What’s the dirt?
Jan. 3rd, 2020 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeWHAT IS THE DIRT? Or rather, perhaps the better question is, "Where's the dirt?" Thank you for asking! Is it in our new backyard?
YAY! Once upon a settlement, we banded together with the neighbours to get a whole bunch of dirt in before the fences went up. So come October, this is what the space looked like:
Not a syringe in sight! Moose was enchanted and immediately signed it with his favourite words.
Then the weather contrived to be dry enough to keep us in drought, but also be too wet (allegedly) to put the dividing fences up. Having delayed the fencing to allow for the dirt, it wasn’t until December rolled around that we got ourselves some partitions – but what’s three more months when you’ve been waiting ten years?
Of course, the fencers were engaged to put fences up not bring them down, so what we ended up with a nice little box of a backyard. Fortunately, Pye’s school knocked off a week earlier than Stinky’s and she has a big friend who likes to bash stuff and also wanted nick bits and pieces of wood. So it was only about a week later that the fence came down - in the scheme of things is practically instantaneous!
He went off cheerfully with a boot full of useful bits, and Pye started happily tidying up the space. Until AHH SHE CHANGED HER MIND PUT IT ALL BACK UP.
We keep having cognitive dissonance when we look out the back – we’ll have to fill it with caculents or something so it feels like it’s really ours. And the sad news is that lil Mo (next door's cavalier king Charles spaniel) is breaking his little heart cos he can hear pats on the other side of the new fence but he can't get to the pats :(
But in the meantime, look, we got a new dog that we can pat at home!
Okay, so maybe Stinky found it in an op shop and it’s the perfect height to use with the couch, and it’s much more patient with us putting our feet all over it than a real doggo would be. Stinky also went to a less classy op shop and bought four Readers Digest books and six VHS tapes. She put the VHS on the counter and said, "I'll take these, thanks!" The op shop lady made a noise that sounded like "??????" and cautiously charged $7. Poor woman, it has never happened to her before that someone has wanted to buy VHS. Then Stinky went home, pulled the tapes apart and made them into pencil cases. Because of course she did! What a rascal!
While at that market, we came upon a young girl who wanted to buy one of the Coles Mini's which we have viciously carved up and inserted unto it a caculent. She knew the product she wanted, so was studiously investigating the caculents.
"I like this container, but the plant looks like a finger!" she said.
This was funny because it didn't resemble a finger, it totally resembled a dick. Hurr hurr. She bought one anyway. A while later, a little surfer lad and his papa happened upon our humble stand.
"HEY DAD, THIS ONE LOOKS LIKE A PENIS!" spake the golden-haired boy.
Amused, we mentioned how an earlier customer likened it to a finger, and not a doodle.
"HAH!" said the boy, "NO. It is definitely a penis!"
His dad nodded sagely. “Yes,” he said, “that’s a penis.”
While not trying desperately to eat all our words so as not to offend the delicate shell-like ears of the younglings, we also developed a problem with polymer clay. Actually, it can’t be a problem, because the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem and these are rad.
2019 is unlikely to go down in history as a good year, but a shining light was a Star Wars spin off that featured the most adorable baby Yoda in the universe. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that Baby Yoda and his single-space-dad Mando are everything, and if you don’t like him don’t bother telling us about it because we don’t want to know and also now can’t relate to you.
Of course you have to get crafty when someone is a cute as little Kevin there.
Unfortunately, life can’t all be about making things out of stuff, we still had to go to work. Pye wishes she could retire on the print credit allocated to her by an IT guy who gives zero fucks any more…
… but apparently you’re not allowed to cash it in, boooo.
Work was being as work tends to be, but imagine our surprise when we got this selfie from Chuckles one Tuesday:
Yep, she was out the front of our house, having stowed away with some Geelong friends who had been visiting them. She is a very sneaky one! Stinky said hi and buggered off to the Valedictory ball, so god knows what Chuckles got up to (although the kitchen and garden started looking suspiciously neat and tidy).
