Oh, dear

So. The three of you that read my blog (read: the three of you that have been given its super secret address, and who possibly stop by once a month, if that) may or may not know my relationship with Paul to be a beautiful thing. And it was. Until, that is, this last week of living with his father before moving into our own love palace. Nothing major has occured just yet, only...only...we're snapping at each other now. Getting snappy. And grumpy. In public. This may or may not have something to do with the large quantities of Cresta and Fourways we have been forced to ingest in the last two weeks, not to mention the stress that comes with trying to find curtains that don't make us openly retch or carpets that are the same grain.
Dont ask.

Or it could have something to do with being confined to two (TWO) rooms in a small house, being forced to put up with hours of whistling (Paul's dad), cricket watching (Paul) and amazingness (Me).

To vent this stress, I have taken to talking aloud to myself in public. I realised this yesterday, after having climbed to the top shelf of Mr Price Home to retrieve a plain white curtain pack and dropping it inches away from a passing woman. After hopping down with a squeal, followed by a stuttering, manic laugh, I practically shouted "I nearly killed that woman!".
She was standing next to me.
After realising that I was talking to myself, I stated, in as calm a manner as is possible under that much fluorescent lighting, "Wow, I've become that woman who talks to herself in public".
I then repeated this sentence endlessly, hoping passers by would think I was talking to my boyfriend, who had walked away.

At the rate I am going, I wonder how long before I become that person whose conversational staple is just a stream of repetitive non-sequitur's. I estimate two years; by 26, I will have the conversational abilities of a 73 year old. Who lived on a farm. In the Freestate. With only Koekie the cow for company.

I should note that this entry was written after I secretly shotgunned two glasses of Rose in the kitchen. I seriously need to get out of this house: cheap booze and painkillers are far too abundant.

A random thought after spellchecking this entry: if they really wanted people who can't spell to use www.dictionay.com, they would make 'dictionary' easier to spell.

A couple of things...

...that annoy me:

1) Whistling. Or, more specifically, the whistling of the same incomprehensible tune that begins at the precise second that my head emerges from under the blanket and continues endlessly throughout the day. The whistling that lets me know that the whistler is very happy, and that I. Am. Not.

2) Queen. Or should I say, hearing the sweet strains of Queen through TWO WALLS at 10.02pm. For the fourth time this week.

3) The plinky plonky of a piano seeping into the bedroom at 8am on a Saturday morning.

4) Did I mention the whistling?

5) The process of limping, slowly...so...slowly...towards the freedom of having my own space.

6) Feeling guilty that I am such an irritable grumpipants that I am annoyed with the people who have let me stay with them for a month while my crazypants mother stays in my cottage.

Cheap & tasty

So the weekend of doom is over. That being the weekend where I lost my best friend to the dismal streets of London.

Anyway. Not much happened, if by 'not much' you mean an orgy of carpet buying and frame-picking-out and bedding browsing and table shopping and hardware store happiness. The final countdown to the move has begun, and my frantic spending has reached fever pitch. To calm myself down, and make good on an earlier promise I made myself, I sewed 2 scatter cushions for the lounge using some fabric I picked up for cheap-cheap with Roxanne a few weeks ago in town. Heres the first one: pretty cool, huh? It almost looks store bought, only in a non soul-sucking kind of way. The second one looks pretty much the same, minus a few alignment issues. The only thing I realised about these cushions is that because I have made them with my own two hands, I can never use them. Ever. Lest they be stained or broken. In fact, I may just seal them in plastic and hide them in the back of my cupboard. Away from Paul. And the cats. And myself.

Friday goodbyes

Roxanne is leaving tomorrow evening, and the force of that realisation only hit me yesterday, despite having almost two years to prepare for it. We all went down to Emmarentia for a farewell picnic, and it was a good day, sparsely punctuated with sadness and the occasional, hidden tear. If that sounds melodramatic, you should have seen the faraway look I had in my eyes when she brought myself, Fran and Emma over to her car to give us each a bag of her old clothes. A little background info may be worthwhile here: I have been eyeing Roxannes amazing wardrobe since I met her and went to her house for the first time five years ago. Even then it was stuffed to the rafters with amazing second hand finds, and despite our substantially differing frames we still managed to share the occasional item. Normally I would have been doing flick flacks around the parking lot at the mere hint ot getting my grubby little mitts on her stuff, but yesterday was different. Yesterday I realised that my friend is going away, and she is not going to be around for me to ignore her skypes or not return her emails. Not that I did that, but when you realise you only have a few more days (or hours) with someone, you begin to punish yourself for all the time you wasted.

