Because adding a picture of your new fabric can perk up even the dullest of posts.

For the record, serblerghfnek isn't a real word, evidenced mainly by the fact that googling it only brings up yesterday's post. I'd like to say it was just me mashing random keys, but when I do that I always get something like neerjdfvjem and that's too many of the same letters. So I made a sound vocally that summed up how I was feeling and typed it out phonetically-ish.

Annoyingly, I'm still feeling somewhat serblerghfnekish. First day back at work, an excess of managers, a droppy-outy internet and a computer that is still being uncooperative. So, to stop this post from being a sea of glum random letters, here's the fabric I bought while I was in Adelaide.

Although the selection at Big W is an odd one (hell, it's odd that Big W even carries any fat quarters) it's usually pretty good quality fabric, and there's an occasional gem. Like a couple of Castle Peeps, and an adorable print of cotton spools that the internet tells me is a Robert Kaufman. And they were all only $2.85 each, but they are American sized, which is an annoyance.

These are from the various Spotlights I went to on Thursday and there's a few re-buys in there, both accidentally and because they were on special for the stash. A couple are intended for various things (the three bluey-aquas are to go into the bundle the last lot got added to) but others I just got cause I liked them.

Sometimes.

Most of the time, I'm kinda glad I didn't move to Adelaide and do fashion design. The fact that, six months or so after I was due to leave, I pretty much stopped sewing clothes and switched to quilts instead, kinda felt like validation. And even though I'll never really know, I think that, for all that I would have gained, I would have also probably missed out on great things like this blog, and all my amazing local friends, and getting to be a proper bogan.

If I had moved to Adelaide, I don't know that I would be able to sing along to that scene in Magic Mike where he dances to Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy. And that would be a pretty big loss.

Sometimes though, I wish I had. Not that my wardrobe isn't quite bitchin' enough, but it'd be nice to just whip up what I really really want off the top of my head, instead of waiting for the pattern to get here, and knowing that even though it's lovely, I'd like it to have one of those shoulder gussets. I really like them. I could be terribly edgy, hanging out in hip city bars. I'd probably have a girlfriend, because I've heard that all the boys you meet at the TAFE SA arts campus are gay, so most of the girls decide to be too. But I'm sure we'd be very hip, and edgy, and I like to think we would share a wardrobe, which we had worked together on. It's all a fun, entirely fictional alternative to my real life which is: tonight, I went to the gym, and then it was cold outside and my thighs cramped up and were hurting so I came home and got in the electric blanket.

On the other hand, things like this are apparently in season. And I sure as hell don't want to work in an industry that feels this way.

Snh, Snh, Snh.

In my favourite series of novels, Discworld, by Terry Pratchett, there is a character called the Death of Rats.

The name's pretty self explanatory. 

Anyway, when he talks it's in Sᴍᴀʟʟ Cᴀᴘs and he says things like Squeak, Eek, and Ik and when he laughs it's written as Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ.

And for some reason, when it's all too big and too much, and a thousand words can't sum up the whole experience of being a human being, alive at this very moment, I think a little Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ, Sɴʜ pretty much sums it up. Because actually, it is pretty fucking funny.

Question:

If you sew something, but didn't blog about it, did you really sew it?

I only ask because in the last couple of weeks what little sewing I have done has been clothes. My so-bad-it's-good formal mullet skirt, which will be saved for an actual BnS ball, and a gathered-front circle skirt in a brushed, yarn dyed plaid cotton, that makes me want to become artsy and hipster again, and start wearing roll-neck sweaters and trench-coats with skirts and tights and tall boots all the time, like I did when I was 19, even though those things don't really feature very much in my wardrobe anymore.

The problem is, clothes are hard to photograph. I am not good at selfies, and even worse at whole-body selfies. There is no big, full length mirror in our house, just a curious assembly of smaller ones, and you jigsaw together an idea of how you look between them. Also, as somewhat messy people, any picture featuring waist height or below is bound to have an... interesting background. But, because these things were made and worn fleetingly, without any record of them shared with the wider world, I find myself forgetting their existence, feeling like I've done no sewing in about 3 weeks, when actually I have; it's just been... ethereal is too artsy a word, but it's the closest I can think off. I made them, they were there and then they were, sort of, gone. Quilts I see on my bed every day, but skirts end up hiding in the cupboard.

Maybe I asked the wrong question, maybe I should have asked: If someone who does a lot of quilting sews some other stuff, does it sate the urge to quilt, in the same way that someone wanting garlic bread's hunger will be sated by spaghetti?

