housekeeping

I hate hot weather. It's always astounding to me how Canberra has long glorious cold crispy winters, sneaks in a few weeks of perfect spring where the evenings are chilly and the days are warm, and then it just thrusts HOT and DRY onto us abruptly. Last week I was wondering whether to leave a jumper or two out in my wardrobe, and yesterday I pulled out all my extreme (hot) weather gear. It's rude. It's horrible, and I wish I lived in Alaska or Nimmitabel* or something.

Hot weather makes me cranky and my skin breaks out. I look like an adolescent at the moment with my spotty t-zone, which is ridiculous with my greying hair and bingo-wings.**

My studio is lovely and cool, but I'm on a weird schedule at the moment where I have to dip in & out of art skool to assess people, and so I never get a clear run at studio time. So I've been writing & thinking & drawing, which is not too bad.

BB still has a sore bottom (have I mentioned it before now?). Caused by riding his bike too hard, it has progressed through many stages of hypochondria from cancer to boils and other alarming things and his hobbling varies depending upon who is watching. He's getting an ultrasound today, so hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it (groan). I can't tell you anything else about it, the details are too revolting and TMI would damage your relationship with me.

Bumblebee is spotty too, increasing in hormones daily, and gaining height rapidly. He's almost grown out of my shoe size, but I don't want my riding boots back because he's trashed them completely. I noticed the other day that his voice has deepened but not breaking yet, so he'll have a very deep voice eventually. He's going through an 80s music phase sparked off by me giving him one of my albums to play after he saw the (new) movie of Fame; I'm trying to steer him into the more electronic side of things, but he loves the cheesy songs, and my ears have started bleeding from all the earworms I carry around all the rest of the day.

The cats are miserable in the heat. I've been planting catmint in weird places around the garden to surprise them, but they're too hot to wander, just lie around the house all day in the cool, stretched to full length on the floorboards. Occasionally I'll step over Padge in the hallway (he can't stretch full out there unless he's diagonal, he's longer than the width of the corridor) and he'll catch my leg with a desultory claw as if to remind me that he would like some food or water please, like some fat English tourist on a Spanish beach.


Padge in my office filling up available floor space. he's not stretched to capacity, and my feet (size nine and a half) are a good size indicator.

Blogosphere as I know it is going through another big purge -- lots of interesting people giving up their blogs, like Alan Loney & Betty Slocombe. Others are starting new ones. It's a dynamic thing, isn't it? I guess I'll just keep on keeping on... that's the beauty of keeping the aim of the blog really broad :)

Happy happy happy that Amanita Design has released a new game: Machinarium. I've downloaded the full version but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I love Samarost and their other games -- good for both adults and kids, with their beauty and reliance upon logical yet dreamy thinking.

And another thing I've been wondering lately... (damn earworms) call me crazy and call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but I'm wondering if my trouble with online Scrabble ISN'T just my crappy connection and the fact that the rest of the virtuniverse is trying to play, but the fact that I have requested that all my playing details aren't broadcast to all of my facebook friends etc. As soon as I vetoed all the notifications and crowings and general annoyances, the software became extremely recalcitrant. Makes me cranky in a very GenX kinda way.

Sigh. I guess I have to go out and brave the heat of the day. I hope you're sitting somewhere cool, maybe even downright frosty.








*not as silly as it sounds. Nimmitabel, between Cooma and Bemboka, is the highest settlement in Australia and even in summer they have to wear a light cardigan in the afternoon. My grandmother was born there. I would be living there now if BB could drag himself away from his career.

**I realised when I talked about the chook-raffle recently that I need to have a glossary sometimes. Bingo-wings are large flabby under-upper-arm bits that wobble when you move your arm. Sometimes they're called 'bye-byes' because they keep waving after you stop. Any other good names for them? Share.