Art, part three.

In my attempts to create and see more art this year, I've been looking for different opportunities to explore this.

We just moved to this new area and I've been trying to put down a few roots and make some friends for the smallest member of the family. Welshy is much better at living in the community. He grew up in a rural village so he's all about knowing the neighbours and having a beer with a random. He got a hug from our elderly neighbour before I had even had a conversation with her. He knows exactly what renovations are happening across the road and how much the house two doors down will be rented out for next month.
A few weeks ago I was trying to get out of the house to go to Ikea to buy some pots for some plants that Welshy had dug out of our neighbours garden for her, when he appeared from another house and waved me in. That particular house had belonged to a lady called Bunny apparently but she had recently died and her family was clearing it out.
They were getting rid of some furniture and wanted to know if we wanted four dining chairs. I saw them and had an artistic vision of blue spray paint and...well that's all really. I just knew that they should be blue.

While spraying one of them on the front lawn (because that's what you do right? No point in getting my own grass dirty) a mother and child walked by. They came to investigate what I was vandalising  restoring. Within a minute, the girls had invited each other for a sleep over but we settled for a play in the park instead. Our new friends moved from China just a year ago. The little girl has just started school and told me that she doesn't have any friends. I told her that she could knock on our door whenever she liked and come for a play.

So last night, that's exactly what she did! It's our first local friend and even though we can't really communicate very effectively, we have organised our next playdate. (I think. When you're using a 5 year old as a translator, anything is possible.)

So even though this one was about making art, it was also about making friends.

Number 50: Watch season three of Girls.

Is it ridiculous to have a T.V season on you 2015 Goals To Do List? I think this one, for me, is more about carving out time and space for my own indulgences. I can't watch ABCKIDS every single day of my life, can I? (By the way, I've started following Jimmy Giggle on Insta. He grew up in the area that we are living in and it makes me feel better about sacrificing big city living for the charm of the peninsula.)
Where was I? Oh, yes! Season three of Girls. Look, I didn't love love it but I did enjoy it. I think I am a bit disenchanted with the characters. The riverside cottage scenes were a bit too over the top, the women so type-casted that they almost seemed like caricatures of themselves and Shosh's bloody over use of the term 'obvi' has become grating. I didn't feel surprised or shocked by any of their life choices but I must say I was mildly grossed out in certain parts and I really felt like adopting Jessa from episodes 1-4. Maybe I am no longer the target audience. I did get on board about 10 years too late. I guess maybe it's just become a bit more.........commercialised? It's lost some of the grit. Maybe as Lena has stepped further and further away from the writing and direction it's gotten more polished. I preferred the grit. The grit was more subtle-like the slow burn of tension between Jessa and her employers. I think series one introduced us to the women and I really enjoyed getting to know them. You know when you first make friends with someone and they are so fascinating and hilarious and you connect on different levels and it's great? And then once you know them you talk about what your kid did at kinder that day and the fact that your shampoo is giving you pimples and even though it's still great, it's not really inspired? Yeah well that's season three for me.

The vodka made it better though.

 

Number 13: Meet Elizabeth Gilbert.

I read Eat, Pray, Love before it was popular. For realz.
I sat in a garden near my house and read it and I was all like "OMG, I need to go do some shit." So I booked a flight to Europe and ate pasta and pizza and gained a few Kaygees, just like Liz. I didn't do the other two parts because they seemed, like, hard and stuff.
And like the other eleventy billion chicks that dug that book, it GOT to me. Why I wonder? What is it about a woman taking control of her life and stepping off a trajectory to seek happiness that stirs us? I am not sure, but stirred I was. Go back to bed Liz.
My own path changed a few days after I flew back into Melbourne and by the time 12 months had passed, I had stepped off my own trajectory and into No Man's Land. Then just like Liz, I got divorced, travelled, had a love/visa wedding and got a book deal! Oh, except for the last bit. That didn't actually happen.
Anyhow.
I decided that 2015 was going to be the year that I met Liz (I call her Liz, we're friends.) I was a bit reluctant to put it on the list though because how on Earth was I going to get to the U.S.A? But I put it on anyway because that's what you do when you dream big.
Then one morning, I was on Instagram and I saw THIS:

In case you can't see that properly because #technologyisstupid what it says is #australiabound. Now I'm not sure of the details and I did read something about her cancelling a trip somewhere else because of illness but then getting the all clear and coming to Aus instead BUT obviously, what I think happened is that the universe heard about number 13 on my list as was like 'Get on a plane Liz.'

So after checking her website and doing a quick google of just how far the venue was from my house (2.5 hours) I booked two tickets. How much is the price of my dreams? 20 bucks. Excellent. So then I got this:

Which says that all my dreams are coming true.

Finally the day came and it was amazing. We loved it. The highlights were:

• Everything.

It was so much fun! And check this out:

 

Totally met her. Tick.

 

 

 

Nothing But The Tooth

For this item on the list, we need to go back to 1990, a basketball court in a small primary school, an accident, a mishap leading to life long consequences and a strangely blue tooth. End scene.
i think I was 9 or 10 when i copped a basketball in the face by a kid called Jerome. It effing hurt and the result was a root canal and a veneer and a humongous bill and my parents telling me off every time I opened a bottle with my teeth.
Fast forward 15-20 years and my little old tooth was looking darker and darker. Mum periodically  encouraged me to get it fixed, Welshy nicknamed me Bluetooth and made up a whole story about how I was a mum by day but a superhero by night who could send and receive digital information through my tooth.
Finally I made an appointment with a dentist citing vanity and the fact that with wrinkles, baby tummy left overs and failing eye sight, my teeth are all I have left.
God, this is a really long and boring story isn't it? Not like Captain Bluetooth. She does loads of cool shit.
Anyway, dentistry has advanced since 1990 and the dentist was able to inject bleach into the tooth and make it prettty. I had it done twice. Well three times actually as the second treatment came out when my temporary filling fell off while I was running. Oops.
So basically, I think it looks awesome.
And guess how many people have noticed? One. My mother. I guess because she spent the equivalent of a European cruise on my smile when i was a kid, it would be hard not to stare at it all the time.
The photos are from during the period of treatment. The left two are the end result.