I think the answer is no, but I can't decide what it is that I want to quilt, and my fabrics are all a bit disorganised at the moment. And also, I couldn't find any garlic bread in any of the freezers, and even though my spaghetti made me full (to the point where I looked a bit pasta-pregnant) I still find myself at 4am, having just brushed my teeth, wanting garlic bread.

It's a shame rainbow has only two syllables... it would work better in song with three.

So today, before my doctor's appointment I got my rainbow beanie/beret finished.

As evidenced by the last selfie, I'm not great at it, so I figured I'd take pictures on my bed head, as opposed to my actual head.

I think from the top/behind it looks like a gobstopper when you break it and look at all the layers

I wore it to my doctors appointment, where I got all chopped up (I've got a hellova lot of bandages for a 1 1/2cm incision) and the doctor recommended I give Bricanyl a go, if Ventalin was doing nothing to stop my cough. I did, but it didn't help, and the side effects of the Bricanyl are somewhere between being quite drunk and having had way too much coffee - an odd combination of tense and jittery and kinda dizzy and woozy, with an inability to concentrate. It's not been fun, and I'm back to work tomorrow, which is equally sucky.

Hopefully tonight though I get to sleep a bit earlier: I was up till 6am coughing, and since mum was working at The G till 3, she came in last night offering to take me to the kiddy ward at the hospital, since I last sounded like that when I was 4 years old.

I said no. Their wi-fi probably isn't all that great.

Does anyone have a therapist they can lend me?

I find myself getting more and more anxious before beginning a new project. I don't know if I got it before and just didn't pay any attention to it, or if it's just a recent thing, but I've been so worried lately that if I start something I'll only screw it all up and waste all the fabric, that I just... don't. I get out a heap of fabrics, come up with a bit of maths, and then demure, and look at super magnets on ebay, and watch comic-con panels on youtube until it's too late to start, and then I put my fabrics away and go to bed. It just seems easier.

Couple my newfound unwillingness to start anything with an apathy toward binding anything, and I'm a bit stuck. The monsters have provided an alternative, but I'll be honest, I'm not a lover of machine applique, and the fact that they need it is what keeps me from doing them more often. I find I'm better at starting something if I use freshly bought fabrics (probably because they can be replaced if it does all turn to shit) but I still get worried about the amount of money I just spent on them.

Still, there are things that need making, and tonight I sucked it up long enough to make a strap. For a bag, which was a bit too much to ask of myself tonight. It's for a gift, so I want to get it right. Except I haven't actually decided what it's going to look like yet, and that's never been a good start to a project. Hopefully it'll be a quiet night at work tomorrow and I can sort it to my liking. I'm using new fabric at least...

Oh, and last night's post was #700. I knew it was coming up, but I forgot to check exactly when, and now we've missed it.

Meagan: Don't look.

Have you seen those surveys that the big quilting websites occasionally do? The ones where they ask you what type of quilter you are, how experienced you are, what fabrics you like.

I'd like to add a couple of questions to the bottom of that, because I think we'd all like some insight into how anal we are compared to all the other quilters.

Firstly: how far off does a point have to be before you will unpick it and do it again? This question needs to be asked twice too I think, since it's different for prints and solids. Prints I'm usually cool with anything up to 3 or 4mm, but solids it's less than 2mm. I think that's reasonable. 4mm is surprisingly large.

Secondly: how many times are you willing to unpick a seam before you just set the whole damn thing on fire? And does this number start off small and get bigger (as you've put in more effort and therefore care about finishing it) of start big and rapidly shrink (as you lose patience and your head explodes)?

I ask because tonight, everything turned to shit. My maths was wrong (shame), my very first piece I cut was 5mm too small, I did the HSTs perfectly but then as soon as it came time to sew together the squares, I sewed along the wrong side, realised, unpicked them, sewed them again, pressed them, discovered the aforementioned wrongness in the maths (each small block was 3.75mm too big), unpicked it again, trimmed them all down, sewed them all back together again, pressed them, realised I really shouldn't have trimmed the medium sized blocks too, unpicked them, sewed them with a narrower seam allowance to make up a few spare milimetres, pressed them and ease sewed them to the now only 2.5mm too big large squares. At this point, the universe clearly realised that it had taken the joke a little bit too far, and let me finish the rest of the quilt in peace.

