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 |  is paved with good intentions... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hi, I'm Elle. I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm the mother of two young adults, the wife of an entrepreneurial gamer and the Queen of Unfinished Projects. This blog will contain poems, short stories, possibly photos and book reviews if you're lucky, and my thoughts on a variety of topics. Hope you enjoy it. |
| Finally transcribed some poems I'd dictated into the audio app on my phone while commuting to/from work some time ago... ___________________________________________ There's no hidden Robin Hood complex. (Jordan Belfort?) He carefully lines his pockets while his lips smile but his eyes don't. ____________________________________________ My eye for photography told me the day lacked vibrancy and contrast and I wondered, absently, if that explained my mood. ____________________________________________ A poem for all the wanker drivers out there Despite your belief to the contrary, Dickwad, your lack of consideration doesn't mean you're smarter. It only means you're an asshole. ___________________________________________ Driving over Upper Harbour Bridge, the water looks like a stucco ceiling in reverse, a mottled mimicry of the wind-torn sky above, more grey than blue, and apropos of nothing I realise I miss you. __________________________________________ The rain blurs the distinction between sea and sodden sky leaving us smothered in a damp, grey blanket. _________________________________________ I heard the electric fence click, and I paused, waiting a beat, for the repetition I had learned as a child to expect. __________________________________________ A sailor's warning splattered across the morning sky. __________________________________________ The traffic on Upper Harbour Bridge plays hide and seek as Greenhithe is smothered into obscurity beneath a dense duvet of early morning fog that reminds me of potential possibilities and the urge to photograph places I've never been. __________________________________________ There seems to be some continuing themes!  |
If someone was to write an analysis of you by the books you have in your possession, what would it say about you? Would a stranger or even a friend recognize you by the book titles? ~ "Blogging Circle of Friends "  This is kind of hilarious. Now, the real question is, are we looking at the physical books on my shelf, or the books on my kindle app? Because there's a huge difference. The only books I've added to the physical bookshelf in the last ten years (I'm guesstimating here) have been gifts from Writing.com friends and poetry books. So for the most part, my bookshelf at home tells you who I used to be. So here are the titles (without authors, just to keep things interesting) of some of the books on my physical bookshelf:  Highland Thirst If He's Wicked Highland Captive Highland Bride Highland Avenger Velvet Song Velvet Angel Taken At Midnight Veil At Midnight Kiss of Crimson Slave to Sensation The Hobbit A Warrior's Promise Bound to a Warrior A Hunger Like No Other Forbidden At Last Comes Love Call Me Irresistible The Medusa Project Shadow Touch An Indecent PropositionI think those titles give an impression of a combination of historical romance and fantasy. Which I guess is kind of true, but the Hobbit kind of throws you off the scent because aside from that one, they're all romance. Some are historical romance, some are paranormal romance and there might be one or two that are contemporary romance. I think people would agree that those titles match up to what they know about me. I'm thinking my family wouldn't be surprised by them. It's a bit different on my Kindle. Here are the most recent titles on my Kindle:  To My Future Number 1 Fan Kinky Sprinkles Alex Imperfectly Criminal Imperfect Chemistry The Hate You Drink Captive Prince Ravensong Dra'Kaedan's Coven Journey of the Heart Spin The Dawn Rend Complementary Colors Death of Darkness Winter When The Earl Was Wicked Immortal Coil Talon Ask Me Why Threatening SkyI think some of these look like non-fiction titles. The Hate You Drink, Complementary Colors, Winter, Ask Me Why, etc. These come across to me like non-fiction. Kinky Sprinkles is such a brilliant title. Journey of the Heart and Captive Prince sound like romance novels, as does When the Earl was Wicked. I think some sound like fantasy, like Dra'Kaedan's Coven and Death of Darkness. In actual fact, they're all romance novels, with a mix of contemporary and paranormal (and one historical). People who read my blog might accept these as being typical of me, but I think my family would be pick the other set over this one as representing me. What do you think the titles say about me? |
| Silence's overwhelming weight, stretching unbroken, reduced to a remora - conquerable. 4 lines. Written for "Invalid Item" |
| Tell us about a great book you have recently read. Or recommend one of your fellow WDC writer's work to us. ~ "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Threatening Sky was written by Osirantinous  , and is the sequel to her first novel, Mackerel Sky. It continues the story of Owen and Andrew, however, rather than concentrating on their relationship, this book answers all the unanswered questions from the first book. Which means that we find out what happened to Owen's father, and we get our happily ever after.Os has a way of making her characters seem so incredibly real. You hurt with them, you laugh with them, you desperately want things to work out for them. You need to read Mackerel Sky before reading this, they are not standalone books. However, I highly recommending reading the pair. This book gives balance to the relationship between Owen and Andrew that was missing in the first book. It's not an extended epilogue, even though Owen and Andrew were definitely together at the end of the first book. It's the second half of the story. It doesn't focus solely on Owen and Andrew, but you wouldn't want it to. By this point, you're massively invested in the other kids too. The two books together are very well written, and as a whole story, I give them five stars. You won't easily put this book down, because these characters will seem as real as the members of your family.
