huagl – Page 9 – Crafts, Cats, and Occasionally Cursing

A Special Occasion

This weekend, Saturday the 20th to be exact, marked Ben and my fifth anniversary of being together. It’s crazy how quickly time passes; it simultaneously feels like just yesterday and forever ago that I moved to Sydney to live with Ben.

We agreed to not buy each other presents this year, in an attempt to make out that it’s no big deal. I asked Ben to let me know if he buys me something anyway so I can reciprocate. Ben has a habit of doing that, so I’ve learned over the years to put in that sort of contingency clause in these types of agreements. To be fair on Ben, I broke our agreement first. I bought him a bowl (I know, how lavish of me), a blue one to match the small red one I bought a few weeks ago that ended up being the perfect size. In retaliation he bought me two dresses. He’s good at buying me dresses, too, so I think I was the ‘winner’ in this situation.

We went on a date on Friday, getting Indian food in Newtown and going to the cinema to watch Looper. It was a simple date night, even though I got a headache halfway through the movie and didn’t have any painkillers with me. Walking home from the station at midnight was so lovely, even with the headache trying to squeeze my eye out of its socket, the temperature was perfect for going for a walk. That is one of the things I absolutely love about summer; in winter once the sun goes down (or sometimes even when it’s still in the sky) I feel like I am going to freeze to death. In summer it may be too hot to move during the day, but the night times are generally much milder and enjoyable. I wonder if I could start a trend of night time picnics; the temperature was perfect for a picnic.

On Saturday we just relaxed for most of the day, doing our own thing, until it was time to go out for dinner. There was an event on in the city where part of a street was closed off and there were Food Trucks showing off how great their food is and all that, so I had been gunning for us to go to that since I heard it on the radio. Once we got there I realised the main problem with this is that the lines for food were ridiculously long and people were pushing and shoving whenever they walked past and it generally wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. We decided to get sushi instead, at our favourite Japanese restaurant in the city that happened to be just around the corner, and then went on an impromptu pub crawl on our way to catch a train home. It wasn’t an overly big or exciting night, but once again it was nice.

So all in all it was a nice relaxed anniversary. There wasn’t any pressure to make it perfect, or ‘special’, we just spent time together and enjoyed each other’s company. Going to the movies and then a mini pub crawl doesn’t sound like anything super romantic, but it was perfect in that we were relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. There’s wasn’t a big reveal of a fancy present or a proposal (sorry Mum, still no wedding for us) and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

More Stanmore Photos

I know we’ve only been here nearly two months, but I’m really starting to like Stanmore. Sometimes it really feels like somewhere out in the suburbs, with its wide, quiet streets and big impressive houses. Most of those houses have been broken up into apartments like ours, but they’re still impressive.

I get jealous of those houses and wish I could have one whenever I pass a really nice one. Then I remind myself that a) I will never be able to afford a house that big; b) I’ll never need that much house; and c) very few of them are full houses any more. I still like to imagine living in one of them, though.

One of these little terraces is more our style. There are a fair few of these ‘Castle Houses’ around, so it must have been a popular design at the time. The little tower-like design at the front makes me smile, and they’re probably only two or three bedrooms so it’s not like the place would be full of empty rooms. It still is probably too expensive for us, especially at the moment, but it is a slightly more realistic dream house.

I feel like I could take photos of the houses around here for days. For every impeccably presented mansion is a rickety terrace full of different colours and textures and personality. I feel weird stopping and taking photos of places, but sometimes I can’t help but notice pretty houses and want to try and capture what it is about that that is interesting.

Of course no photo post would be complete without some pictures of flowers. I love the orange and white rose (it smelled amazing, too), but the next time I walked past that house on the way to buy groceries it was gone. I remember my Mum having a rose bush that grew red and white flowers like that, and it is such a striking flower and I can’t help but be drawn to it.

Also, here is a local cat. s/he seemed unimpressed that I had interrupted his/her roll in the grass. It lives across the street, with our friendly neighbour and his four other cats and his little dog. It is a huge cat, one of the biggest I’ve seen around here, and there are a lot of cats around here. One day I will make friends with them all.

Frustrations

I have tried, and failed, to write three posts in the last week; The drafts have been saved and waiting for me to get the courage to publish them. I look at the links to them every morning when I go online and check if anyone other than spambots have commented on my posts (they never do), and I consider posting them but never do. I consider just deleting them all, but never do that either. They just sit there in limbo, waiting for me to make a decision either way.

I think the main problem is that I feel like I don’t know how to organise my thoughts a lot of the time. My posts ramble along (much like this one will inevitably do), and I don’t know if that is particularly good and engaging writing. I understand that writing regularly is important to improving my skills at it, but the frustration that occurs when I feel like I am writing rubbish constantly makes it hard to keep it up. Plus I feel like I have nothing interesting to write about; I’m not really doing anything, so why would people care to read about me not doing anything?

I think I just am in a lull in my mindset. There are things I could be doing, but instead I just sit at home and feel sorry for myself. Maybe once my mood starts peaking again more consistently I will feel better about all this. Until then I guess I have to post boring, slightly sad posts even when I don’t want to.

Review: Apple Thief Cider

Ever since I started drinking cider I have been on the look out for new (or at least new to me) varieties to try and see if I like them. Sometimes I find ones I really like, other times not so much; it’s always a gamble. I keep trying to see if I can find one I can label as my favourite, but I am too indecisive to say anything like that, so instead I have a group that I like Quite A Bit.

