Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known

K, it’s time for my weekly show and tell.  I have been busy this week making more stuffies, making brooches and making more headbands.

These are my stuffies. They are made from recycled bed linens so they are totally awesome prints and most of them are really smooth and soft (some aren’t, apparently some people like quite stiff bed linens, each to their own). They are stuffed with polyester filling and have acrylic felt eyes with recycled button pupils. Try finding a more eco friendly, vegan, all round awesome toy that is even half as cool as my stuffies…you won’t! The little girl standing on top of her friends, in their luxurious home of an old fruit box, is named Margaret. Margaret likes listening to Tom Jones records and drinking Pimms on Sunday afternoons. None of the stuffies are officially online for sale yet, but if you want one so bad it hurts to breathe you could email me, that would work. They are $35. I wouldn’t reccomend them for children under five years of age, they have little buttons that could be pulled or chewed off and I would hate to be responsible for choking any wee ones. They are toys for adults, because there are too many “adult toys” you can only buy in seedy stores and not nearly enough nice toys for grownups that you’d be proud to keep on your desk or on your bed. Also, there will only ever be one stuffy made from each kind of fabric, and because it’s all recycled fabric you’ve got Buckley’s of finding another piece in the same print, so don’t proscrastinate, buy one this second. If you want to know the name and bio of another of the stuffies you can see, drop me a line or comment.

These are my fabric brooches. There are two kinds, the scruffy ones and the smooth ones. Both are awesome. I love making these, so much, because I get to hand sew. I get to handsew with the stuffies, their eyes are hand sewn and so is the hole they are stuffed from, but the brooches are entirely done by hand. Each one is entirely unique because it would be as good as impossible to try and make them identical. The brooches are also the product of a clever combination of recycled fabric and buttons, they are backed with felt and have a brooch pin so you can attatch them to your clothes, or even on a bag or something. I am looking at making a slightly smaller version to put on headbands and hairties as well. Both are $15, and also not officially for sale, but again I can release one if you want it super bad. Some other colors will also be available, but as the recycled fabrics tend to be either pinks/purples and browns/yellows the other colors will be less commonly featured. The purple/blue/grey one on the bottom right is one that you won’t see very often.

All prices on my online store will be the same as the ones I list here, so there won’t be any difference if you are worried about me scamming you. All prices are inclusive of regular postage within Australia. If you’d like express or registered post, or something sent internationally I am down with that, contact me for a quote.

My mobile finally got sorted. I called Them this morning and spoke to a nice girl (hurrah for ladies who can make things happen!), she instructed me to turn it off, then on again and just like magic it worked. I feel so lame that I didn’t think to try it earlier, but I would only think of doing that to fix a computer, not a mobile. I also called Virgin to cancel my old phone, there was no tears or pleading which was unusual because that’s normally how getting out of a phone contact goes down. There is a fee, I hope it’s $150ish but I suspect she really did say $250ish. Either way it sucks, but I’ve been with them less than a year so I sort of deserve to pay something, plus it’s exxy to pay it all up front, but cheaper in the long run to pay that now than to pay $50/month for 9 more months and still have to pay a fee at the end. I am going to look at the final bill when it comes and then call them to dispute it if it seems unreasonably. It can’t hurt I suppose.

I’d love to get today off work, I have a lot of little bits and pieces to do and it would be so nice to spend a day getting them all done but I suspect it won’t turn out that way. My ovaries feel as if they are trying to gnaw their way through my tummy so I am going to eat a bunch of chocolate, it won’t stop anything from hurting but it will make me happy.

