Five things (Old School Blogging)

Ok so for any of you wonderful readers out there who follow Baking In a Tornado you will know that she tagged me in a post earlier this month called Five Things. And for any of you who don't follow Baking in a Tornado, what on earth is wrong with you people?? Get your backsides over there now and meet a classy lady and brilliant writer who is responsible for the Secret Subject Swap that I partake in every month, as well as the Fly on the Wall series, which I will be joining as of next month. (Stay tuned, it's going to be legen...(wait for it)...dary)

Any way the five things tag is another chain blog post which apparently was a popular thing when blogging was in its infancy, but seems to have been lost over time. This one doesn't come with any fancy trophies or dinner for two at the Olive Garden, but it comes with seven lists of five things about me. (Well technically the seventh list is five bloggers who I pass the tag on to, but now you're just splitting hairs.)

Because I have just run out of witty banter, I'll plow straight into the lists.

5 Things I Have a Passion For

1. Paper crafts
2. Music
3. Food (seriously, have you seen the size of my butt? that should have been a no brainer.)
4. Word puzzles. I can't get to sleep until I've done at least one at the moment. Just as well I have a massive collection of puzzle books to keep me company
5. Writing. Of course I never did manage to write the best selling novel I dreamed of as a kid, but that's why this blog is one of my happy places.

5 Things I'd Like to Do Before I Die

1. See Miss K grow up happy (Isn't that all any parent ever wants? I don't care if she grows up to  be a secretary like mum, or a cleaner like grandma, or a rocket scientist like....OK I don't know any rocket scientists, but I'm sure they're all very happy)
2. Visit the birthplace of my ancestors
3. Own a house
4. Become a grandma (my mum makes it look like so much fun, I can't wait to try it for myself. Actually I can wait. Until Miss K is 25 at least OK young lady??)
5. Retire near the beach

5 Things I Say a Lot

1. For the love of monkeys! (I don't really love monkeys, although some of them are pretty cute, it's just better to say that than to keep swearing like a fish wife when the children are around.)
2. I can live with that. (Any time my little sister tries to insult me by calling me horrible names that's my come back. She can never beat it. Ever.)
3. I'm going to count to three. (This one has saved Miss K's bacon so many times over the last year, she knows that if I've gotten to the counting stage, things have just gotten real and she needs to pull her head in.)
4. I love you. (This one is usually aimed at Miss K, but sometimes I'll feel comfortable enough admitting it to other people.)
5. You weirdo. (This one is also usually aimed at Miss K, but it's always when she's doing something totally bizarre like pressing her stomach up to the fridge because it's cold, or spinning around on the ground in circles.)

5 Books I've Read Lately

1. The Hunger Games trilogy. I love this series so much I've finished the last book and gone straight back to the first book several times. I never get tired of the story.
2. Girls Night In. This is a massive omnibus of short stories written by some brilliant women from around the world. All the profits from the sale of the books go to the charity War Child which was just one of the warm fuzzies reading this book gives me. Again another book I can read over and over again.
3. Puzzle books. I know technically you don't read puzzle books like a story, but I still have to look at words with my eyes so I'm counting this as reading.
4. There's a Reason for Everything. This is a very old trivia book that was written in the 1970's so some of the trivia has since been disproven, but it is still full of so much interesting information about topics like the origins of superstitions and rituals.
5. You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News. This is a book written by the people from the hillarious and brilliant website cracked.com, and basically includes some of the articles you can find on their website, but in book form so it makes you look more intellectual when you read it. I bought this book when Miss K was a baby, and it has helped get me to sleep on many a night.

5 Favourite Movies

Thank you for finally giving me a list that asks for more than one favourite movie. How can I only love one movie the most? There are too many awesome movies out there to just pick one. So I'm happy to finally be given a place to list in no particular order just some of my favourite movies.

1. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
2. Cry Baby
3. Despicable Me (Hey don't judge ok I've got a kid now so it's totally ok for me to have a wallet full of kids movies.)
4. Shock Treatment
5. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 the movie. Americans may recognise this one, but I don't think it was even released in Australia. I had to buy our copy from an American seller on eBay. Thank heavens for multi region DVD players.

