That feeling ...

... you know the feeling, it sneaks up on you as you're walking along.
You're just walking along, briskly, striding really, you're on your way somewhere ... and you suddenly notice.
You notice your muscles, flexing and relaxing as you bend your knees and swing your arms.
You become aware of the smooth glide of muscles in your legs, your thighs, as they skim over each other as you move along.
That slip of your back muscles, over your ribs, that slight pull at the spine.
There's a slight, not quite click, as all those hundreds of little foot bones move in perfect synchronicity.
You feel your face, your cheeks glow a little pink. You're warm but not hot.
You hear that slight "boom, whooosh" in your ears as your blood pumps along it's circulatory route.
There's no pain, no aches, just an awareness of movement, that everything's working as it should. Flex, relax, slip, slide, skim, sweep as you sally forth.
If you think about it too hard, it disappears.
I love that feeling.
I've not felt that way for quite a while.
I think I need to do something about that.

You see those sandles up above?
I have matching tan lines on my feets!

Our roses ...

... You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.Even if it's going to cost you $1,400 to make sure they are properly fed, and the poo-tray cleared, while you are away on holiday.
*Le Sigh*

This is ...

... what it's like in my 'library' when I retire there, with the air conditioner, to get out of the heat.
Well, a bit like what it's like. The Brown-Mouse Library is a bit tidier, I rarely wear shorts, we've only got two cats, and I don't have a beard. Also, I'm a girl.
Other than that, it's a spot on perfect illustration of a hot Mouse, trying to stay cool, thwarted by cats who love to snuggle, even though you are boiling to death.Actually it's the wonderful Edward Gorey and a few of his beloved mogs.

I was just congratulating myself ...

... on not having come down with ennui, the blues or Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder recently. But then it hit a day or so ago.
It's the season you see, and the weather, and having a sore back that won't get fully better, and being tired because I'm not sleeping well because of the sore back and the heat and the humidity.
O dear, me and my first-world problems and not really even seriously real depression.
Fuck it.

That pie ...

... in the post before, it was made for a friend's birthday picnic on Sunday.
A picnic I didn't get to go to because while baking said pie I suffered a baking-related injury.
Yep, I fucked my back. First time ever. Bending down to get baking paper out of a bottom drawer.
My back went 'twang' and I thought to myself "hmmm, that feels funny" and continued on my merry way. Until, that is, I tried to bend over again. It quickly became apparent I would not be bending over again that day.
Nor the next, so the picnic was out.
Monday saw me still out of order, and so at home with plenty of kitteh nursing and pain-killers left over from Mr Brown's eye operations (yes, we horded, we are SO naughty).
Tuesday, after a day of very painful work, I popped down to my friendly local acupuncturist and was almost put to rights. I'm walking and getting up and down pretty well. Sitting for long periods is uncomfortable as is getting up after. But all in all, I'm on the mend I'd say.
Still, fark, this is old age creeping up on me isn't it?

So, Jury Duty ...

... obviously I can't tell you any of the juicy details, mainly because there aren't any, but also because I'd get into terrible trouble with the jury police for talking about the trial outside the jury room and with persons other than my fellow jurors! Apparently they could take me outside and shoot me for that.
I can tell you it's a bit like a holiday. There's the 10 am start! There's the full hour lunch, 1pm on the dot EVERY DAY! There's the breaks for morning AND afternoon tea. There's the 4pm on the DOT end of the day. O, and then there's the 1pm end of the day EVERY Friday. POETS* day, every Friday - Bliss! And work pays me, my usual rate HA.
The food provided is fucking awful, really, really bad. I know I'm fussy but honestly, it's appalling. I take my own.
The Jury room is small and ugly, but we get a balcony, which will be nice when it warms up.
The trial is dull, repetitive and not at all juicy. I'm glad it's not a horrible murder, rape of something beastly to children or animals. I'm not at all sure I'd cope with that.
My fellow jurors? Some seem quite nice and some ... well let's just say I'm not planning on breaking the law anytime soon, a Jury trial by my peers is a terrifying thought**.






* O go on, you can work it out I'm sure.
** Why yes, I am a bit of a snob, for good reason I assure you.

I'm Crushed ...

