Don't mind if I do

Inspired by J's post yesterday, I are a bunch of cheese, crackers and bacon for dinner, which I washed down with a glass of red wine. Treat yo'self! Yeah! 

I also made this skillet cookie for sweet treats. Remind me never to do that again. Skillet cookies seem like a great idea but they are not. Neither cookie nor cake, they just make me confused. 

Haiku Thursday (PM)

J deserves the best

Last week she baked croissants. Yum.

Ice cream this week, mate? 

Just jokes. Not really.

Ha ha! Of course it's just jokes.

And yet, not really. 

I still remember

Cinnamon ice cream, sandwiched

Between gingerbread.

2016: reflections (AM)

I know that February seems  too early for reflections but January was pretty intense and  I feel it really deserves some reflection before we move on to enjoy the awesome year that 2016 is bound to be.

2015 ended fine, Christmas went for days but was pleasant and largely lazy and warm and all the good stuff. And 2016 began normally enough, I was in the countryside ringing in the new year with Blizzie and my babies and their babies and some friends of theirs and it was all lovely. Days passed, I went back to work, I quit my job and then hours after that happy moment, on the train home from work I got a message from a friend. 

I was so shocked. I guess it was not knowing he was sick. And he was so, so great. 

David Bowie has always been a great favourite of Miss Soft Crab and I feel like we need to take a moment to remember his excellence. The British legend, who died at 69 after a battle with cancer. 

I actually could not believe my ears when I heard on the radio three days later about Alan Rickman. The British legend, who died at 69 after a battle with cancer. Alan Rickman was so great. When I was little I used to watch this film my mum liked called Truly, Madly, Deeply. It was a romance in which Alan Rickman played a ghost. It was great. But why pretend that the most important part he played for me is anything other than Snape? Shit gets pretty real at the end of Harry Potter and Snape's role and their relationship, well it's pretty...moving (excuse me, I have something in my eye).

I couldn't stop thinking about it when Rickman died. He was a really great actor. I like him a lot. 

They say celebrity deaths happen in threes. But in this case it's just three deaths of old, great, codgers, because a couple of weeks after Alan Rickman, it was time for my parents' cat, Aphrodite. 

She would have been almost 19, we got her when I was around 17 or 18, she used to sleep on my bed and was so sweet. But then I moved out and she became a bitch (possibly unrelated). You had about 12 good seconds of patting her before she'd lash out with her claws but she was still sweet. Doing all that cat stuff like rubbing against your legs (when she wanted something), sleeping in the sun, deserting you. I loved her, but she died sleeping in some bushes as all cats should. 

January, you were not without your delights, but you, unlike others, we're not gone too soon. 2016 onwards and upwards. 

Mixed feelings (AM)

I was sure that Miss Soft Crab had written a few posts under the banner 'Mixed Feelings'. Turns out this is the first. And even more surprisingly, we've only tagged 6 posts with the tag 'Feelings', though it seems to me all we do is talk about feelings. I guess we just feel them, and don't talk about them that much.  Weird. Or possibly, we talk about them constantly and don't use the tag 'feelings' when we do. That seems more likely.

Anyway, back to mixed feelings. My stage of life is quite conducive to mixed feelings.  I'm extremely excited all the time,  and I'm a little bit worried all the time. I could go into details but they are quite boring. Also, most of the time it's quite abstract. I'm excited about having a baby, but it's something that is happening in the future, and the things I'm worried about (apart from, you know, having the baby), tend to be well in the future.  Like, will the little tacker make friends? Will it have a bad sense of direction like I do? How will I help it if it does, I never know which direction I'm going! As you can see, it's really not worth putting in to words. But today I have mixed feelings about something very very tangible.

Basically, it's like this. We have rats living in our roof. I know, gross. I say 'rats', but I have no idea how many, or even if they are rats. The could be mice. Or possums. Or bunyips, who knows? All we know is that every night we wake up to the sound of creatures scampering about our roof in quite a hurry and with no mind to the fact that there are people sleeping downstairs. It's creepy and gross and I want it to stop. To this end, Appleheart put a bunch of ratsack up in the roof  the other day and when he came back, he said there is quite a lot of poo up there. Great, I thought. We'll get em for sure!
Flash forward to last night and instead of the sound of rats scampering about, I heard both scampering and squeaking, very mournful squeaking. I pictured a mother and father rat who had eaten the ratsack, or fed it to their rat babies, and were either squeaking mournfully because they were dying and terrified of leaving their rat babies behind, or watching their rat babies die.
I am SURE that's what happened and OH GOD it's all my fault but (assuming J would tell me to harden the eff up) living with rats in the roof is gross and one of us had to go.
So you know, mixed feelings.