• I worked for nine and a half hours today, without a break. It sucked. This why I cannot be bothered with a more coherent post, brain power will resume tomorrow.
• You know who I hate? Australia’s largest telecommunication network. Everything they do seems to be for the sole purpose of making life more difficult for people. I activated my SIM online and my phone has reception and works fine…except if I want to call or text anyone. So I call them in case I activated it wrong. No, I did it right, but I have to call this other number to activate my $25 “free” credit. The number can’t be dialed from my phone. Awesome. Try time and time again over the course of the day and call them again yesterday. Phone should be working, no real idea why it isn’t, no one can help because it’s a public holiday so I’m told to try and call that number again in six hours. Still doesn’t work, more than 24 hours later. Is it so much to ask to just have a phone that CALLS PEOPLE? Jesus, tap dancing Christ! I suspect this particular company is run by sadists who eat babies because I have never dealt with any other company who seemingly derives so much pleasure from the paint and frustration of others. I may go into their store tomorrow and have a tanty, I am getting no satisfaction from calling the phone jockeys, I need to speak to a face.
• I have God awful period pain at the moment and feel so angry with everything  I feel as if I could poke my hand through someone’s chest and tear out their beating heart so a tanty is incredibly possible (for all those people who mistakenly believe I’m actually nice all the time). If you work for Australia’s largest telecommunication company, be scared to go to work tomorrow, I won’t be pleasant.
• I sold some more buttons, a lovely girl bought two from me this arvo. It’s exciting, I have the coolest customers, they are always so friendly and awesome. And they always have cool names. I like selling stuff to awesome people, it makes me confident my stuff is going to a good home…as sad as that sounds.
• Today’s Facebook gift is a Turkey Baster. Why on God’s green earth would you pay $1USD to give someone  virtual turkey baster?! The only people who would require are people who’ve ever cooked a roast turkey (I can’t think of anyone I know who has done that) and someone hope to try a spot of DIY IVF (also, no one I know) so what good is a VIRTUAL turkey baster?! Is there some big turkey joke I am missing? Does this make sense to anyone else? Why am I getting so concerned over a virtual turkey baster?!
• I am going to go be beastly offline now. I become incredibly aggressive with PMS, except I am only all talk. I think I threatened to beat up every guy I work with today, with not even the slightest intention of getting off my office chair (and they knew it) but it felt so much better to threaten to hurt someone. Much like the idea of going and having a big meltdown, complete with lying on the floor and screaming and kicking type stuff, about my phone makes me feel much better about the whole thing. I never would, because it would draw far too much attention to myself and I am far to lazy to expend that kind of energy, but I like to think about it.
• I am going to post a “Tell Me I’m Clever” post tomorrow, I have been freaking clever this week, so prepare to be amazed!

I finally worked out what is wrong with me. Well, it wasn’t so much me working it out as it was Wifey working it out, but either way, I found the root of my problem! I have PMS! I know what you are thinking “Dude, you fail at being a girl if you don’t even know what PMS feels like” but because of my dodgy plumbing I’m on the pill to regulate everything my body seems incapable of doing, so I get to choose when that time of the month is and all that, so I normally expect PMS when it happens. Very occasionally my hormones seems to sort themselves out and do what they are supposed to do and I get a random bout of PMS, and that is what is happening now.

It’s happened like…five other times ever, so it’s not something I am really used to, nor does it happen at any specific time or season or anything so it’s not something I can plan. It all makes sense now! I can’t stop eating, I have been a big pile of  misery for the last few days, I am angry, I feel super fat and I’m having lots of dreams about pashing girls. Knowing it’s PMS doesn’t really fix anything in the short term, but knowing that it’s only a temporary feeling is better.

Wifey is an absolute beast when it comes to PMS. When we went to the bush she was PMSing big time and I was concerned, at points, that she might have dropped me off in the middle of nowhere and left me there. She’ll admit this herself, so I’m not even being a bitch, but she is totally someone you would rather chew off your own hand than annoy at a certain point in every month. I think that’s the reason she was able to pick my PMS before I did, she’s clever.

I feel much better knowing I am not actually just getting super fat for no particular reason, or being unbareably miserable and wallow-y because my brain candy isn’t working anymore. I guess it’s probably not helped by the fact that this is the first round of PMS on medication so I am a bit more free and open about my shitty feelings so I’ve actully told people I feel like crap so it’s just a different experience this time around.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that my mojo should return shortly. I am just going to cut myself a bit of slack and indulge my ravenous appetite and need to wallow for a couple of days and then I will be sweet. Fighting it has probably make me feel worse so I am just going to go with the flow and everything will resolve itself.