Thank god it's a) really pretty and b) what should be a really quick quilt. Had I not screwed up pretty much every single thing it was possible to screw up, I think I could have almost had it done in a bit over an hour - as it was it still took under 3, and there was a lot of unpicking to be done.

It's pretty small, about 1m by 1.1m. Baby sized.

Tomorrow I have to come up with a back for it. There's still quite a bit of the green and both blues (maybe a fat sixth?) and there's the half metre of purple I decided to not use. I might do all cool colours on the back, and I'm going with grey for binding.

Have any of you seen the latest episode of Castle? I was wondering if it was possible for 42minutes of televison to erase the pain of the week of Tuesdays. Actually, I was thinking that maybe the new episode of White Collar could do it, since Sara's back, and you gotta love a character that shares your name. But the 40's noir flashbacks, narrations and funny accents, coupled with my ability to work out what was about to happen (on average, just early enough to say out loud, to myself, "oh, oh...") made for an episode I was very nearly about to wake siblings up to watch at 2am.

And a quick catch up on the progress of the week of tuesdays: Dad made me help him rake up tree-bark and leaves and my throat's doing that horrible "pre-sick" thing, two days before I go on annual leave.

Day 3 of the Week of Tuesdays.

Last week was blue week. We wore blue at work and generally had a good time. When you work in retail, casual days are the best, because you get to be a ninja. Customers think you're just like them when you're not behind a register, and when you are behind a register (especially if you're one of the few and/or the only one in casual) they feel bad for you, assuming for whatever reason that it's so desperate in store that they're forcing employees to come in in casual and help out. It's lol-worthy. Last week was lol-worthy.

This week, not so much. I've been refering to it as "the week of Tuesdays" after the fact that bad things always seem to happen in our house on a Tuesday.

On sunday I was hungover and I lost a battle (but not the war!) against microsoft copyright protection and my wallet broke. Unrelated incidents.

On Monday I spent 2 hours going around the mount trying to find a replacement wallet. I pretty much failed, eventually buying an iphone hardcase because I like hard shell cases. It'll suffice for now, since I'm not much of a cash carrier - I really only needed it for cards and bum change. Then I went to Red Rooster and got denied my request for 8 nuggets (apparently now they can only sell me six) before going to work to find that Meagan has neo-natal classes now on mondays, so she's switched nights. I got Maccas on the way home, and they put mayo on my wrap. I hate mayo. Also, I couldn't use my kitchen or my bathroom, since handymen were coming in the morning.

Morning. Tuesday morning. The actual Tuesday in the week of Tuesdays. There were guys coming to install a new oven and get rid of the old bathroom vanity and replace it but through my sleepytimes and my closed door, it sounded like they were removing it with a hammer. And maybe light explosives. Loudly. During what is, for me, the middle of the night. I was a half hour late for work (actually, this Tuesday 4 weeks ago I was late too. I have 4 week rolling roster and my brain has obviously remebered it wrong) and we were a tad understaffed. When I went to the post office, instead of a funky new phone case or a bag of fabrics, there was a speeding fine. From Victoria. 106kph on the highway. There should be an exception for South Australians. I was under MY speed limit (110), isn't that more important?

Tonight, in spite of the fact that it is the week of tuesdays, I had a go at quilting the sunset quilt. I bought a spool of varigated pink a week or so ago so I filled the bobbin with hot pink thread for the back and threaded this expensive stuff through the machine.

Guterman Sulky Cotton 12 doesn't work well as a top stitch thread... Actually, it goes okay so long as you don't stop. If I could quilt the entire thing edge to edge in one smooth movement I'd be okay, but I can't, so I'm not.

On the bright side, It's very easy to unpick.

Drawing a blank.

So ebay have returned a list of your purchased items to the main myebay page. That's good. While I like having the increased-to 3 years of purchase history in the sidebar, I like having the last month or so's worth there on the main page to remind me of the things that haven't arrived yet. There are actually ones I'd forgotten about. Maybe the post office is holding out on me?

For those of you who don't use ebay, myebay is the page that has your watch list and your saved searches and info on what you're bidding on and, although it disappeared for a month or so there, a list of what you have recently bought. Very very handy when you buy so much you can't remember all of it.

That's all got to stop now, cause it's NOvember now, and also I have no money left after tje weekend. And it's the first Tuesday in November*, AKA, Melbourne cup day.

