2016 reflections. Again.

Well, here we are! The end of 2016. I can barely believe it! In the grand tradition of Miss Soft Crab round-ups K and I got together to have a little chat about things. There were things I wish I'd mentioned, like how a highlight of the year was our new once-a-day, daily post format which, I don't know about you but I am sure enjoying. And the new iOS update which has finally included a croissant and a pile of pancakes in the emojis. Anyway, here's what K and I thought of the last 51 weeks.

 ‪J: Yeah 2016! How was it for you?

 ‪K: You know, it was pretty great.

 ‪J: GREAT! What did you like about it? 
‪K: Well, personally, I liked settling in to being KB's mum. And I liked hanging out with KB and watch him become cuter and cuter. ‪I liked going back to work and therefore being able to read books again.

  ‪J: Yeah I was thinking about how at the start of this year you had a six-month-old baby and by the end of the year you have a nearly 18-month-old toddler and how different those two things are.

 ‪K: Fully different. ‪And you went from being a mother of sons to being a mother of sons AND WHOOPSIE!

 ‪I also liked how it was a year of serious things. All the deaths. Brexit. Trump. It's a year  to remember.

 ‪J: Oh yeah. Seriously what a year! I had a baby. And all that totally crazy shit happened. Basically if you had asked me what this year would hold ‪I could not have predicted any of that shit. From a new baby to the Trump presidency I'm basically still having difficulty believing any of it. 


‪K: Yeah. The shit has been pretty unbelievable. I know we still have a week or so to go, but I'm just glad QEII is still here.

 ‪J: I've been really worried about her, what with 2016 being so full of unbelievable shit. Mate, as much as I've loved QEII and her monochrome for a long time now, I feel so much closer to her after watching The Crown. Let's just hope we can escape this year without any more celebrityy deaths. 

 ‪When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature LB and I were saying if you came into the news report half way through you would have thought he was dead too. God forbid.

  K: ‪Totally. It was really a strange year. Kind of doomy. ‪And the weather has been a bit shit. ‪But personally it's been nice, so what are you gonna do?

 J: ‪Yeah. It was a totally strange year. I was basically pregnant from the beginning until Whoopsie was born in October and I was highly emotional for that entire time. Which really added to the weirdness for me. Like I was so emotional when Leonardo FINALLY won his Oscar. But I was so emotional for that entire awards ceremony. I basically cried at every standing ovation.

K: ‪Oh man, that victory was one for the ages. Leonardo Di Goddamned Caprio. What a proper movie star he is.

J: ‪You said it!  

K: Speaking of movies, one of the things I enjoyed about this year was discovering a film review podcast called Kermode and Mayo. It's a couple of blokes mucking around telling jokes and talking about movies. I think Fassbender is going to be on it next week.


 ‪J: Oh I see. 

Well that sounds cool. I may listen to it. I've enjoyed listening to Lena Dunham's podcast this year and working through my complicated feelings about her. Recently I listened to a few podcasts about Buffy, just people talking about Buffy episodes and stuff. It was pretty enjoyable.
 ‪
K: I've been enjoying the Lena Dunham podcast too. Did you listen to that one with her dad? I really liked that one.
J: I did listen to that one and I also enjoyed it a lot. I liked her dad. Readers, go listen to that show.

 ‪K: Please do readers.


‪J: And how about TV? Obviously I loved The Crown. Also of course Stranger Things. I mean just the stuff everyone talked about already. 

 In truth this year was so intense I feel like I have nothing new to say about any of it.

 

K: ‪Yep, I liked that stuff. And I liked Hard Quiz because I love a quiz and this was a delightful spazz one. 

J: ‪I like that too. But you know who really loves that show? Baby! He loves it. HARD!  

K: Ha! ‪That's adorbs. 

J: ‪Sometimes we play it at the dinner table. And when I told him I saw Tom Gleeson at Ikea the other day he was so impressed! 


K: ‪That's super adorbs. ‪
I saw one of the couples from Gogglebox at the market the other day and that was very exciting. ‪
J: HAHAHA. Gogglebox!
‪
K: ...now we are chatting about the year and i'm thinking about how intense it was I guess I'm realising that it's set a lot in motion. But I don't want to be a downer.



J: ‪Look, if we wanted to talk seriously this year we'd be here for ever. I mean fucking TRUMP?!

