Life choices: Validated.

My mum said to me a few weeks ago (I think it was when I was churning out the adorbs halloween animal ears) "why can't you and your father use your powers for good instead of evil?"

However, all my life choices were validated when ABC local radio's Stan Thompson said that he was particularly impressed by my dinosaur dog costume, as worn by Graham in the local Christmas Pageant on Saturday.

Admittedly, in all the photos it looks like there's a stuffed toy dinosaur trying to hump him. I'm gunna say that it's my retaliation for all those times when he's humped my leg. Powers For Evil!

Anyway, The Bedrock Kids float won the "encouragement award" and made it into the paper. There were 5 copies of The Border Watch in our kitchen tonight when I got home... one on each of the 4 tables, and one in my hand as I walked in.

Honestly, encouraging us isn't that good of an idea. With no encouragement at all my father built a four-bike-powered Flintstones car on a whim and I managed to design, draft and construct a perfect doggie-dino costume in an evening. Admittedly, I did need a bit of encouragement to help with the kids costumes, but that was because mum assembled them and then wanted me to sew the spots and triangles on them. And she always wanted me to do it in the mid-morning, instead of at 2am like I normally would.

And she's got the nerve to call me evil. I think it's not only my father that I get that from...

Happy Halloween.

It was so nice to come home tonight and not have to make anything. I think I was so excited by the fact that I could just spend the night on facebook and tumblr and youtube that I got a bit carried away, which is why it's now 5.30am.

Anyway...

A cool cat, a cow and little red riding hood. All made by me.

A cool cat and a cow holding tails, and getting photobombed by the boy who couldn't be arsed doing a costume, so we made him wear teddy bear ears.

The ears of the cow... she didn't wear them because they kept flopping over her eyes.

Group piccie.

As much as I was sooooo sick of working on this stuff by last night, I'm also so glad I did it. Only two of the daytime staff did anything, and only two of the people in this photo (the witch and the bloodsplattered guy) aren't wearing at least a little something I made. But we had a fantastic night, got quite a few compliments (a couple were skeezy, but they were balanced out by the adorable ones from little kids) and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The fact that I can now, still, 7 hours on, still feel the ghosts of the sunglasses/headband combo pressing against the sides of my head seems like a small price to pay.

And it's over...

As of 10 hours from now (8 hours of which will be spent sleeping) my holidays are over. Sad times, though, admittedly, considering it was only 5 days off, short times too.

I've spent most of the last 5 days sewing costumes for Halloween, from a whole heap of ears:

To a truly bitchin' Red Riding Hood cloak, that I don't even get to wear because I agreed to do it for Chantelle.

And a cow print onsie that's given me a lot of trouble because it's for someone who's a completely different size to me. And that doesn't matter with animal ears or badass crepe georgette (why did I pick that fabric? It was horrible to work with) cloaks. But on me, the crotch is almost down to my knees, and the legs are waaay too long, which stopped me from putting feet on it like she wanted. I've put some buttonholes at the ends of the legs though, so I can make her some button on feet later.

And a half dozen boring black capes that I'll probably insist management wear, since I like the idea that they can be the villains of the piece. I'm still going with being a cool cat. Brittni (who we often call Britta) is going to be one too, so I think that means that halfway through the shift I need to get myself some white wings and a halo and be the cool cat that had too many drugs.

Hopefully I'll meet some more Community fans in the process. The world needs more cool cats.

llol. with two ls.

So all of a sudden it was 3am and I realised I hadn't started Thirsty Thursdaying yet. But there was a bottle of double strength summerberry cider in the fridge, and I have a box of cruskits. So that's good. Progress is good.

Anyway, I found this earlier, and it gave me literal lols.

  A teenage boy is getting ready to take his girlfriend to the prom. First he goes to rent a tux, but there’s a long tux line at the shop and it takes forever.
    Next, he has to get some flowers, so he heads over to the florist and there’s a huge flower line there. He waits forever but eventually gets the flowers.
    Then he heads out to rent a limo. Unfortunately, there’s a large limo line at the rental office, but he’s patient and gets the job done.
    Finally, the day of the prom comes. The two are dancing happily and his girlfriend is having a great time. When the song is over, she asks him to get her some punch, so he heads over to the punch table and there’s no punchline...