5 Places I'd Love to Travel to

1. Ireland. In particular Tipperary because that's where my mum's family originated, but the country as a whole would be fabulous to see
2. Italy. This is where Miss K's other family come from, and I'd love to take her to her Nonna's home town so she can see where her family started.
3. Fiji. The people seem to be so friendly, and the beaches are stunning. It's always been a dream destination for me.
4. The rest of Australia. I've been to two of the territories in Australia and three of the states. I'd love to visit the rest of the country that hosts me as a citizen and see more of the beauty that is out there.
5. Tokyo. I think there are just so many fantastic things there that you just need to see for yourself to believe, and I'd love to be amazed. Oh and I've always wanted to go to a cherry blossom festival in Japan too.

5 Blogs I'll Tag

Now this one was tricky because I didn't want to tag anyone who had already had a turn, but I also have so many blogs on my favourites list, I didn't want to leave any of them out.

1. When Crazy Meets Exhaustion
2. Life, Unexpectedly
3. Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
4.We Band of Mothers
5. Ms. Adventures

Now if you were tagged and you don't want to play along, that's totally cool. And if you weren't tagged and you want to play along, that's totally cool also. For anyone at home who is playing, tagged or not, answer all the questions yourself and then send me a link to your post and I'll even advertise the hell out of it for you.

Well that's all from me for now, I'm off to charge my camera batteries and use up some more of my immensely impressive and slightly over the top collection of pretty papers. What's that? you don't believe I have too much crafty stuff??

Yeah, I may have a problem...

Stay tuned people, soon I'll have a post showing what to do when you have too much crafty crap.

The chair killing bottom strikes again and other stories

Hello again people, I know it's been waaay too long between posts, but I've been slowly trying to get into a groove between work and home, and that sadly leaves very little time for extra curricular activities like sharing with you guys. But I'm still here, and things are still going well, and hopefully I will have more to share with you wonderful and patient people soon, especially about my current downsizing. I've been having a huge cull, and have taken the mantra "if you're not going to use it then get rid of it" to extremes by trying to use up a heap of my craft stash so I don't have to throw it away. I'll have more on that as soon as I remember to charge the batteries in my camera so I can take pictures.

So for a bit of a back story, and for anyone who doesn't know how deadly my backside can be to a common chair, check out this post here which goes into details of chairs that I have killed in the past.  Well this week my butt struck again, destroying my office chair at work. Now this time I can't blame sitting on my feet, which is my excuse for most other chairs I've broken (that and shoddy workmanship when building the chairs) as I can't sit on my feet at work. First it is incredibly bad OH&S so I'd get into heaps of trouble, and second I can't operate the dictation machine unless my feet are on the ground. But I have gotten into the terrible habit of throwing myself into my chair while at work, usually because I'm insanely busy, and I don't have time to sit down like a lady, so a lot of my day is spent just diving onto the chair as quickly as possible so I can do the mile long to-do list the boss has just given me before I forget any of it.  Sadly the standard office chair is not designed to be used in such a manner, and my poor chair has been creaking and groaning at me for several weeks now, so  I had a feeling that what happened this week was really inevitable, but it still came as a shock when it finally happened.

It was close to the end of the day, which happens to be the worst time to work in a law firm. That's usually the time when my boss checks over the correspondence for the day, and signs the letters that are good to go out, and returns the ones that need corrections done. So I usually have a massive pile of letters that need to be folded and stuffed into envelopes, another massive pile of letters that need adjustments before they can be signed, stuffed and posted, and yesterday I had a handful of people I had to call to reschedule their appointments because there had been a massive double booking in today's calendar. So needless to say I was incredibly frazzled, and not very worried about being delicate with the office furniture. But this time when I flounced to my desk and threw myself down, my poor chair decided it had had enough, so there was a huge crack sound, followed by a very unprofessional scream from me as I jumped up to save landing ass first on the ground. My office manager happened to be standing next to me when I decided to go all Incredible Hulk on the chair too, so I couldn't even hide the fact that I was destroying the office in front of her. Of course she was more concerned about me than the chair, but I explained that I was so used to chairs breaking underneath me I wasn't even scratched. (Gotta love ninja like reflexes at times like these.)

I inspected the chair and found that one of the five legs had snapped clean off and escaped somewhere to enjoy its new found freedom. I still can't find the leg so it has done a good job of falling off the grid. I just hope the boss doesn't find it on one of her random trips to the front office because then I'll have some explaining to do. Of course if she notices I'm using one of the crappy spare chairs I'll still have some explaining to do, so I can only pray she's too distracted for the next few weeks to start asking any uncomfortable questions. Of course if she does find out about my amazing skills of destruction, I could use it as a bargaining tool in the future. I'll start threatening to break all the chairs in the place simply by sitting down unless I get a longer lunch break, or a higher rate of pay. (Of course she could just use my pay rise to fund the replacement of every chair in the place.) In the meantime I may just start looking at the office catalogs to see if any of the office supply stores in the area sell steel reinforced chairs for flouncers like me.

