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.

Me ow.

The distinct advantage that quilting has over dressmaking is that the photographs, and therefore the bloggage, are a whole lot easier. But, as ever, I'm busy being too obsessed with my wardrobe to quilt. And too crap at taking selfies to logically explain the last few days worth of sewing. Also, I just realised it's 5am, which would explain why I can't words.

...Anyway. I'm still very into Community, and Britta, with my spirit wardrobe, was wearing a denim jacket with grey fleece sleeves and a hood. I still had a denim jacket in my cupboard that had survived every round of salvo-ing purely for the reason that I felt it was important that I still owned at least one, even though I haven't worn it in at least two years, due to a strong fear of coming off too double-denim-y. And I'd rather die than come off double-denim-y. But last weekend I dyed a pair of my skinny jeans black, and that means I can wear a light blue denim at the top without looking at all matchy-matchy. So I chopped out the sleeves and drafted myself a hood design and the only grey heavyweight fleece they had at Spotlight was kinda weird fluffy on one side, slightly silky on the other and it was $13p/m but hey, I wanted a denim jacket with grey fitted sleeves and a hood and I wanted it by the next day. And I did it, and I had it, and it's bitchin, and it's nice to know that after two years of just chilling in the cupboard, it's going to go back into rotation.

As well as this, it's Halloween on Wednesday. Now, for the most part, I'm very opposed to having Halloween in Australia. Good on the Americans, it seems like a lot of fun, but when it's done in Australia it comes off as a Valentines-Day-esque grab for the consumer dollar. On the other hand, we don't get to do enough fancy dress, and Wednesdays are (sadly) not really drinking days (though admittedly, I drank this Wednesday) so the initial plan for a fancy dress drinking party got canned. But there was vague mention of Woolies going fancy dress for the day and I'm pushing for it. I want this. I want costumes at work day, to the point that I have drafted a onesie pattern to make for one of the girls at work in cow print. I want this to the point that I bought 5 metres of black cotton lawn from the $1 clearance rack at spotlight to bulk churn out some capes. I want this to the point that I've offered to make some animal ear headbands, because animal-ears are a traditional lazy-person's costume.

Hey look, teddy-bear ears. And my newly altered jacket. Twofer selfie! I'm actually still wearing these, four hours later. I think when I get up tomorrow I might put them on and pretend like they're not even there, just to see people's reactions. I think they are adorbs, and plan on mauling the faces off anyone who disagrees, just like a real bear in a badass re-purposed jacket would.

But, keeping with the theme of wanting more of Britta's wardrobe, my personal animal ears option is the "cool cats" from season 2.

My sunnies are a bit different and my leather jacket is out in the car, and also on this first version they're a bit too big, but I'm sure I can pop them on someone's head. I need another cool cat to be cool with me.

The handy thing about making these is that I'm sewing the ears onto the headbands by hand, and you can still watch TV while you're handsewing.

DVD commentaries, come at me.

I wish so hard that it was real...

So a couple of weeks ago, for reasons that now escape my memory, it came up at work that I knew one of my co-workers credit card details off by heart. Obviously, a couple of the girls at front end immediatelly decided we should use them for something, and an epic international holiday was decided on. Over the course of the rest of the shift, this hypothetical holiday was hashed out, attendees decided apon and dates chosen. There's about ten of us. I say "about" because we have been arbitrarily uninviting and adding people as we see fit.

We left for our hypothetical holiday yesterday morning.

First up is 4 days in New Zealand. We arrived at Mt Hutt last night and spent today skiing. Tomorrow we are going to try snowboarding. Then we are flying to the north island, because I want to visit Hobbiton. That's what we're doing Thursday, and then Thursday afternoon we're doing a tandem bungee jump. Annalise, Emily and I are agreed that this is very important, (so important it may actually become a real life - albeit more local, thing) and we want as many of our co-travellers to join in as possible. Brenton has to, we have decided. It's his credit-card we're using, so that's only fair.

