Curiously Minty

Leaving on a jet plane

I have a new camera.  Very tiny and neat.  Thanks for the recommendation.

I have a nifty little tool which shows me what time it is in other parts of the world and has a rotating selection of photos of said city.  It gives me great pleasure sitting on my toolbar plus I can see at a glance if my scrabble partneris likely to be up and have played a move.

I am getting things under control at work - I have a plan and am beginning to understand the politics and at this level of the organisation, the machinations of the Medicis seem plain talking by comparison.  I am faking it with aplomb.

I am working at home today.  Since I spend a lot of time on the phone speaking to people who do not have English as their first language I finding the office hub bub very distracting.  The downside of working at home is that the whole fridge and pantry are within 5 steps and there is the potential for much snacking.  Even though I am going to lunch with some old clients, I have eaten a door stop piece of brioche and some of last year's apricot jam.  Yum.

Despite the fact that I am getting on a plane in just over 24 hours for a marathon flight (I just realised we have 5 hours in KL airport), that I have nothing to wear to this wedding I am going to (or nothing that pleases me), and that I have not yet packed anything, I am feeling remarkably calm.

Professional help

Mwah, this new job is very consuming.  I have an A5 notebook because, you know, I like something I can fit in my bag but I am worrying that it is not big enough for all the notes I seem to be taking.  I'm getting all anal retentive and thinking about colour coding my notes so I can keep up with all the countries - Korea! Austria! United Arab Emirates! - and the subjects.  I guess I will get to grips with it soon but I need to get my plan out so my boss stops hijacking me stuff I am not totally convinced is on strategy.  Plus, I need some thinking time, not talking on the bloody telephone time.

Anyway, in other news, the tea party was a raving success.  The tent was erected in under an hour and looked fantastic.  I have photos but can't be bothered to get up and find the camera.   The visitors were all nice and polite and one stayed behind to help dismantle the marquee so the garden was returned to its former state of calm.  (and all the sausage rolls got eaten)

The last guest left at 6.30 and I threw on a frock and a pair of comfortable heels and headed out to a leaving party.  I bought a bottle of Pelorus but ended up drinking most of it myself - to the extent that I left my car and got a cab home.  Sunday I felt a little tired but the quality of the vintage I was drinking meant there was no hangover.

Monday saw me and oldest at the vehicle registry to get her licence.  And then she dropped me at work and drove off.  Just like that.  It was very odd to watch her drive off alone but she and I both survived the experience.

I am so looking forward to getting on a plane.  Damn, that reminds me I have to go and beg some pharmaceuticals off the dr to help me through jet lag.  I am getting very excited about winter nights and cold.  And not being on the phone every evening, blah....

Off with her head

I think my menu for the Mad Hatter's tea party tomorrow would have MeMe Roth (via elle) advancing on me with wrath.  All I can say is, that I grew up with Sunday lunch (roast beef, yorkshire pud, etc), a brisk walk to work off the enormous lunch and then afternoon tea.  Since my youngest daughter shares a birthday with my much missed mother, I dedicate this afternoon tea to her.  We are having smoked salmon sandwiches, ham sandwiches, sausage rolls, scones, tiny meringues, fairy cakes, birthday cake and earl grey tea.  I am breaking out my best china tea set, my apostle tea spoons and the sugar tongs.  We have a tent gazebo pavilion.

Today, older daughter worked wonders in blowing up balloons, constructing a "pin the hat on the mad hatter", wrapping pass the parcel and assembling party bags.  We are severely downplaying the prevailing trend on these.  Far out parents, what happened to sending your guests home with a slice of birthday cake and a balloon?  The stuff in the bags, often rivals the birthday gift itself.  Fortunately older daughter has a part time job in a pharmacy so she clued me in that they were selling nail polish for $2 and with her staff discount we got a collection of vile colours for $15 which seemed a fine thing to send home with barely teenage girls along with a small box of smarties.

All this and trying to do the job for which I am paid money.  Phew.  I got off the phone and rushed out to mow the lawn before it rained - ha, not bloody likely that we get again rain here except when I am running a garden party.

Do I sound like I am on one track.  Older daughter said "Mummy, you must tell her this the last year she can have a party".  She could see I was erring on the frazzled side today.\

Did I mention she has passed her driving test.  She can get the licence on her 17th birthday so we are queuing up at the vehicle licensing centre as soon as it opens on Monday morning.  I have promised to lend her my car for the day.  She has already adjusted the speakers to increase the bass and burned a CD of her driving tunes.  I am so happy for her.

Fairy cake tales

Ha, was that me blithely claiming to be calm about all upcoming events and tasks.  Even as I sit here juggling a phone and trying to remember the timezones in Shanghai, I am also writing a list that says "sausage rolls, meringues, candles...".  Still oldest has finished school for the year and I have co-opted her to assist in erecting a marquee tomorrow (an ebay bargain) to be turned into the Alice in Wonderland venue for Saturday.