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| The house is on fire, but everyone is safely out, the pets are safely out, and all wallets/cash are saved. If you could make one last dash to get something, what would it be? ~ "Question of the Day!" Okay, let's be clear first of all, that I wouldn't be the ninny running around trying to grab everything. If it were a real fire, I'd be getting the fuck out. But in a more hypothetical sense, let's roll with this... This is a really tough question for me. I have too many boxes of memorabilia that I'd be upset to lose, and I'd want to make another ten dashes to rescue stuff! So, I recently posted about how I'd finished putting my memorabilia from 2001 into my printed blog book, right? And the inference is that I have memorabilia from every year since, waiting to go into a blog book. So I have boxes of memorabilia. Most boxes are about the size of a shoebox, and fit approximately two years worth of memorabilia. So I have approximately 18 boxes of stuff. One of the boxes is titled 'miscellaneous' because it contains memorabilia that pre-dates 2001 or it's undated and I'm not sure where it fits chronologically. I've been thinking about this recently, actually. I'd be so gutted to lose that stuff. But how can I protect it? Fireproof boxes are usually small, and we don't have room for something huge anyway. I don't really have room for the boxes as it is! I guess... I guess I should scan all the memorabilia, because then at least if I lost it all, I could include images of it. Photos of tickets and things. It wouldn't be the same, but I'm going to have to do this in part anyway, because I have to make two copies of each book and only have one set of memorabilia. So yeah, this is the backup plan. But that means I have to photograph and/or scan all my crap. Not that I think it's crap, of course, or I wouldn't have kept it, but it's a running joke in our family. When Caitie was little, she was telling Steve that we needed to clear the table for dinner and we had to move something of Daddy's, and Mummy's crap. She meant 'scrap' because it was all my scrapbooking paraphernalia, but she said 'Mummy's crap' and that stuck. So okay. I need to digitise all my memorabilia so that if something happens to it, I'm not too upset. I've got all sorts of stuff, and it's hard to know what's most important to keep. I have newspaper clippings about my grandfather, that are from newspapers printed before I was born. I have booklets from stage show productions I was in as a child. I have yearbooks from high school, and letters and stories that heyxie  and I wrote in high school. I have the kids' baby blankets, and my wedding dress. I have the porcelain doll my mother gave me for my 21st birthday that SHE was given for her birthday as a child from her grandmother. I have stuff that belonged to Steve's grandparents and my grandparents. FUCK! How do you know what to take?!Hmm, I just had a quick Google, and it looks like jewellery and metalware (eg. silver/copper dishes/plates/jugs) will survive a house fire. So I'd leave the jewellery and the antiques. That's good. So if I exclude the jewellery and the metalware, I still have a shitload of stuff left. Apparently some stoneware will survive, but not china or crockery. Ugh. We don't have much stoneware. Mum's Wedgwood collection is stoneware I think, but I've only got two pieces of stoneware that I know of. I have loads of china, glassware and crystal. Apparently crystal will survive better than the others, but only up to a point. For instance, if the fire is extinguished early, the crystal might survive. One website recommended packing china and crystal into sealed storage boxes, and then they're more likely to survive (excluding a total loss situation). All my valuables that aren't on display are loving wrapped in newspaper inside cardboard boxes.  Oh, I just realised that if metal survives, the war medals should be fine. That's good. The one bonus of our house is that it has metal cladding, which makes it more resistant to fire. But that's only if the fire is on the outside, not if it starts inside. If it starts inside the house, it's basically a sealed oven.  Okay, I've had a look through my list of stuff, and I think I've narrowed it down. While I'd be gutted to lose any of it, if I could only make one trip, I'd grab the two paintings in the lounge. One was painted by Steve's grandfather and the other was painted by Steve's grandmother. They're irreplaceable, as both grandparents have since passed away. So that's what I'd grab if I had the chance. But again, I wouldn't take the risk. I'm not that much of a ninny! |
