ms crankypants

I went on a morning stroll/jog/run/walk/undignified crawl today to work off some Generally Undiagnosable and Irrational but Very Real Crankiness and wandered through a new industrial estate.

It’s all rather exciting looking at chunks of former farming land being reinvented into large sheds and marvelling how importing cherries from the USA, avocadoes from New Zealand and kiwi fruit from Peru or Gautemala or some place on the other side of the world makes good sense.

The current lessee of one vacant block stores monster trucks that move dirt from here to there with a burgeoning side business in growing dandelions.

The developer’s marketing campaign for this block took my interest because it, well, seems less industrial than its intended client base would expect.

Who on earth invented the word ‘factoryette’ for an industrial estate? A dickheadette?

Crank-o-meter: the stupidettes are taking over the world

December 29th, 2008 | Tags: crimes against language, marketing | Category: crimes against language, marketing | Comments (2)

Only two things were going to stop me from hitting the Boxing Day sales: I hate crowds and would rather knit my own towels out of cat fluff than queue for discounted manchester and, oh yes, I’m down with gastro and can’t be more than five metres from a toilet.

Urgh.

I did a mental walk through my digestive habits on Christmas Day to hunt down the cause, but I was quite the freeloading guzzler about town. All I had eaten at home were some cherries ($21 a kilo so it wasn’t even a *lot* of cherries) and a piece of toast. There was a mince tart from Place A, those yummy chocolate-mint wafers from Place B, nothing from Place C but a young child stole my water bottle and perhaps had dirty hands when running about with my source of hydration (you give kids scooters and Wii games, and all they want is a bit of plastic filled with water!), and a sit-down dinner at Place D where I may have petted the dog or fed her treats under the table and forgotten to wash my hands.

Gotta go. Bye.

Crank-o-meter: using my telekinetic powers is not making rolls of toilet paper fly in the front door

December 27th, 2008 | Tags: general delusions, health | Category: general delusions, health | Comments (6)

Try this place.

I scouted around the web to see if the salon does wigs for cancer patients or services along that line, but no. Perms, colours, tints, cuts and weddings and perhaps a tissue if you need a bad hair cut fixed.

Crank-o-meter: you try them first

December 23rd, 2008 | Tags: general delusions | Category: general delusions | Comments (4)

Today’s question is how many bags of mixed pretzels does it take to find enough star shapes to turn into mini-reindeer antlers for a batch of whacky cupcakes?

I know! I know! Pick me, pick me!

Yes, cranky cook?

A fucking shitload!

Or, to be precise, this many.

Stupid pretzel makers should put more than three stars in a mixed bag and less traditional pretzel shapes. If I wanted the ubiquitous pretzely pretzel, I’d have bought a bag of them, not bags based on a false pretext of being mixed.

So half of my reindeer cupcakes ended up with curved horns like demented water buffalo. Whatever. They all tasted the same.

Then I had to cut 24 liquorice eyeballs. I say yes to the stupidest projects, but just wait until Easter when I have to choose between making rabbits or bilbies. No one knows what a bilby really looks like, so I won’t be asked the, “What on god’s earth are those things?” question like this time.

Crank-o-meter: sugar crashin’

December 19th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (9)

In an e-mail the other day my friend J asked if there was anything I really, really, really wanted for Christmas, as in something I’d happily sell my soul for.

I put the question on high rotation for about a day and still came up with ‘nothing’ (and got stuck counting how many times I’ve already IOU’d my soul about the place). I’m fortunate to have most of the stuff I need, enough of the stuff I want and am content enough to live fairly simply (take my internet connection away and I’ll lop heads though). My everyday wishes for a lot more world peace and a lot less child and animal cruelty are ignored, so I keep on those just in case the universe takes notice one day.

On a more realistic level, I’ve already been given a book shop voucher and a new radio tuner thingo for my car (and hopefully my brother will help me build a speaker box to put it in because my car was manufactured without modern concessions such as places to put electronic doodads — unless you count a 41-year-old AM radio with dially knobs as modern).

I don’t covet anything with heart-tearing passion this year, but I wouldn’t mind these:

Source: almost everywhere on the web

I’m not sure where I’d keep them but I like giraffes — kind of the animal equivalent of a stress ball watching them amble around coolly. What do they eat? I wonder if they’d get along with Mum’s alpaca herd.

Source: Barrie Jamieson http://users.bigpond.net.au/Barrie_Jamieson/Jamieson_Bird_Photos.html

And I may as well ask for pelicans to add to the menagerie. They are the cool, that is all. And their beaks can hold more than their bellies can.