Friday morning we are flying to Hawaii. I picked Hawaii, mainly because Shay was there at the time, and I was jealous. I haven't made any hypothetical plans for Hawaii yet, though I believe it has been decided that we shall learn to surf. I claimed my plan was to start drinking on the plane and not sober up till we landed back in Melbourne. That was before I was quite ill on Sunday, so I have postponed my drinking till we reach Hawaii, at which point, mimosas: come at me. Nonetheless I have hypothetically sourced some lovely south island red wines.

I had though it would be fun to photoshop our faces onto pictures of people standing in the snow but Google has been rudely unforthcoming with the kind of starter images I need for that. If there's something worse than finding out that your plans for a huge international holiday on a friends credit card can't follow through because said card only has a $1000 limit, it's finding out that you can't even fake the holiday in a fun way for facebook.

Actually, no the fact that I'm not actually on the trip of a lifetime right now is worse.

If anyone wants me, I'll be on ebay, buying myself some souvenirs, while I sit here in bed eating crumbed parmesan from the jar...

The Plan

The plan for tonight was to finish work at 10.30, go to the gym and come home home to try to have an early night. I start at 12 tomorrow, and that's early for me. But I forgot my headphones, and EmmStaff, who is one of the most gorgeous, tall, athletic, pretty, smart, funny, insecure 17 year olds I know, was going to try to sneak into The G underage, and wanted me to come with her. And because I adore her even though I really should hate her, I agreed. It was her best friend's 18th and that was going till midnight and I figured that would give me time to finish the half-sewn olive green version of my fantastic jacket.

Long story short, she got in, we danced, I had two drinks, there was some country boys in there, I decided I'd have a crack if the opportunity presented itself, it did, I've got it even in town, and then I ninja'd away to take Emm home, and came home myself. It's no later than I would have been up anyway, I had a fun evening with a different crew, and it was a good reason to finish off my jacket, which I'd be procrastinating on for no apparent reason.

What's more, because there's no-one else up this end of the house, I figure'd I'd have a go at getting a picture of it, since the dark green's probably easier to photograph than black.

I think what this picture best shows is that my fingers are freakishly long, and that the bathroom mirror really needs a clean.

When all else fails, sit on the floor in the passageway with the tall mirror leaning on someones door and take wonky photos, and wait for instagram to fix them.

Thanks instagram.

Because it is already after 5am, and there are still tumblrs that need to be read...

Today there was sunshine. It was terribly strange, but then, I have barely talked for 11 days now, so my very existence has started to go a bit weird. I find myself regularly going and laying in odd places, staring at the light fittings or the bit where the door meets the roof, just because, as a person who is made up of words, and who has no words, life is weird. Also, did I mention it's 5.30am? Just as well I have no voice and got my shift replaced for tomorrow.

Back to the point, it was sunny today, and I went into work late (they'll let you be in charge with no voice, but not actually serve the customers) so I had time to go out and take some pretty pictures.

This quilt is so unlike all my other quilts that I almost love it the most, because it's so unashamed to let it's freak flag fly.

This is the holiday quilt, hand quilted by me, while I was high on the glue fumes from spray basting together, in a motel room in Adelaide, the layers of pre-pieced plaid, pink polar fleece (batting) and wool coating (backing). And I hand sewed on the binding too, which is actually woven polyester tape.

This is the Carried Away Miniquilt. Some point soon I want to re-do this in the solids I originally designed this to be in, and as a nine-patch.

The block itself is what I came up with for the GenQ block design competition, and since the magazine is out now, I think I can do my excited squeally they picked it!

This is the original colours. I only had enough to make this one block, which got turned into a cushion, which was promptly stolen by Casey, and then by Maddy. I also made a really hideous one, in a selection of other new DS fabrics, that I tentatively titled when bad things happen to good fabrics.

Naturally, one of the girls at worth thought it was kinda funky when I showed her the photo, so I've quilted it ready to eventually turn it into a cushion for her.

Blah Blah Basting

The problem with basting is that, much like being sick, it's boring and uninteresting and no-one cares.

