Sort Of Typing

I wouldn’t say anything much has changed in the last couple of days re: This Annoying What-Does-It-All-Mean Angst Thing I Go Through Every Couple Of Months, but I’m ready to have something else be the front page so here I am, sitting basically on top of the electric heater in the lounge at 9:00 on a Thursday night, my laundry in the dryer, my mug of lemon-ginger-and-honey going a bit cold, sort of reading last month’s Cuisine, sort of wondering what I’m going to wear to this party I’m going to tomorrow night, and sort of typing out to the ether.

We’re all a little sick in my house at the moment, actually, hence the lemon-ginger-and-honey (which, for all your North Americans reading this, comes as a syrup in a big glass bottle that your pour into your cup and then top up with hot water and is something I’d never seen before, having always just made lemon-ginger-and-honey with the three ingredients right in the name). Both Rachael and Rachel are down for the count, sniffling and coughing and feeling pretty miserable. I felt bad just looking at them. I got a flu jab this year (yay for working in health care) but it was only last week so I don’t know if that will save me from whatever it is they have. If I can get through this winter without too much mucus I will be happy.

Well, actually, I tell a lie, because I will only really be happy if I can get a good winter coat and a pair of black knee-high leather boots. My whole life, you realize—well, my life since I moved from California to Seattle in 1999, when boots became more of a reality for me, weather-wise—I have been searching for a pair of knee-high leather boots, and my search continues to this day. I don’t ask much, from boots, I don’t think. In my secret heart I would like many pair of boots, in all different colors and styles, but since we are living in a material world and I am a material girl, I am forced to consider the cold hard practicalities of life and limit my quest to: black, leather, wide enough to subsume the cankles, a bit of a heel but not too blocky of a heel, not too pointy in the toe, and hitting just below the knee so that I can wear them with cute tights or fishnets and knee-length a-line skirts, which I realize are something that only I wear anymore, as it is no longer, in fact, 2002, but I have found something that looks good on me and I think it’s fine for me to stick with it as long as I promise to sort of update the look by wearing a scarf everywhere I go and by layering fifteen or sixteen shirts one on top of the other. Anyway, I think I have found a verrrrrrry promising candidate (simple, I know, but I think they would work well) and at the moment I am considering whether to order them from the States or to buy them here with American money, or even with regular old Kiwi money. I need to run the numbers, obviously, but first I need to try them on in the shop beforehand, as I have been giddily tempted and then cruelly disappointed before, regarding boots. (Boots among other things).

And then, for those of you waiting on the edge of your seats for continuing news about my sartorial challenges (and seriously, girl, we could be here ALL NIGHT), there is the coat issue. Did I tell you what happened with the coat thing? How I needed a real winter coat after a year of summer, and how I don’t exactly remember what I did the first winter I was here re: outerwear but I think since I was young and naïve and fresh from Seattle I was still finding it appropriate to go about in public clad only in goretex and polarfleece? And then the second winter here I piked out and just went to Australia? And what this all boils down to is that I didn’t have a winter coat, and I spent last Northern Hemisphere winter in Miami, where I wasn’t even wearing jeans outside without expiring in a puddle of sweat until…November, maybe? And then only after ten p.m., and I still couldn’t wear closed-toe shoes. Anyway, so my sister had this old coat from the Gap that fit me pretty well so I told her I’d take if off her hands and I wore it to New York in January where it was so bitterly freaking cold I thought I my whole face would just peel away and flake off and my sister’s coat just wasn’t enough and I ended up borrowing something from my dad’s partner that was very warm but looked a little like I had slain a seal right there on Essex Avenue and thrown its raw pelt over my freezing shoulders. The issue of what coat I was going to wear and how long I would wear it and how warm would I be began to seem like a very difficult issue indeed, when I was in New York. And I was also really really worried about the weight of my baggage and so I don’t even remember how it happened but I ended up leaving the butchered-seal coat in the car on the way to the airport to go to San Francisco and my sister’s nice coat from the Gap at my dad’s place, all in the name of saving weight. And that was fine except here I am today, without a coat. I guess I’ll buy a new one? But why didn’t I keep the old one, the one my sister gave me? I don’t know. I would have been a lot warmer this evening on the bus home if I had—and let that be a lesson to us all, okay?

In further clothes news, I did actually get a couple of new things over the weekend, you’ll be happy to know—for free. See, I’ve been channeling my inner femme lately and have started to want to girl it up a little, and I don’t know how it happened but I started reading this great Wellington-based blog called, appropriately, Pretty Pretty Pretty and all of a sudden I found myself watching YouTube videos about how to apply, like, eyeshadow. Which I have ever only worn about three times in my life and always for either costume parties or dance performances, I don’t know girl, you tell me. Anyway, last weekend the cool girls who run that blog had a party and I screwed up my courage and emailed to see if I could go and they said yes and so I went and they were having a clothes swap—which is seriously such a good idea and I think more groups of friends should do it more often—and I got rid of a too-small jersey and some pants that just didn’t fit right and came home with a new sleeveless sweater, a singlet top that perfectly matches my patterned yoga pants, a skirt that, upon reflection, I’m not convinced really fits me, and a ridiculous dress that is super eighties but also super hot and I think I may have just answered my abovementioned question about what to wear to the party tomorrow night.

Anyway the rest of the night was good fun, with lots of new buddies (including a very nice American girl who not only recognized me from reading this blog but also “neatened up” my eyebrows for me, which really hurt but which looks pretty good) and makeup demonstrations and 90s-era SingStar and product giveaways and cute little meatballs on toothpicks and a very excellent mix CD in the giftbags the hosts put together for everyone. I am still unsure about the whole eyeshadow thing but I can dig getting together with strangers from the internet and having serious discussions about red lipstick and “the smoky eye” even if I don’t completely understand what everyone’s talking about.

So that’s my little world, about which I am still not completely sure that I’ve made the right decision. I guess I don’t really have to make any big choices at the moment, though, which is good because the vacillating between The Big Questions and the minutiae is making me a little nauseated, you know?

It’s totally time for me to go to bed and I’ve just been talking about, like, clothes, so I can’t tell you too much about the puncture I got when I was driving a work car the other day—driving on the other side remains entertainingly terrifying for me, and probably for everyone else on the road, too—or about how everyone in my family is adorably schmoopy and in love and engaged to be married, or about how I sort of wanted to see Sneaky Sound System last night but I didn’t get tickets but how I ended up having a super yummy dinner at the fabulous Sweet Mother’s Kitchen with my wife Alice, or how I have decided to pull back from bellydance for a while or possibly forever, although I really hope it’s not forever, or how my sweet friend Giulia is finally back from Italy where she, no lie, got a tumour removed from her spine and now she’s being written up in a medical journal, or how when I was sitting outside (why?) at the Southern Cross for birthday drinks the other night this very cute be-dreadlocked server guy brought me a hot water bottle and how I think that is a genius business idea, or how I painted a cute picture of a cupcake to put up in my room the other day. It’s time to get into bed with my book in my hoodie and yoga pants under my three thick blankets and just…get on with it, I guess. Fortunately for me there’s a lot to do and think about lately so getting on with it is, at the very least, never boring.