I think I was a bit too keen to jump into layers and stockings and cute skirts with the change in weather, because I had definitely forgotten how very ANNOYING such an outfit can be. I spent the whole day pulling the skirt down, and the stockings up.

I think there will definitely be LESS tights this autumn . . .

I’m not very good at confrontations, or emotional drama. I either freeze up, or turn into an overly confrontational bitch. Either results in immediate abandonment because I don’t know how to resolve the situation without making it worse. I dislike drama, and avoidance is usually the easiest way to not have to deal with such situations.

In this case, for me it always starts with these shoes.

I’ve mentioned before that I used to wear mismatching shoes all the time. It started when I lived in a shoebox in the sky, with a couple. They were my best friends, at the time. This girl and I were as tight as tight could be, we loved the same things, had so many in jokes and rocked out together all the time. And naturally our shoes, clothes and pretty much everything was interchangeable. We basically combined our wardrobes. And then we went through a pretty heavy chucks phase, I must have at least 5 pairs, and we would wear *those* interchangeably too. It didn’t matter if they matched or not, and when I moved out I moved wearing one of my pink ones, and one of her blue ones.

She kept my pink one, and I kept her blue one and it became another symbolic connection of our friendship. Like one of those necklaces and each has half a charm that joins in the middle. Except in shoe form. Weird, but whatever.

Long story short, we aren’t friends anymore. I can’t even remember what happened, other than I went from bridesmaid to not even invited to her wedding because I asked if she wanted to go a wedding expo. Well, not quite, it wasn’t exactly like that. We said lots of horrible things to each other, and justified it with other more horrible things. There were some gigantic misunderstandings. We hurt each other, in the way only best friends know how. We stopped being friends, let alone best friends. We were no longer tight. Or even talking.

And for ages I thought I was okay with that. I didn’t want to be friends with someone who was okay to drop you like a stone from bridesmaid to nothing. That hurt. What also hurt was her saying that I’d been replaced, and that I was an easy replacement. That sucked ass, massive kick to my self esteem that my supposed best friend would even think such a thing. At the time my family was in the process of breaking. It was one of those times you wanted a best friend around, but alas. I was accused of being more dramatic.

In the end I sorted out what I wanted in a friend, and stuck with the people who wouldn’t dare drop me when I needed them. I didn’t want to loose anymore friends, and wasn’t going to waste time on people who didn’t want to be friends with me. And as time went on I was okay that we weren’t friends anymore. Oh sure, we had mutual friends who had mutual gatherings. And I was happy to see her and talk to her if she came up to me at these mutual gatherings, but it was always awkward. I never initiated anything, I always found her so unapproachable. In the end I was glad that our mutual friends lived in another country, so we only ever met every couple of months, if that.

I’ve wondered if I should give her shoe back, but I haven’t. It would be like the ultimate cut. At this point I can acknowledge that we did have a past. That we were best friends, and the wearing of two different shoes is the last link back to that time. Then today, while I was looking through a bunch of facebook photos, I realised that she had un-friended me.

I was happy to stay acquaintances, cause it was safe there. There was no confrontational issues, no need to get involved in all the emotionalness, no need to worry about it. But she obviously wasn’t. It probably wasn’t that dramatic, actually. She probably did it without thinking. But for me, this resonates quite clearly that things are done. There is no such things as happy acquaintances. There is no coming back from here. We’ve lost a best friend in each other, the time for resolution is past and that’s that.

Tough shit to me, really. If I had wanted anything different, I’ve lost the chance to do so. And in all honesty, I didn’t know if I wanted different or not till that quiet, sneaky friends cut. I was happy to stay in the limbo, the nice non confrontational limbo. I guess it’s too late to do anything about it now.

is FINALLY HERE! Hurrah! I was able to eat the first from our tree yesterday. I love this part of the year, when eating Feijoas (my favourite fruit, for SERIOUS) is still new and you haven’t been bombarded by too much of it yet.

I devoured the two that I collected up this morning. I can’t wait till there’s enough to eat with icecream.

It’s not uncommon for movies to be adapted from books. It is, however, unfortunate that (in my opinion) many of these books have been butchered, and butchered horribly. Examples? The Golden Compass (though it was much better if you’d read the book and were able to be excited about the polar bear battles). Twilight (epic butchering. That silly diamond skin thing? In my head I had imagined that he was his own light source with big, sweeping beams of light. Instead – fail). Movies such as those use the book to get you through.

But THIS book is all kinds of awesome. Who didn’t read this as a child? Who hasn’t given copies to their god children, or nieces or nephews? For me, this book is up there with some of the Dr Suess classics.

The trailer looks awesome. Hopefully it won’t be butchered. Are any of you as excited as I am?

The great thing about dress up parties is when everyone goes hard out. When everyone gets dressed up, and some people pay money for outrageous suits, and others pull things together based on what odd getup they can find out of their closet. And you all get together, and dance around and you realise that it takes very very little to get people to be silly and do crazy things.

Okay, perhaps the addition of alcohol helps this process, but I’m positive the dressing up helps.

And then you get the really stupid things. Like when two cowboys meet and someone cracks out a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ joke and suddenly they are comparing the size of each others barrels. Or when Kermit the Frog starts singing ‘The Rainbow Connection’ to make Barbies night. Or when GI Joe decides that keeping his gun to Obama’s head is amusing for the newcomers, but halfway through the show decides to take on Kermit instead. As long as it’s all in good fun, right?