| If you could only eat one thing for breakfast for the rest of your life, what would you choose? ~ "Blogging Circle of Friends " Poached eggs on toast. Easy.  I really like poached eggs. Before I discovered poached eggs, I was a 'sunny side up' eggs girl, but now I'm strictly poached.  I love poached eggs on toast by themselves, or with crispy bacon, or with smashed avocado on the toast beneath the eggs, or poached eggs in huevos rancheros, or poached eggs on mince (ground beef) on toast, or... Yeah, I like poached eggs.I like pancakes too, but not enough to have them every day. Steve and the kids LOVE pancakes, but while I like them, I only want them once every so often. I like porridge too. Either the old fashioned way with some brown sugar, or with sultanas/raisins and little pieces of dried apple. Yum. I could probably eat porridge for breakfast every morning too, but since I get to choose, I'm staying with the poached eggs. When I was a kid, we used to have cereal every morning. Usually cornflakes. These days I usually just have an Up N Go drink or a homemade shake for breakfast, but on the weekends if I'm not having poached eggs, I'll have weetbix. |
| I've had to start keeping a 'project master list' on Google Drive just so that I can track all my projects. That's how insane my life has become. Rhonda has been teaching me that both my constant drive to start new projects and my inability to finish existing projects may come from having inattentive ADHD. Which is still a diagnosis that sits awkwardly with me. The symptoms pretty much fit, yeah, but I can't get over this idea that ADHD means someone with lots of energy, and I don't really feel like someone with lots of energy. Although, I'm sure some people who don't live with me, and just see me taking on new projects all the time, presume that I have loads of energy. Anyway, time for an update. Family recipe book   The first volume is finished. You can check it out online if you want - Click here to see Meals, the first volume of the family recipe book . There are two more volumes to go. The second one is 'baking' and I keep opening up the program to work on it, then closing it some time later without having done a single thing on it. I'm really struggling to make any progress at the moment. All the feedback for the first volume has been really positive though, and these are a high priority of mine. I want to get these finished. Inventories I am on a mission to inventory all the heirlooms and personal effects of the family. We had major dramas after Steve's grandmother passed away because things went to the wrong people after they'd been promised to certain people, and people got shitty and upset, and it became a huge drama. People literally stopped talking to each other for years. On top of that, once the owner of an item passes away, it can be impossible to know the provenance, the history and story behind it. Who gave it to them? Why have they kept it all these years? Who owned it before them and how long has it been in the family? Those were the key things I was interested in. I was not particularly interested in the monetary value, either original or current, but far more in the story behind it. I've done inventories for both my parents, which is good. My mother had far more things to note than anyone expected (including her!). Some were things that had belonged to her parents or had been given to her by her grandparents, others were things she'd been given for her 21st birthday, her wedding, or other special occasions. My sisters got caught up in the spirit of it all too and were asking if particular items could be bequeathed to them once they knew the story behind it. It was really cool. Dad wasn't interesting in 'playing the game' but he gave me all the details about his two best guitars and said that those and his tennis racquets were the only things he was interested in noting. I dutifully took photos, but I'm not really sure that any of us are interested in his tennis racquets. The guitars are cool though. He said he wasn't interested in recording any of his knick-knacks, ornaments or art, as 'none of it has sentimental meaning or any monetary value'. I believe him, he's not a very sentimental man. As we wandered through his garage to say goodbye, he did add the handmade wine rack and bookcase to the list. They were made of macrocarpa for the new farm house, in approx 1993. They're quite nice, I like them. Nice workmanship on them. Anyway, I still have to do my in-laws (I have photos and notes, and need to put them together into the spreadsheet and then discuss who they want to bequeath stuff to) and my own. I've mostly done my own, but I need to go through a couple of boxes in the storage room to make sure I have everything.Family history books I haven't really started on these yet. I'm still in the planning stages, and I'm stuck. And yet, I'm working on some info for a colleague who knew virtually nothing about his family history, and I'm presenting that the same way that I wrote up Steve's father's family history for his terminally ill uncle. Maybe I should just roll with that. It seems to work for me. It might not be 'standard' or it might not be how someone else would do it, but if it gets it done....  