Being a girl is shit sometimes.

• My mojo is slowly returning. I have written and deleted about twelve posts so far. I’m just going to try and write though this “eh” time, so please just bare with the exceptionally mediocre offerings for a little bit longer? Please?
• When I have not been working, I have been sewing or stuffing or ironing or cutting or something else related to craftiness. I still sleep and bathe and all that junk but it would be safe to say that it’s pretty much consuming me at the moment. Not so much in a bad way, but I am definitely preoccupied at the moment and find it difficult to talk or think about anything other than fabric or business.
• Speaking of crafty, I made a sale today. TO A STRANGER. I rarely sell to strangers, mostly because blogging gives me a fairly wide audience so the people who buy my stuff are usually also bloggers, or readers or friends of one of those people. I’m pretty amazed about the sale as I’ve done almost nothing to promote my store yet, nor is there even very much listed at the moment. That means someone was just browsing, saw my buttons, thought they were cooler than the other stuff they saw and parted with their cash, that’s fantastic! I love being in business!
• Today was productive, on a number of levels. I researched using a NextG phone for wireless internet while I am out on prac, but whole “plug your NextG phone into your laptop” deal is not Mac compatible, so that idea was canned. Seeing as that was canned, I no longer needed a new phone because I happened to have my old, 3G enabled, Telstra locked phone squirreled away so I got a $25 NextG pre-paid starter kit and I’m as good as sorted. I then had the brainwave of just using this new/old phone from now until I leave the country which will 1) save me money, as it’s just prepaid and 2) allow me to cancel with Virgin and sell my new/old phone. I spoke to the guy in a phone shop today and he said Virgin doesn’t have an early cancellation fee as far as he is aware and they’d probabaly charge me less than $100 to cancel, if anything at all. Super yay! I tried to call and do that today but the public holiday stuffed that plan up for me. If anyone is in the market for a Samsung D900 that is less than a year old, working brilliantly and has never been dropped or otherwise abused, let me know!
• While I was at the shops, I had a hankering for a piece of jewellery…which had to be lovely but less than $50. I wanted a bracelet I can wear all the time but didn’t see anything outstandingly beautiful and settled on the idea of a ring. I got a big, wide silver band for $30 and as I was buying that I noticed a gorgeous sterling silver chain bracelet. It was on sale for $110 which was quite good because it’s a fairly substantial bracelet so I thought about lay-buying it, so I could still have it, at some point, but not outlay all my cash up front therefore keeping inline with my stingy saving plans. D’Nanny caught wind of my plan and demanded she be allowed to pay for it for me so I “don’t get myself into debt”. I tried to explain that it wasn’t debt if you lay-buy something and that if I didn’t pay they just keep my bracelet and any cash I’d paid to date and that I do have enough money to buy it, I’m just being stingy but she was adamant I was not allowed to pay for it. D’Nanny is the only person I know who carries around spare $100 notes in her purse, but she doesn’t use ATMs so I suppose she has to? Either way, she bought it for me and it’s just lovely and I feel rather blinging (and quite spoiled) at the moment.
• I’ve decided to sell my Spencer and Rutherford bag as well, I have only used it a couple of time and as much as I love it I just won’t get around to using it anytime soon and it’s not coming OS so it may as well go. It’s $275 on the website at the moment, which kind of makes me gag that I spent so much on a handbag to begin with, but it pleases me that the resale on eBay should still be quite good. I am not smart enough to not to drop lots of money on an accessory again though as I would currently punch a nun for a Mimco button wallet. I know I am possibly years late in hopping on this Mimco button bandwagon and every fashionista worth their weight in Manolos has stopped using her ages ago, but that works for me. I like buttons, a lot, and a purse with a giant button on it would be awesome, plus if they aren’t super cool anymore they should be relatively easy to buy. I want one badly, I may siphon funds from the S&R sale to fund this new dire need. They are still exxy on eBay, but they are so sweet!
• I am aware that my blogs at the moment are all “work, work, craft, craft, money, money, want, want”. I wish I wasn’t so boring and materialistic but I yam who I yam. I have tried hard to be really sensible with money lately so if I splash out just a little, especially before I go on prac and cannot shop or waste money for two whole months, I don’t think it’s so bad….right?
• The rest of this glorious long weekend will be spent hunched over a sewing machine or laptop with a short break for a BBQ. I insisted D’Olds have a BBQ at some point over the course of this long weekend as we would most likely have our citizenship revoked for being so painfully unAustralian if we don’t, so that is now happening. I plan to make a giant mess of the pumpkin and fetta salad Wifey does so, so well. It’s pretty much one of my favourite salads so if I fuck it up I will be so upset…and Wifey will tease me. I also found some supremely excellent vege sausages the other day, they are infinitely better than the rubbery Sanitarium ones and they taste like TVP which I think is awesome. (They are in the frozen section in a green box, I think they are “Fry’s” brand, for those who are interested).
• Happy long weekend!

