huagl – Page 14 – Crafts, Cats, and Occasionally Cursing

10 Things I Like About Winter

So it is the first of June, which means that it’s Officially Winter. We finally put the doona back on the bed two nights ago, so for me that is when it started. I’m actually surprised it took us this long seeing how cold our house has been lately; I busted out the heater in the office at least a week ago. So, in celebration of the new season beginning, I decided to remind myself of things I like about Winter before I get sick and decide that the weather needs to be warmer again. Here we go, in no particular order:

10. Soup

(photo credit to Dear Belly)Colder weather means I can eat soup without overheating, which is a good thing because I love soup. I’m too lazy to make it in general, but with a plethora of Vietnamese restaurants and a well-stocked supermarket nearby, I can always get my fill of soup.

9. Breath Clouds

(photo credit to Billijis Loc)I have memories of when I was younger and my brother and I walked to school in the cold weather, our breaths steaming out in front of us. I used to pretend I was a dragon, blowing smoke, instead of a boring person. Recently I was waiting for a train and did the same thing again. I’ll probably be pretending to be a dragon when I’m old and wrinkly; I hope I will be, at least.

8. Kitten Cuddles

Scout has taken to lying between me and Ben of a night time, so when I wake up in the middle of the night I have a cat purring right next to me (or, sometimes, partially on top of me). It is so cute when she walks up and flops on top of me. The extra warmth is an added perk, too.

7. Winter Clothes

Scarves, coats, boots, tights, layers upon layers upon layers. That is one of the first things I think about when I think of Winter. I love that I can work all these different aspects into outfits and not end up sweating like a pig. I get cold really easily, so sometimes I overcompensate on the layers front, but it doesn’t matter as much in Winter.

6. Hot Drinks

I am a pretty big tea drinker, and there’s something lovely about holding a cup of tea and feeling the warmth spread through your hands and slowly up your arms that I can’t get over. I think when I drank coffee I liked the warmth of the drink more than the taste or the caffeine. Maybe that’s why I don’t really drink it much these days.

5. Snuggles

This one seems pretty obvious, really. I’m always cold, while Ben is always hot, so snuggling on the lounge or before going to sleep is nice. In Summer it’s frustrating, because we both like to cuddle but it’s normally too hot to even think about it. In Winter it’s great, because the colder weather is a perfect excuse to spend most of the day on a weekend in bed cuddling.

4. Rain

This will probably come back to haunt me, but I really do like it when it rains. Everything looks so clean and shiny when it rains, and when I am wearing appropriate clothes it’s nice to walk around in the wet weather, earphones in and pretending I’m in a movie. Of course after a while everything goes soggy and miserable when the rains hangs around, but before then it’s nice and peaceful.

3. My Birthday

(photo credit to RebeccaVC1)Oh yes, a good thing about Winter is that my birthday occurs during this season. I’m always saying that I don’t like to make a big deal out of it, and am too nervous to do anything for it in case no one shows up, but I do like it. I guess it’s just a day that I can claim for myself; even if I have to work it’s still a day for me.

2.Roast Dinners

(photo credit to Mr San)They don’t happen very often, but I feel like roast dinners are really a Winter thing. Maybe because the oven heats up the house and you sit as a family and have roast meat and roast vegetables and it’s hearty. Makes me think of Winter. Roast pork with crackling and apple sauce and roast potatoes are amazing, if it wasn’t so much effort I would eat them all the time. I have tried to do this in late Spring and Summer, but the house just gets so hot from the oven, and then you’re eating hot food and it feels like too much effort. In Winter there is something to look forward to at the end.

1. The Sunshine

When a lot of Winter is grey and dreary, the nice sunny days feel more special. You try to make the most of it before the clouds roll back over and you need to retreat back inside. Also, Winter sun seems thinner than Summer sun; I don’t feel like I’m going to get sunburnt as soon as I step outside so I am more likely to sit outside and soak it up. The Cancer Council wouldn’t approve, but sometimes you just have to recharge your batteries with some sunshine.

So there are 10 of the things I like about Winter. There seems to be a bit of a theme in that I like things that warm me up and keep me warm, but I know that when it comes to Summer all I want is to be cold; it’s a fine line for me, it seems. This was a nice exercise to think about these kind of things, hopefully I remember them when the season is in full swing.

That Movie Book – Week Nineteen

This week’s theme was “Male? Female? Other? a weekend of gender-bending” It seemed quite an appropriate theme for this week considering what has been happening in America with Obama and New Jersey, and also in Argentina. Gay and Trans rights have had some victories and some setbacks; it seemed a curious coincidence that the theme was to do with the issues facing this part of the community. Maybe Marc Fennell is psychic and knew this was going to happen. I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, on to the films.

First up I watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig is a German post-op transexual who tells her life story and how she came to be here at a series of punk rock shows to generally uninterested audience members.

