I recently had a conversation with my Mum where she told me about showing her sisters a recent photo of me. My extended family all live a fair way away from me, and the last time I saw most of them was at my Grandfather’s funeral, so it’s been a while. One of my Aunts commented that she wouldn’t have recognised me, which I find strange. I never really though I had changed that much over the years, but I was looking through old photos I have taken of myself over the years (and I took a lot of photos) and it was surprising how different I looked. So I decided to share.
I never would have thought that this little cutie would have such a transformation. I used to be blonde!
I was suitably awkward in high school, where I tried to blend into the background as much as possible. The most rebellious I got was the edgy black nail polish I sported for a while. But generally I was really shy. I kept to myself and only had a few friends. It was around this time I discovered the internet, where people paid attention to me, and my confidence started to (very, very slowly) improve.
(this is probably what I looked like when my Aunt last saw me)
I tend to gauge time by how long my hair is in the photos. I had long hair for a very long time and going through these photos reminds me how quickly it grows. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with my hair, which is why most of the time I have it tied back so viciously.
I moved to Sydney, bought my own clothes and tried new things. Ben was so supportive through all this, and living with him in such a different atmosphere than I was used to encouraged me to change and grow.
I made a quick decision out of frustration which ended up being a big change (for the better, I think).
I made another change soon after.
And another, soon after that.
And the biggest, most permanent change after that.
And at some point along the line, I started looking like an adult. Most of the time these days I even feel like an adult. It still catches me by surprise; I’ll get dressed and look at myself in the mirror and realise that I’m not a kid any more. I’ve made it, I’m an adult.
Going through these photos has been a strange experience. I took photos of good times and bad times, and I realised how far I’ve come. They brought back memories of how I was so scared to try new things, simple things that felt so daunting at the time. I was reminded of clothes I bought but never wore in public, and were probably donated a long time ago; some things I’m happy to be rid of, but others I wish I had kept.
So, as they say, I am who I am. I have bright hair and piercings and tattoos (and plan on getting more). I swear like there’s no tomorrow, and am completely unapologetic about it. I’m still shy, still awkward, still battling against my own brain’s lies, but I am also so proud of how far I have come. I have changed so much, and it’s all for the better. I don’t know if my extended family would necessarily approve of my choices, or the ones I make in the future, but at the same time I don’t care. I am who I am, and I’m liking that person.
Hello My lovelies! It is a beautiful day today, and I thought I would give you an update on my crafting projects. There will probably be lots of photos.
I finished the blanket that I started down in Melbourne. There was a bit of drama with this, in that I ran out of one of the pinky-purple yarn before the blue or the grey. It was strange, because the balls were all the same size, and the stripes I was doing were all the same size, but it still ran out halfway through what was going to be the second last stripe of the blanket.
So I had to order some more. I found the webiste of the store in Melbourne I bought it from originally, placed the order, then found out they were out of stock and had to get some from their supplier before I could pay and have it shipped to me. Thankfully that didn’t take very long. I got two more balls of each, and even then I was worried about that colour running out again. It was good because it made it that bit longer and snugglier, but it was still frustrating. The cats both seem to be enjoying covering it in cat hair, though, so it must be good. I really like the more muted colours of this one, especially after the super bright granny squares.
After that I moved on to some cross stitch. I have been eyeing off What Delilah Did‘s patterns for a while, and when I got given some money for my birthday I figured I would take advantage of the situation and buy one. Specifically, the Mr Magpie. When it is finished I’m gonna frame it and hang it on my hypothetical wall of art.
I also bought some even weave linen to do this on, rather than Aida cloth like I probably would have normally, at the suggestion of the website. It takes a bit more concentration than Aida to make sure you’re stitching in the right spot, but it looks so much nicer. I will probably use it for all my cross stitches from now on, I like it so much. I am probably about 1/3 of the way through this pattern and I didn’t start it until about July, so I’m doing pretty well!
