibly, channel the art fund into a mortgage fund).

.