Aaaaaaahhhh, that's better 

K: You said it. 2016 involved a lot of emotions, a lot of humongous events and some rubbish weather. Any hopes and dreams for 2017?

 
J: ‪Geez, what a great question. What do you base your answer on?! Well I guess I want to enjoy it. Personally I'd like to organise my time so I can write and exercise instead of just thinking about doing those things. I'm super excited to see who Whoopsie starts becoming. Obviously I love seeing Baby and Newbie grow but Whoopsie is a brand new slate, you know. And I think by the end of next year I'd like to have some professional developments. So yeah, I guess I have a bunch of hopes and dreams. How about you?
‪K: You've given me some great hope and dream ideas for 2017 just now!

 ‪I'd like to write and exercise more too. And I'd like to go overseas again before we have to start paying for a seat for KB. ‪I'd like to read more. And I would like to have a conversation with you, mate, about us starting a sing club which some people might call a choir but I'd prefer to call sing club 

J:  ‪Yeah sing club! Let's do it! And let's have more conversations! ‪
K: Yeah!


Have a great summer everyone. We'll be back in about a month. Woot!

Still life

This morning I noticed that there was a nappy in my fruit bowl. No idea how long it's been there for. 

 

Thought of the day

If I were taller would I feel more like a grown up? More of a question than a classic 'thought of the day' but that's what I'm thinking about. 

Further to the pyjama question

A few comments in response to yesterday's post..

• I'm still trying to figure out how to dress post-baby and KB is 17 months old

• Those pyjama pants sound a little like these:

 

And no one thinks twice about the way those guys dress. 

• Reading about wearing pjs on the street reminds me of this really stupid thing I read in the good weekend on, well, the weekend. A woman who works as a stylist in Sydney had put together a one page 'edit' of her favourite things for summer. It included a white bathrobe. She said she included it because "nothing is more indulgent than eating mango and drinking champagne on the deck in a crisp white cotton bathrobe. 
• FFS. 

The pyjama question

Me wearing pyjamas in the streets (of my DREAMS!)

If you read fashion blogs you’d be aware that a couple of years ago people started wearing pyjamas out on the street. Or at least on the streets in front of fashion shows. Although some highly glamorous women seemed to be pulling this look off to an extent, it seemed far too stupid for me and a movement I essentially ignored. Until last week when I bought a new pair of pyjama pants for summer. They are wide legged and white cotton with navy stripes and I felt so delighted when I put them on I felt like I never wanted to take them off and the crisp whiteness made me wonder if maybe I didn’t have to.

I’d have thought of myself as a person that would never again wear a wide leg pant but pyjamas are so special. Plus I’m still trying to figure out how to dress in this post-pregnancy body. You’d think I’d have some better ideas by this third baby but I don’t. I should probably go back and read some old blog posts to see if there are any clues in there. At the moment I am blessed with an actual baby that actually sleeps through the night. I have to say I always thought this was a bullshit thing that people with grown up children who couldn’t remember what babies were like would say but Whoopsee legit sleeps through the night and it’s great. I love her for it, but not having constant demand for my breast milk means that I may actually have to do something  about losing this pregnancy weight like stop eating ice cream or start exercising more rather than trusting my baby to literally suck the fat out of me in a beautiful symbiotic relationship between their weight gain and my loss. 

Or maybe I don’t have to stop eating ice cream at all! Maybe I can just start wearing pyjama pants. I mean, I don’t want this to turn into a slippery slope to obesity (though if I'm being honest I’m also very drawn to mumus) but I just don’t know how to dress right now. Naturally there would be a few barriers I’d have to overcome if I were to start wearing pyjamas in public. Like self respect (luckily there isn’t that much there for me to over come). LB’s inevitiable inability to cope with it (I once wore tracksuit pants out to coffee - styled pretty well I may add and it was all I could do to get him to walk beside me to the cafe). And the fact that the pyjama pants in question look exactly like pyjama pants.

It's weird how one can apparently wear any crazy shit if you're going to a fashion show where everybody there will check out your kit and probably judge you but walking down the streets of Collingwood I feel like I'll be far more judged wearing crazy shit. But maybe no one cares. Lord knows I don't. Let them wear cake I always say. Still there's a big difference between sitting in a room fantasising about wearing pyjamas on the street and actually doing it. Mind you, by the end of last summer I was wearing a t-shirt with my brother's face screen printed supersize across the front and I sure as hell hadn't seen that coming so let's check back on the pyjama situation in a couple of months.

