If Nick and I suddenly disappear from our social networks (virtual or actual) or stop coming to work one day, this is why:

Send someone to dig us out, would you? You know, when you have a minute.

Like so many other people with some sort of iThing, I’m completely and utterly obsessed with Draw Something at the moment. In fact, both Nick and I are. We’ll sit there, each with our iThing, in front of the television and catch up on our current games.

Hmm. That makes our lives sound a bit like a blackly humorous 21st-century BBC sitcom.

Either way, we’re not above boasting to each other about our favourite of our own drawings. And while boasting to one’s partner has its advantages, sooner or later one tends to crave a larger audience.

I think I’ve just about perfected my tentacles by this point:

I’m also rapidly improving my Vikings:

And then, every now and again, you get to stretch yourself a little:

Clearly, my primary artistic influences are Monet and Renoir.

Oh, and Dick Bruno.

Sleep had (insufficient).
Cups of coffee drunk (3).
Showers taken (1).
Strange men holding an enthusiastic conversation right outside my shower (2).
Outfits that accidentally look like tuxedos worn (1).
E-mails sent to students (1).
Thank-you e-mails sent to television production companies (2).
Exciting breakthroughs made in television research (2).
Exciting breakthroughs not made in television research due to a disappointing and illegal absence of authorial credits in Dutch DVDs of Australian children’s television programs (1).
E-mails sent to boss (4).
Lead-paint removal (ongoing).
Conversations held with my computer desktop image (several).
Spreadsheets updated (2).
Headaches endured (minimal).
E-mails received from my mother (1).
E-mails sent to my mother (1).
Misunderstandings had with my mother via e-mail (1).
Phone calls received from the builder telling me he is standing outside my front door and would like me to let him in (1).
Paint colour catalogues to look through (2).
Rooms in which the builder will allow me to have a colour feature wall (1).
Editing tasks completed for my father-in-law (1).
Lifetimes spent waiting for service in the post office (7).
Book I impulsively bought while waiting seven lifetimes in the post office (2).
Minutes it actually took to post the parcel (4).
Parcels posted (1).
Post-office employees who told me highly personal stories about their horrible mothers-in-law (1).
Tutorials held (2).
Number of tutorials in which I used The Never-ending Story as a metaphor for conscientious editing (1).
Number of students who told me that “Atreyu really loved his horse!” (4).
Number of us who admitted that we cried when the horse died (2).
Undergraduates who have done me unnecessary but thoughtful kindnesses today (2).
Bus trips taken (2).
Amount of wine I’m about to drink (all of it).

Our kindly landlord has decided to do a comprehensive renovation on the house. Of course, we’re still living here, which makes life a little surreal at times. And noisy. But mostly surreal.

It all began with us having to shower on our back verandah, but I’m not posting photographs of that. You’ll thank me. Trust me.

We’re showering on our back verandah because our bathroom is undergoing complex generic metamorphoses.

First, we had a Southern Gothic bathroom:

Now, we have a crime-scene bathroom:

The turquoise is quite fetching, though. Shame it’s going under the tiles, really.

But right now, I’m living in some kind of zombie/psychological-experiment horror flick, as they tent my house to remove the lead paint:

And you can’t even see the strange, white-suited astronauts moving across the windows …

(Of course, you realise this entire post is a lengthy excuse for not blogging more often, right? But with pictures!)

ME: Didn’t you just tell me I look fine?
NICK: Yes.
ME: I look like a panda that’s just lost a boxing match!
NICK: Well, you look fine by present standards.
ME: You … what?
NICK: Hello!

ME: Honey, if you want to go out this afternoon …
NICK: Well, I don’t really want to, exactly.
ME: Perhaps “want” was a poor choice of verb. Allow me to rephrase. Should a complex system of emotional and social triggers prompt you to exit the house this afternoon, that would be fine.
NICK: Okay then.
(Pause)
NICK: I don’t really want to, though.