It was a big week (even without surprise Chuckles), as aside from Valedictory, the victim of the Great Monkey Undies Theft (Menentang) had won an award and Stinky had to represent the school. She was a bit “Ugh, it’s a school night and I’m in Werribee”, when suddenly Sammy J wandered onstage to serve as MC. The kid had no idea who he was, but Stinky made sure that photos were taken. Then she bullied Menentang until she told Sammy J about the monkey and undies, because everyone needs to share in the magnificence. Sammy J was very polite and thought it was a pretty special experience!
Flash forward to the next evening and Stinky is at the Val. It must be noted that she doesn’t drink at these things, so the plot that unfolded was hatched sober. What plan? THE GREAT UNDIES PLAN.
You see, Pak Rossaksa was going back to Sumatra over Christmas and was even staying at the same place as the naughty monkeys. So it seemed only right that a bunting of tiny undies was created! The plan was for Pak Rossaksa to drape them in a bush and maybe bait it with some fruit to attract monkeys - he’s planning on making a bit of documentary-style video so Menentang knows that her undies have grown into a bush and are flowering! Most of the undies are pink and other girly-colours, but Stinky couldn’t help but include one pair that truly represent Menentang’s original undies, hurr hurr hurr.
He better do it, because if he doesn’t follow through, he is dead to us.
But in excitinger news, we are proud fiends [sic] of a published author! We got to go to Belrog’s book launch.
#such_pride
There were a lot of very Cool Brunswick Hipsters, but even they weren’t as strange as this specimen at Stinky’s colleague’s farewell!
Speaking of strangeness, there’s some weird shit going down on Network 7, or should we say…some great wee!
… and the AEU should remember that when they try to be cool, they should run it past a 12 year old and a 40 year old to make sure something like this doesn’t happen:
Yes, I’m sure that ‘boofed’ can be read as ‘hit’, but we all remember the time Moose boofed Stinky’s ear and gave her that infection, don’t we?
We can say, without a word of a lie, that these bottles were found as-is, showing that Jas and Camel need to find someone called Zhao to be besties with.
Pye tried very hard to play it low-key that she got to knock off work a week earlier than Stinky (on account of not wanting to be murdered in her sleep), but it was hard to keep quiet about sneaking off with her office-mates for this … Cheese high tea! What a world to live in, where this is a thing!
Sometimes random people on the internet are completely correct -
- and Donna was the first to admit that she is very slutty for cheese when Pye finally got to give her the cross stitch (it seemed to be an appropriate time!).
Pre-Christmas festivities continued with even more devilishly good-looking people…
Before it was all aboard your festive marsupial of choice – set coordinates to family!
D’admiral and Chuckles had planned a mind-blowing cornucopia of treats for Christmas Day and we were all thoroughly spoiled. But check out this confused holly, it forgot how to be pointy half way through the game!
We were pretty excited to give D’admiral his contour map of his bay…
… and Moose was lucky enough to get a present from the little crew, too!
Moose knows who to suck up to, so traditionally will always get a present for Chuckles and D’admiral. He was very on-brand this year!
Chucklesgot revenge reciprocated with a butt-ton of moose-themed serviettes, which D’admiral got to wrap. To be fair, Stinky had made Pye wrap every box of Sensodyne she got Chuckles in Indonesia, so it seems to run in the family. Moose was delighted and put one on immediately.
Robyn had found an exceptionally perfect pair of socks for the Cabin Girl, but unfortunately was pretty sure that it would make her a Bad Mum if she were to give them to her daughter. No such thing as a Bad Auntie, though – she loved them, and we get the credit! Whoo hoo!
Moose was inspired, so snuck into Stinky’s Little Box of Fucks and found a gift for his old, fluffy buddy, ‘Knuckle.
Thus we entered that time between Christmas and New Year, where every day feels like Sunday and is proof that time is a social construct. Pye started a new jigsaw, a very classy affair….
We popped home so Pye could play with our new toy and throw some water about to keep the garden alive.