Cheeses me off

It's another one of those beautiful weather days that make it hard to feel anything other than really really great. 

And it's also KJ's birthday, a beloved faraway sister of Miss Soft Crab, so it's a day to get extra excited about. Happy birthday KJ. 🍻🎉🍰🍦

But rather than dwell on the positive, I thought I'd balance things out with a list of things that cheese me off.  It's a very petty list but you should all know that I am not perfect, I am quite petty sometimes! Let's celebrate our pettiness on this beautiful Friday, shall we? So here we go, a list of minor things that cheese me off in no particular order.

1. When people arrive at the tram stop after me, but get better seats on the tram than I do. 

2. When strangers say uncool things and then look to you for agreement. For example, a stranger at the gym the other morning was complaining to kid at reception about how he kept letting people from the northcote high swim squad ahead of the other people in the queue so they could go ahead to their swim squad practice. The stranger said "the rest of us get out of bed at the right time, so they should too". I was behind him in the queue and he looked around at me and nodded like he was representing my views. But I was just wishing he would stop bullying the kid at reception. 

3. The phrase Friyay. Oh god this cheeses me off.

4. Off cheese. Ha! As if cheese would ever last long enough at my house to go off.

I guess that's about it. I was going to add when Appleheart sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to KB, but gets the tune wrong, but when I think about it, it's actually quite lovely. While I'm not listening to it. 

Haiku Thursday

Dreams

Dream of a cleaner

And of Roomba, oh robot

Clean my frustrations

Christmas shopping

Money's no object

To Santa, thus Baby's list:

Unrealistic

Good yesterday

After reading J's post yesterday, I immediately texted her to advise I was at work (I don't normally work on Tuesdays) and that we should probably rendezvous. 

We met at the new fancy Alpha 60 store and tried on clothes while Whoopsie happily lay on the floor and wriggled around. Then we had a cafe latte.

 

J bought lots of Christmas presents and I felt good about myself for not spending money on a dress.

It was basically a great little interlude in an otherwise run of the mill day. 

But hooray for that! 

A better yesterday

K was so right yesterday,  a sunny day really makes life seem great. I love the way thinking about Margaret and David made her feel happy rather than miserable that they we're no longer with us. You know on TV. The way thinking about all the great Hong Kong cinema made her happy rather than sad that we never watch it any more. Or eat as much Cantonese food as we did that year we studied HK cinema. Good weather is really the world's best upper. Not, as some people may suggest, cocaine.

Yesterday afternoon we went to Fitzroy pool and then our neighbours joined us and Housemaid had the most excellent idea to bring a bottle of wine and have UberEats deliver us some pizza and after dinner we basically had the whole (kids) pool to ourselves and there I was back in that idyllic Australia. 

And although today is warm the overcast sky and wind is really bringing it down. But not as much as the fact that I have to start my Christmas shopping today. As soon as I've written this post I'm going to head to the city to buy some KK presents and some kids presents or at least that's the plan. I kind of love Christmas shopping when I know what I'm buying but today I don't and I'm pretty sure that the day will result in me wandering around the city from shop to shop thinking I have a plan and direction only to find at the end of the day that I haven't bought any presents but somehow managed to spend $200 on beauty products for myself. You'd think that given I can predict the disastrous outcome of today I should have come up with a plan to prevent this, like maybe had some ideas for presents and developing the self discipline not to buy beauty products, but sheesh, I'm only human!

A better tomorrow

I was going to write a post about the great weather that's forecast for the next couple of days, and how on days like today and tomorrow, life feels easier and it feels better and I feel happier. Then the title A Better Tomorrow popped into my head and I thought ooh, that's what I'll call it, in homage to the film of the same name that came out in the 90s and J and I watched as part of our exploration of cinema from Hong Kong. Then I started thinking about Hong Kong cinema and how great it was in the 90s and 2000s, and I wondered if it was still great. Thinking about this made me happy. Then I wondered where I would turn to find out about what's coming out of Hong Kong, somewhere I could trust, not just 'the internet'. I thought about Margaret and David and how much I relied on them to educate me on cinema and thinking about that made me happy too. What a great show that was. What a great community service. Sure, they never talked about Hong Kong cinema but they had producers they needed to keep happy. Then I thought about Terry Gross, and the great interviews she does with the filmmakers and actors involved in films she loves, and that her radio show has certainly helped fill the hole left by Margaret and David. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but I have to say people, it made me happy. Happy happy joy joy. That's where all trains of thought are chugging me to, and it's all because the goddamned weather is so goddamned nice! 