So busy was I selecting fairy cake flavours that I mixed up a call to Dubai last night and did not get on line till 30 minutes after the call was due to start.  The person I was supposed to be talking to had been a few minutes late and had wondered if she had offended me with her tardiness.  Sweetheart, I am so not a person to stomp around in a high dudgeon and I confessed up the fairy cake debacle.  I had an earlier call with someone in Shanghai who I knew when she was a great deal less easy to work with but time appears to have mellowed her as it was a pretty good meeting.

I need a bloody great world map to stick in front of me so I can ponder the folly wonder of a business region that encompasses 170 countries and 14 time zones.  I spend a lot of time here.

I was working at home yesterday but oldest daughter was hanging out here too and that was not a combination conducive to work so I need to get my home office sorted out so I can gently close the door on her and not be bombarded with the following requests:  can i make brownies, where is the chocolate, sugar, how hot should the oven be, can i use your credit card to book tickets to see lady gaga on-line, i'll give you the money after i get paid tomorrow, can you take me to far-flung pharmacy to buy particular brand of fake tan (oh gaslight pharmacy how I miss thee).  I can not wait to turn up at the vehicle registry on Monday so she can get that driving licence and take herself off to do these things.  Thank goodness she is working today.  

In for a penny

I have a lot of my mind. My daughter will turn 17 on Monday and though I rejoice in her growing I am regretful of some things I could have done better.  She will get her driving licence on Monday and another piece of independence.  I'm glad but feel a loss as well.  Everything changes.

I like my job but it's a steep learning curve.  And all those time zones, phew, it's a challenge working out who is at work when.  I need to watch it's not me who is at work all the time.  I spoke to bossman about some stuff today - had to call his boss's baby ugly but fortunately he agreed with me, so I wrote a "I'm new around here and I must be missing something because it seems like ..." email.  We'll see how that goes.

I'm going to visit some heirloom chickens and their owner on Sunday.  That should be fun as there is a golden lab in the mix as well.

I have horrible thrush.  I have not had this in years so assume that my stress levels and two courses of antibiotics have got everything out of kilter.  I am mainlining yoghurt in every way you can imagine (or probably you prefer not to imagine anything).

Tonight I ate gaspacho (salad in a soup which allows me to drink my vegetables) with toast.  I bought a dollar baguette from the Vietnamese bakery to make the toast.  I know it wasn't quite artisan sourdough bread but you know what, I just felt good there was something I could buy for a dollar.  In fact, I unwittingly tried to pay her with an Irish 20 euro coin but she had seen charlatans like me before and handed it back to me.  Even paying legal tender it was a cheap dinner.

Listless

Oof, if that weekend was supposed to be restful it was very unsuccessful.  The father of my children was moving house.  This was deeply stressful for him for many reasons associated with many things that don’t need to be discussed on the internet but I was feeling a little unhappy about the stress that was being visited my way via the medium of my children.  Oldest daughter went as far as to complain about her father while she is normally deeply loyal to him (in a way that irks me since she is dutiful, compliant, sunny daughter with him reserving her true, unpredictable, venting teenager-dom for her mother who she knows will absorb it without tantrums, but I digress).  I had offered to assist and was breezily told that it was all under control while it most patently was not.  So I talked to someone about it and decided to suck it all in and go and assist nonetheless on moving day.  Six car loads, 18 sets of stairs, one teenager to deliver and collect from her place of employ, one bookcase untangled from my shed and donated by me, beds made and clothing put in cupboards.  Of course, he wasn’t in the least bit grateful but I wasn’t seeking his approval not even trying to relieve the stress on my children, just doing what was right for another human being.  And of course feel that I had added to my general saintliness on what was at least a 37 degree day.  

I was so tired on Sunday I just found myself too exhausted to be good company.  I can’t even remember what I did other than clean out the rabbits.  As I swept away the cobwebs from the hutch a red back spider ran out from under the eaves.  I called someone over to observe the red back and then squashed it promptly.  Good thing I was wearing my gardening gloves.   I have little empathy for wildlife that wants me as spiderbait.  

I am feeling a little overwhelmed at the weight of tasks for the tea party next week.  I am leaving for London in less than two weeks and feel like there is a lot more planning that could be done.  I need a serious bit of list planning to get everything back under control. 

The secret life of me

I don't know if I am getting old and crotchety but I am not loving the new typepad interfaces and urges to connect.  Don't you know that I have spent years on the internet keeping my life in compartments?  I don't want facebook to match twitter to match my blog.  I even have two twitter ids:  one for here and one for rather more earnest work-like observations.   Believe me, you don't want the two to come together.  I don't see any contradiction in this.  Weren't you a different person in front of your school friends than your parents?  I even had two accents - my middle class English tones and my Glaswegian accent for not getting beaten up on the bus home from school.  I can switch in and out to this day.  

