todayiamadaisy | Entries tagged with delightful things

It's a weird, liminal week, this one. I've been clearing the decks. Inbox zero, or very nearly. I'm thinking of declaring podcast zero too, and deleting what I haven't listened to. Start collecting them afresh in the new year.

I have been thinking about what I'd like to do next year, what sort of little project. What I have enjoyed most this year is trying new recipes: my lockdown focaccia was fun and the Christmas bûche turned out well. Maybe I could pick twelve things I'd like to make and do one a month. Croissants, I've always wanted to make them. Can I think of eleven other things?

Later this week I'll mark up my work calendars. I treated myself to two this year: one for the home office and one to take to work when we finally go back. Two new calendars, a new diary, a pack of highlighters: what a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

My mother and a couple of her friends have gone a quilt crawl today, meaning they are driving round the countryside going to quilt shops in small towns, stopping for lunch at the Timboon Distillery and afternoon tea at Cheeseworld. They know how to live. That's not really pertinent to this tale, though. What is pertinent is that when my mother's friend Sue came to pick her up, she walked in with a small parcel. "I feel like Santa," she said, "delivering presents the postman left at your front door." She handed the parcel to me.

I'm not expecting any parcels. What could it be? I opened the plastic envelope and found a box:

Fancy Feast his His Lordship's preferred brand of tinned food. Earlier this year, they had a promotion in which you could send in proof of purchasing so many tins of it and they would send a prize. I ended up with the decorative food bowl I originally wanted, plus a fancy collar and a second bowl in the distribution of unclaimed prizes. So what's this? ( Another bowl? )

Over the next couple of months, I will have to make a few trips to Tullamarine, Melbourne's main airport. That sounds like I might be going somewhere, doesn't it? And so I am. I'm going to the airport. For meetings. So that will be exciting. No, you're right, it won't. But cleaning my teeth will be. You see, since this is going to be a regular thing for the next few months, I thought I would put together a sort of permanent travel kit, so I don't have to keep packing and unpacking toiletries. I mean, it's only three trips, so it's not like I'd get repetitive strain injury, but, you know, I was (briefly) a Girl Guide, so I like to Be Prepared. Anyway, I splashed out two whole dollars on a travel toothbrush, which is a normal head on a half-length handle, all of which fits in a plastic case. So that was cute. But even cuter was what I found in the case when I got it home: travel toothpaste! Seen here next to a normal tube of toothpaste and a paperclip:

How many uses do you think I'll get out of it? I say two.

In case you've been on tenterhooks about Ted the dog that was adopted by a new family while his old one was on holiday: he's been returned to his original family.

Yesterday was a good day. I saw a crab on the beach, which was exciting. I thought that the day couldn't get any better than that, but then I got to work and learnt that the person who made the whole merger business so awful has resigned, effective immediately. Huzzah.

I have a long term goal of being made Australian of the Year simply for being a model citizen who doesn't bother anyone. This plan has been unsuccessful so far. I mean, this year's AotY won't be announced until Thursday, but I think it's safe to say they'd have let me know by now. So I have been passed over yet again. Sigh.

But! It appears that someone is giving a new award. Well, I don't know if it's new. I've never heard of it before, at any rate. There was a news item the other day that took me by surprise: Barry Humphries has been awarded Australian of the Year in the UK today. At first I took that to mean that the AotY award was announced, several days early, in the UK, which struck me as being odd. It was only after thinking about for a minute that I realised that Mr Humphries had been awarded Australian (resident in the UK) of the Year. I don't see the purpose of this award, I must say, but best of luck to him.

Anyway, I am thinking perhaps I should go to a country where there are relatively few Australians and be a model citizen over there. Australian of the Year in Chad, maybe. I will romp it in.

Big news on the medical front this morning. The weekly newspaper for doctors has a headline shouting: NOT MUCH FLU ABOUT. Super. We WON'T PANIC then.

I have never wanted a piece of fruit more than I want this: a watermelon shark! Look at its bright, beady eye. I would love to see one of them lunging out of the ocean. Or a school of them attacking fish. I would watch a show about animated pieces of animal-shaped fruit. Or if not, I'd at least be glad it existed.

( A bit like Quaq Quao )

Hot gossip! My mother showed me a letter she received from the Evil Accounting Firm where I used to work and where she still gets her tax done*. The EAF is splitting up to become Nice Partner's Accounting Firm and Evil Partner's Accounting Firm. Ooh. This exciting news is slightly dulled by the fact that they will still be working out of the same offices, so it's obviously not an acrimonious split.

Still, it made me smile to see the Evil Partner's company name. The Nice Partner, you see, always advises people starting a company to choose something with a bit of mystery - to make up a word based on their children's names or places they've lived or whatever - for practical reasons (because there could be more than one person in the world who wants a company called Alicia J. Daisyname Pty Ltd, but probably only one who wants Daisywarr Pty Ltd, for example). 'But they don't,' he told me once. 'It's an ego thing, they all want their own name.' So what did Evil Partner go for? Evil Partner's Name Pty Ltd. Of course he did.

* Now you know my dreadful secret: I'm an accountant who is not trusted with her own mother's tax return. The shame of it. Her partner trusts me with his tax, though, ever since he realised I would do it for free.

I WON A PRIZE!

I mean, I never win prizes. Probably because I don't enter things, but that's because I never win. And so on.

Anyway, there was a parcel collection notice in my letterbox when I got home last night, which wasn't a surprise. I'm expecting this any day now (I bought it as a celebration for a freakishly good performance in my subject last semester. I mean, I was expecting a High Distinction anyway, but apparently my thoughts on contemporary masculinity expressed through selected films of the twentieth century are particularly noteworthy).

So I went to the Post Office this morning and handed over my card, and the lady came back with a box big enough for a small TV. I hope my pendant is well-packaged, but, even so, it won't need a box that big. All the way home I was itching to know what was in the box, and intrigued by the big FRAGILE and HANDLE WITH CARE stickers.

Home again, I got a knife and opened the box, got the bin to put all the styrofoam peanuts in, and pulled out... another box and a letter. I opened the letter, which told me that when I re-subscribed to Donna Hay magazine a few months ago, I was put in the subscription prize draw and lo! My name has come up. I opened the new box, removed the styrofoam peanuts and took out... another box. So I opened that box, wondering if my prize was a nest of boxes filled with styrofoam peanuts, and, happily, found a small, hot pink hatbox. And in that was some Royal Albert bone china: a cup, saucer and plate (mine is the 1990 piece, Hartington Lane. If I'd had a choice in the matter, I would have picked the 1950 piece, Festival, but I'm not complaining).

So that was all unexpected and delightful. I've a cupboard full of vintage china cups that I've inherited, so it's nice to add one of my very own. I'm drinking peach and raspberry tea out of it right now.

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Entries tagged with delightful things

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Watermelon shark

Hartington Lane

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