Friday Favourites: Dirty Dancing

One of the joys of Friday Favourites of yesteryear when K and I both used to blog daily was our mutual appreciation of the Friday favourite. Sometimes we be gushing over a shared favourite thing, like Prince songs or Damon Albarn. Other times we'd just be enjoying each other's love of a favourite thing. Like K and Babs or me and NPH. So it's a shame we don't get to hear from K today. 

When we were kids there was a girl that lived up the street from us, let's call her Choo Choo. She had the Dirty Dancing soundtrack on vinyl and we didn't have it on anything so we sometimes used to contrive reasons to borrow it from her without also having to invite her over. Eventually she moved out of the street, along with the Dirty Dancing record and although at the time the best thing about that seemed that we didn't have to hang out with her anymore in retrospect the best thing was that we didn't have to be such little bitches anymore. 

At the time I don't think I even liked the movie that much but I sure knew a great soundtrack when I heard one. And I definitely under appreciated Patrick Swayze but I'm glad to say one of the gifts of age is a broad appreciation of great things and that includes this movie and Patrick Swayze. First, I love choreographed dance. Any kind of dance really but I especially love group dancing as at the end of this film. Now I own this movie on DVD and I watch it every time it's on television. Most recently on Wednesday night. It's such a delight to find it on TV and I basically smiled the entire time I watched. 

Here are some of the great things  about this movie: dancing; Patrick Swayze; the upstairs-downstairs story; the way that Baby and Johnny know how to have a great time; music; all the great lines. 

Dirty Dancing you are a bona fide Friday Favourite!

Life goals Thursday

J is right but I'm still following two clothes shops on Instagram because I like looking at the ads. 

You know what else I like? Rebecca Judd. Or at least, her Instagram feed. And not in a hateful way. I don't like her feed because I like hating on her. I like it because she seems kind of charming. It happened very gradually. One day Instagram suggested a post from her. As if, Instagram I thought. But then I looked at it and it was about one of her kids, and seemed kind of funny. Then I started looking at her posts, like, seeking them out. And sure enough, the are sometimes charming and funny. Once, on Chris Jude's birthday, she posted a photo and said happy birthday chris judd, I would be up shit creek without you. I thought it was kind of nice.

I don't follow her yet. I'm not prepared to do that. But I am prepared to admit that on Instagram, I kind of like her. 

Life Goals Wednesday

I recently stopped following a bunch of brands on instagram that I felt were inspiring my inner consumer too much. Again. A while ago I did the same thing, basically stopped following a bunch of clothing brands and retailers who sell nice things. Because they just made me want to buy clothes all the time. But then slowly, I started following them all again.  Isn't it weird that one follows brands in Instagram? It means that you are willingly just scrolling through a heap of ads. Ads! Willingly! The thing that most of us think we want to avoid all the time. And yet with the current state of things we willingly subject ourselves to them. On Instagram, on mailing lists. Those evil geniuses have sucked us in with nicely styled images and promises of loyalty discounts and now we are seeking out ads! Those things that we used to complain about when they came on during TV shows but now mistakenly think we are avoiding by watching everything on catch up TV and Netflix and illegal downloads. But we must have secretly loved them because we find other ways to access advertising. Willingly! (I guess I'm having trouble coming to terms with this). 

Well today I take a stance. I don't want to be advertised to! I have some dignity! (Jokes. I have no dignity.) I'm unsubscribing from lists and I'm unfollowing on Instagram  and I'm going to become a better, less consumerist person. Or I hope so. Let's see how I'm feeling in a week. 

A festive season list

If I wasn't excited about Christmas already, J's Memento/Fifty First Dates/The Santa Clause dream certainly did the trick. I keep chuckling at the thought of all the drama and tension and confusion over why the wrong brother showed up. I guess it's been a pretty big year for everyone and J's subconscious is the first to say it's time for a break.