God, I'm making it sound like she has terminal cancer, instead of a terminal case of too many party options awaiting her in London.
Bitch.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I will miss her, and her throaty laugh and the astounded expression she gets when we talk about the stupid things my ex boyfriends did and said.
Rox, I love you, thank you for being so great for so long, I will miss you and hopefully you will read this damn blog and let me know about all your adventures.

x Mia

Bangin new shirt, Yeah

Ola, bitches. This is my new shirt, as worn by me, post pasta, pre tequila, sans hangover. I made it from an old dress (see previous post).
So, what do you think? (Her voice echoed across the cavernous, empty internet)

The Poison Dwarf

Alright, so this is has been on my mind for some time, and I have been toying with the idea of just letting it go, but dammit, y'all know I love to whine and whine.

So here it is, my little rant, and I will try to keep it short.
It is a rant, a dirge, a scat, if you will, about a small pointy-skulled individual who shall remain nameless (but, alas, not lifeless). He is a wee lad, but four foot two, with the intellectual capacity of a pea. When I say pea, I am being kind. Earlier, I compared dealing with him to dealing with a drunk who has just shat himself and who is now picking his teeth with his toenails. If given the choice, I would choose the drunk, hands down, every time.

This is the person, let it be known, that has decided that he would like nothing better than to ruin my life. When I say life, it is important to know that I mean social life, and when I say social life, it is important to draw a distinction between the social life I enjoy and the one which makes me want to stab myself with a fork. Luckily for me, he succeeded in devastating the latter. (What, no more gallery opening invitations?) And yet, I still cannot bring myself to take kindly to the knowledge that somewhere, some new and unsuspecting person's ear is being chewed off by him about what a naughty, naughty girl I am.

Listen, tonto. Get. A. Grip.
It's been almost a year, ok? I know you're just looking out for your friend, but get this: he was a dickhead. Ok?
When someone tells you that the reason they COULDN'T COMMIT TO YOU IN TWO YEARS was because they were a NAZI WAR CRIMINAL IN A PREVIOUS INCARNATION, it's time to leave.
Ok?
There was nothing, NOTHING, more I could do to save that prize of a relationship.

And there is nothing, NOTHING, that will disguise your gossip-mongering hypocrisy amongst the people whom you talk about me to.
Ok?

Rant over.

Hateful young urbanites

I am sitting on pauls bed listening to the strains of his upcoming mashup set through the wall, wondering: what is life is going to be like when the first flush of romance has withered and crawled into the same corner as he throws his dirty socks? Lots of things brought us together, my severe dislike for squinty eyed cricket players and his hatred of chilli notwithstanding. We have things in common: our seemingly endless capacity to watch (and re-enact) scenes from high fidelity, our love of swiss-rolling ourselves into a coverlet and sleeping the day away, our morbid fear of dogs. But I think that in the end what really keeps us together, the real glue, if you will, would be that we are hateful young urbanites.

Watching the movie Crumb last night while eating buttered popcorn and dissecting a certain friends lack of sex life, I was struck in mid-sentence by the term. Robert Crumb – he of the bowtie wearing stuck in the surreal underbelly of 1950s america (bless him) – used it to describe a young san fran couple eating in a coffee shop and I think that the moment the words left his lips paul and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

He was talking about us.

See, I think that some people may get the mistaken impression that we are nice. Nice, sweet, friendly, good hearted people.

Excuse me while I get up to use the last toothpaste to clean the coffee sweaters from my teeth.

Um. No.

We’re not nice. We’re not even particularly friendly. We are mean, mean, bitter people. We hate puppies and sunshine and rainbow alice bands. Children sense our coming dread, and indie kids shrink from us at parties. We hate the beach. THE BEACH, people. For gods sake, who hates the beach?

We do.

Maybe it has something to do with being outsiders, but we hate outsiders too (whiney annoying bunch of self-congratulatory pussies. I totally hate you, outsiders!) I always thought it had something to do with being an only child, but Paul has brothers and god only knows he’s not any more adjusted than I am.

Sitting here, the the laptop slowly irradiating my lady bits, working it’s warmth up to my cold, cement heart, a thought unfolds. Maybe we hate other people so much because we love each other so much. Perhaps we don’t hate them at all, but only think we do because our love is so grand, so strong, that everything else pales in comparison. Except the sun. which is still too goddamn bright for me to be out in.

Or maybe we are just angry bitter people.

But if we are, then at least we found each other, right?

Cat amongst the pigeons

Heres a rough mock up in photoshop of some cat pillows I want to make for my little kitties, Possum (aka Possie) and Choef (aka Choefsticks, aka Choefelina).

I found this fabric on a trip to town with Roxanne last Friday, and totally fell in love with it. It has little birds flying on it and I thought it would make a perfect catnap cushion for my furry friends. Because, you know, I'm pretty sure that when they sleep they are dreaming of birds, and not dreaming of dating Paul, like me.

As you can see, the pillow itself will be shaped like a cartoon cats head (oh, how i do so love those cartoon cats). There's even a felt panel for general scratching and claw sharpening business.

When lil possie or choefie sleep on there newly made beds, they will be: cats amogst the pigeons. AHAHAHAHA!!!!


Now all I have to do is, you know, make it.
..........................................................................................................................................................................