Today is very hot.  I got up early and cut the grass.  I cut it sort of long so it didn't parch but it was still neat and pleasing.  I did some work.  Went to the gym.  Came home and worked all day interspersed with hanging out the laundry and getting distracted by the fact that Hulk Hogan was in Canberra (I learn the most requested celebrity that kids with cancer want to meet).  Apparently more of the press gallery turned out for his visit to Parliament House than can usually be arsed to make a Kevin Rudd press conference.

This working at home thing is turning out pretty good at the moment.  I am powering through stuff though my head is spinning with the newness of it all.  In a good way.

I ate gaspacho for lunch.  It lacked a certain something?  Maybe good vinegar since the stuff I used was pretty ordinary.  I am trying to think what to eat tonight in 37 degree heat.   Maybe tandoori chicken with creamy yoghurt and cucumber?

The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory*

Why is the Green Book like a watermelon? Because it is green on the outside, read inside with lots of black spots.

This was the joke going round Tripoli when I lived there.  I was reminded of this reading about Gadaffi's soiree where he invited 200 glamourous Italian hostesses to a lecture on the role of women in Islam.  Speaking as someone who was employed at a Libyan university as a role model for young Libyan women to enter further education and to assure parents that there were women as well as male teachers, I can attest to his genuine concern for the education of women if slightly eccentric way of demonstrating it.  We used to dread that he might turn up at one of our classes and we'd be sitting there for hours listening to interminable speeches.  I love that the woman complaining "we were at least expecting a snack".  Honey, would you be complaining about the catering if it were Obama offering you the lecture?

On a different note, I am obsessed with these pencils.  Do you think it is frivolous to spend $660 on a set of pencils? I mean there are five hundred of them and their names are enticing?

*the official name for the Green Book, next you can test me on Gramsci's cultural theory

Pit stop

I'd like to say we sail through the mornings with cheerful harmony, but two teenage girls intent on competing for every ounce of attention does my head in.  What should be relatively straightforward turns into a frenzy of accusations and door slamming.  I have decreed that youngest needs to learn to braid her own hair and stop asking oldest to do it, and oldest needs to shut her bedroom door until she has made her wardrobe selection is made and stop huffing and puffing over her choices.  I am frazzled before I even get in to work.

Today, new job started in earnest but since I have a number of evening calls, I left the office mid afternoon and had a pedicure and went to the gym before coming home and getting stuck in again.  I am quite enjoying my unconventional working hours.  The gym was hard as I am still a little breathless but I am trying to get back into the groove of exercise.  Tonight I watched more Friday Night Lights.  The girls are with their father so I have wrested back control of the remote.  There is a cool breeze coming in and I am feeling pretty good.

Monday on my mind

It was a good weekend. Yesterday, we went to the farmers' market and bought cherries and peaches and lamb and tomato plants.  I bought a lot of tomatoes - Saint Pierre and Pantano and Marglobe and Red Per sel Franchi and basil and dill.  Youngest was going to the movies so older daughter drove the car to Civic and we went to Target and bought her pants for work.  She is 17 in two weeks and I bought her a faux Herve Leger bandage dress to wear to her birthday party from Forever New (a shop I would have never have entered into if not for her, but which pleases me with its high turnover of stock and constant sale rack.)  To please me, we did some grocery shopping in Aldi and discovered that dvds were on sale this week.  We bought Hoodwinked and Dodgeball to idle away an afternoon.  After we picked youngest up we came home and worked on the skirt that she was making for her textiles project.  I was reminded of how little I enjoy making clothes when she sewed on the waistband the wrong way round.  While they watched Hoodwinked I cooked the lamb on the weber with lots of garlic and rosemary and cumin.  I made a potato bake and a salad and while the lamb was roasting, planted out the tomatoes.  We ate dinner after I showered and then the girls ate homemade vanilla icecream with a hot fudge sauce via here.  I'm not really a chocolate sauce person so I gave that bit a miss.  By the time we had put the zip in the skirt (expletive deletive) it was 9.30.  I watched the beginning of Se7en but honestly did not have the energy to stay up past midnight.

This morning I was up early for first day of new job which was somewhat spoiled by three hours of doing performance reviews of old job.  I was on the end of the phone and the process was somewhat complicated and torturous mostly to try and assuage the fact that very few of our team had made their (hard edged numbers) targets.  So when one of my colleagues (who I like very much but think a poor manager for their avoidance of delivering tough messages) said "blah, blah, I think her performance in these areas more than outweighs the non-achievement of her financial targets" I could not help myself reminding him that we are in the  business of growing our business and her failure to achieve meant the overall size of the business was shrinking so in what possible way did her being a nice person compensate for that.  Sheesh, you'd think people who work for a company which epitomises capitalism in the way that mine does, would have a clue about what constitutes business success.

Oh boy, in the meantime, the person who has been carrying my new job was bombarding me with emails which had the opening line "Since Curious has now joined our team as Chief Apologist in the Regret Management Unit, I am copying her so she can respond to your question".  I pinged her "you're enjoying this aren't you?"  She is a hoot and since she has 3 children under 3 including 8 week old twins, I do not grudge her the open and flick email routine one iota.