House of Mirth

I've had enough - it's time to move. Yesterday I returned home not to the catastrophic mess that my house was, but something altogether worse. Bottle caps littering the floor, the sink full of dirty dishes, half-eaten meals sitting on the bench, dirty tea towels lying on the floor, week-old scraps of fast food hiding against the skirting board. And to top it off, two of my Neanderthal housemates were drinking to the point of drunkeness at 3pm whilst loudly playing Monopoly and berating everybody in sight. I copped a serve about being a first year, wearing a dress and having 'bad' taste in music, and once again they started on Will for the fact that he has basic hygiene and can speak understandably! I felt like screaming. I also felt like slapping them both and telling them exactly what I thought, but I did neither. I eventually made some snide remarks, grabbed enough stuff for the rest of the weekend and stormed out.

But enough on that. It is a ridiculous situation, and I'll be glad to get out of there.. but so many other lovely things happened before that nastiness. Let's start from the beginning.

Friday morning was divine. A perfect morning of pancakes, window shopping, random acts of kindness and the most wonderful type of company - Paul. I hadn't quite met him before other than seeing him around campus, but as he is leaving for Philadelphia quite soon, it had a sense of 'now or never'. I'll have to post more about this theory later, but he is definitely a member of my tribe. We had breakfast at Morgan's on Collins Street, then went window-shopping, visiting RetroStar (vintage clothes), Anton's (unusual haute couture) and Smiggle (stationary), which was torturous. So many beautiful things that I wanted, but alas! I haven't started properly at Myer yet, so I don't really have the funds to buy anything. But lots of fun was had nonetheless, especially when I tried on a particular crazy purple dress. It had puffed sleeves and a full skirt, with square pieces of lace sewn onto it, with ribbons everywhere. Paul has a photo of it, perhaps he'll publish it.

After the mid-morning sojourn, I headed to Carlton and then Richmond for various medical appointments. I have bronchitis (spelling?) at the moment, which is just peachy. And now the medication to make me better is making me dizzy and nauseous. Even better!

My Dad then picked me up to have dinner with him, and my new step-mother and step-sister. This was interesting - they only got married a week ago, and already the status quo is changing rapidly. The daughter, let's call her Scarlett, tends toward being a spoiled brat. She's the only child of a single mother who doubles as a business executive - Scarlett is very used to getting what she wants, and being a little cow about EVERYTHING. But there was a noticable change in the air.. suddenly she was not getting her way, and being ignored when she sulked.

Though apart from the absolute insolence that is my new step-sistet, I had a nice time. We went out for pasta in Kew and then took a walk around a very nice shop - Leo's Fine Food and Wine. I didn't end buying anything, but just being surrounded by such interesting things was a treat in itself. There was every type of tea you could imagine, packages of dried rosebuds to put in cocktails, kinds of pumpkins I'd never seen before, tiny roasting quails the size of your palm, and little biscuits that looked like sculptures. I felt like an explorer - a shop full of curiosities!

I ended up staying the night, and the next morning we went to the Richmond and then Queen Victoria Markets. I bought three particularly beautiful blood oranges to draw pictures of before eating, a pig's trotter for my puppy, a slice of French almond tarte to share with Lucien, and then - my bargain of the day! A fishmonger called out to me to buy the last of his mussels. $4 a kilo, so I obliged. He measured them out to a kilo, then added the rest of the mussels in the tray. It came to about 1.7kg, to which he remarked, "Well then, that's the biggest kilo I've ever sold!". So yes, dear reader, I scored a ridiculous amount of mussels for $4.
I took them home to my Mom, after the housemates debarkle - we sauteed them in butter, wine, garlic, ginger and chilli. So good! If only I could cook...

Such a nice weekend, now the week looks all the more dreary in comparison. Oh well, I'll keep my chin up.