b f pinkerton is a shifty beggar

In the spirit of my previous “I did a thing” posts, I shall review my visit to the NZ Opera on Friday night now that the season has come to an end.  Consider this entirely useless and feel free not to bother. 

So.  Yes.  Friday night, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, thanks to NZ Opera.  Good. 

P and I started the evening with an abortive attempt to get a quick meal at Depot.  This place is excellent but you need the patience of a saint or the willingness to eat at ridiculously early hour to get in.  We had neither; so we ducked into Elliot Stables for some treats at Besos Latinos first.  The food was a bit meh, but the caipirinhas and pisco sours?  Tasty (not that I can really provide a judgment on authenticity not having made it to South America yet, P: SORT THAT OUT PLZ K THX). 

We floated outside on a wave of cachaca (sp?) into the loveliest, warmest autumn evening.  You would not have known it was the end of April, and it’s been like that ever since – highs of 21 or more every day, overnight lows of 17, crisp mornings, lingering (if dark) evenings.  The balcony at the Aotea centre was fabulous, full of people wearing sequins waving bare arms and glasses of wine around like it was February.

It got even better – beautiful singing, gorgeous set design.  I personally loved the NZSO’s accompaniment, but a lady I chatted with in the loo queue was a bit more ambivalent.  Madame Butterfly herself was a consummate actress and her voice was lovely.  Antoinette Halloran, in case you’re interested.  A colleague of mine thought Suzuki a little pantomime-y, but I loved her voice so could forgive the acting.  Gosh, I’ve never been much of an opera fan before (tried it previously and was ambivalent), but this really was lovely. 

A shame that as the first strains of the melody wafted into the refurbed Aotea centre, the phone of the woman behind us rang, and rang, and rang, and then she leant over to ask us to ensure our phones were off…and then realised it was her own fault as the usher came over with a stern face.  It wasn’t a generic ring tone – it was pretty bloody individual, so how she didn’t recognise it is beyond me.  Cell phone etiquette: muttering about other people’s rudeness never gets old, does it?  I still feel outraged nearly a week later.  That’s also possibly because I’m the crotchedy sort.

The evening was also slightly marred by arriving home to discover people had been let in to fix the ceiling holes (long-ish story, demonstrably NOT MY FAULT this time, a nice change) without our permission.  They left a layer of gib dust over our entire home and belongings and added further scuff marks/paint chips on the walls.  Really took the shine off, I can tell you, as we squabbled over the merits of sending an email to the property manager while slightly squiffy (result: drafted it, decided to sleep on it, GOOD DECISION). 

 

I still dreamt of cherry blossom that night, though. 

bossy

Things I would like to have more control over:

(aka some things I should generally have more control over and some things I can't control at all)

(aka a bossy lady's shitlist)

• biscuit consumption
• cheese consumption
• wine consumption
• wobbly belly bits
• the Auckland property market
• my performance review
• my knees (their performance review is not looking good)
• that guy on the way to work with the annoying shoes that just, ugh
• the supermarket trolley (sorry, lady who was just innocently considering her ham options)
• my mouth
• the lotto
• my open-mouth breathing when I run
• my hair
• especially the frizzy bits at the nape of my neck that always, always escape confinement
• my self esteem
• my linen cupboard
• the future of the nation
• feminism (lean in! lean sideways! have it all! have some of it!)
• my blog

gotta get down on friday

I ran! Again! 3k this time...could have gone further, faster but this little heffalump is taking it slow so that the phantom knee lump problem doesn't rear it's knobbly bits and make me feel sore.  See also: lazy. 

Only another 18k on top of that and I've totally run a half marathon.  Oh yeah, and add some hills (this was all on the flat).  Good thing I've got six months to go, my dears.  I am unbelievably out of shape. 

Wrote this run down to keep accountable.  Sigh.

I've been avoiding the blog a little / writing about my knickers in order to try and avoid the house-thing a bit.  Totally got it wrong with the last one (fuck the acronym).  Went for more than $160k over valuation.  This was for a variety of reasons, I suppose, but I didn't see it coming until we arrived at the auction venue.  We ran into N there, a friend of a sister of a friend (oh yes, AKL is that small).  We first met N at one of the last disastrous auctions, where he bid (we thought) hugely over the odds for the place.  He was unsuccessful on that occasion.  This was the second auction he's attended and it was immediately apparent he didn't intend to lose this one.  We congratulated him afterwards (tinged only slightly with bitterness); it's a lovely property and I'm thrilled for him, truly.  Just a bit green with envy. 

So, retrench: this weekend, we're looking in such lovely locales as Ellerslie.  Ellerslie sports a train station (tick for Ellerslie), is near the race course, has excellent motorway access and fuck all else, it seems to me.  All y'all Ellerslie-lovers please come to the party and give me the down low on what's good here.  Oh I know, what a privileged wee rant.

will knickers with bows boost my self esteem?

You know what is really, really stupid? 