I have made a mistake or two so far, but thankfully they are not noticeable, and I can alter the pattern a little to compensate for what I did. I feel like that makes it a bit more personal, because it’s not exactly like the pattern. It’s not quite perfect, but no one will know unless they look really hard. Just like me.
My housemate Ally noticed the new blanket and after realising I made it, has commissioned me to make one for her (and she’ll pay for the yarn). So now we have the fun part of working out the details. I spend about half an hour in the little yarn store in Newtown putting together colour combinations and taking photos of them to show Ally to see which ones she likes. There’s also the issue of how big she wants it, because that will affect how long it will take and how much it will cost. That’s a smaller detail though; the colours are the most important part.
I think this is my favourite time when doing a craft project. The planning stage, going through all the options, filling me up with a sense of excitement. Trying to get what I have pictured in my head to match what I have available to me. Getting more eager to start as things fall into place. Then the familiar repetition of following the pattern and watching the project grow into what it’s supposed to be. Perfection.
I was pretty excited about this weekend. I went through a phase of being a little obsessed with mainstream Japanese culture (funnily enough around the time I decided to learn Japanese at school), and this was a nice way to relive that. Plus I have a cold so I felt this was a good way to justify spending the weekend watching cartoons in my jammies. Apologies in advance, this post is probably going to be a long one.
This week’s theme was “Inside The Magical World Of Hayao Miyazaki”. That’s right, it was Ghibli week this week. I had seen two of the suggestions before, but all five films were ones I had been meaning to (re)watch for a while and hadn’t gotten around to it, so I figured this was as good a chance as any. I managed to watch all five films this week, but I started a day early in order to fit them all in. The book talked about the English dubbed versions, but I went all authentic with Japanese and subtitles.
I started on Thursday with Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s the often-told story of a girl who gets on the bad side of a huge fat blob of a witch and gets turned into an old lady. She then meets a wizard, Howl, and they both help each other out and fall in love or whatever.
This certainly was a Miyazaki film. There is a cutesy, wandering feel to the whole thing that is reminiscent of all the Ghibli films I’ve watched so far. There is the obvious distinction between good and bad visually; Howl (good guy) is tall and attractive and all the ladies love him, while the Witch of the Wastes (bad guy) is a huge, monstrous lady who gets stripped of her powers and if a fat ugly old lady. Fairly straight forward who you should be cheering for. Also being old doesn’t necessary equate to being bad; the King’s advisor is an old witch, but because she did ‘good’ things she wasn’t fat and ugly. If you are good you are pretty, and if you’re bad you’re ugly. It’s pretty simple stuff, which makes sense seeing as it’s essentially a kid’s movie.
There are some aspects I would have liked to have seen explored a bit more. Howl is shown as vain and shallow because he feels life isn’t worth living if you’re not attractive, but then miraculously gets over that and moves on. Then there’s the Lady Suliman, who was Howl’s mentor, what is up with all that? Also, why does Sophie keep changing back and forth between the old lady self and the original self? I would have liked a bit more explanation in those kinda of aspects. That being said, the film is very pretty. Very Pretty. This is something that Miyazaki seems to do quite well, that complex, detailed world that also looks really beautiful. It was nice enough, but didn’t really seem to grab me that much. It felt a little too young for me.
Next up was Spirited Away. A girl (Chihiro) is moving to a new town with her parents. They stop at a village and her parents get turned into pigs. She gets a job at the bath house in the village, specially for spirits, and tries to work out a way to get her parents back the way they were with the help of a boy (Haku) who also works there.
