Moseying

I have many friends participating in Movember and I thought in honour of them and my own facial hair I'd share the gist of a great Cathy Wilcox cartoon:

Two guys drinking beer.
Guy 1 : So, is your new girlfriend attractive?
Guy 2 : Well, she has a moustache
Guy 1 : So, is it a nice moustache?

Glue ear

One particularly chatty little trick or treater said to me:

I've seen you in my street. My mother said you must have gone to a party and forgotten that your hair was green.

Something burnt and something blue

On Saturday we went to a wedding. Beforehand I was in our bedroom getting dressed and D was in the kitchen ironing his favourite shirt. I came out of the bedroom with green hair, I's magical green, purple and blue dress and a purple cape. D said "You look good. You look really good." And just stood there gazing at me admiringly. Until he realised he'd burnt his shirt.

I think I will tell this story for a long time as one of our most romantic moments.

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At the wedding I was dancing to some unfamiliar song with a friend who is maybe 10 years younger than me when he said "I suppose you remember this from when it came out?" I didn't but that was fine. Then he said "My dad was hippy, were you a hippy?" Suddenly I felt a hundred.

When I told this story to another friend who is maybe 10 years younger than me, he said "Well if you are 100 then you look really good for your age."

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Sorry for the lack of posts lately - my laptop is sick and I'm suffering from work angst.

Greener than I'm cabbage looking

Today I got my hair dyed green. A vibrant kelly green. I'm very pleased with it.

Why green?

1. It is an strange personal joke about 'natural' hair colours.
2. It will stop me applying for other jobs before I know what is happening at my work.
3. It's one of my favourite colours and purple is too trad.
   
4. I'm feeling rebellious.
5. It will help me do some other things that are outside my comfort zone.
6. I've been meaning to do it for years.
   
7. My sister's hair hasn't been green.
8. Our corporate colour wasn't radical enough.
9. I thought it would make my complexion look less florid.
10. It is a transition stage from white back to brown.

Brown girl in the ring

Occasionally I realise that some of my fundamental assumptions were set when I was growing up in the seventies. Today I picked up a brown skirt that I've had for a while and never worn, thinking it would go well with the top I'd chosen and would be pleasantly warm. Then I thought "but I can't because I have no brown shoes".

Let me explain my illogical reasoning:

• Black is a base to which other colours can be added but it doesn't count as a colour.
• Brown is a base to which other colours can be added but it doesn't count as a colour.
• You can't have two bases.

Ergo I can't wear black shoes with a brown skirt.

Fortunately I remembered that not only am I a biped but also, sometime after the eighties when black was the new brown, brown became a colour.

My fashion logic worked - at the bus stop I saw a friend who is about 10 years younger than me. She was also wearing a brown skirt and black boots.

I can see clearly now

Since I've started wearing reading glasses:

• I am much more conscious of the bridge of my nose.
• I am developing a whole new set mannerisms (like taking them off and waving them at people while I talk).
• I keep being at meetings where everyone is wearing glasses.
• All my friends have got wrinklier.

Bespectacled

I've just got my first ever glasses (for reading) so if I seem both more intelligent and less like a superhero you'll understand.

I looked up glasses on Wikipedia which led me down the following strange paths:

• meganekko: "females who wear glasses, especially when it is considered their most attractive trait"
• glasses fetishism

Who knew?

[Updated as the second bullet point got lost in virtual wilderness.]

Walking with cats

As you can see our model has accessorised her professional outfit this morning with a dab of breakfast by the collar. This is an eye catching look which can be achieved simply and in a wide variety of fetching styles to suit your mood. And in the wise words of my big sister: egg is better worn on the sleeve, with the heart, than on the face.

Out and about

Yesterday H, K and I went to the Gay and Lesbian Fair.

K went in a lavender fairy dress and H wore a muscle shirt that says "Sweetie". Most 4 year-old girls do camp without even trying, K has worn the fairy dress every waking moment she's allowed since she got it from the toy library last weekend and H picked out the "Sweetie" top without knowing where we were going.

I'd like to award a funniest T-shirt prize to my pregnant, lesbian friend C, who was wearing one like this:

So many different levels of dubious.

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In other news H & K's daddy is back. Yay!