I have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past two weeks thinking about how gross I am.  Normally, Bendon, I'd sing your praises to the high heavens (Glory Be To Elle MacPherson and Praise the Sainted Underwire!), but I bought some discount plain cotton undies from the store a while ago and christ, they make me feel ugly.  I've never had a problem before with cotton knickers - they're the business.  Comfortable and always available in a range of sassy colours.  Tend not to creep up your crack / go some feral colour in the wash / shed elastane within about 5 wears.  Safe knickers.  Sure, they're not going to be the best in the event of you get accidentally seduced by Ryan Gosling (or Justin Long, is that weird? He seems so ... genuinely funny?) but you're not going to be upset about what the paramedic is seeing if you're involved in some kind of bicycle accident.  So yeah, I love me some sensible knickers. 

AND YET, BENDON, AND YET. 

It's probably just that I've stacked on some belly recently but my latest cotton dacks are JUST SO GROUSE.  They sit at exactly the wrong place to look even remotely attractive. Poor old P has bought me drawers worth of frippery which sits idle (my knicker drawers also hold: eleventy billion odd socks, ribbons, broken pens, lost necklaces, single earrings, a flaming treasure trove of stuff I never use) and here I am wearing cotton gruts that even I can't even stand. 

Things have got to change around here.  I may be getting older, fatter, more shortsighted and grumpier by the day but BY GOD I WILL HAVE NICE KNICKERS if it kills me.  SURELY that will be the cure to my body issues?  (ha...as opposed to regular healthy diet and exercise.  trust me, I'm aware of how fucking warped this logic is but so help me jeebus, I stand by my assertion that lace on my derriere will assist).

So yeah, that's what's really, really stupid.  Add it to the list of bullshit resolutions I make around here. 

by the numbers

Ha, I haven't written about homebuying in at least, well, three posts.  WHAT A RECORD.  So here's the downlow for this week because I can't possibly go any longer without airing my innermost thoughts and feelings on the process:

Auctions won: 0
Auctions lost: 1
Time spent sighing over auction lost: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Bids made: 0
Bids whispered about but not made pending meeting the reserve: 3
Offers made: 0
Offers that were to be made except for shitty title issues: 1
Emails to solicitor: 2
Emails to bank: squillion
Dollars spent on valuations: too many
Valuations: 1 and a half
QV reports: 4
Open homes: 1
Drive bys of homes that transpire are sold already: 1
Drive bys of homes that we missed the open home for: 1
Number of conversations about being done with this shit already: 7 (approx)
Tyres curbed parking in too-narrow streets: 2
Number of emails between A + P listing properties: 4
Number of times have been asked "bought a house yet?": 7
Time spent on TradeMe: black hole vortex, cannot be counted
Time spent having lunch with out of town friends instead of going to open homes: 2 hours 10 minutes (and not a second regretted)

So a quiet week on this front (comparatively.  Last weekend was 10 open homes, for example).  Holding out hope for Great Location, Crappy Kitchen But Fuck Me, I Think We Can Afford It House which goes to auction tomorrow evening.  I'm not even sure I love it, having spent a sum total of about 5 minutes in and around it.  I know for a fact it's going to take years of practice for me to get the car in the garage there but THERE I GO AGAIN being all premature and imagining my life in that space only to be bitterly disappointed. GLCKBFMITWCAI, please PLEASE come through not least because my acronyms are becoming worse and worse and entirely unwieldy!

happy little kiwis

Oh you guys, I watched Parliament TV last night.  It was worth it (as opposed to when P made me watch a repeat of Question Time later to back up his assertion that Parliamentarians are a bit monkey at the zoo-ish.) 
I couldn't stop smiling in the latter stages of the debate and as the personal vote was cast. 

New Zealand has marriage equality. 

It's awesome and about time.    

So many of us are bursting with pride today about what that vote says about our society.  I'll admit, Pokarekare Ana sung by the press gallery may have jerked a tear.  Speaker Lindsay Tisch's very strong Kiwi accent made me cringe but also recognise the glory of the representative process - sounded like my great uncle, right there on the telly.  It's a really good day to be a Kiwi.

It means so much to my family personally, but I can't separate that very personal joy from the joy and pride I feel about being part of a nation that wants to recognise love.

A very good day. 

update on p: family violence is not ok

P, with a seriously swollen nose and two black-ish eyes, is being asked on the regular if everything is ok at home.  Poor old P, I think he can see the funny side of his wife breaking his nose in the middle of the night with a savage if unintentional headbutt, but it's still getting a bit old having to explain himself to all + sundry.  Luckily, I managed to crack his nose along an old break, so he didn't have to have it rebroken/aligned. 

In the wee hours of the morning, having finished losing my shit and cleaning up my husband/all the blood (ALL THE BLOOD), I was wide awake.  Wired from the events of the night and wary, in case P choked on blood in his sleep or god forbid I had a further episode of terrors.  This led to a bit of a google session on my phone:

"I broke my husband's nose"

"Nose broken night terrors"

"fuckity fuck fuck I headbutted his face"

& variations on the theme. 

Do you know what?  I am not the first woman in the world to have broken her spouse's nose during an episode of night terrors.  I found a message board relating to exactly that scenario, upon which the responders detailed savage night beatings of their bedmates.  I felt so much better afterwards but also marginally horrified at the nocturnal violence being perpetrated worldwide.