.. faithful readers with good memories will remember my devotion to Pears Transparent Soap.
I love the stuff, used it from when I was wee, and snitched a bar from my mother's pantry/store cupboard upon finally leaving home. I've been using it ever since. I introduced it to our co-habitable/matrimonial home.
You take the last wafer-thin bit of soap, mold it into the dip of the new bar and carry on. If you believe in the theory behind Bach Flower Remedies, I don't by the way, but if you did, you could argue that we are still using the same soap I took from home over 20 years ago. It's a lovely thought.
Anyway, just the other week Mr Brown opened a new box, slipped out a new bar, popped the old snippet of soap on top, to find it didn't have that concave space (created, apparently, not by deliberate, careful molding, but by shrinkage asthe soap dries). Hmmmmm.
I was next in the bathroom. It smelled wrong, strong, overpowering and wrong. It was the soap. "This isn't Pears" I declared to Mr Brown, "we've been sold dud soap, fucking Coles is selling counterfeit Pears! The Fuckers." (Not an unfair charge I contend, they've been sneaky before.) I was accused of overreacting, possible defamation, and told to hurry up we were going to be late for work.
Some judicious Googling proved me right ... and wrong. It wasn't counterfeit soap, Pears had changed the ingredients and the formula. The ingredients list for the soap I love is - Sodium Palmitate, Natural Rosin, Glycerin, Water, Sodium Cocoate, Rosemary and Thyme Extract and Pears Fragrance, a nice, short relatively natural and safe list.
The new list is Sorbitol, Aqua, Sodium Palmate/stearate, Sodium Palmkernelate, Sodium Rosinate, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (nasty) PEG-4, Alcohol, Glycerin, Perfume, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Meta Bisulfite, Etidronic acid, Tetra Sodium EDTA, BHT, CL 12490, CL 47005, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Salicylate, Cinnamal, Eugenol Limonene, Linalool. A nasty list of toxicity.
I DO NOT WANT.
Turns out a shit load of other people did not want either. Pears has apparently stated it will abandon the new forumla and use one "much closer to the original".
Now I dealt with the packaging change, the disappointing, dull box and cellophane replacing the lovely proper paper individually enclosing each individual tablet. But I won't deal with the new smell, the funny "feel" (it's sort of softish, creepy) and the horrid shape. "Much closer to the original" just isn't good enough Pears, you've lost a customer of some 40-odd years.
Goodbye Pears, hello Dr Bronner's Magic Soaps! The ingredient list for the bar soap isn't quite as comforting as old Pears, but it's a shit load better than what Pears became.
Here endith my rant.

Missing my joie de vivre ...

... I hate when this happens, this sudden onset blues.
I've lost motivation, fun, appetite, bladyblabla.
It's not helping that it's hot and humid.Cruising for pictures of Spring is not making things better.Coming across pictures of Small, actually makes things worse.The round of intense retail therapy I underwent this week has not helped either.
I really, really need for (a) it to cool the fuck down and get on with autumn already (b) for Mr Brown to spend a weekend at home now and again. Pathetically, things get done when he's there doing or helping alongside.
Bah.

A grumble ...

... but in grumbling I will reveal something shameful about myself. Please do not judge me too harshly.
I read comic books. Yes, really. Not by choice so much as circumstance. I'd much rather read the adventures of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, in novel form. But Mr Gaiman chose not to provide the story as a nice book, but as a comic book, a series of comic books. It's not as if he couldn't have written a good book, he's written several, most of which I think I possess. But no, he went for comics and I must suffer the shameful consequences of becoming a comic geek.
Calling them graphic novels does not help.
The gripe? Well, having paid $ehemm for parts 1 & 2 in a local bookshop, I chuffed off to Amazon.com and found I could get the rest of the series for half price or under. I ordered the rest, paying only $ehemm.
(Mr Brown reads this blog from time to time and even though it's my own money, earned by the sweat of my own brow there are still some things married couples do NOT need to share. How much I spend on publications is one of those things).
This morning there was a delivery, I ripped open the box while Mr Brown was in the shower, I received parts 4, 5, 7, 9 & 10.
According to the Amazon.com docket thingy parts 3, 6, 8 & 11, were sent the same day, but clearly in a different fucking box, that was not delivered this morning.
WHY, Amazon.com, of why didn't you just bung the whole lot in the same box??
Here endeth the gripe.
In other, slightly book-related news, while out scouring the CBD for lunchibles, I found this plate in a Japanese teashop window.It's coming home with me this very evening.