Pretty much the whole country was on fire, while our political leaders carefully took the time to do nothing about it (but at least we did get to ruin Scum-mo’s holiday), and we got this gem of a song.
The fires probably contributed to the rad light that made it look like D’admiral and Chuckles installed a fluoro light on their clothesline.
It may sound curmudgeonly (because we are old and cranky now), but one of the things we were looking forward to least was an uncle’s 70th birthday party that we were compelled to attend. Not because we dislike him or anything, but just because it was decided that his birthday had to be celebrated on his actual birthday, and in his home. That’s fine, unless your birthday is on New Year’s Day and you live on Phillip Island >:( The only way we were going to make it was if we were to wake up at Somers on New Year’s Day and were allowed to sit in someone else car. This all lead to the conclusion that we had no choice but to celebrate New Year’s Eve Eve! Whoo hoo! Screw you, arbitrary dates!
The most elegant of company, even if it did pan out that we are much too old to pull up okay from going to bed at 4:30am.
We definitely needed a good nap the next day to be able to make it through to midnight, but we made it, fuelled by another amazing menu put together by Chuckles and D’admiral. It wasn’t too hard to resist the urge to join herds of teenagers staggering around on the beach – rather more difficult was refraining from hitting them with D’admiral’s beast of a spotlight…
We did harass a possum in one of those trees, but only with light pollution. Playing with torches is fun!
Ooh, do ‘deformed rabbit’, that one’s my favourite!
It could have been worse, we could have been told to make hundreds of polpette for the party on New Years Day, but that fell on these three, who will meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain.
Off it was to Phillip Island bright and early the next day, to the 1970s-themed 70th birthday. There should have been a prize for best dressed, and they should have just handed it straight to Chuckles for rocking the very same dress she wore at their engagement party in 1973. Whooo!
There was a surprise renewal of vows, which was even more surprising based on the cranky emails the aunt has been sharing with all and sundry. When they called out for everyone to gather up for a surprise announcement, Pye heard a small child ask, “Are they getting a divorce?” We have no idea who she was talking to, but they sagely replied “Nah, that’s next week.”
So assuming we make it to next week without all burning up, happy new year and we'll see everyone in Phillip Island for a divorce party!
YAY! Once upon a settlement, we banded together with the neighbours to get a whole bunch of dirt in before the fences went up. So come October, this is what the space looked like:
Not a syringe in sight! Moose was enchanted and immediately signed it with his favourite words.
Then the weather contrived to be dry enough to keep us in drought, but also be too wet (allegedly) to put the dividing fences up. Having delayed the fencing to allow for the dirt, it wasn’t until December rolled around that we got ourselves some partitions – but what’s three more months when you’ve been waiting ten years?
Of course, the fencers were engaged to put fences up not bring them down, so what we ended up with a nice little box of a backyard. Fortunately, Pye’s school knocked off a week earlier than Stinky’s and she has a big friend who likes to bash stuff and also wanted nick bits and pieces of wood. So it was only about a week later that the fence came down - in the scheme of things is practically instantaneous!
He went off cheerfully with a boot full of useful bits, and Pye started happily tidying up the space. Until AHH SHE CHANGED HER MIND PUT IT ALL BACK UP.
We keep having cognitive dissonance when we look out the back – we’ll have to fill it with caculents or something so it feels like it’s really ours. And the sad news is that lil Mo (next door's cavalier king Charles spaniel) is breaking his little heart cos he can hear pats on the other side of the new fence but he can't get to the pats :(
But in the meantime, look, we got a new dog that we can pat at home!
Okay, so maybe Stinky found it in an op shop and it’s the perfect height to use with the couch, and it’s much more patient with us putting our feet all over it than a real doggo would be. Stinky also went to a less classy op shop and bought four Readers Digest books and six VHS tapes. She put the VHS on the counter and said, "I'll take these, thanks!" The op shop lady made a noise that sounded like "??????" and cautiously charged $7. Poor woman, it has never happened to her before that someone has wanted to buy VHS. Then Stinky went home, pulled the tapes apart and made them into pencil cases. Because of course she did! What a rascal!