Something's been bugging me. See, I remember this song about the Melbourne cup from when I was little. But noone at work had heard of it, and neither it seems, has the internet.

Oh the Melbourne Cup,

Brings Australia to a stop,

From Darwin down to Hobart, 

From Perth up to Ayers Rock,

The nation's in a fever, 

You're bound to be caught up,

First Tuesday in November,

They run the Melbourne Cup.

I'll have to ask Mum and Dad tomorrow. It's not the one by Slim Dusty and it's not the one by Mike Brady. And if I google those lyrics, I get... this blog. Cause I posted it last year on the first Tuesday in November. And I didn't know any info on it then, either. Bummer.


*Well, an hour into it. Thus why I don't yet know who will win.

Nothing. At all.

I just wasted two hours of my life trying to make a half decent looking image of holographic glitter. I am aware that I could have spent that time sewing, or reading or partaking in any number of more worthwhile pursuits, but I didn't.

If someone asks me if I did anything after work tonight, I shall tell them I went round to Meagan's, and then came home and did nothing at all.

On Top Of Spaghetti...

Quilting-wise, I'm finding it quite hard to get motivated this week. It could be that I'm getting masses and masses of internet and a new reset date, and as usual I'm desperate to use it all up before it resets a week early, so I'm downloading and watching new shows at a feverish rate. Or it could be that I've limited myself to quilting and binding, and boy is that a downer.

Good news though, Lincraft sent me a $10 voucher, though I'm gunna wait till thursday to use it just in case my beloved 8fq bundles go on sale next week. You never know. And Spotlight sent us out a Spend $100 Save $40, just in time for me to take it to Adelaide. I might even get Helen to print me a spare or two (did you know you can do that? if you get the special vouchers emailed to you, you can just print out a many as you want!) Just in case I feel the need to go off at more than one store. I've found 6 in Adelaide, though Gepps Cross has been established as a bit shite, Melrose Park is apparently all homewares and Munno Parra and Noarlunga are a wee bit out of my way. Still, with just Rundle Mall and Clovercrest, that's a 200% increase in apparently quite good Spotlight stores in Adelaide compared to the Mount.

See what I did there? That's how you make maths your bitch. You can make the numbers say whatever you want if you try hard enough. What I want them to be saying is "your dinner is ready" - they do this by sitting on my oven and reading 12.05. 3 minutes to go.

Apart from cooking myself some spaghetti, all I've really achieved today is one of my usual overwritten lists. I'm the queen of the lists; big, expansive ones with sub-lists and a tendency to get lost within 15 minutes of being written, but that's okay cause then I can write another one.

*short break to eat spaghetti*

*back, but with the meatball song stuck in my head, despite the fact that I have my spaghetti without sauce*

I've hung onto this list for nearly 3 whole hours now, which is jolly good, since it's got some useful stuff.

Up the top: "sculpey/fimo!?!?"

Because when you're not sure what crafts people want to do/have the tools/skills/space to do, sculpey/fimo (whichever I can get cheaper, since it's kinda the same) is the answer. Even if they don't have an oven, I can bring it home and bake it. I need to look up some easy tutorials online, but I think it's a winner.

Somewhere in the middle: "how to smuggle contraband into rehab???"

I'm not sure. I've heard others are doing it and I'd appreciate some tips, but so far it's either put it into a real coke bottle, at which point it goes flat, or be sneaky, and change the packaging on a regular bottle. This would seem fairly easy, but the bottle lids are different colours. So it will take a bit of pre-planning.

Down the bottom: "What in-cinema movies? Take on lappy or put on tablet? test formats on tablet. Would Bill have a projector? need speakers. What's policy on illegaly downloaded movies playing on the walls of government buildings? Is scoffing cinema food inappropriate? - stop in penola on way and get lots of raspberry twists"

The little writing is my sub-listing. As for the whole actual bit? Dunno. Last movie I downloaded for Kelsey (Black Swan) she said creeped her out. I'm thinking Gnomeo and Juliet and maybe Rango, if I can find it in the next couple of days, unless I get a request.

In other news, since it's stuck in my head, it may as well be stuck in yours too

On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese.
I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table, it rolled on the floor,
And then my poor meatball, rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden, and under a bush,
And then my poor meatball, was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty, as tasty could be,
And early next summer, it grew to a tree.

The tree was all covered, with beautiful moss.
It grew great big meatballs, and tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti, all covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball, and don't ever sneeze.

So I have some advice for the day...