Still, it's the first crafting I've done in ages, with the exception of the statistical anomaly that was the holiday quilt, and I figure it's a good place to start. Spotlight had 30% off today so I got myself some batting, and a 108cm wide quilt can handily be backed by a single width of quilt fabric. Of course, I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it, since it's a very odd design that really needs an all-over free motioning, but, um, I still can't do that. I even gave it another quick try today, and I've got the shapes down pat, and my stitches don't vary too much in length, but the tension on the back is still utterly utterly horrible, and I'm still too cheap or lazy or both to get it serviced. I might end up doing wavy lines in both directions à la the pavement quilts, since that looks like an all-over while actually being a side to side, but, baby steps.

And on the voice thing, it's baby steps on that too. I have some vowel sounds. This is progress. I'd probably make more progress if I didn't keep going in to work, but they keep guilt-tripping me. Tonight I did reversion - basically taking down all the old specials tickets so new ones can go up tomorrow. I answered any customer queries with obscure hand gestures and interpretative dance. I hope one of them was a mystery shopper, because I'd love to read their review of my silent service.

... continued

As predicted, today was no-voice Monday. But getting up at 12 for a 1.30 start and finding the house empty meant I couldn't get anyone to call in sick for me and I couldn't do it myself either (obviously) so I just had to go on in. Since I went home sick on Friday the first thing everyone asked was if I was feeling better, to which my response was, (again, obviously) "..."

Actually, I said, "Yes, I do, thanks, but, um, well..." but what came out was "..." with some lip movement. Unfortunately they were a bit understaffed so I ended up hanging about till 5.30 anyway, mainly doing self serve (I can mouth "thanks a lot, see you later" with such conviction that people's brains insert the words) or smokeshop (people usually know how much their smokes are going to cost them) or supervising (though someone put on their help light and I went to help but they were still talking to their customer and I was trying and trying to get her ask her what was wrong and she was ignoring me and eventually another supervisor came up and helped her and I sulked away unnoticed) but we all agreed that I couldn't really supervise tonight because I couldn't talk to customers or answer the phone or make calls over the PA system, so really all I'd be doing is bumming about as all my employees amused themselves by saying "what?" at me over and over again. So instead, I came home, so my family could do exactly the same thing to me.

And I watched the first episode of Big Brother (and probably the only one, since I work nights and don't get to watch real* telly) and the new episode of True Blood (bye Molly and Hoyt... sad face) and spent a whole lot of time on etsy looking for the perfect fabric to make this top and being saddened by the fact that they've already got pretty much the perfect fabric. Gods of perfect plaids, why have you forsaken me?

Oh, and gods of voice, you too? At least the gods of finding a good car space still like me.

*Admittedly, Big Brother isn't reall telly anyway, but I mean stuff that our antenna picks up in real time, as opposed to stuff I download and watch

...

To say that I have no voice is a slight overstatement; I'm currently audible on about one of every five words. But thats a rate low enough that, should it continue tomorrow, I probably won't be able to work, even though I'm starting to feel a bit better. It's the best kind of sick day really. Who doesn't love a day of sitting quietly?

Small victories.

Today I threw off the guilt-trip-induced shackles of the frontend of Woolworths Mt Gambier, hugged a security sensor pole so I didn't fall over, gallantly talked myself out of throwing up twice in an hour, came home sick and built myself a blanket fort on the couch. I'm declaring this to be a victory, and a much needed one after I spent last night coughing up blood.

And now, from the comfort of my blanket fort, I'm gunna watch the leaves on the trees sparking in the sunshine outside, because the DVD player is too far away.

/startsulk

I am a sucker. More to the point, I am a sick sucker. Last night I spent 8 hours at work in horrible pain every time I tried to swallow, only to come home, have a shower, mumble something about dragons at my mother and pass out on the floor in front of the fire with the towel still wrapped around my wet hair. Then today (I wasn't supposed to be working, but they appear to have fucked up my roster this week) I worked 6 hours, coughing and spluttering and feeling pretty miserable. Tomorrow, also when I'm not supposed to be working, I've been rostered 10-3, which contravenes both my don't-work-fridays and my don't-work-before-lunchtime rules.