And so with that I've had to say RIP to yet another brave chair, it tried its best to support my ample frame, but the stress was just too much. Memorial services will be held this Friday, and we ask that instead of buying flowers, you donate the money to the science of finding a chair that I cannot break.

© Reystleen | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Oh the humanity!

Secret subject swap ~ treasured memories

Welcome to Take One of August’s Secret Subject Swaps. This week, 12 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting them for your viewing pleasure. Well everyone else posted theirs several hours ago but due to technical difficulties and the fact that I seem to be late everywhere these days, mine is being posted at 10:30 Australian Eastern Standard time instead of East Coast Standard time.



So I'll start as always with the list of lovely bloggers you absolutely MUST go and visit today, as all of them have posts on their wall right now that are GOLD! 

http://BakingInATornado.com                              Baking In A Tornado

http://themomisodes.com/                                     The Momisodes

http://www.justalittlenutty.com/                           Just A Little Nutty

http://followmehome.shellybean.com                   Follow me home . . .

http://mooreorganizedmayhem.blogspot.com/      Moore Organized Mayhem

http://stacysewsandschools.wordpress.com/         Stacy Sews and Schools

http://thesadderbutwisergirl.com                           The Sadder But Wiser Girl

http://menopausalmother.blogspot.com/                Menopausal Mother              

http://dinoheromommy.com/                                 Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://hypnoticbard.blogspot.com/                        The Insomniac’s Dream

www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com                       Evil Joy Speaks        

So today my subject is What’s your most valued possession and why?  Tell us the story behind it.

It was submitted by: Moore Organized Mayhem          

So this one was a bit tricky for me because I own so little these days, and less of any value. I told mum of my subject and she guessed I'd say Miss K, but given I don't really own her, I'm just borrowing her till she becomes an adult I can't  really use her today.  Anything else I truly treasure has been locked up in storage for so long I can't even remember what's in the boxes. I look forward to the day I finally have the space to start bringing my crap back into the house because it will be like my birthday, Christmas and a walk down memory lane all at once.

There is one thing in storage that I remember very clearly and it is probably the thing I miss the most out of everything. It's a little green box, a little bit larger than a shoe box. The box itself isn't much to look at, but inside the box is every single card I have ever received, as well as a few special school certificates, photos, letters from old friends and a lot of smiles. Opening that box takes me all the way through from my childhood and people I haven't seen in over twenty five years to my youn adulthood to people I haven't seen in over eight years. I think my absolute favourite thing in the entire box (and probably the strangest thing too) is an old rusty horse shoe a work friend's husband gave to me when I moved from Melbourne back home again for the last time. 

I'd always joked with him that he must have had a horse shoe rammed into his nether regions because he always managed to dodge near catastrophic events with ease. So when I was leaving work on my last day he gave me the horse shoe (which he claimed he removed from his nether regions himself, but I'm skeptical) so that I would have his good luck with me wherever I went. I have no idea where he got a real horse shoe from, but I've learned in the past to just not ask. I still smile whenever I see the horse shoe though, a private joke shared between friends that I will remember forever.

From Christmas cards I received from old high school friends to the get well soon card my dad gave me when I broke my foot at eighteen, my little memory box has everything I love to reminisce about...well almost everything. You see I packed it away in dad's storage shed while I was still pregnant with Miss K so all of my special cards I have received since she was born are still here with me now. And of course there are other special treasures of hers that needed to be protected, so we've started a memory box for her too. The outfit she wore home from the hospital, a newspaper from the day she was born and her very first pair of shoes are all packed away safely with her very first swaddling blanket to remind me of the most terrifying and exciting part of my life so far. And one day when she out grows Elmo he'll be popped away too, as well as every birthday card she ever gets and any special school certificates, just waiting to be given back to her one day when she is an adult.

So there you have it, my most valued possession. Completely worthless to anyone else, but certainly the one thing I'd run into a burning building for. Oh, after Miss K of course.

So that's all for now, be sure to go visit the rest of the lovely bloggers taking part in the subject swap today and enjoy the rest of the fun.

image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Pictured: not a good place to store your memory box...or your children