But I’ll be wearing purple shoes with it.

After not going to any weddings together since we met, this year we are going to three!  Crazy times.  Luckily they are all separate and unrelated people getting married, so the dress can get three outings.

This particular wedding is in Daylesford, which is renowned for many health spas.  We won’t be going to any spas while we’re away.  Just the wedding on Saturday.  Oh and dinner on Friday night.  And a BBQ on Sunday.  See, no time for spas.

I had to go buy some make up for the wedding, since mine all seems  to have disappeared in the move.  Can’t find a damn thing, so I took myself off to the Chanel lady and left an hour later with an enormous bag of stuff.  Just as well there are three weddings to use it all on!

Anyhow, for Christmas I got all these books:

And over the next few weeks I plan to finish them all. In fact, I’ve already finished the Steve Jobs biography. It was very interesting and I really liked the fact that the author didn’t sugarcoat it. There is a danger that people who are loved and hated in equal measures will be painted in an overly flattering light by their biographers, but Walter Isaacson didn’t fall into that trap and the book is better for it.

I’m now halfway through The Fry Chronicles, which is richly entertaining and makes me think I don’t know nearly enough about the English language.

I’m also very much looking forward to the other two books.

1. What did you do in 2011  that you’d never done before?

Flew in a Piper Chieftan.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t make resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, my friend Barb had her baby Ruby, and Christina had her baby Eliza.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no.

5. What countries did you visit?

I didn’t leave the country this year!  Shocking, I know.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A decent holiday.  We only had a three day break in August and I am over things completely now.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

The day one of my best friends told me she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Moving house.  You can laugh if you want.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I didn’t manage to find a new home for Teddy before the Boy got too attached.  Now he’ll never leave.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No, it was an injury-free year for once!

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My Leona Edmiston dress.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Renovating the house.  An enormous money-guzzling exercise.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Booking our holidays for 2012.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5, and for all the wrong reasons.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder?

Just as happy.

b) thinner or fatter?

Slightly fatter.  Don’t tell anyone.

c) richer or poorer?

Poorer.  See #12 above.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Holidaying, or at least taking a break from work.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Renovating!

18. How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas Day with the boy’s family.

19. Did you fall in love in 2011?

I was already in love!

20. What was your favorite TV program?

Still loving The Big Bang Theory and NCIS.  Am a bit sick of House these days.

21. What was the best book you read?

I am struggling to think of which books I have read this year!  Unbearable Lightness by Portia di Rossi was pretty good, and I enjoyed BossyPants by Tina Fey.

22. What was your favourite film of this year?

The King’s Speech was excellent.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 38, and spent the morning firstly helping my friend (who had her mastectomy the week before) finish her Christmas shopping, then spent the afternoon packing up as we moved house the next day.  We did go to Vue de Monde for dinner the night before, and it was the BEST birthday dinner ever.

24. What kept you sane?

Knowing that this move into a smaller house is just temporary, and will be totally worth it in 2012.

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I never fail to keep adoring George Clooney.  I don’t see what all the fuss over Ryan Gosling is about.

26. Who did you miss?

Nobody.  All the important people in my life are still around.

27. Who was the best new person you met?

Thinking about it, I am not sure there are any new people in my life.

And from me too! Thanks for sharing the year with me.

(The kitchen boxes)

and this:

(my shoes and clothes)

And then the next day three more men showed up and moved everything to the new house.  They also took everything out of the boxes in the new house.

Then I had to spend a few days sorting everything out.  We moved on the Tuesday and by Saturday everything that was going to get unpacked was done.  There are two more boxes in the garage, but I think they might be shed boxes that don’t need unpacking.  And there are 32 boxes in storage at my parents’ house.  Mostly books.

It took another week to get the foxtel and intenet connected, and here we are!

On to today’s discussion.  It’s all about housework, which I know you all are thrilled about.

The boy and I have been cohabiting (living together? sharing a house?  it all seems a bit sordid, really) for nearly six years now.  When I moved in with him, we never had a discussion about jobs around the house.  Over time, our list of jobs has evolved and now they are divided up like this.

Me: cooking, laundry and ironing, checking the letterbox, grocery shopping.

Him: dishes, taking out the rubbish, killing creepy crawlies, feeding cats, changing cat litter trays.

We pay a very nice woman and her husband to do our cleaning.  I used to do it, but resented spending half of my weekend scrubbing toilets or showers or whatever, so we solved that problem quickly enough.  I think boys and girls have different levels of dirt tolerance, so to save any arguments we get an impartial party to deal with it!