While at that market, we came upon a young girl who wanted to buy one of the Coles Mini's which we have viciously carved up and inserted unto it a caculent. She knew the product she wanted, so was studiously investigating the caculents.
"I like this container, but the plant looks like a finger!" she said.
This was funny because it didn't resemble a finger, it totally resembled a dick. Hurr hurr. She bought one anyway. A while later, a little surfer lad and his papa happened upon our humble stand.
"HEY DAD, THIS ONE LOOKS LIKE A PENIS!" spake the golden-haired boy.
Amused, we mentioned how an earlier customer likened it to a finger, and not a doodle.
"HAH!" said the boy, "NO. It is definitely a penis!"
His dad nodded sagely. “Yes,” he said, “that’s a penis.”
While not trying desperately to eat all our words so as not to offend the delicate shell-like ears of the younglings, we also developed a problem with polymer clay. Actually, it can’t be a problem, because the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem and these are rad.
2019 is unlikely to go down in history as a good year, but a shining light was a Star Wars spin off that featured the most adorable baby Yoda in the universe. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that Baby Yoda and his single-space-dad Mando are everything, and if you don’t like him don’t bother telling us about it because we don’t want to know and also now can’t relate to you.
Of course you have to get crafty when someone is a cute as little Kevin there.
Unfortunately, life can’t all be about making things out of stuff, we still had to go to work. Pye wishes she could retire on the print credit allocated to her by an IT guy who gives zero fucks any more…
… but apparently you’re not allowed to cash it in, boooo.
Work was being as work tends to be, but imagine our surprise when we got this selfie from Chuckles one Tuesday:
Yep, she was out the front of our house, having stowed away with some Geelong friends who had been visiting them. She is a very sneaky one! Stinky said hi and buggered off to the Valedictory ball, so god knows what Chuckles got up to (although the kitchen and garden started looking suspiciously neat and tidy).
It was a big week (even without surprise Chuckles), as aside from Valedictory, the victim of the Great Monkey Undies Theft (Menentang) had won an award and Stinky had to represent the school. She was a bit “Ugh, it’s a school night and I’m in Werribee”, when suddenly Sammy J wandered onstage to serve as MC. The kid had no idea who he was, but Stinky made sure that photos were taken. Then she bullied Menentang until she told Sammy J about the monkey and undies, because everyone needs to share in the magnificence. Sammy J was very polite and thought it was a pretty special experience!
Flash forward to the next evening and Stinky is at the Val. It must be noted that she doesn’t drink at these things, so the plot that unfolded was hatched sober. What plan? THE GREAT UNDIES PLAN.
You see, Pak Rossaksa was going back to Sumatra over Christmas and was even staying at the same place as the naughty monkeys. So it seemed only right that a bunting of tiny undies was created! The plan was for Pak Rossaksa to drape them in a bush and maybe bait it with some fruit to attract monkeys - he’s planning on making a bit of documentary-style video so Menentang knows that her undies have grown into a bush and are flowering! Most of the undies are pink and other girly-colours, but Stinky couldn’t help but include one pair that truly represent Menentang’s original undies, hurr hurr hurr.
He better do it, because if he doesn’t follow through, he is dead to us.
But in excitinger news, we are proud fiends [sic] of a published author! We got to go to Belrog’s book launch.
#such_pride
There were a lot of very Cool Brunswick Hipsters, but even they weren’t as strange as this specimen at Stinky’s colleague’s farewell!
Speaking of strangeness, there’s some weird shit going down on Network 7, or should we say…some great wee!
… and the AEU should remember that when they try to be cool, they should run it past a 12 year old and a 40 year old to make sure something like this doesn’t happen:
Yes, I’m sure that ‘boofed’ can be read as ‘hit’, but we all remember the time Moose boofed Stinky’s ear and gave her that infection, don’t we?