And, even though I have over 200 hours of sick leave accumulated, I go to work, I suffer through it, I share my germs with customers and I devote at least 40% of my concentration to mentally telling myself not to throw up over and over again. Because whenever I try to call in sick they get all passive aggressive; "but we don't have anyone else, wah wah" on me. And meanwhile, the department manager randomly takes a day off a month out of sickleave to "help keep the budget down"

Oh, and the best part? If I quit, I lose all that sick leave. Nearly four grand worth.

/endsulk.

In actual good news, the first issue of GenQ magazine arrived today with my bonus 8 kickstarter bribe fat quarters. Especially loving the brown and pink zigzag one.

It's alright...

I had some misgivings about tonight - drinks with the girls after work, when I have to start at 12 tomorrow. Those misgivings got worse when I found out that we were planning on actually going out out as opposed to just sitting on the couch with a couple of drinks. But it turned out to be really really fun; an hour of gasbagging about work, then going to The G (that bit was kinda boring) and then off to Shads. It's been a long time since I've had a night out with people from work, it's been even longer since I've been to Shads relatively sober (less than one drink per hour) but, actually, I kinda loved it. I guess it all depends on who you're with, and if you get to dirty dance with some random guys, then all the better.

Good.

One would assume, seeing as how I've watched THIRTY HOURS of True Blood since Sunday night, that I'd make that my favourite for this week. Or at the very least, that I would make last night's strawberry cider, breadsticks and True Blood night my favourite thing this week. But I'm not going to.

Nor am I going to go with my fantastic friends at work, or trashy romance novels, or Wrigleys Strongmint chewwies, or even the very pretty yarn I got with the $10 voucher that Lincraft sent me.

Even though I find the tingly sensation that I get in my legs when I sit down in my skinny jeans to be weirdly enjoyable, that's not it either. Nor is it the entertainment I get from trying to push repelling magnets together.

Nope, today, my favourite thing is the tiny tick of my watch. It's so quiet that I can only hear it in the really quiet moments, and I don't get them too often. So I like the fact that the tiny tick of my watch is there to remind me when they're happening, so that I know to enjoy them.

Oh, okay, all the other stuff can be a favourite too :)

Pathetic whinging post.

I have a cold.

I woke up feeling okay, even managed to get in a half hour of actual sewing before it hit. Since then I've had tissues shoved up my nose whenever I'm alone and I've been shooting back Demazin like it's $4 shots night at the pub (including saying "nostrovia" or sometimes "za vas" as I do it)

Worst of all, it's my full weekend on, and, short of throwing up all over a customer, I don't have much chance of getting to go home sick tomorrow. Like Sundays aren't bad enough when you're feeling good.

Maddy was home from school yesterday (with "sniffles") so I assume I've gotten it from her. Only good thing is I made a doctor's appointment for Tuesday for something unrelated so if I'm still feeling crap I'll see if I can at least get a few weekdays off work. I don't even remember the last time I had a sick day, but then, I also don't remember the last time I felt this sick.

I can only hope all the cough meds make me fall asleep instead of lying about feeling sorry for myself for the next 4 hours.

Saturday Night (do do do do do do do do)

What a crazy day. Enjoyable, but crazy.

Started off, I went into town to buy stuff. The $10 vouchers that Spotlight sends can be used once a day for the 4 days, and I like to get my money's worth. Today I bought a similar bundle to yesterdays, but in blues and greens instead of pinks and yellows and greens.

Again, about half of it is from stash. There's also a couple of cuts in here that are only 10cm, but because it's a random design, this is okay.

Work was especially fun for a Saturday night, for two reasons. Firstly, it's (now) April Fools Day, which means that I was free to leave clever traps for the co-workers who are working in the morning. I left a note on the service desk saying that a heap of people had called in sick, and the girl in the office left a similar one saying that the safe combo had been changed. We also left some hints as to how they could pass on the April fools joy - PA calls for staff members' number plates, food dye in the milk in the staff room, that sort of thing. Much fun.