Youth before beauty

I was trying to sleep in this morning, a forlorn hope as the only adult in the house. At about 7:45 both girls climbed into my bed. After a bit the following conversation took place:

H: "I'm hungry." Pause. "Mummy?"
me: "Yes?"
H: "I'm hungry"
me: "Oh."
H: "Mummy?." Pause. "Mummy!"
me: "Yes?"
H holding up her pyjama top: "Look at my tummy. It's flat. It's not supposed to be flat. It's supposed to come out to here." H holds her hand a couple of centimeters out from her tummy. "It's flat because I'm sooo hungry."

She's right you know.

Stone age slogans

Inspired by Gary Larson and a little boy I saw today with a T-shirt which I couldn't quite read but it might have said "Save the Dragons". The caveman is borrowed from here.

Pachyderm philanthropy

Looking at this year's Breast Cancer Research T-shirts in the local Glasson's I decided that if I was designing one it would have flying elephants on it. So here they are:


(When I drew this I though this year's theme was 'One Kiss', since then I've discovered it is 'Kiss Off').

In the little bumpy car

My ideal car for our current requirements is:

1. automatic
2. second hand
3. a people-mover (comfortably seats 6 with room for baggage)
4. environmentally friendly (e.g. a hybrid)
5. painted metallic purple, colour-shifting purple/green or with a mural

Unfortunately environmentally friendly doesn't currently go with either second hand or a people-mover.

At the moment we have a Honda Odyssey people-mover and even though we mostly don't need the extra capacity sometimes it is wonderful. Someone on our street has got a Toyota Prius and I'd like to be as green as the Jones's.

Not the Edinburgh Tattoo

My friend I suggested I write about "What you'd tell your daughter if one of them wanted to get a tattoo?"

I'm not anti tattoos per se but I've never got one because I've never been confident that I'd still want the same thing years later. So I think I'd want to set an age limit, like 18. If I thought I could get away with it I'd like a rule that you have to write down what you want 5 years before you get the tattoo and can only get it done if you still want the same thing.

Maybe I should be evil and ask H & K when they are 13 what they'd get if they could have a tattoo, write it down and bring it out when they're 18 to scare them :-)

My grandmother had her ears pierced when she was 80. Maybe I'll get a tattoo when I'm 80. I wouldn't have to live with it for so long :-)

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When I went on my OE (short for overseas experience - Kiwi for travelling and or working overseas typically as a young adult). I realised that facial tattoos are more common in New Zealand than anywhere else I went (US, Canada, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Greece, Samoa).

I used to go out with a largish guy with dark curly hair who wore black jeans and a black fisherman's knit jersey. Once I saw him in the middle of town, I ran up behind him, grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him round. It wasn't him. It was someone with full facial, gang related tattoos. I said "sorry - thought you were someone else" in a cheery voice and ran off again. The guy looked stunned.

I think being accosted in an overly friendly manner by small brightly coloured people was outside his normal experience.

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The Tattoo Museum in Wellington is closing soon. I've been meaning to go to it ever since it opened. If you're in Wellington and you're in the same boat you should go now.

Blonde thoughts

The other day I had my hair bleached white blonde. I have had a lot of positive feedback and I am very happy with the change but when the umpteenth person said, "So do blondes have more fun?" and I replied, "I'm not sure but they certainly get more inane remarks," I didn't mean it as a put down - just a statement of fact.

Now I use it as a put down.

[Orginally published with a request for advice from punctuation pendants, especially I. Updated after that great goddess of punctuation provided her advice.]

An ode to shoes

I wear Merrell Jungle Mocs,
I wear them all the time,
I've persuaded myself they're corporate enough
to wear them on work time.

I like the way they're comfy,
I like the way they feel,
I'm delighted that work doesn't bat an eye
since I hurt my heel.

My toenails aren't making holes
in my socks anymore
but all my other shoes are getting dusty
on the wardrobe floor.

[Insert standard doggerel disclaimer here.]

Hair today

Walking to work this morning, feeling frustrated with my appearance, I decided not just to have a hair cut today but a radical change.

So my hair which has been brown most of my life with occassional episodes of orange or red highlights is now white blonde.


(Photo taken by me with my phone at work hence strange composition and expression as I couldn't see what I was doing.)

This is in part a tribute to my sister.

Beauty is in the smitten eye of the beholder

Before my daughters I thought:

• innie tummy buttons were better than outies
• pink was a colour to avoid.

Now I have been convinced that:

• the two most beautiful tummy buttons in the world are both outies
• pink is a attractive colour which suits three year olds.

The other side of this equation is that I really enjoy having two people who are completely convinced that I am the most beautiful person in the world.