Now, cards on the table, I was pretty drugged up on cold and flu medication when I watched this. I had already seen it, years ago, so I knew the gist of what was going on, but I may have been paying less attention than usual seeing as I could barely keep my eyes open. That being said, I think I can safely say that I enjoyed it more than Howl’s Moving Castle. While the storyline was a bit more wandering than Howl, the world Spirited Away was setting was much more magical. The various spirit characters were really detailed and interesting, and all the colours and layers and music just made it feel like a really full movie. The story also was nice in that it showed Chihiro’s growth as a character, from the scared, whiny child to someone with confidence and willingness to stand up for what she believes in. It’s a clichéd story, but it was done in a nice way that I didn’t roll my eyes at it. It feels like Miyazaki learned over the years what he did well and improved as a result. I can see why this one won an Oscar when it came out. I really liked it.
Again, I wish there was more backstory. These characters are so complex that the glimpse you get in the films isn’t really enough to satisfy me and just left me with a lot of questions. What is a NoFace? Why was Haku working for Yubaba? Why was Yubaba’s sister really mean when you first meet her and then super nice when Chihiro goes out to see her? Why does she live so far away from her sister, anyway? What caused whatever falling out they had? What’s with the giant baby? It’s frustrating, y’know?
Next up was Laputa: Castle in the Sky. A girl with a magical pendant falls from an airship and meets a boy from a mining town. They decide to go on an adventure which takes them to a magical floating castle, Laputa, where they, uh, live happily ever after? I dunno, I didn’t get that far.
Not really that much of a fan of this one. It felt kinda clunky and overly cartoony, like the afternoon kids shows I used to watch when I was younger. Plus the art style wasn’t something I liked, even though it was pretty similar to other Miyazaki things I’ve watched, it was a little different and just looked like an older style and it was distracting. I got bored pretty quickly and stopped watching it before they even made it to Laputa. Sorry Miyazaki, but I just didn’t care enough to continue..
Then came My Neighbour Totoro. A family move into an old (slightly abandoned) house, and get settled while the Mother is in hospital. the two girls, Sachiko and Mei find a spirit-y being that they believe is Totoro, a troll, and they have magical adventures with him.
(sorry about the pathetic trailer; it was literally the best I could find that was able to be embedded in here.)
I have been meaning to see this for a while, seeing as sometimes I feel like the only person I know who hasn’t watched this already. It was a bit slow to start, but I was happy to watch it because I wanted to see Totoro. The voices of the children were kind of annoying, but I have watched anime with more irritating voices so it wasn’t too bad.
It was a pretty strange movie, though. Cute, for sure, but still really strange. I probably won’t watch it again, because I didn’t really find it that interesting. I don’t completely understand why people get so obsessed about it. Sure, Totoro and Catbus were cute, but not really enough to want to wear clothes with them on it and squee over Totoro merchandise in store. To each their own, I guess.
And finally I watched Princess Mononoke. A young man from a forest tribe is poisoned when a Boar God becomes a demon and goes on a rampage. The man, Ashitaka, leaves the village in search of a cure and an explanation for what happened to the Boar God. He encounters a town built around producing iron, and the head of that town who is set on destroying the nearby forest and killing all the creatures in it. Ashitaka runs to the forest and tries to get people and animals to live in peace, teaming up with the Wolf God and falling in love with her human daughter, San. There’s also the Spirit of the Forest, whose head is supposed to grant immortality or something. It gets a bit confusing after a while.
This was the first subtitled anime I remember watching. My brother borrowed it from a friend (on VHS, how old school!) who was into anime and wanted Rowan to be too. I remember the strangeness of the subtitles, and the being confused by the story because I would only pay attention to it in burst and essentially had no idea what was going on most of the time. This is the only one I watched this time around in English; I remember reading about how the American producers worked closely with Miyazaki to make sure the English translation was a close as possible, so I figured it would be ok. But the way Americans pronounce Japanese works grates on me so much that I think it possibly ruined the film for me. I had other things that needed doing so I couldn’t change it to Japanese and sit and watch it straight, which meant I just struggled through to mangled pronunciation of names.