Source: www.theage.com.au

Source: www.theage.com.au

I’ve had a small, pervey, guilty crush on Ben Cousins since the TV footage of his arrest. Just a week would be fine. Next week? Oh, OK, if you twist my arm. Ouch.

Source: shop.cherriesonline.com

A box of Red Hill cherries and, unlike the other items on my wish list, I can afford and have these because they’re just up the road and the cherries are ripe and I’m going to buy boxes and boxes and pit them and cover them in Mont Blancs of custard and Mini the Custard Cat (I have never seen a cat addicted to custard but the little shit won’t let me get a photo of him begging) and I are going to stuff ourselves silly. 

Crank-o-meter: oh yeah, I gave my Kris Kringle a set of juggling balls *with* instructional DVD and she didn’t even go to the lunch! And the balls aren’t even on her desk so she had better not have re-gifted them

December 17th, 2008 | Tags: general delusions | Category: general delusions | Comments (10)

With more than a million hits and hundreds of comments on every post, I’m last in line to know about Margaret and Helen and the whacky cross-section of society who post comments on their blog.

Thanks, Foodycat, I found them when clicking through your site!

I want to be them when I get older. Ah, bugger it, I want to be them now.

Now go away while I make some popcorn and laugh at Helen’s crisp analysis of Christmas tradition:

However you celebrate the holiday with your family – celebrate it fully and savor the time with loved ones.  Hang your tree right side up, upside down or stick it up your ass for all I care.  Quit worrying about how others choose to celebrate it.  It accomplishes nothing except to ruin your own holiday.

I wonder what they make of Kris Kringles and office Christmas lunches that no one wants to organise but everyone bitches about?

Crank-o-meter: sides are aching

December 13th, 2008 | Tags: entertainment, not cranky | Category: embarrassing stuff, not cranky | Comments (4)

You know you’re tired when you:

• grab deodorant and face cream during the morning routine but, with only two options, swipe your face with the deodorant
• have two diaries yet forget the only meeting of the day until the meeting keeper drops by and asks why you’re still at your desk, and he doesn’t understand see the innocence of “because this is where I work” in reply
• ask a staff member why her mandatory training was out of date, and you are reminded that Sept 2009 is next year
• discuss a wealth and hellbeing program and not realise you were transposing the letters until after several mentions

Wealth and hellbeing sounds a lot more fun than the alternative anyway.

Crank-o-meter: anyone disturbing my sleep will die slowly and painfully

December 11th, 2008 | Tags: embarrassing stuff, shittypants | Category: embarrassing stuff, shittypants | Comments (5)

I’m a bit behind on who’s doing whom in celebrityland and I tend to avoid casting judgement when I know less than one side of a story, but Kathy Lette is rather less conservative.

With the whole Ramsayshag-Gate saga still selling newspapers, the author has decided to lend a hand to the family in crisis. To quote an article on infidelity she wrote for the Daily Mail newspaper:

“(My latest novel) offers advice on how to learn to stand on your own two feet and not wait to be rescued by some fictional hero.

“I’ve just sent a copy to Tana Ramsay.”

If my family life was being turned upside down and journos were calling me every minute of the day and night and photographers were camped outside my house, the first thing I’d reach for is Kathy’s book. That’s not the slightest bit presumptuous.

Please be joking.

Crank-o-meter: it’s not about you

December 9th, 2008 | Tags: media, sex | Category: media, sex | Comments (4)

I was hoping for a few more years of familial independence before adopting the role of the child who will be parenting the parents, but I’m in a bit of a pickle.

My mother has always been a ‘if you want something done properly, do it yourself’ kind of woman. That’s great when things need to be done well, but creates a relentless burden when other family members throw their hands in the air in surrender while hiding a sigh of relief that they’ll never have to cook or clean again.

Now mumsy has a stress-related illness and looks old for the first time in her life. She and dad both work part time and have equal home time, but she still cooks the food, cleans the house and buys the food. Even though she looks frigging awful, not one resident of the house is lifting a finger to volunteer to take a load off.

Do I step in to help but end up reinforcing the habit that women do the homely stuff? Tell mum to read the riot act to the family while she puts her feet up, learns to lower her standards and gets used to mayhem while they learn they won’t die if they fend for themselves? Get on the phone to the other family members and tear them a new one for being slack bastards? Hire a cleaner and direct debit the cost to dad’s bank account? Stop interfering and let them sort it out? Book the old girl into a nice hotel for a week to recuperate and threaten blood on the walls if the house isn’t dust-free and shining when she returns?

Crank-o-meter: really damn confused

December 7th, 2008 | Tags: family, feminism | Category: family, feminism | Comments (4)