The plan for today was ...

... get up early(ish). Have breakfast cooked for us in some cafe or other. Drive to our old home town. Go look at some pretty pictures that are visiting all the way from La Belle France (including Starry, Starry Night *sighs*). Have lunch somewhere nice. Do a little poking about a proper, good plant nursery (me), visit a sister and collect the last of the 'inheritance' (him). Come home.
What actually happened?
Mr Brown ended up having to go to work. I know if he didn't work we'd be poor and sad and I couldn't have frocks galore but still, a day off, once in a blue moon, not too much to ask surely?
So, Ping and I had a girls day at home. We slept in, read a bit. Washed the new sheets. And painted our toenails. Well, I painted mine while she watched. That's not to say Pingu doesn't take care of her toenails.
I'll cook a lovely dinner of chicken with pasta and peas for poor Mr Brown. Generally a weekend sort of dinner but what the hell, I have the time. I may even throw in a couple of lovely, buttery, herb-y dumplings!

Zombie tomatoes ...

... it's been raining for near-on 40 days and 40 nights now.
Well, almost, long enough for it to feel like it'll never stop.
The humidity is in the 80s, the high 80s, most days. Everything is slightly damp, or sticky. My bare feet stick to the floors. If we didn't have a heated towel rail we'd be mopping ourselves off with damp towels in the morning.
The house looks like a laundry, since I can't dry anything outside. Even the inside-dried stuff never feels really, dry. Not that lovely sun-crisped dry you (well I) look for in my washing.
And to top it off, the rain's brought out the snails, slugs and rain-borne zombie-flesh diseases, all landing on our lovely tomato crop.Our not-so-lovely tomato crop.It's my fault, I planted late, we should just be harvesting the stragglers now.Instead the glut, so eagerly anticipated, is just rotting on the vine.I'm marking the calendar for next time. I intend for us to be eating the glut as a celebration of the new year, next year.

I want ...

... This Chair, called Lyra, so badly it almost aches (only in red, obvy).I've wanted it for years.
I think I first spotted on the back of a Vogue magazine.
I've found somewhere that sells it.
That somewhere is a little coy about the price, which makes me a little uneasy.
You know the saying "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford one"? Well, I need to know the price, also, is it comfortable?

The art of being warm ...

... it's no secret that I prefer my weather on the cooler side.
I look forward to Sydney's too-few-and-far-between cold days. Days when I can be free to indulge in the art of being warm.
I love building a fire, the making of it, the getting and keeping it going, the poking opportunities. I love it when the room is gloomy, that's when the bright, dancing flames look their best. The hissing song of burning wood, the smell of woodsmoke.
I love dressing up warm, the weight of a proper jumper, the snuggle of the layers. The bliss of warm woolly socks, tucking toes into eiderdown slippers. Gloves and scarves in bright colours and soft yarns, I welcome the excuse to wear them.
Then there's the soft alpaca rugs, the woollen lace shawls, the snuggling down with a good book and a couple of cats. One of those cats always tries to get onto the lap under the rug or shawl. I love going to bed when it's cold, wriggling down into the doona, being thankful Mr Brown is, in actual fact, some sort of human furnace.
And food, cold weather food is so much nicer than it's summer counterpart. Long, slow, fragrant cooking. The opportunity to have dumplings with your stews and braises. Soups, wonderful hot, chunky, vegetable soups, I relish the opportunity to set one to simmering on the stove. And a proper baked dinner, humming away in the oven, warming the kitchen end of the house.
Clearly I was made for cooler climes, how did I end up here!

Life at work just got very, very ...

... busy.
So I may be quiet for a bit.
Then again, I may not, you can never really tell with these things.

Why is it the only swimsuit I actually can see myself wearing ...

... costs $US350?I blame the universe, it's plotting against me.
Pic from here.

Aaaarrrgggg ....

… horrors upon horrors – I woke up this morning with horrid itchy red eyes, as if eczema has taken over both eyes (in very hot weather, and when under undue stress I tend to get a bit of eczema on my top left eyelid but this is unprecedented) and huge fluid-filled bags under them. They ache like they are bruised, look a bit like that too. No other symptoms (just as well) so it’s not some disgusting eye disease or hay-fever. GAH, I feel like poo and look appalling. Something has gone horribly wrong or, I’m suddenly violently allergic to mushrooms.