• Still no mojo.
• I found out the other day my job runs out at the end of February. Fuck. I think it’s a sign that I need to get my act together and have my online store and stall all sorted by then. I am choosing to see this as one of those “one door closes” type situations and hopefully my crafty ventures are an indication of the new door that is opening. That’s the way I am choosing to see things, I still refuse to believe it will turn out any other way than spectacular.
• I dyed my hair this morning. It’s something I hate having done in a salon because I am 1) stingy 2) fussy. I have very short hair and a box of dye costs about $12. It takes me 5 minutes to do and seeing as I’ve been doing it since early high school I am a pro at not making a mess of my skin. It’s almost black, really, really dark, flat brown. It’s my color, I feel most like me when my hair is this color. It’s probably an indistinguishable change to the average human but to me it feel so much better and is much darker than my hair was getting. If only I was born a brunette, it would have saved me so much money. D’Mummy is naturally quite dark haired with brown eyes, and D’Brother is pretty dark with brown eyes as well but I must have inherited D’Daddy’s (strawberry blond/blue eyes) because I am naturally dark blond and have greenish hazel eyes. I don’t suit blond hair, I am too fair and the tone of my natural hair color doesn’t suggest a Nordic look, more….”mousey” or “monochrome”, if you will.
• Best and I have nutted out dresses for the wedding. I get the style I want, she picks the color. I am down with that. At one point Bestie wanted all of us in the same dress, but the other two girls are 5’8 and size 10, and I am neither of those so I would be that awkward one in the wedding party who doesn’t quite fit in. I negotiated with Best that she can have us all the same color, but that I would really prefer if we could all wear styles that we felt comfortable in. I’m going for something similar to my ball dress but with a lower waist and less poufy skirt. I am in love with my dress already and feel much, much better knowing I won’t be the Amazonian one looking pained standing next to the tiny, perfect people. Thank Jeebus BP and his brother are relatively tall or I might be the tallest one in the wedding party. Why do I have such wee friends?!
• Work has taken to not telling me not to come in, despite there being almost no work for me to do. It sounds awesome to be paid to sit around and do nothing but it’s actually pretty crap. I spent most of today wandering around the warehouses and watching funny video clips my boss has on the computer. We don’t get access to the Internetz at work so I can’t even go surfing, I just sit and doodle on my desk pad or swing around on my office chair. It’s nice to be earning money, but I can’t stand being bored all the time.
• I have a desperate urge to be in a band, more specifically a girl band. This is slightly difficult considering I can’t play an instrument to save myself nor do I sing in public. I think I would also be too shy to go on stage anyplace, so maybe if an awesome band needs someone to dance around side of stage, banging a tambourine and sort of dancing to herself I could do that, but otherwise I might have to can this urge of mine. Bother.
• I want to be Patience Hodgson when I grow up. “Nothing Sir” is my newest favorite song, followed up “Lies are much for Fun”, “Science is Golden” and “19 20 20″. It’s a shame The Grates album seems to only go for 11 minutes, all the songs are so little! I want more!