I do the cooking because the boy CAN NOT COOK to save his life.  He tried making pancakes once, using a recipe I gave him, and under strict supervision, and they were inedible.  Neither of us could explain it.  I do, however, make him give me suggestions about what to cook, because when it comes to cooking dinner every night of the week, 54% of the battle is deciding what to cook.  And he is very good about saying we’ll go out or get takeaway if I decide I am incapable of cooking every now and then.  I also the laundry because I am the only one who considers it a good idea not to put every single item of clothing in one load of washing and turn it on hot, then dump everything in the dryer.

As for the grocery shopping, the boy comes with me every other time I go, and of course it costs me twice as much when he does.  But he helps and it’s all good.  He is also in charge of bringing the bags of shopping in from the car, and putting things in the fridge and freezer.

So I have no complaints about the division of labour in our house.  How does it work in yours?

p.s. I will be absent for a while longer as we’re moving house on Monday and Tuesday.  I know, I can hardly believe it myself.  I’ll try and take pictures.

The boy’s sister is getting married in January.  His dad needed to get a new suit for the wedding.  He is a farmer, and the last suit he bought was probably 30 years ago (according to the boy’s mother).  So it was agreed that the boy’s parents would come to our place today, and we would take them shopping in the city for a new suit.

They arrived, and it was apparent from the moment they arrived that the boy’s father was not happy about having to go shopping.  But we all got in our car and drove into the city.  We parked just behind David Jones, which is a large department store in Melbourne, and trotted up to the second floor to men’s suits.

And there the fun began.  The first jacket we looked at was “no good”.  Neither was the second.  The third, “I’m not paying that much money for a suit!”. (yes it was expensive, but it was a damn nice suit).  After doing a lap of the floor, with the boy’s father becoming more and more mulish and his mother getting more and more frustrated, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands.  The boy had already threatened to get in the car and leave everyone behind.  It wasn’t going well.

I went over and spoke to the sales assistant, who was a very nice man, and closer to the boy’s father’s age than my own.  I told him we had to get a suit for a wedding, that the person in question was being difficult, and could he please help us.  With great confidence he said, “leave it with me”.  He is my new hero.  20 minutes later the boy’s father had tried on three suits, chosen one, and was getting the trousers measured for taking up the hem.  They had even chosen a shirt and tie to go with it.

The boy’s father complained all the way home, but he has a very nice suit for the wedding.  He even paid more than $100.00 for it.  Now all he needs are shoes.  I was told not to even mention those today.

It was a weird experience.  I’ve never actually seen a grown man of 62 behave in such a petulant manner.  However, I did know that the boy’s father might throw a temper tantrum in front of his wife, his son and me, but he wouldn’t do it in front of a stranger.  Which is why I dragged in the salesman.

Thank goodness for all those years of psychology training in how to deal with difficult and stressful situations, and dealing with people behaving badly.

1. Dress sense
2. Shaving habits
3. Hairstyle
4. Nose and ear hair issues
5. Shoe choice
6. Aftershave
7. Plucking eyebrows
8. Improving hygiene
9. Get rid of his beard/moustache
10. Cleanse and moisturise daily
11. Diet
12. Financial responsibility
13. Talking about their feelings
14. Drinking less
15. Watching more chick flicks
16. Call mum more frequently
17. Put the toilet seat down
18. Stop swearing
19. Share the remote control
20. Learn to cook

I’ve had a good hard look at the list and I must say, there’s only one thing on it that I’ve actually tried – and succeeded – to change about the boy.  Swearing.  We both swear a bit occasionally but he is banned from saying the “c” word around me.  I find it horribly offensive for reasons I can’t explain, I don’t even like the sound of the word.  It only took me three times to say “please don’t say that word around me” and I haven’t heard it now for seven years.

Why haven’t I tried to change anything else?  Well for starters, he is who he is and I don’t actually want to change him.  Secondly, he’s adult enough to know how to dress and when to shower.  Okay he can’t cook but he makes up for it by doing the dishes every night.

Oh, and although he doesn’t actually cleanse and moisturise daily, he does use Clarins Men’s Face Scrub in the shower every morning.  And I get in trouble if there isn’t a new tube in the cupboard when he runs out

Pandas are stupidly cute, and everyone who saw them was going beserk over how adorable they are.

You can make up your own mind.

You really need to try the berry yoghurt, or the blood orange, or… actually you need to try them all.  Except the salted caramel.  Because that’s my favourite and I want them all.

Macarons courtesy of Shocolate in Brunswick St, Fitzroy.

For those of you waiting with great excitement to hear about the progress on the renovations, the meeting with the builder has been put off til next Monday.  Hmpf.