We can say, without a word of a lie, that these bottles were found as-is, showing that Jas and Camel need to find someone called Zhao to be besties with.
Pye tried very hard to play it low-key that she got to knock off work a week earlier than Stinky (on account of not wanting to be murdered in her sleep), but it was hard to keep quiet about sneaking off with her office-mates for this … Cheese high tea! What a world to live in, where this is a thing!
Sometimes random people on the internet are completely correct -
- and Donna was the first to admit that she is very slutty for cheese when Pye finally got to give her the cross stitch (it seemed to be an appropriate time!).
Pre-Christmas festivities continued with even more devilishly good-looking people…
Before it was all aboard your festive marsupial of choice – set coordinates to family!
D’admiral and Chuckles had planned a mind-blowing cornucopia of treats for Christmas Day and we were all thoroughly spoiled. But check out this confused holly, it forgot how to be pointy half way through the game!
We were pretty excited to give D’admiral his contour map of his bay…
… and Moose was lucky enough to get a present from the little crew, too!
Moose knows who to suck up to, so traditionally will always get a present for Chuckles and D’admiral. He was very on-brand this year!
Chuckles
Robyn had found an exceptionally perfect pair of socks for the Cabin Girl, but unfortunately was pretty sure that it would make her a Bad Mum if she were to give them to her daughter. No such thing as a Bad Auntie, though – she loved them, and we get the credit! Whoo hoo!
Moose was inspired, so snuck into Stinky’s Little Box of Fucks and found a gift for his old, fluffy buddy, ‘Knuckle.
Thus we entered that time between Christmas and New Year, where every day feels like Sunday and is proof that time is a social construct. Pye started a new jigsaw, a very classy affair….
We popped home so Pye could play with our new toy and throw some water about to keep the garden alive.
Pretty much the whole country was on fire, while our political leaders carefully took the time to do nothing about it (but at least we did get to ruin Scum-mo’s holiday), and we got this gem of a song.
The fires probably contributed to the rad light that made it look like D’admiral and Chuckles installed a fluoro light on their clothesline.
It may sound curmudgeonly (because we are old and cranky now), but one of the things we were looking forward to least was an uncle’s 70th birthday party that we were compelled to attend. Not because we dislike him or anything, but just because it was decided that his birthday had to be celebrated on his actual birthday, and in his home. That’s fine, unless your birthday is on New Year’s Day and you live on Phillip Island >:( The only way we were going to make it was if we were to wake up at Somers on New Year’s Day and were allowed to sit in someone else car. This all lead to the conclusion that we had no choice but to celebrate New Year’s Eve Eve! Whoo hoo! Screw you, arbitrary dates!
The most elegant of company, even if it did pan out that we are much too old to pull up okay from going to bed at 4:30am.
We definitely needed a good nap the next day to be able to make it through to midnight, but we made it, fuelled by another amazing menu put together by Chuckles and D’admiral. It wasn’t too hard to resist the urge to join herds of teenagers staggering around on the beach – rather more difficult was refraining from hitting them with D’admiral’s beast of a spotlight…
We did harass a possum in one of those trees, but only with light pollution. Playing with torches is fun!
Ooh, do ‘deformed rabbit’, that one’s my favourite!
It could have been worse, we could have been told to make hundreds of polpette for the party on New Years Day, but that fell on these three, who will meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain.
Off it was to Phillip Island bright and early the next day, to the 1970s-themed 70th birthday. There should have been a prize for best dressed, and they should have just handed it straight to Chuckles for rocking the very same dress she wore at their engagement party in 1973. Whooo!
There was a surprise renewal of vows, which was even more surprising based on the cranky emails the aunt has been sharing with all and sundry. When they called out for everyone to gather up for a surprise announcement, Pye heard a small child ask, “Are they getting a divorce?” We have no idea who she was talking to, but they sagely replied “Nah, that’s next week.”
So assuming we make it to next week without all burning up, happy new year and we'll see everyone in Phillip Island for a divorce party!