• I have momentarily lost my mojo, I have started to write so many posts and have deleted them. Apologies in advance for particularly lack lustre posting, I hope my mojo returns soon.
• I didn’t have to work yesterday or Monday. Monday I spent organizing myself and cutting things out, yesterday I made six headbands. At midday, an hour after I was told not to worry about coming in, I called my HD and begged for an appointment. They had one at 1pm so I showered, dressed myself from the floordrobe I have going on at the moment (yes, I am lazy) and dashed into the Valley. I had just enough time to call and harass Jac to come into the Valley and have lunch with me. After my haircut I collected her from the movies at Southbank and we went back to the Valley mall for lunch and a spot of op shopping. I got a long denim skirt for $8.50, it feels like it compresses my internal organs but it’s not hard to get on. It’s one of those ones that requires a deep breath and a suck in to get the zip done up, I think because most of my pants are quite loose and saggy at the moment I have forgotten what tight clothes feel like. Everything denim I have ever owned has always stretched out heaps after a short while, so I imagine the skirt will be similar…if not, I guess I will just have to enjoy having very compact internal organs.
• I had a new stylist yesterday when I got my haircut, she was from Manchester so we chatted about the UK while she cut my hair. She did an awesome job but spent about 20 minutes too long finishing it. She used clay as well as hairspray on it so my hair just felt really…gluggy, I came home and washed it so it’s all better now, I hate having sticky hair!
• I also fell in love yesterday. With a machine. As Jac and I ate gelato I smelled the most wonderful scent wafting in the air, it was coming from Perfect Potion a few doors up. I went in to suss it out and found this wonderful machine pumping steam and aromatherapy oils. When I was in Korea I developed an addiction to vaporizers, they were everywhere and in the harsh winter weather it was nice having some moisture in the air, but adding oils to the process?! Genius! I never found out which oil was being used in the machine, the sales lady was faffing about with another customer. I would totally have dropped the $150 on the machine right then and there if I wasn’t on my stingy savings plan. If anyone wants to ensure my future happiness (and maintain my dewy complexion and overall well being) you could buy it for me, I kind of want to have babies with that machine I  love it so much. Good smells are one of my favorite things.
• I have wicked allergies today, my eyes are burning and I can’t stop sneezing. Fingers crossed I won’t have to go to work and sit in my air conditioned box today, I just kind of feel like lying around being squinty and hurting today.
• Yesterday I started listing things on MadeIt. I haven’t put much up yet, so I won’t do an official link to my shop until it’s all up, but I think it’s fairly obvious what stuff is mine anyways. Just wait for a couple of days though, if you can, because it will be cooler when there is lots of things to look at (…and spend your hard earned cash on).
• Over and out, sorry for the shitty post!

Right, so what will I be selling? What won’t I be selling may be a shorter answer, but for the sake of making things clear for myself (and for the entertainment of all of you) I’m going to go ahead and list all the things I will be selling:

• Stuffies (5 made so far, 4 if I keep the one I am not sure if I can bare to sell, aiming for 10 or so)
• Tie Dyed Nighties (8ish and I won’t be making any more for the moment)
• Headbands (6 so far, aiming for at least 15)
• Buttons (100 or so of the paper ones, 50 or so funny ones, I’ll make more funny ones though)
• Pillowcase Bags (3 made, 184586 cut out and pinned, 0 motivation to sew them. This is D’Mummy’s new job)
• Hula Hoops (D’Mummy’s idea, I have about 8 made up and waiting downstairs for someone to play with them)
• Fur handbags (fake fur, settle down, vegans!) 0 made, I possess the materials to make 2)
• Magazine bowls (6 made so far, 138648 more that are able to be made, this is my TV watching activity)
• Record Bowls (2 made, I’ll probably knock up 8 or so more because they are quick and easy and flashy as hell)

That actually sounds like very few items, now that it’s listed.  I thought about making some more button earrings but I am still having adhesive issues and if they are left sitting in the sun they will come unstuck, it’s just too hot at the moment. I thought about making some of my doily tops or painting some tshirts and maybe even making some denim cut offs with fabric patches (cooler than they sound, think less “Babysitter’s Club” and more “awesome”). I think it’s probably best to start off with a smaller selection of things and see what sells and what doesn’t. Things will range in price from about $2 for button badges to about $55 for the fur handbags with a fairly even spread across price points between those two amounts. I know at markets a lot of purchases are on impulse so I want to have a fair few items for less than $10 so there are things people will buy without really thinking about the purchase.