ME: I don’t really like birds. I find them a bit creepy.
NICK: Yeah, the funny little theropods.
ME: Is that what they are?
NICK: That’s the order of dinosaurs from which they’re descended.
ME: Okay, but that’s like calling you a woolly mammoth.
NICK: Not even remotely.
ME: Well, biology is not my strong point.

ME: Gosh, I really lucked out with you.
NICK: And I really lucked out with you.
ME: Not so much. Except that I’m a Doctor Who fan with boobs.
NICK: Well, those were my two criteria.

ME: Oh, you have made a great mess in the land.
NICK: You have?
ME: Not me. You.
NICK: You’ve got to break stuff to make stuff, Treena.
ME: Is that your version of “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”?
NICK: Exceptionale.
ME: Is that your version of “Yes”?
NICK: Exceptionale.

I’ve mentioned before that I dislike having idle hands, because it makes me restless. And as the year cools down a bit, I’m ratcheting up the knitting. It makes Nick a bit anxious, because he worries that it aggravates the odd upper-back injury I’ve given myself somehow, but it keeps me calm. Ultimately, anything that means less shouting is likely to get Nick’s vote.

But I’ve been between projects, while waiting on a second delivery of the special wool for the super-secret (not at all secret) birthday afghan project. So I experimented with a new pattern, one that creates a lovely lacy effect, almost like a honeycomb:

It’s not a difficult pattern, of course (I’m not up to difficult patterns), but it does look pretty, especially in a fluffy variegated wool (leftovers from my tiny baby niece’s fancy baby blanket):

Then I added tassels, because who doesn’t like tassels?

This is intended for a friend, but I like the effect so much that I’m thinking the next project (after the afghan) might be a loose, lacy, honeycomby jumper.

ME: I slept with my nicotine patch on again last night. Which explains why I dreamt of diseased eyeballs.
NICK: Yeah, I noticed that, but I didn’t want to wake you up to take it off. Or risk taking it off myself.
ME: Next time, wake me. Or just rip it off.
NICK: Really?
ME: Diseased eyeballs.
NICK: That does sound pretty bad, actually.

Once, when I was very fragile and felt as though I’d lost myself in a dark wood and would never be able to find myself again, I watched Robin of Sherwood.

And it occurred to me that Richard Carpenter, who’d never met me and never would, had written Robin of Sherwood just for me and just for this moment. And all over the world, other people have had the same thought, in similar states of mind and in very different ones.

To do that, with so major a mythic figure—to make Robin Hood so important to people and so personal, so immediate and so alive—is the sort of legacy that most of us cannot even dream of. And it isn’t the only gift that Richard Carpenter gave us.

Vale, Richard Carpenter. You helped show us what television as a form and fantasy as a genre are capable of.

Via text-message, after I’d left a Dungeons & Dragons game early, leaving Nick to play my Elf Ranger:

NICK: Just killed a little Steven for you. 22 hit points with a Thundertusk Boar Strike.
ME: Steven? I hate that guy.
NICK: Wyvern.
ME: Not Steven? Damn.

And via text-message, after a doctor’s appointment:

ME: The indigestion is from the anti-inflammatories.
NICK: That makes sense. As you have been taking various forms for some time. And have been having issues for some Tim.
ME: Which Tim?
NICK: Autocorrect Tim!
ME: Oh, that guy.

Putting the “strange” back in “strange conversations”:

NICK: I’ll give you a billion quatloos if you can find the other one of these socks. With the dark blue toes.
ME: I’m not doing anything for a billion quatloos.
NICK: But it’s valid currency in Star Wars. I think. Or Star Trek. Anyway, I found it myself so the deal’s off.

Via text message:

NICK: Okay, on my way home now.
ME: All right. I’ll ask my other boyfriend to leave, then.
NICK: Excellent.
ME: You’d probably really like him. I do.
NICK: Probably. I’ve alway got on well with people.