Here is a detail of the fabric, apologies for the fuzzy picture I am certainly no photographer and dealing with shiny fabric is not exactly playing to my strengths, if you know what I mean...

Blowing off work

So my therapist recommended that I take the weekend off, starting Friday, because she thinks I am burnt out (I was like, hello? Thats what I've been trying to tell you).
Of course I obliged her (it's amazing to pay someone to tell you to do what you want, I highly recommend it), and Roxanne and I spent the day together shopping and eating and drinking. It. Was. Amazing.
Roxanne, thank you so much for such a great day; I got home glowing and exhausted, in a good way. And, totally inspired. We went to Jabus in town (this great second hand store where there are literally piles of clothing that you need to sort through), and I ended up practically diving into the scarf pile to dig up the most beautiful patterned scarves. The idea is to take the scarves and sew them together to make scatter cushions for mine and pauls apartment. I mean, come on, have you seen the shit that stores are selling in the way of scatter cusions these days? Two hundred rand for a shiny pink pillow with sequins? No thanks. Really.\

I also bought this great dress which I plan to turn into a sexy shirt, and this funny little grey dress which I think would be fantastic as a slim pencil skirt with pleated panels at the back to allow for movement.

Woot!

Okay, okay...

Okay people, a lot of you have been whining about how I never bother to call, write, sms, or post back, and I get that you may think I have all the time in the world to take your calls or post you pictures or take photographs and put them up on flickr.
And thats fine.
Except that there hasn't been any bleeding time, because this past year my life decided to go sideways, and take me with it. I haven't had time to wash my hair. The upshot of this has been that I have emerged, a little bit older, a little bit happier (ok, ok...a lot happier), and a little bit richer for life experience. It's been good. I mean, it hasn't been good, but, you know, now it's good, and that's gotta be something. Right?

So. Why so good, you ask?
Well, other than the fact that I have finally stopped working 18 hour days (which helps, believe me), the most exciting news is that me and Paul are finally moving in together!
YAY!!!!!!
I should note here that I seldom make use of exclamation marks. I think they are tacky. This should give you some indication of how frigginexcitediam!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!MOREEXCLAMATIONMARKSANDLACKOFPUNCTUATIONWOOOOOOO!!!!!

Ahem.
I digress.

For those of you who don't know who Paul is, a quick recap: Paul is pretty much the only decent thing that came out of four years of drunken behaviour at various parties around Johannesburg, most notably The Secret Party, where we first met. I will leave it to your imagination as to just how very suave I must have been on this first meeting; suffice it to say that I asked him his name and what it is he does. After he told me. Twice.

Anyway. The point is that we met and godammmmmm do I wish I had been single (oh yeah, I SAID IT) at the time because had I been we could all have saved ourselves a lot of trouble and this post could have been written six months ago and I could be sitting on the couch which I have not yet purchased for our living room. Or found. Or saved for.

So me and Paul. Mia and Paul. Paul and Mia. (Not to be confused with Paul and Mia from Black Rabbit, but who I don't have to worry about because they live in London (but just WAIT until we move to London which we are totally gonna do so WATCH OUT, BITCHES).

Where was I? Oh, right, moving in together. So we decided a couple of months ago and I have been eagerly counting down the days until I can leave the pokey little Parkhurst hole I have been living in for the last 9 or so months. For the last while leading up to the endevour I have been hyper excited, but since March 1st my excitement has turned to abject terror. Not at the idea of moving, you understand. Or moving in, together. Rather at the extreme unlikeliness of finding the apartment we want: a 3 bedroom, parquet floored, spacious, cozy apartment with a clean and new (and smallish) kitchen and a bathroom in decent nick. Did I mention that we were only looking in one particular neighbourhood, or that I have two cats that need to come with?
Yeah.
So. With a list like that, and the fact that I am a fussy little bitchypants, I am surprised we even thought we had a chance. The classifieds did not look good. Neither did the google list, the gumtree list or any of the listings on any websites that I had trowled for months prior. Until. Until. Until... (see how I built suspense there? Take notes, people.)
Until I clicked on a link of a link on some arb site and wound up finding 2 available listings.
Two. One of which looked and smelled like an institution for old Jewish grannies who have lost the ability to smile (even at kittens).

And then. We found it. Sweet jesus crackers, it was perfect. Perfect price, perfect size (3 bedrooms!), perfect location (one block away from the Killarney mall) and beautiful finishes. Granted, the apartment has been painted that kind of soul-sucking beigey/yellow colour that they all seem to be these days, but everything else is perfect. All thats left now is to sign the lease. We are going on Monday, and until then it is doubtful that I will be able to relax for a second. My mind is consumed with thoughts of the flat packing itself up and running off, or burning down, or that the estate agent may suddenly require DNA testing before we are allowed to take up residence.

Until then, I have only my tortured thoughts and slowly diminishing couch hunting options to keep me company.
The clock is ticking. It's Thursday now. Wish me luck.