I didn’t have to work today so I made about six headbands and four stuffies. I am yet to photograph anything, I just feel I have crap everywhere, there are piles of fabric and stacks of magazine pages and just bits and pieces everywhere. I am sort of working on everything all at once, so I don’t want to pack everything away but I feel hopelessly disorganized. I think I need to work on a game plan and set some specific targets so I know what I am working towards. I am not making the most effective use of my time.

Alright, this has been your Monday evening freakout, as hosted by me. I hope you enjoyed it. For now I am going to sew an eye on one of my stuffies, carve a stamp  and then make a big list of what needs to be done and allocate a time frame to each of them. It’s an absolute must do if I am going to stay motivated and not just throw in the towel like I’ve done previously. Any ideas of awesome crafty bits that I can make that are relatively inexpensive to produce and quick to make, send them my way.

In other news, I am quite certain I have broken my smallest toe this morning. I was vacuuming and somehow managed to bash it in a way that made it slam into our bathroom scales and in a separate direction from my other toes. This prompted a rather guttural groan and a barrage of most unladylike language directed towards the scales from me and made me instantly feel like throwing up cause it hurt so bad. I know there is nothing you can do for a broken toe, particularly one that is smaller than a Cheeto but it really fucking hurts, 10 hours after the fact. Boooo to tiny toes and their flimsy bone structures.

Well, I’m a day late this week. I know, but I had to work all day yesterday and most of today and my button press only arrived this morning so I didn’t have time to pump out anything awesome by Thursday this week. Forgive me?

So, if you were wondering how awesome it is to own a button maker, imagine the best thing you’ve ever owned and double it. That’s about how cool it is to make your own buttons. It may, of course, be slightly less cool if you have not wanted to make your own buttons for as long as you can remember but it’s still pretty cool. I will also have really buff arms in a short while because you need to be reasonably strong to pull down the arm of the press and strong, I am not….yet.

So here’s some pictures. I’ve made like 100 buttons so far, which is about 50 more than I planned to make (left). I have had a thousand kinds of beautiful Japanese origami paper stored away from ages and I decided to bust some out and use it for the buttons. I hope everyone else enjoys the paper as much as I do, cause dammit, I’ve got a whole bunch of buttons to sell. I am only keeping three for myself (right) which is an example of supreme will power, because I adore them all but would probabaly have difficulty wearing 100+ buttons on a daily basis.

Don’t mind the dodgy lounge room floor fauxtograhpy of the buttons, I am going to take proper lightbox pictures of everything over the weekend. So what else have I been making? Let me show you! I have been making some “no knit” scarves (left). It’s far too hot for scarves in Brisbane at the moment (and most of winter) but these ones are loosely woven so they will be warm but not stifling. I really quite like them, especially the grey one, but I need to stop keeping the stuff I make for myself and do more of the “selling to other people” stuff. I have also made quite a few of the old faithful magazine bowls (right), they now come in four dandy sizes which is pretty cool. The baby one could be a change dish or a bowl for keys and they go up three more sizes to the largest one which about the same size as a fairly large, deep dessert bowl. I’d like to make a whopping great one, maybe like a fruit bowl size, but my hands are currently claw like from either holding the button press arm or cutting with scissors and I need to give them a break for tonight. I also bought this old suitcase at the Op Shop the other day for $3 (left). It’s awesome! It’s sort of a bit scratched and marked on the outside but the lining is fantastic! It will be good for carrying stuff to the markets as well as a fun way to display some things. I think it was such a good buy.