Why is Legolas so creepy? (AM)

We're all getting older. You, me, that guy. And that's cool. Better old than dead, right? I don't mind it so much. I don't like the pigment spot on my chest or the fact that my hair is getting even worse with age. But I quite like the fact that I feel more emboldened to wear lipstick and heels. LB seems to feel sad he doesn't party on any more, but in truth when he does he complains about that too. I've also begun to appreciate not being beautiful. I don't mean that in any kind of "please say I'm beautiful" way, I just mean, I'm ok-looking I guess and that's kind of great because imagine being beautiful and then losing your looks. That would be way more depressing. Why am I talking about this? Is it because one of the Misses Soft Crabs celebrated a birthday this week? No. It's because I saw a preview for The Hobbit the other day.

I realise I am a little late to this party but I guess I am just not that interested in those films so didn't pay much attention when the recent movie came out, but after telling Baby about gollums my Mum and Baby watched some Hobbit clips. And I joined in.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, they were epic and exciting and all that good stuff you want in an adventure film. Plus they had a selection of hunks. Naturally, I only (mainly) had eyes for Aragorn. Because, well...

 But that didn't mean I couldn't appreciate Legolas. An ethereal pretty boy leaping around, whipping out his bow and arrow and picking up distant murmurings with his heightened elf senses. I mean, I am human, I am not totally immune to the elvish charm.

But I didn't think about Legolas much and on the whole I've never been a huge Orlando Bloom fan. He's fine and all but not very interesting so I certainly never thought about him much, but when I saw him in the ad for The Hobbit I was a bit horrified.

 I couldn't really find a picture that captured how terrible he looks in it. Kind of puffy and definitely weird. Maybe it is a trick of the make up or CGI. But why would you use those powers for evil, like puffing up Legolas and making him look like some creepy puffy elf that has been on a bender for the last three years? Use CGI and make up for good not evil! So maybe it isn't age that has aged him. Maybe rather than being thankful that I was never a pretty young thing I should just be grateful I am in charge of my own make up and live a CGI-free lifestyle.

My phoney life (PM) (or I suck big time)

Great photos mate. I especially love the explosive snake. Natch. But that Niagra Falls nonalcoholic water beer...get the hell out of here with that. 

So usually I do not like to admit my idiocy  or lack of preparation but frankly, this time I see no way around it. I only have iThings for my blogging and to upload photos you need a certain app and to download apps you need to be in a town with more than one bar of data access so sorry guys I got bubkas. If I was more prepared I could show you a really artful photo of Pickle I took through  streamers at a wedding on the weekend or the adorable country church said wedding took place in. I've got bush turkeys and XXXX signs and this morning I took a photo of World Wide Web and pickle and then a goant goanna! But you ain't seen nothing yet. And you ain't gonna. Sorry!

Also sorry about the fucked up font situation. I promise everything will be fixed by tomorrow. 

Lets have a wonderful weekend! (PM)

Hahaha, oh  J, you sure do love that Elmo on the moon youtube. And why not?  Elmo has some rad moon moves. Smooth and mellow, just what a lady needs at the end of such a busy week. And Snoop! Just what a lady needs. End of sentence.
But now it's Friday afternoon, the home stretch of this crazy busy week, and I'm somewhere between
feeling crazy tired and crazy excited, which is a lot of crazy guys, a feeling that they have a word for and that word is hysteria . I feel hysterical. And now, after bashing out the word crazy this many times I can think of only one song to close the week with.  Crazy by Patsy Cline.
Just jokes.
While I do love that song, I think it's a little too mellow for a Friday afternoon. So lets get Beyonce to drive this baby home. All my ladies if you feel me:

See you next week, Crab fans!

TGIM (PM)

Well Mate, not only is this week full of ace things, but it got off to a pretty rad start for me because I washed all my linen yesterday and then had a shower and washed my hair before bed last night.  I guess it would be fair to say that I feel like the cleanest and most mature person in the world.

So May has really delivered for us. First Hobart, now Prince, Pickle, Minderbinder, a birthday and the eternal love of two of the nicest and cutest people you could ever hope to meet. Talk about playing to win, May.

But, as you said Mate, balance is important to ensure we don't go crazy from all the awesomeness.

As always, balance for me will come via some serious anxiety over the following things:

• work*
• whether I will finish making the dress I am wearing to the wedding in time for the wedding^
• whether that dress will look as awesome in real life as it does in my imagination^
• whether I should get a dog*
• whether the spider that came in to my house on Friday night but then went missing on Saturday afternoon will pop up again^
• whether I will injure myself trying to escape the spider, should it catch me by surprise and cause me to be terrified. ^

So I guess things are pretty balanced.


*Ongoing cause of anxiety
^Acute anxiety

HAPPY MOTHER FLIPPING BIRTHDAY MISS SOFT CRAB!!! (PM)

Poor J, being sick is a total bummer. And today, of all days, Miss Soft Crab's motherflipping first birthday, the day we were each going to fulfil (my) childhood dream by each making a whole cake for ourselves!

Oh well. Happily, I can advise that I did indeed make a birthday cake for Miss Soft Crab, and I'm even happier to report that though I made it up, it worked out pretty darn well. 

Here it is, readers. 