Even funner, Kelsey had sorted out a scavenger hunt for her friends for tonight, and one of the things the groups had to do was come in and sing me a song. Naturally, hilarity ensued - Even though I had told the girls on checkout that tonight was going to get a bit weird, and let the duty manager and a couple of the nightfill guys what I was anticipating, we didn't tell all the nightfill people, nor the other customers. We were pretty quiet, till the singing broke out, and the walking-around-falling-down worried a few of the nightfill people at first, but it still made for one of the most enjoyable Saturday nights I've worked in a long time.

And then, after meeting up with them all to get a quick run down on which teams achieved what, I went to meet Casey and a few other friends for a few drinks and a firebucket.

Now I'm gunna put my clock back for the end of daylight savings (sad face) and snuggle up with my electric blanket.

Hi Ho (Hum)

Well, my holidays are pretty much over. In 10 hours time I'll be back at work, for a 9 hour day, no less. I think that the first half of your first shift back should be holiday-paid too, so your first day back is a half-day, to help you ease back into it.

And yes, I know it's only been two weeks, but they've been a fairly full two weeks:

I learned how to make shoes, culminating in spending the last two days wearing a pair I made.

I quilted a mid-sized quilt, and the binding's 3/4 done too, but I've run out of pink thread.

I made (as in, fully completed) two baby quilts.

I'm about half way through 25 monsters.

I made three skirts.

I pieced and quilted a pillow case.

I cut and began piecing a 4th quilt.

I went to four parties, and a country music festival.

All in 17 days.

Worse, I feel like I'm really starting to build momentum, like if I had another week off I could fully double that output. Though I will confess, both weeks I had a Monday/Tuesday slump, so maybe I'm just imagining it.

Anyway, no photos of the grey version of the peach spotted skirt I made yesterday, because it got vomited on by Anna's dog. Luckily I had packed the peach one too, in case of something like that happening, so I just switched halfway through the night. And then my shoes really did coordinate with my outfit, since I'd made them in the same peach fabric.

I realised last night too that the skirts really really needed to have pockets (I kept putting my phone down and freaking out 30 seconds later), and even though it took me a bit of thinking today, since I hadn't done pockets in a long time, I eventually got them worked out.

Not that you can see them in the photo. The fabric is a very lightweight poly-cotton blend, that I don't love the drape of as much as the rayon, but which I love the retro browns of. The crinkle made it hard to cut straight too.

I spent a couple of hours tonight sewing the faces to the monsters, and I've found that the keys to raw edge applique are to have your machine on the slowest stitch speed, and do something else every other hour, lest you go blind and/or insane. All the black around the eyes and the big smiles is done, now I just need to do the whites of the buck teeth and then the associated mouths.

In between the two hours spent turning fabric in circles watching a needle bob slowly up and down, I cut all my HSTs for the blue and grey quilt I bought for earlier in the week.

And it seems the key to correctly cutting an entire quilt is to only use new fabric that can be replaced tomorrow if any mistakes are made. None were, and after my second hour at the monsters I laid this out.

And I'm so in love. Here it's laid out at 1.4 by 2 metres, but there's pretty much 4cm of seam allowance for each block, so it'll become quite a bit smaller. That's the worst thing about HSTs, you lose 2cm in the 45 degree seam and then if you sew with a wider allowance so it's easier to do neat points, as I do, there's the same gone again. Still, it's going to be at least 1.6m long, and that's nearly as long as me, so it's plenty big enough.

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.

It just makes me happy...

It is love of which I wish to ramble on about tonight: not grown up, used to each others faults, committed love, but the first heady rush of new love.

Now, it's not me. I'm not really in love with anyone, unless you count the chocolate cake that I'm devouring between sentences. No, I'm talking about Tegan and Alex, two of my co-workers, who should have gotten together a very long time ago, but haven't till now. Meagan called it out to me yesterday when she saw them in shopping but I wasn't convinced; today I must concede that she was right. She called it. They are in luuurve, the cute, sappy, hickey on their necks, 17 year old's version of love. The heads together conversations, the matching hickeys ("It was my cat," Tegan said, to which I replied "It's cute to have pet names, but that doesn't mean you need to literally name him after your pet") and the looks they give each other when they don't realise that Meagan and I are watching them just so we can see everything and be happy for them about all of it.