One of the side effects of the increase of time spent hunched over a sewing machine, or a stack of magazines or a table doing something, when I am not at work hunched over a computer, is that I am breaking myself. My spine feels like I have a column of fire running up my back most of the time. You know how you can wriggle around and crack your back and it feels so much better? I wriggle and get to the point where it will almost crack but I can’t get it to do it and that sucks. I have about 87 cracks I need to get out of my back so I am going to pay a visit to our local Chiro and get myself straightened out. It feels better just thinking about how good it will feel to hear all my crack being pressed out of my spine. I also get a really hollow sort of ache in my wrists and my palms feel all tingly and numb most days as well. It’s probably just some sort of RSI or whatever you get from doing fine motor work in a really repepative fashion. I will be one of those Nanna’s who needs to have a knob on her steering wheel so her poor, crippled hands can curl around something so she can steer the car, but at least I will have gotten my moneys worth out of my hands in this lifetime!

I’ve decided to go to a yoga class as well, in all my free time, you know? I’ve always been too scared to go to a class but the place where my Chiro is offers a class on Monday evenings. It’s OK to do on a casual basis, plus it’s alright for beginners. I have been practicing yoga very sporadically for a good few years now, so I get the general gist of it all, I’ve just never done it in front of people.  I’d really like to pick it up again, on a regular basis. Yoga makes me feel good.

Tomorrow I am going to continue on my Op Shop trawling mission looking for frames and old bed linen, then spend the rest of the weekend sewing or otherwise crafting it up, in a desperate attempt to get ready at some point to start selling all this stuff. Eeeep!

• I worked all day today. Well,”worked” would be a rather gross inaccuracy, I worked for half the day and spent the rest of the day staring at the wall or drawing on my big desk calendar thingy. The girl I work with was away today so my boss spent the day trying to do her work and after I had finished everything I could do in the day by about 1:30pm but he begged me to hang around for moral support until 4pm. It was alright but pretty boring, but I get paid so that’s the main thing I suppose
• Speaking of getting paid, my work forgot to pay me this week. That was their official excuse too “Oh, sorry, we forgot about you”. Nice. I’ve been paid now so it’s all good, but it sucks to realize exactly how insignificant you are to the company in general, when they don’t even bother to check if you deserve any pay.
• I’ve told my boss that it would be good if they didn’t need me tomorrow. On the days it’s super quiet they call me and tell me not to worry about coming in. I am gunning for tomorrow to be one of those days, I suspect my button machine will arrive and I’d rather sit and home and sew wait by the door for the postman.
• It’s a fairly well documented fact that Kate Moennig makes me weak at the knees. I found some pics in the latest NW magazine of her hanging with Paris at the launch party for the new season of The L Word. I don’t believe Kate would have anything to do with Skanky McSkankerston but dear GOD, she’s hot in the photos. I actually photographed the page and emailed it to Wifey just to share the hotness. I refuse to believe that even the straightest of girls would resist to opportunity to do unspeakable things with her. If anyone was able to resist, I would gladly trade places in line with them. Rawr! I adore her! I don’t know if it’s the gazing out from under the hat or her general vibe of indifference that makes her so freaking attractive but whatever it is, it totally works!
• K, I’ll stop being such a big lezzer now. But really, me-ow!
• I realized this afternoon (as I was staring at the wall calendar at work) how quickly everything is coming up. January is more than half over, and uni goes back next month, then I only have March left and then I’m off on prac and intern. Then I come back and graduate. Good God! I’ve decided not to bother with the interview for teacher registration. Wifey has convinced me I should come to London ASAP, so at the moment I am planning to leave the Monday after Bestie’s wedding. It’s the week after school starts in London so there will be the most jobs. Not that I need to worry, seeing as I will have my awesome school job. but I may as well start the term as close to the real start of term as I can. Plus the longer I have to earn pounds, the better! I will just find a random full time job for the couple of months between June and September, or I will just keep making squillions from my market stall and all. Either way, I am sure it will be fantastic.
• If I get tomorrow off I will post some pictures. If not, I’ll do it on the weekend. I will share with you the picture of the little hat I bought on the weekend. It’s sort of like a beanie, except loose and saggy and it’s a very loose knit. It’s sort of a rose pink cotton yarn, I adore it. It’s my London hat, I am not going to wear it out in public until I get overseas. I might even wear it on the plane, as my official arrival headwear! I am actually far more impressed than I look in the pic, I don’t know why I look so cheesed, maybe it’s because the angle makes me look extra terrestrial (the unfortunate side effect of having big eyes and a large forehead).