In short, I had a great time. Prancing around a pink wig, with a tiara, wand and fairy wings, tipsy on cheap asti with a cute cowboy on my arm – how could I have not?

Hope your weekend was just as grand :)

When you find yourself with a neon pink wig, it’s only natural to want to put it on your dog, right?

It’s the first time I’d ever asked him to do something as crazy as this and he wasn’t happy about it. At the same time, I was offering him cheese treats. You can see which side one out. :)

I don’t know alot about cars. I only just learned how to lift up the hood and check the oil a couple months back when The Boy asked if I’d done it. The Fourth Quarter felt he had to explain what ’safe’ psi levels were, when he realised I was just putting ‘the air thing’ in my tyre and leaving there until it beeped. I’m happy to admit that while I know how to drive, I know very very little about how my car works.

So when I went to leave The Boy’s this weekend I had a spaz when I realised the key wouldn’t turn in the ignition. It actually would. Not. Turn. I thought it might have been the dreaded immobiliser or something (something I’d heard about, and sure my car had, but had never actually seen the effects of) so I locked and unlocked the car and tried again. No luck.

My Dad once mentioned something about the handbrake needing to be down. It didn’t make much sense. I’m sure he was talking about something else at the time, but it didn’t hurt to try. So I dropped the handbrake and tried again. Fail. And then I decided that perhaps I should put it in neutral, and maybe that would do something.

It didn’t. Mostly because my car is an automatic and it won’t let you move the gearstick until the car is on. Siigh.

In the end I admitted defeat, and fetched The Boy. He got in. Jiggled the steering wheel and just like magic the key turned. He laughed at me, and tried to explain it away as the ’steering lock’ or something. I’m mostly convinced it was magic, and that my car is a hussy that is partial to cute boys.

I think it’s safe to say that me and the mechanics of cars are NOT destined to be friends.

I was sick for a couple days this week (Me and fluids had a falling out. Me and the IV drip had a brief reunion. Sigh.) so I’ve spent the last few days at home. In my boredom I tidy-ed. And apparently this what happens when I bed make now. Just quitely I think Sibling taught him as a new game.

I love that he always looks so confused after. Yay for funny little dogs :)

When I last posted about this little guy, he was in a cage off to have his parts removed. Alas, he was the kit I was going to foster, but it turned out he was too old to be tamed and was returned to the colony.

I still go out once a week to feed the colony kits (this colony is a small one, only 4 cats big) because despite popular belief, domestic cats, even if they are wild or feral CAN’T feed themselves. The best they can do without human intervention is raid rubbish bins, which isn’t good for them and rather annoying for us.

Anyway, like I said, I go out and feed these kits. They’ve all been desexed so the colony is not in any danger of getting bigger, which is good. What is also good is that they are getting better at being around people. They are still all skittish like, but will come when they hear me rattle the food containers. They will eat with me sitting a mere half meter away chattering to them (which is new, they weren’t so keen on that a while back) and the braver kits (like the little black one) will come and sit near (ish) me once they are done.

Not even remotely tame, but a definite improvement :)

Also, while I’m discussing kits. Friendly reminder if you’re looking for a kit, and you’re in Auckland, please check out Forgotten Felines. They have many many kits that were able to be tamed who are looking for homes.

There was this boy that I used to date. We were wrong for each other (I was particularly young, and demanding and pretty hot-headed at the time), which was fine. You learn about these things as time goes on. Our relationship ended, but we still remained friends. We even lived together post-relationship for a bit. Separate rooms, and all that. It was tough for a while, but you know, you work shit out.

We had the kind of post-relationship friendship where we’d sit down after work for a bit, and just chat about our days. It always turned into one of those great honest conversations, where you talk and exchange and discover new thoughts as time goes on with someone who knows you really well. And before we knew it the sun had gone down and we hadn’t even noticed. We talked openly, and it was nice that we could chat like that.

He was such a down to earth guy, who would buy books about places he wanted to go. And the three of us who lived in that flat got on so well! We’d all cook together, and go on walks and take photos together. We’d download tv and watch it all sprawled out in the lounge.

And then he moved to London, and I was horribly sad that he had. I knew it was good for him, and seeing me with another boy (The Boy, actually) wasn’t pleasant for him. But I missed him, I missed our conversations, and I missed not having him around.

He called me from Paris one night a couple weeks after he moved, while he was with a friend. They were on speaker phone, so I could hear them both. And they described what they could see (the people, the Eiffel Tower) and I was amazed. I wished I was there. Glad that he hadn’t forgotten me, glad that he was out there doing things with his life.

He would leave me random messages, and I’d laugh, and send something just as cute back. We were comfortable, as friends. Much more comfortable than when we’d been together. It’s like we let go of all our expectations and were happy just to be in each other’s company and accept each other as we were.

Now days I only talk to him occasionally online. And he’s getting married. At first that wigged me out a little – I was the one before, after all. Now I don’t mind so much, he loves his wife-to-be and I’m happy for him.

What wiggs me out instead is that he’s having his wedding in Hawaii, so the extended family can’t come. He has a wedding planner, and they have a website especially for their wedding.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, but it just makes him seem so different from the guy I knew. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s been two and half years since he moved to London. I’ve changed, he’s changed. We’re doing new things with different people.

But I miss the old us. The sitting on the couch and talking all night. Looking through pictures of Melbourne and London together. I miss the friend I used to have.

I wonder if I went to London whether we could still have that kind of friendship. Or if he came home whether it would be the same.

Probably not. Still, I’m happy that for that short while, we had the friendship that we did. :)