Please don't expect rational segues from me tonight. There's a twitch just above my right ear, and it's distracting me.

Let's start with some life lessons I'd like to share.

Don't sew two quilt tops at one. Even if you really really want one to be made right right now because it's really really pretty and you want to get the tutorial for the other one online as soon as possible. Especially, don't do two quilt tops with two different thread colours. Because it's hard to keep track, and you'll have random bits of black stitching on your purple quilt.

Even if it's your pattern, and you're super sure you know it back to front, keep referring to it as you do it, because your memory might be wrong. I didn't, and I cut my rectangles too wide, which is why my demo edition of the purple quilt is gunna be a quarter smaller - it's now three by three square. Good news though - the pattern is correct. I'm just stupid. Or congested. Let's go with congested.

Now to the Random Shit, because according to the words in the sidebar, this crops up a lot, and I'd hate to let those words down.

I took the day sick, so I could freely shove tissues up my nose, which, for completely inexplicable reasons, they don't let me do at work. Also, the thing that makes me cough the most is talking, which they say you have to do. But then customers get cross cause you're coughing on them. It's lose/lose.

I have a new least favourite thing. Fabrics that are meant to be 112cm wide but which are actually less than 105cm wide. I do all my math to give them the 7cm leeway, but any more than that makes me cross. Just as well I made my cutting booboo on the first strips I cut and the too-short fabric was after that, otherwise I probably would have gone spare. It was only a centimetre or so, but still. 1cm too little and I need to buy a whole another 20cm of fabric to cover it.

I want *something* but I'm not sure what. My big chocolate bar stash, that I got a couple of weeks ago, has disappeared, and I'm pissed. I want a crunchie, dammit. All I can find is a cherry ripe and some fads. Not what I want but it will have to do. Actually, I've just changed my mind on the fads. These taste like chalk.

The worst thing about blogging is that even when you say "right, I'm gunna finish up at midnight" there's still an hour or so for blogging. Longer if you're watching Burn Notice at the same time. But it's not like I'll fal asleep till at least 2am anyway.

I want another Jotter. I've had a few over the years and get quite attached to them, and then I lose them, or they get stolen, and I don't get around to getting a new one for a while, until I see one in a movie or TV show and then I suddenly want one again. Do you remember the exploding pen in the first Pierce Brosnan James Bond film? That was a jotter. None of mine ever exploded though.

I wish it was tomorrow night. Then I'd have the finale episode of White Collar instead of season 1 of Burn Notice.

Beat.

I've been up for over 26 hours now and I gotta be honest, I stopped being productive about 8 hours ago now. I got the second half of season 1 of Covert Affairs and watched that while I was doing the binding, and yeah, it's still my weakness. Binding, not Covert Affairs. It's a good show and all*, but I still have 2 more days of White Collar obsession before Psych arrives Thursday night and takes over. And then when Psych finishes in January, White Collar starts again. 

It's a never ending cycle of awesome.

Anyway, I'm beat. I'm not good at this. I'd only ever done it before when I had something going on, and to have done it without rushing to get something finished is a bit weird. I've go no actual, real world motivations/distractions, but I know on the other hand that I have to wait till tonight to go to bed (I wont be tossing and turning tonight) otherwise my body-clock stays whacked. But I'm too tired to do anything much, so I've been doing the click-a-link thing that's sooo good at wasting time and bandwidth. I said I was gunna go to Helen's but I'm not sure if I'm feeling game to drive. I've got 5 new quilts for her to see, but she wont get to if i fall asleep in the car on the way there.

Casey has spent most of the day sleeping. It's like I'm in bizarro house or something.

*isn't it interesting that "weakness" here refers to both something that I'm not good at and something I can't resist... What an interesting language we have.

First Tuesday in November...

Oh the Melbourne Cup brings Australia to a stop,

From Darwin down to Hobart,

From Perth up to Ayers Rock,

The nation's in a fever, 

You're bound to be caught up,

First Tuesday in November, 

They run the Melbourne Cup*.

After the Melbourne Cup ran I figured I didn't really have enough time to kick into a big project before I had to go to work. So, I had a rummage through my drawers and found a little ziplock bag of flatbear pieces that I cut about 6 months ago, but that got put aside because I got bored.

I'm still waiting for that to happen with quilting. Most mornings I wake up and expect it to be the day, but it hasn't been yet.

Anyway, since I need to do some little things for the markets that are coming up over the summer, I figured it was a good bit of time to squeeze them in.