It's beautiful. I wish I could bottle it, and keep it in the fridge, and then whenever I'm feeling glum I could just get it out and drink-in a little bit of it. It's like a cute puppy. You no longer care about all the other shit that's going on when you see two teenagers making doe-eyes at each other. You don't care that there's work that they should be doing* cause it's sweet and cute and comparatively innocent. Let them learn later on about having your heart torn out by someone you entrusted it to, about the heart wrenching realisation that although you thought you knew everything about a person, you couldn't have been more wrong.

Actually, don't. I hope with all my heart that neither of them ever find out all that other stuff, and that they stay forever as in love as they are right now. Cause they are so gosh darn cute that it kinda make me want to be in love.

Now I just need to find a cowboy-boot-wearing, html-coding, Shakespeare-reading, beer-drinking guy who'll be willing to carve up the dance floor with me one of every four weekends. Oh, and he has to work late afternoons and evenings, and sleep in with me till lunchtime. Anyone know anyone who fits this description? Send me a link to his facebook so I can stalk him please.

*Sometimes I would care, but other staff members tonight also did jack-all without the excuse of being distracted by Mills and Boon-esque stares of longing. Which of course made me go naaww...

And yet, I do actually like my job.

Now that we're properly into 4 week rolling contracts at Woolies, I only work one of every four Sundays. And while I miss the extra $50 or so that comes with the bonus half pay, those 3 weeks where I'm not doing anything on a Sunday, or more to the point not running around stressing like a crazy person (or bursting into tears like some of my co-workers) being passive aggressive towards some really genuinely lovely 16 year-old girls who are nonetheless faffing about and not getting anything done and making me cross but I can't yell at them because they're nice and sweet and it's bad enough that the people who are supposed to be in charge are out the back crying and I don't want the people I'm supposed to be having on register crying too and... I forgot what I was talking about.

Oh yeah. I'd much rather spend my Sundays feeling shit cause I spent Saturday night drinking waaay too much alcohol and injuring my coccyx by falling off the stage than feeling like shit cause customers are swearing at me because there's a NATIONWIDE FAULT IN THE EFTPOS SYSTEM, and therefore THERE'S NOTHING I AN DO ABOUT IT. No, swearing at me doesn't help either. Trust me, I wish it was fixed waaaaay more than you do - this 3 minute wait you have to SUFFER THROUGH while we process your transaction is nothing compared to the 45 minutes I have to stay back tonight getting everything counted and balanced and put away. If you keep this up I will STAB YOU IN THE EYE WITH MY PEN, lady who wants a raincheck on the cat food we still have plenty of on shelf, even if it isn't still wrapped in plastic. GTFOI.

Nine hour shifts with a good deal of pent up anger followed by an hour at the gym waiting for the anger to be replaced by apathy have let me here, to my bed, with its lovely warm electric blanket. I'm going to go and dream sweet dreams of people paying for everything with cash, and of being able to ban customers simply for getting on my nerves.

And relax...

Some days you achieve a lot, some days you don't. Sometimes this lack of achievement makes you cross, other days you're like, meh, whatever.

Today was the latter on both accounts. Well, work was a madhouse, what with the EFTPOS machines of half the country (apparently) being down and all the transactions taking twice as long and all the staff having nervous breakdowns and all the customers swearing at me, and maybe that's why I didn't do anything today. Because Casey told me that it had happened, so I bummed about in the afternoon knowing that later in the evening was going to be shit, then after it was over I was just worn out and couldn't be arsed.

Either way, today I sewed about 6 inches - I'm taking up a dress for a friend and wanted to make sure my machine could get a nice edge on the chiffon before I got a bit scissor-happy. I think it's going to be fine, but it's not needed till next Saturday, so I'm in no rush.