The Being-Unable-To-Work Thing

It’s been a pretty hectic week since I got the good news. You’d think that with the being-unable-to-work thing I’d be sleeping in until noon only to wake and lounge around watching daytime TV before rehydrating my Top Ramen, but no. Your friend Chiara is still waking up at eight every day and checking things off her to-do list and having a very fun social life and in some ways it’s good I can’t work yet because frankly, I am too busy, okay?

In fact I’m too busy (I have to make a decision about whether to go to a cheese-tasting party or tonight’s hafla or both) to write a real entry right now, so I will instead leave you with a bullet list of various things I’ve been doing lately and my reviews and responses thereof and thereto.

Getting the paperwork for the visa together: AAAAAUGH. It could be much much much worse, I know. I know this, and I’m grateful it’s not, but that doesn’t stop me from tearing my hair out trying to get this thing going. I wasn’t able to put it in on Friday because my transcripts from grad school won’t get here until Monday (I hope) so that’s super annoying, especially as that nice job I was offered would like me to, you know, start working there as soon as possible. It will take between ten days and two months to get it, the immigration website informs me. Why don’t they just say “It’ll be done when WE SAY IT’S DONE, EH,” and be done with it?

Going to my first bellydance class in eight weeks this morning: Ow ow ow ow ow. You can’t skip class, babies, you cannot skip class. Oh, sure, you went to Australia and then you spent a week horking up variously colored bodily fluids and then you weren’t sure if you should go to class because you weren’t sure if you’d be around to go to class. Excuses, excuses. Your obliques don’t care.

Being told by a fine young thing in a dance bar last night “I want to have Italian babies!”: Flattering, I guess, although I felt compelled to mention that I’m only half Italian. I cheekily mentioned this, however, in Italian, whereupon this fine young thing rolled his eyes and went “Do you know how hot that makes me?” “Uh, lukewarm?’ I guessed, ever the smooth talker.

Going to a very cool island bird sanctuary for a friend’s birthday: Birds are pretty, cake is yummy, and I have still not completely thawed out.

Dealing with a streak of mutiny on the part of various inanimate objects in my life: Not so good. First the dryer broke but we got that fixed so that was fine, and then the power point in the kitchen decided not to work which is annoying when I vacuum. And then my phone started acting weird and needed to be charged for multiple hours a day only to decide to turn itself off at the most inconvenient moments, and then my laptop thought, oh what the hell, I’ll just be really slow for a week or so and to not let me watch DVDs, and then the new batteries I put in my new camera went on strike or something. I’ve lost two bus tickets, at twenty dollars each, in the last week, not to mention my scarf, and then my sunglasses—my fourth pair since I lost my awesome prescription ones in Fiji—went down, and then of course I lost an earring last night. I am feeling…well, I’m just sort of tiptoeing around at the moment, hoping that nothing else happens. On the upside, I did find a couple of lost socks the other day, so that’s good news.

Being invited to go to a speed-dating thing on Thursday: Yeah, no.

The lavender-orange hot chocolate I had the other day with Sylvia at Schoc, which is basically just a lump of delicious lump of chocolate swimming around in a cup of hot milk, and they give you a spoon that is also a straw to stir/sip it with PLUS it was two-for-one day: Oooooooooooohhhhhhh giiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllllll.

Upgrading my years-long adoration for Jemaine of Flight Of The Conchords from “mildly embarrassing crush” to “obsession that burns with the fire of a thousand big-lipped, glasses-wearing suns” : Right on schedule.

Seeing my first rugby game (on TV): I sure like it when burly guys with no necks and very tight shorts jump on top of each other like that.

Going outside in the Wellington spring weather: Bring a jacket! And socks! And jandals! And sunnies! And a scarf! And sunscreen! And a fleece! Because it’s four seasons in fifteen minutes, man.

Feeling so glad I don’t have to leave next Friday, that even though I have no idea when the visa is going to go through and a lot of things are still up in the air, the thing that needed to happen for me to be able to stay for even a little while longer has happened: Every minute of every day, pretty much.