This means that Ben and I have a tendency to just stop in at bottle shops when on the way somewhere to check out what they have and sometimes buy cider when we didn’t mean to. This happened on Thursday when we were walking back to the station after Trivia. We stopped in and discovered they had Apple Thief cider; they even had the various types that Apple Thief make, which was a surprise seeing as we thought they only made the one kind. We grabbed a 4-pack of the Pink Lady and Granny Smith varieties (leaving the pear because we both prefer apple ciders to pear) and decided we’d try them out to celebrate the weekend. I figured I’d write a bit about them for you all.

Apple Thief is an Australian Company from Southern NSW, down near Tumut. It’s right near Batlow and its apple orchards, so it makes sense that the cider uses Batlow apples, and apparently no concentrates. There seems to be more Australian companies trying their hands at ciders, which I find nice because then I get to support local companies and also get drunk! It’s a lovely two-for-one right there. The branding is cute and original to my untrained eyes, although I probably would have chosen a different font. The labels are matte and I almost expected them to have raised parts like a letterpress print, which is another thing that puts them apart from the majority of ciders around.

Pink Lady:

I have seen this once or twice when out and about, so I had actually tried this one before. I just figured I should try it when I hadn’t already been drinking for a while, so I could properly appreciate it. Every time I drink it I like it, and this time was no exception. I am always surprised how much it tastes like Pink Lady apples, as if I had just imagined it last time because of the name, but it really does taste like them. It’s probably the perfect amount of sweetness; it’s not cloying or overpoweringly sweet like Rekorderlig is, for which I am very grateful. I don’t have anything against Rekorderlig, I just need it to be super cold for me to drink it and then that hurts my teeth.

It is quite a light cider, with very little of the fermenty taste that some of the other ciders I’ve tried have. It’s very smooth and easy to drink, not too bubbly but also not flat, and that coupled with the sweetness makes me feel like it would be perfect for me to drink in a park over summer. It got a little less sweet the more I drank it, but it still had a very appley flavour, rather than getting beery over time. This is definitely a cider that is up high on my list of preferences, and will be drinking it whenever I have the chance.

Granny Smith:

This one was definitely tangier than the Pink Lady cider, which is really unsurprising seeing it’s made from sour apples rather than sweet ones. There seems to be a trend at the moment of more sour ciders, so I’m getting used to the tanginess of these kind of things, but sometimes it still catches me by surprise. The label on the bottle says it has a ‘medium dry’ finish, which compared to Pink Lady’s ‘medium to sweet’ finish is a pretty big contrast. I tried it again the next day and it didn’t seem as sour as it had before, so maybe part of the contrast was because I’d had the sweeter cider a little while before.

It is still quite a smooth cider, compared to some of the other more sour ciders I’ve tried. The flavour tends to build up over the course of the bottle, but because of the lightness of the drink in general it didn’t seem to become too much for me and I was still able to finish the bottle easily. I did seem to keep getting an aftertaste of passionfruit while drinking the cider, which I found strange. I wonder if there really was passionfruit in there, or if my wires have gotten crossed somewhere and this is the weird result.

Because of the sourness I probably wouldn’t want to drink a lot of this over the course of an afternoon or evening. I have done that with another popular sour cider and after a few it feels like something is coating the inside of my mouth and it generally feels fuzzier than other ciders. I can tell that would happen with this one as well.

So all in all these ciders were both quite nice to drink, especially compared to some other, drier, ciders I’ve had in the past. I’m looking forward to the warmer weather so it will be prime cider-drinking time. I want to sit in a park in the sun while wearing a dress and drink nice cold cider and forget all my worries.

Local Wanderings

Last Friday Ben wasn’t feeling well (it seems breathing in all that dust when moving irritates sinuses and tonsils. Who would have guessed?) so he took the day off work to go see a doctor in case it was some sort of sinus infection. After that was out of the way we decided, seeing it was a bloody beautiful day, to go for a walk and explore our new neighbourhood. It was also a good excuse to walk to Petersham (the next suburb over) and get Portuguese chicken for lunch. Not that we need an excuse to get Portuguese chicken and chips, really.

For once I didn’t have to try and sneak a photo of Ben. We’re both as bad as each other when it comes to having our photo taken, so normally I get a bunch of blurry shots of the back of his head. It must have been the nice weather putting us both in a good mood.

We’re right under the flight path, so the planes can get pretty close when they fly over. The double windows at our place helps cut the noise from the planes back quite a bit, so most of the time they’re quieter than the ones that flew over us at Marrickville. It shows how much I’ve changed over the years, I used to get irrationally terrified that the planes were going to crash into the house when they flew over; now I reach out to try and touch them when I see them.

Spring really seems to have come out in force around here. I had to keep running to catch up to Ben because he didn’t realise I had stopped to take photos of plants and had kept walking, excited to eat chicken. It seemed that everywhere I looked there were plants springing up cheerfully and I just couldn’t help but get distracted by them.

It’s funny how different this area is compared to the other suburbs around here. We’re the suburb next to Newtown, just one stop away, but it’s so much quieter here. There’s such a different atmosphere, but I think I like it. I’m looking forward to exploring more of the area while I have the spare time.