I call it Peaches and Cream. 

It's a vanilla sponge layer cake with peach flavoured ricotta cream, and peach frosting.  Nothing but the best for MSC, right? 

I wont bore you with details of making the cake. I mean, you guys know how it goes. You make a cake. You divide it in between two pans. You bake it. 

The frosting however, now that really is something else. First, you make a syrup with one cup of sugar, one cup of water and in this case, a few teaspoons of peach juice. You simmer this syrup for quite a while, until it bubbles and boils and gets to a temperature of 230 degrees - that is, you practically turn it in to toffee. Meanwhile, you whip egg whites with a little sugar to soft peaks. Once the syrup is hot enough, you pour it in to the egg whites and beat for 7 minutes (why they only start the clock at this point I don't really understand) and voila, you've got your seven minute frosting. It's really quite delicious, something like a creamy toffee. In order to give mine the kind of peachy flair I was looking for, I added a little peach schnapps and  so it basically tastes like peachy, creamy toffee. Effing delicious!

But back to the mother flipping celebrations!!

I lit some candles and drank a toast to MSC's first year. 

I have all of this peach schnapps now you see. 

Then, because I am only human, I cut myself a slice and put it in my cake hole. What? That's what it's called.  

It was yummy and all, but Mate, I really wished we were hanging out and eating it at your place, with LB drifting in and out of the room acting like he isn't listening to everything we are saying, and Baby frolicking around being cute. I mean, childhood dreams aside, MSC is not about doing solitary things, it's about hanging out on the internet as well as real life. 

I made do though, with a toy Baby left behind last time you guys were here. 

Say hello, Mr Pinky. 

That guy is mad about peach schnapps! Not really. He's not real, I know that.  

Anyway, I guess this just goes to show that real life is not like TV, but it is pretty effing great, right? 

Happy birthday MSC!

HAPPY MOTHER FLIPPING BIRTHDAY MISS SOFT CRAB! (AM)

Yes, yes, y'all, you heard right! Today is Miss Soft Crab's first birthday! We began exactly one year ago today! Can you even believe it?!

In some other world we would be throwing a hot party with guests like Vincent Chase and Serena van der Woodsen. But this is the real world guys and those people don't exist here. So instead K and I decided to bake cakes. By ourselves and for ourselves. WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! It's a celebration bitches!

My cake was to be loosely based on another first birthday cake that I made last year.

That cake was delicious light sponge iced with whipped cream mixed with icing sugar and passion fruit. And if you ask me it was delicious. Miss Soft Crab's first birthday cake was to be a delicious light sponge.

That sponge would be smothered it with lemon curd. 

And that was to be smothered with whipped cream. Then I would decorate it. Kind of like this.

You guys it would be delicious. 

But this is the stupid real world. And I have been so sick all week yesterday I could barely stand for more than 10 minutes. So no cake guys. 

Might as well imagine Miss Soft Crab's birthday party looked like this rather than imagine a non-existent cake.

 

And let's hope that K has had more success celebrating than me.

A day in Queens

One of the reasons my Mum and I made this trip to NYC was to hang out with our American relatives. My Grandmother's sister, Dottie, married an American and has lived here since 1946. She had a daughter and now has a bunch of grandkids and great grandkids. We've been hanging out with them a lot, and today we went to visit Dottie at her house in Fresh Meadows, Queens.

Everyone kept telling us that Queens was far far away and an attempt to travel there by PT would be crazy. Really, it was fine. In fact we caught an express bus that took us right there. We collected all our quarters so we could make the bus fare.

This is Tyrone, our bus driver.

He's been driving the bus for 32 years. He gets five weeks leave per year and enjoys sunny holiday destinations like Bermuda. He dislikes laziness, and the poor driving habits of his fellow bus drivers. He also dislikes his neighbour George, but I'm not entirely sure why. I don't know whether it was because he enjoyed our conversation or didn't like the look of our pile of quarters, but he let us ride the bus free. Thanks Tyrone!

We were a little early, so we stopped off at Starbucks so I could have a coffee. I asked for a small latte, but they misheard me and gave me a tall one. Check out the size of it:

It was gross.
Anyway, when we got to Dottie's house and she had a couple of slices laid out for us:

Yes!

For the next few hours, Dottie told stories of being a war bride in NYC. The woman is seriously hilarious. Highlights included the time she told her boss what her plans for the afternoon were when he made the rhetorical statement "What are you going to do?". Turns out that she used to work at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue and if her stories are anything to go by, Mad Men is totally real.

Anyway, no story of a visit to Dottie's house would be complete without acknowledging the specialness of her bathroom. It's wallpapered with a silver and pink clam shell print.

That's the wall and the roof. It's everywhere. See?

And as if that isn't good enough, she also has a cushioned toilet seat.

So comfy.
Anyway, we had a delightful day. As we were leaving, I managed to take a snap of this novelty kitchen wall decoration.

Nyuck nyuck nyuck.
Dottie lives alone, mind you.