I never had an answer to that question, which really explains so much. So many courses that have been started and never finished, so much accumulated HECS debt and for what? I have finally discovered the answer to that question and I now know what I want to do with my life and my career.

Let’s look at the things that I love the most:

• learning
• people
• projecting kindness and positivity

I really thought that I wouldn’t be able to find a career that could tick all those boxes for me. I could be a high school art teacher, but I relate to younger children much better. I could be an Early Childhood teacher, but the current school system isn’t always appropriate for some people so the whole aspect of positivity is not always present in mainstream schools. As soon as Wifey mentioned the yoga-doing, alternative, four-days-a-week school I knew I was hooked. Just based on what she had told me (and what I desperately hoped the school would be like) I knew that it was precisely what I wanted to do with my life. A couple of nights ago I Googled this particular school, I ended up reading every single word on their website. Everything from the way they operate the school, to the curriculum they cover, to their approaches to learning, the learning community they foster and the structure of their school is absolutely the way I believe education should be delivered. The school is everything I had hoped they would be and everything I would want to encapsulate in a school, should I ever start one.

I have been banging on about this to Wifey via chat and emails ever since she went to the interview and she mentioned that she’d tell one of her agencies about me because she thinks I would be well suited for the job. She texted me this morning to say her agency thinks I should contact the school before I come over because I really would be perfect for the job.

I am not entirely certain how I go about sending this email. “Hi, I’m from Australia and I’m not even a graduated teacher just yet but I love you and everything your school stands for, so just give me the word and I’ll drive straight home after my final prac, pack a suitcase and be at your school as soon as I land in London”. I want it so badly that I have no idea how I can properly articulate how much I love and respect what they are offering children and how badly I want to be a part of it. In the mean time though, I am going to do as much research as possible on alternative educational theorists like Steiner and find out even more about Montessori and Reggio so I can prove that I know this stuff backwards and forwards and highlight exactly how much they need me to work for them. I am going to work in an alternative educational setting as an early childhood teacher.

In other news, I finished You Can Heal Your Life last night. Louise Hay is my latest lady crush. She might be 70-odd but I still love her madly. You guys know how attractive I find a good education, and she definitely knows her shit.  I am such a convert to affirmations and positive thinking now. She makes so many excellent points and just makes it all seem so terrifically possible and simple that you can’t help but want to  think in the way she suggests. She’s all about making specific what you want the  Universe to  provide to you and speaking in the present tense, as if you already have what it is you are wanting or hoping for. For example: “I run an extremely successful market stall” “I am creative and people hold my creative abilities in high regard” “I am a proficient early childhood teacher with an incredible job in London”. It’s so much fun to imagine as if all those things were true and, according to Lousie, if you believe it then they will happen, which is pretty awesome.

Her book also has a section about prosperity and how the Universe is full of abundance and things will never run out so based on this your income is only one channel for this abundance. If you are worried about never having enough money then you will never have enough but if you welcome abundance and accept the Universe will provide you with as much money as you would like, then you will get it. I’m all for thinking that way, after my total lack-of-income meltdown at the end of 2006 I realized I did always have what I needed and that I never really had any reason to be so upset and worried by it all. So now, even though work seems to be going slowly I am perfectly content that I will have enough money to pay my bills and save enough money by September for my flight to London, my visa and $5000 for a bank account because I am open to the abundance of the Universe.

I know I promised pictures the other day. I took them and uploaded them but I want to make a bit more stuff so I can do a big show and tell post about it all, so please be patient, it will be worth it. I have also started the 8 things meme, again, I’m in the process of writing it so it will also be posted soon enough.