Photo books My mum asked me to do a 'portfolio' book of my very best photos. No captions, no notes, no poems, no nothing. Just the photos. So I've done it and ordered it, and I'm really hoping it arrives by Friday for her 70th birthday. If I did a reprint for me or anyone else, I'm not sure if I'd leave in the dedication page or not. Anyway, you're welcome to have a look - Click here to have a look at my photo portfolio book . I have always had a fascination for photographing people's hands. Not just hands doing nothing, but hands doing things. Like, hands writing or painting or drawing or steering a boat or decorating a cake or pinning a boutonniere to a shirt or whatever. So I decided I'd do a little photo book collating all my best hands photos. I printed it with Snapfish, and I'm feeling a bit 'meh' about it to be honest.  Ah well, it's done. Moving on. No progress on the book of our 2018 UK trip yet. Mum asked me to do this one before I'd even got home from the trip, but it hasn't been a priority yet. Sometimes a single photo doesn't tell the whole story, but a sequence of photos together tells a powerful one. These are 'photo essays'. I have a few that I want to put into a book. Like, a bunch of photos from a single wedding. A bunch of photos from the Rugby World Cup. A bunch of photos from the Highland Games. A bunch of photos from Auckland Anniversary Weekend. That kind of thing. Where having the photos grouped together makes them more powerful than a single photo on its own. Haven't started yet though. I'm not sure about this project, but I thought it might be cool to have a wee book of my favourite photos. Not the best ones, just the ones that make me smile. Am seriously thinking about it.My friend Beth, who I have talked about many times, shared on Facebook that she'd made a memory book of her cat. It was basically a photo book with just photos of the cat in it. I instantly thought that my kids would LOVE to have one of those for Rider and Smudge, the two cats we lost earlier this year. So I want to make Rider and Smudge books for the kids for Christmas, and then I might make ones for myself of Ed The Talking Cat of Doom and Queen, two other cats that have been a big part of my life (Queen was our family cat when I was growing up. She was the same age as me and passed away when I was 17). Poetry books When I started writing poetry at 14, I wrote the completed poems into a hardcover exercise book. By the time I started writing digitally, I had three books filled with poems. I liked the look of them all, handwritten, so I started writing my digitally written poems into a hardcover journal. But I'm much more prolific these days, and I rarely sit down to handwrite them, so I'm waaaaaaaaaay behind. I think I'm up to 2015. So not too bad, but yeah, I have four years of poems to handwrite into a journal. Must get on to that. But I also like the idea of having the very best poems printed in a little book. I'm struggling a bit with visualising it though. Do I enhance it with my photos? Do I match each poem to a photo? What fonts, etc. should I use? How should I arrange them on the page? Should I include notes as to when they were written, their form, the prompt...???? I have no idea. I did come up with a title for it though - Smatters of Salted Sunlight. It's a line from one of my poems. Quilt My friend Beth, who is Caitie's godmother, made a quilt for Caitie when she was born, and used materials from her kids' childhood pajamas, blankets, etc., to make it extra special. Unfortunately, Caitie had a bad habit of throwing up all the time when she was tiny, and it got wrecked. I've felt sooo guilty about it ever since.  I saved a whole bunch of Caitie's baby clothes so I could make one for Beth, but they got thrown out when we moved house. I have some pieces of NZ-themed materials to use in it, but nothing else really. I have some of the kids baby blankets still though, so I may be able to work something. This project hasn't really drawn my interest yet though, as I'm shit at sewing and don't own a sewing machine.  