Hedwig is a film I have seen people raving about and linking clips from and generally loving, and I felt that maybe if they all enjoyed it so much then I probably would too so it seemed a fairly safe choice for this week’s viewings. It was… not what I was expecting at all. Ben and I both thought it was going to be kinda light-hearted, so when it turned out to be a strange, confronting, confusing film we both didn’t really know what to make of it. The book said it took a little bit to get going, but even then it was not really my cup of tea. The story was a pretty tragic, but I feel like the outrageous way it was presented gave a sense of disconnect and I kinda spent most of the movie a little confused and wondering where it was going and when it would end.

It was an interesting film, but I couldn’t say that I enjoyed it. It’s interesting because I didn’t overtly dislike it, or dislike it enough to turn it off, I just didn’t like it that much. I liked the story in that it was a subject that should be addressed more in mainstream media, and the actors were interesting, it was just a bit too abrasive for me to say I liked it, but not abrasive enough to turn it off. It was like a puzzle; I felt like if I could work out the secret to the film then I would start enjoying it, but I couldn’t work it out. It made me think about what it is that makes me enjoy films, and why I watch them. Obviously I watch things for entertainment value, but since starting this challenge I have started watching more films that I wouldn’t normally watch and don’t necessarily like, but still feel like I should give them a chance. They may not be completely enjoyable but it feels like I have completed a step towards becoming more open minded in my viewing habits. But then I go and ruin that by watching terrible cheesy British TV shows. I guess it’s a slow process.

Perhaps part of the issue was that I couldn’t really relate to the characters. Hedwig was such an interesting, complex character with such a strange history, but because she was so different there wasn’t really anything at all I could try and have in common with her that I didn’t have any sentimental attachment to her and because of that, no attachment to the movie.

Next up was Transamerica. Bree is a pre-op transexual who is a week away from making her bits match the rest of her. Out of the blue she finds out that when she was in college, and still a man, she fathered a child who is now 17 and working on the streets. Her therapist convinces her to go meet him and that meeting results in the son thinking Bree is a missionary and they end up on a road trip back to LA together.

This probably would have been a better film to start the weekend with. It addressed a lot of the themes that Hedwig did, in terms of the challenges trans people face, but it is done in a lighter way that makes it easier to comprehend and digest. It’s a more mainstream film than Hedwig’s more avant-guarde style. Also, the actors were really good. Really good. They broached and dealt with a subject that could have been a big old downer, but handled it with a sense of humour that balanced nicely with the more serious parts to make it well rounded. I think I would say that I enjoyed this film, even though it was still pretty sobering as a topic. Felicity Huffman was nominated for and won a fair few awards for her role as Bree, and I feel like they were well deserved. Transgender people may disagree with me though, I don’t know how much my opinion on a woman’s portrayal of a trans woman is worth when it comes down to it.

It did make me think a lot about how messed up the situation is. It’s really rubbish that even if Bree had a loving, accepting family who supported her throughout her transition, the rest of society would make it hard for her in a number of ways. She obviously doesn’t, so that is another hurdle she would have to leap. I was able to relate to parts of the film more than I did with Hedwig, which might also explain why I enjoyed it more, but it was still mostly something I couldn’t relate to as a straight person who is comfortable with the gender I was born with. I think that’s a sign of a well made film that even though I am very different to the main characters I still felt an emotional attachment to them in a way. So I guess that means I think Transamerica is a better film than Hedwig. Yeah, that sounds like something I am comfortable in saying. They both were good films in that they tackled a difficult subject, but for me I feel that Transamerica did it in a way that was was gentler in introducing the issues to the viewers and because of this may encourage more people too look into these things.

Basically this weekend made me really sad that I have it so much easier than these people. It might be partly because I used to work with people who were very heteronormative, but after watching these two movies I feel guilty that I haven’t been as supportive when it comes to that part of the community. I guess I just wish it was a bit easier for them. Being transgender must be hard enough as it is without being judged by strangers as you walk down the street.

The other suggestions this week were Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Crying Game and Boys Don’t Cry. I felt like the two I chose were a good choice, to be honest. I have seen Priscilla plenty of times so I figured that could be given a miss, but with the other two I felt like I had made myself feel guilty enough as it is with just two movies, any more and I’d get really depressed with the world. Next week, to celebrate Mothers Day happening in parts of the world, is about awful mothers. See if you can work out what the five films might be from that. Hopefully next week won’t result in my rambling for 1200 words with no real purpose.

Friday is For Photos – May 8th and 9th

Week one of unemployment over. It’s gone really quickly and I feel like I haven’t accomplished much this week when I wanted to be super productive. Ah well, I still managed to do some things this week, and one of those things was take photos. So you get good quality photos this week rather than instagram ones. I don’t think I took a single instagram photo this week, actually.

On Tuesday I was in a bit of a defeatist mood, so I tried to combat that by sitting in the sun for a bit. That seems to help, and I’ve read somewhere that sun is supposed to help with depression a bit as well. I grabbed my camera while I was at it because then I could try and pretend I was out the front for a reason. Two of my workmates gave me a pot of tulips on my last day, which was really sweet. They chose the tulips because they reminded the girls of my hair, which is doubly sweet of them. I was really touched by the gift, because I wasn’t expecting anything.

After that I went out the back and took photos of Scout being a doofus in the grass. I don’t know what she was so interested in; probably a bug.