Also it seemed to drag on a bit too long. By the time we got to the big climax of the film I felt like it should have come half an hour earlier. There was a lot of build up and I had burnt out a little by the end of it. Plus it got a preachy. Ok, I get it, humans should try and get along with nature, not destroy it. You don’t need to hammer it home quite that much, alright? This grumpiness about the film is probably because I was movied out by this point. Five films in a weekend is definitely too much for me to handle, even though I didn’t watch much of Laputa. I’ll probably give Mononoke another go at some point, in Japanese, but at the moment I don’t want to watch anything for a while.
So, in summary, this weekend was a bit of a slog. I did like the majority of the films that were suggested, I will admit that freely. I was also just really glad that fuckin’ Ponyo wasn’t on the list, because that is a really weird, vaguely irritating film that I never want to watch ever again. Ben bought it for me as a joke for Christmas one year, and I forced him to sit down and watch it with me. We both decided at the end of it to put it away and leave it on the shelf as a reminder of Bad Decisions. it was definitely a lesson learned and hopefully never repeated. Next week is about living in the suburbs, we’ll se how I go with those ones, eh?
I can’t remember how I found Fat Mum Slim‘s photo a day challenges, probably through a blog I follow. I found it in time to start the June challenge, but gave up on that 2/3 of the way through when I got stuck on a difficult prompt, so I decided to try again at the start of July and managed to complete them all! I figured I would put the month’s photos up on here for those who don’t use instagram.
Wow, that’s a lot of photos! They’re all on my flickr so if you want a bigger look just click them and it’ll take you to the flickr entry for it. There are some photos I’m quite happy with and others not so much, as is always the way. It was still a fun exercise, so I’m going to try and take a photo a day for August, but I didn’t really like the list of suggestions so I’ll just try and take photos of whatever tickles my fancy.
I love stationery. Sometimes I think I love it a little too much. I head straight to that section whenever we go browsing in shops. I make a beeline to the notebooks, wistfully tracing what is on the covers with my fingers, deciding which ones have the best colours. I always choose a red variant initially, then remind myself of the multitude of red items I own, so if I was to potentially buy something I should shake it up, colour-wise. I weigh up the pros and cons of lined vs unlined vs grid pages. Sometimes, if I can do it unnoticed, I will give them a subtle sniff and breathe in the papery smell they have. Some of them are surprising, one that I have has a distinctly peppery smell to it!
I go through a similar process with the pens and pencils, debating internally over whether I would use black or blue in more, or if I should get a bright coloured ink to make things interesting. I take them out of their holders and cradle them, feeling their weight and testing their balance. I very rarely end up actually buying anything because I already have entirely too many notebooks that I’m not using to justify buying any more. But every time it’s a serious struggle, a test of will.
So when my friend asked on facebook if anyone wanted to buy stuff from a stationery website to bump the order up enough to get free shipping, I understandably went a bit crazy looking at everything. I think at one point I had over 10 tabs of product pages open. Finally I was able to narrow it down to three things. And that ended up being about $85. Shoot. So I’m putting them up here so I do’t forget about them and can close the tabs I still have open.
The washi tape I can go without, but the pen and the diary I reeeeeeeeeally want to buy. Ben has a Lamy pen (but a different kind) and it feels so nice to use, and the diary will match my O-Check notebook journal and will be good for general organisation. Plus they all look pretty. And I wants them.
I think I’m the only one in my family that feels this way about stationery. There have been a few times where I’ve asked for stationery as presents for my birthday or Christmas, and they always seemed so confused at what I mean. It’s frustrating because I don’t know how to explain what it is I want, but I also don’t understand how they can’t see what is so amazing about this kind of stuff. Don’t they hunt for the perfect pen to write with? Am I crazy for obsessing over these things as much as I do?
I think, in a way to try and justify buying more shinies, I’m going to take the little notebook that’s propping the laptop up and start actually using it. The first day of a new month seems like a good time to start. If I can write something in it every day for a month then I shall give myself a reward. Sounds like a good plan to me!
delightful teen smothering her wet ass on her ass crazed playmate.https://xxxcom.plus fast wank.