Blog books And here we come to my real triumph of the day. My blog books. Get this - I actually finished one.  No, really, I did! I need to take some better photos for iKïyå§ama-Happy 25th!  , but here's a glimpse:    That's the book for 2001, which was the year I turned 21 and also the year Jayden was born. So lots of congratulatory cards in that one! I've learned a lot of things while working on the first blog book. In particular, - the cards need to be vertical, not horizontal, or they don't stick in well and the ends get damaged, and - I should measure the memorabilia and use the ruler function in the book software to make sure if fits the space left for it. It's incredibly satisfying to have all that old memorabilia and all my blog entries (journal entries, whatever) in one book. That's a whole year of my life, in a book. Buuuuuuuuuuuut... I have two kids, not one. Caitie says I should give this book to Jayden as it's the year he was born and there are things from his birth in there. However, the truth is that Jayden isn't remotely interested in my projects, and Caitie is. But that may change I guess. I dunno. But maybe in future I should split the memorabilia between two copies of the book so that they can each have one? I simply don't have duplicates of everything, and sometimes I would have had the opportunity to have duplicates but didn't bother because ugh, storage, but now I kind of wish I had. I don't know. When I've mentioned it, people seem to be all 'You're overthinking it. Just make a series of books if that's what you want to do. They can just take whichever ones they want or take alternating years or whatever. Does it really matter?' But yeah, it kind of does matter. I want them both to have a set of these journals. Initially, I wanted them to have them because they're a record of their childhoods. But Caitie recently turned 14 and asked me if she could read my journal from when I was 14, which I agreed to. And I think she wants to read all of them one day, which makes sense. Maybe Jayden only wants the ones from when he was born onwards, but since that's 2001 when I started blogging anyway, that doesn't help. He's probably not overly interested in the memorabilia, but I do think they make the books more interesting, and break up the text and photos. So yeah, leaning towards splitting the memorabilia between two copies of the book at this stage.The other thing I realised is that I have a tendency to redo the same projects over and over again. Which is a ridiculous waste of effort and materials. So, I kept handwritten journals from age 14 until about 2002. There was an overlap between when I started blogging and when I stopped journalling. I took up scrapbooking in 2001 when Jayden was born, and I made some scrapbooks for him with all the congratulatory cards, the hospital discharge papers, photos, etc. And I did a bunch of scrapbook pages for different events and occasions. When I did the scrapbooks, I took the memorabilia out of the handwritten journals (I've shared photos of those before in "Invalid Entry" . So I basically destroyed the handwritten journals to make the scrapbooks. Then I wanted those things for my blog book, so I destroyed the scrapbook pages. I'm such an idiot. I'd have been better off retaining the original handwritten journals. Except, they didn't have ALL the journal entries or ALL the memorabilia in them. So I still had this drive to do something. Well, no more. This is it. Done! Well, one copy of 2001 is done. I have to do another copy for Caitie with the few small things that didn't fit in the other copy (I underestimated the size of some of the memorabilia). And then rinse and repeat for years 2002-2019. It's pretty cool though, the finished blog book. I'm really pleased with it. It doesn't sit flat, because it's got Jayden's hospital bracelet, and a bulky paper tole card that my aunt made, in it, but that's okay. It's got some cards that are just on the page to be opened, and some things that are in envelopes to be taken out, and some pages that are stuck in and can be read as they are, and some pages that have been folded up and stuck in, and need to be unfolded to be read. I love it. An interactive blog book. It's kind of exactly what I pictured, what I wanted. I just wish I could show it to a couple of people who are overseas, but oh well. I showed the 2001 blog book to Steve on Sunday, after I finished it, and he was so happy I'd finished a project. That says so much about me. He had a flick through and smiled at some of the memories my blog entries reminded him of. Was pretty cool.Anyway, there you have it. That's my project update. |
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