#Shameless

So I've been thinking about maybe having myself a Shameless Saturday this weekend. Not that it would entail any of the kinds of things one might think something called Shameless Saturday should entail, on account of the fact that I still have only the barest of voices and a tendency to explode into an asthma attack as soon as I get too warm/cold/thirsty/horizontal - no, my Shameless Saturday would be a facebook thing, where, just like I did with First World Problems Night, I'd post a status of something I have no shame about every hour or so.

Stuff like:

Just spent 3 hours looking at cute animals on BuzzFeed. #shameless
 
Sniper bid yet another dress I don't need from someone who probably really wanted it on ebay. #shameless

I bulk buy huge amounts of chocolate when it's cheap and hide it from my family. #shameless

Haven't cleaned out my handbag since I bought it. #shameless

I mainly watch True Blood for the nudity. But only because the plots this season have been so ridiculous. #shameless


Or, here's some ones about sewing:

Sometimes, I quilt with polyester thread. #shameless

I hardly ever trim my blocks. #shameless #lazy

I never follow the instructions on a dressmaking pattern. #shameless

I don't press my seams, I iron them. #shameless

I sew over my pins. #shameless #hardcore

All of this was, of course, inspired by someone tweeting "Leg hair don't care" which is the kind of brilliant succinctity I wish I could master. I've spent a whole blog post wishing I could sum myself up in 4 words or less. #irony

I'm glad I'm not an actual parent.

At what age should someone stop believing in the tooth fairy? Maddy is nine now, and even though I don't know at what age I stopped believing*, I'm fairly sure it was younger than that. Along with money, we have sometimes written notes, so maybe it's our fault

Is fault the right word to use? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that she believes in the tooth fairy? I believe that stories such as the tooth fairy are important, since it primes us as children to accept things that don't exist (like santa or the easter bunny) in preparation for the grown up things that don't really exist that we nonetheless have to believe in to be functioning members of human society, (like truth and justice)

But then that's a theory I got from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, along with a belief that the most logical set up for tooth fairies would be some kind of franchise operation.


The internet seems to think about 10. But I think my internet either has some kind of separation anxiety going on, or either it thinks I'm fat, because whenever I go out to the kitchen, it stops working. It's fine if I go to the bathroom, or to work, but if I go to the kitchen, dropout. So clearly it's deranged, and not to be trusted.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I'm worried that my otherwise very smart little sister is going to be derailed into a life of Nigerian bank scams and fake European lottery wins because I fabricated some quite flimsy evidence that the tooth fairy exists, based solely on the fact that once upon a time I used to do all my as like the computer does instead of like a circle with a stick on the side, which is how Maddy thinks I write. If she falls for that, how will she be able to tell if that email from paypal is real, or a nasty phishing scam?


Ooh, hey, new justification for not giving them the good desktop. Yay!


*I have to think very, very hard about what I did last week.

I put that warning there for a reason...

Do you wanna know what I did tonight?


Warning, contains ya mum jokes. And obscure bogan references.

Stop judging me. I know you're doing it.

So I use Schmetz needles in my machine most of the time. Have for ages, even before I started quilting. My machine was probably chucking a hissy fit one day and someone probably told me to try the expensive needles. I'm a sucker like that. But now that I'm a quilter, there's another reason I keep using them, other than the fact that they're really good.

They're German, and they call them Stepp-Nadels. And I'm so in love with saying, or even thinking those words. Especially in a German accent. Stepp-Nadels is so, so much better than "machine quilting needles". So much better. And that's why I don't buy the cheap ones, even though these are $9 a pack. It's worth it, just so I can say (or even just think to myself) today, I got some new Stepp-Nadels. There's some Stepp-Nadels in my handbag. I used my 15% off coupon on Stepp-Nadels.

I'm such a child sometimes. Stepp-Nadels. (tee hee hee)