I took some lovely photos of them too, including the last one which has a strange cheek lump and a dislocated shoulder, which convinced me to stop for the night, but my card reader has randomly decided to cark itself (it does this sometimes) and Mum's taken her laptop with her so I can't even use that to put them on the network.

My horse got scratched (I think he had to go yell at some terrorists or something**) my card reader stopped working and I broke a thumbnail, and then silly me picked at it till it was quite short (I had photos of that too, but...)

It's not been the best of days. It seems Tuesday strikes even when my parents are away.

Also, I think a midnight gorging of strawberries, cream and chocolate cake may not have been the best idea.

*Stay tuned another day for my detailed description of the mandatory hat or "substantial facinator" needed for entry to our uber-exclusive cup day celebrations.

**His name was Bauer. I know 24 got kinda ridiculous after season 3, but still... I loved that show.

Stupid Bloody Tuesdays*

As I said earlier, it's been a big, long day.

Dad dragged me out of bed early to help Casey and Becky clean out the house gutters. Then they pissed off down to Nan's to see if these long lost relatives that have come for a visit are worth schmoozing with. Apparently they arent, but still. This meant I was home without any means of escape and Dad made me mow the lawn. I had been making good progress on the Nutmeg quilt top, not racing through it by any means, but cruising, and stopping to mow the lawn killed my flow.

Geoff the mechanic called at lunch time, and apparently what's happened is the engine has got hot (there were always problems with the temp gauge, reading fine for a little bit warm then after halfway to hot going back to cold) and one of the cylinder heads has warped from the heat, and that's letting in water. Car should be fixed by Friday, which is good news in that if it takes less than a week to fix, it shouldn't be too expensive. I don't think I'll keep it though, at least not for long. It still has 10 months rego left though, so I think I'll say that I'm gunna use it for another 3 or 4 months, so that I can get plenty saved to get a brand new car, and not a Rio like Dad is suggesting. There's a 2002 Civic in Gazzards for a bit under 10k, but I'd rather a new Swift, for 18ish.

When the weather cleared up I went to take some photos, and realised, they don't really work if you've had them folded in cute little bundles for a few weeks. So I ironed them, and by then the clouds had come back. I got the nutmeg quilt to the point of being 3 big strips to be joined together before the sun came back and I had another go. I took a heap hanging from the wall of the pergola, but even with most of the creases ironed out, they still have nasty shadows on them. As a result, most of the photos have been taken with the quilts lying on the freshly mown grass. It may as well have some use, right? Then I figured I may as well do photos for what's missing on the page of completed quilts, so I pegged out Maddy's, the BlueGreen and the big rainbow and took photos of them on the clothesline, since they were all crease free from being on the bed. The retro quilt was still in the washing machine though, so maybe tomorrow for that one.

Everyone else gets home about now from school and Nan's and just as I'm about to get back to the last 2 seams on the Nutmeg quilt, there was a massive crack and then the sounds of destruction...

It doesn't look that bad in this photo...

This was our storage shed.

Now under a tree. A really big tree. Probably the biggest on out block, before someone let Dad near a chainsaw on a Tuesday*

So we had to spend half the afternoon pulling most of it off and putting it on the pile (I don't have a photo of the pile, but if there's less wind tomorrow night we'll be burning it. It's very big, look for the glow...)

See those tubs in there? Those are mine. They're full of wool, and half done projects, and books, and bags, and fabrics. You cant see the other 4, that got crushed, or the garbage bags full of wool, a couple of which burst.

Hoo-freaking-rah.

Anyway, we stopped at this point, so there'd be something left to show the insurance man, but I have a nice graze up my arm from where a stick fought back (I threw it on the pile, and it bounced) and Casey got eaten by various things that made her neck and arms all blotchy. Good times.

Tomorrow though, we are going into town at lunchtime, Nevile is going to let me pick a car (I've already picked. I want a Swift) and I am going to drive it across the road to work, where I will stay till late, hiding from any manual labour that's taking place at home.


*Tuesdays. Although Australia Post says more things get delivered on a Tuesday than any other day, Tuesdays in our family are bad, since Dad starts his socialising/drinking week on a Wednesday. So Tuesday is the day when it's been the longest since he's had a drink, and he's usually grumpy, and, apparently, shouldn't be in possession of any powertools. Tuesdays in our house are best spent, well, at the post office, I suppose.