I'm pretty excited about Christmas, I have to say. KB was to little to care about Christmas last year, though we did try to get him in the festive mood.
This year he is more into stuff. Right now, he is having a great time putting the TV remote control in his nappy bag and then taking it out again. So I feel like we can have more fun with him this christmas.

And I'm excited about Christmas because I am hoping to acquire some of the cookbooks I've been eyeing off all year. Here's my wish list.

First, Classic German Baking by a lady who writes a nice blog called The Wednesday Chef.

It's baking and it's classic and I like it.

Next, Small Victories.

It seems like one of those good books full of practical tasty stuff to make for dinner during the week. Like, a repertoire expander rather than a mind blower.

This one might be a mind blower. Or just have its hand on it.

It's the cookbook of the kitchen of the studio of Olafur Eliasson, the artist, in case you hadn't caught on. It looks annoying and tasty.

There are several others but KB is getting bored with the remote control caper, so I'd better save them for another post.

The festive season begins

It's no secret that the Misses Soft Crab love Christmas. Mostly. And given that it is now December 5 it's time to admit that the festive season has begun. Decorations are everywhere, the weather is heating up, on Friday when I had to cross Alexander Parade at 9am there was a noticeable lack of traffic on the road. It's practically holidays already. And I'm not the only one who's ready to admit it, my unconscious is too.

Last week I woke up from a vivid dream that was basically a sci-fi/thriller in which Ben Affleck was breaking through barriers of space and time in an attempt to find Santa Claus to prevent some kind of evil. Every year Affleck starts this mission but each day always ends with memory loss so he's frantically trying to discover whether he's found Santa while also looking for Santa until he realises... HE IS SANTA. It was basically Memento meets Fifty First Dates meets The Santa Clause. Though I want to make it clear it was not cute or a kids movie. It was more of a dark, gun toting, thriller Santa chase.  Merry fucken' Christmas.

Though in some ways I would like to spend some time figuring out what this dream all means and what I could learn about myself I'm too disappointed in my subconscious to give it the respect of my time. It is just so terribly disappointing that my brain has been doing all this hard work thinking about Casey Affleck a lot recently and my unconscious goes and dreams about Ben. It harks back to that time I dreamt about Donny Wahlberg instead of Marky Mark. I guess if I wanted I could look into why it keeps sending me the hunks' brothers, but I'm just assuming that in its sleeping state my brain is too lazy to conjure up the right guy. Right? Right! Nothing more to interpret here folks. Welcome to December.

A final word on Friday

I am watching The Crown too! I've only watched two episodes but I kind of love it. QEII is so young and adorable and Prince Phillip is so Prince Phillipy.

I wonder when the monarchrome experimentation  begins.  I really do want the queen to live for a long time. 

It's so boring

It is so exciting that the E class team is hitting the #86 route. I far prefer the tram to the train but that D class makes pram-tram travel so unpleasant I've basically given up on the tram. But I'm looking forward to reuniting with, it E-class style! 

Now, I know I promised on Tuesday that I'd get out of the house so that I had something to write about, but in fact for today's post I've only managed to get out of my head, which is in fact what I was really talking about on Tuesday, just in metaphor, so mission accomplished I guess. 

This week I've watched a couple of episodes of The Crown. When I first heard about this series and how Netflix spent really big bucks on it I felt kind of surprised. I mean I love QEII but her life just seemed like a kind of boring premise for a TV series. 

Of course one pleasure of watching it is that QEII, Prince Phillip, everyone is turned into people. Elizabeth is more than just a monochrome dream. I watch documentaries about the Queen and the  running of the palace at every opportunity and although I've seen QEII driving herself around in her Land Rover and Phil tending to his farm I have never really gotten a sense of them as people and so I guess that's why Netflix put so much filthy lucre into this show, we all just want to see that human queenie. But you've got to view biopics as fiction, I always think. Sure the events may be fact but everything else is just someone's interpretation, at best based on someones' memory, but mostly probably on a wish or an idea. So watching The Crown we're all just fooling ourselves. But I'm cool with that. 

But really, I was right. It is kind of boring. And yet I'm thoroughly enjoying watching it. All those long shots of grand rooms, all the outfits which are yet to become monochrome. All the silent meaningful looks from the staid British characters. The show is kind of like QEII - a comforting presence I enjoy despite myself. Long live the Queen.