On Wednesday I decided seeing it was another gorgeous day I was going to go for an actual walk. A walk out on the streets away from the house. I started with a few photos of Tiger, just to get up to speed. She didn’t appreciate them.

Then I actually left the house. It was nice to see a bit more of the neighbourhood, we’ve been living in Marrickville for almost a year and haven’t really explored that much. I looked down one of the streets right near the house before branching out and wandering down more streets on the other side of the main road.

On my way back home I saw this cat just hanging out next to a shop, not caring about everyone walking past. I wasn’t sure how skittish he might be (we have a fair few strays around our house that are almost impossible to photograph) so I slowly got closer until I could get a good photo of him. He had a collar on but looked pretty scruffy. I wonder where he lived.

And that was my walk! I got a Vietnamese chicken roll for lunch and spent the afternoon on the internet again as per usual. Like with the other posts, all these photos are links to where they are on flickr, with bigger sizes and other photos I didn’t put in the post. Go check ’em out or whatever.

That Movie Book – Week Eighteen

This week’s theme was “Some Of My Best Friends Are Black: a beginner’s guide to interracial clashes”. The movies suggested this week were given as examples of films where interracial couples or situations where there is a cultural clash are dealt with in an interesting way or are done well. Most of the time these kinda of situations have a white person with their foreign friend/coworker being used as an example of how Wacky the other culture is. This week is supposed to help shift away from those clichés to something a bit more realistic.

Once again, I only watched one film this week. But it was definitely a good one, so I felt satisfied with just seeing that one. On Saturday I watched Lost in Translation, one of the films I have been meaning to watch for ages but never got around to. A bored wife and an ageing movie star staying at the same hotel in Japan become friends when they realise they are both equally alone and confused by the place they are in.

I really liked this film, and I was a bit worried I wouldn’t because of the slow pacing. I can be a bit fickle when it comes to those kind of things, but it seemed to work well enough for this film that I enjoyed it rather than getting bored and turning it off. It’s a delicate balance. Anyway, the two main characters were so beautifully sad and flawed that I was intrigued by their interactions. One thing I was really glad about was that they didn’t sleep with each other. The idea of two people who don’t really fit in finding each other and just being friends is much more interesting to me than two people who don’t really fit in meeting each other and falling in love but never being able to be together because of Reasons. The second storyline has been done to death, and having them just be friends was probably a more realistic situation as well. I know that they do fall in love or whatever, and kinda wanted to sleep together but never did, but I am choosing to ignore that bit because I am so sick of that whole “a woman and a man are friends so they much want to fuck” deal in films. In media in general.

It is interesting to think about how such an intimidating place Japan can be to outsiders. It’s one of those places that you either embrace fully or will never really understand. Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson’s character) seems like she tries to experience the various cultures in Japan and seemed to be interested in some of them, but at the same time she never really seemed to fit in. She also didn’t explore the parts she liked further. There was a superficial interest in the whole thing, but she doesn’t seem to really want to look into things more because she doesn’t really want to be there. There are scenes which show her trying out Japanese things, but most of the times she looks bored, or lost. I can sympathise with her a bit, though. She doesn’t really know what to do with her life and now she is left alone in a strange place where she can’t understand anything, which makes her feel even more lost than she would have felt anyway.It makes sense that she would have reached out to the only other person she’s really met that seems as out of place as her.

One thing that annoyed me in a way was that neither of them really tried that hard to fit in or make things easier for themselves and others. They both seemed to not speak Japanese at all (which is a bit frustrating seeing they’re in Japan), and Bill Murray’s character very obviously makes fun of the Japanese people who try and talk to him. Maybe it was supposed to play on Bill Murray’s comedic skills, or his character not wanting to be there, but it really felt like all those people who go overseas and demand the other countries to speak English. A lot of Australian people do that and it makes me embarrassed to be vaguely associated with those kind of people, so it irritated me that I was reminded of those kind of people. I liked the characters a bit less because of this; they were kinda culturally insensitive and selfish. I guess that makes them more rounded as characters, in that they’re not perfect, but it was just something that took me away from the film a little.

The other films suggested this week were Borat (a British comedian pretends to be from Kazakhstan and makes a pretend documentary about America), Silver Streak (a black/white buddy comedy that apparently did it quite well), Zorba the Greek (a British Author goes to Crete to try and fix his writer’s block and befriends a Greek labourer while there, and 2 Days in Paris (A French/American couple stop over at Paris to visit the French lady’s family). I was going to watch 2 Days in Paris on Sunday night, but I think Lost in Translation gave me enough to think about. Next week looks at the issues of gender. There are two I have been meaning to watch, so hopefully I’ll get to both and maybe some of theothers as well.

Friday is for Photos – Out and About

Here are the last of my instagram photos from when I was working. Now, hopefully, there will be more nicer photos now that I have time to use my DSLR for something other than taking photos of belts.

Gotta watch out for all this flash floods in#marrickville

I really am having trouble naming this posts, so I might just go with the week’s dates to make it easier on me.

So yeah. I’m still going to try and get out of the house once a week while I don’t have a job, so photos should still be coming, but they might just be more instagram photos from around the house. Your guess is as good as mine, really.