Friday - sunshine - navel gazing

Aleks Sennwald via Supersonic Electronic

The weekend is rolling around again, the sunshine is out today and I'm hoping for a beautiful weekend of pottering and making and planting. In fact, the Metservice says it will be sunny until next weekend, which is heavenly. Think of all the sunshine I will loll about in! I will be some kind of SPF-30-wearing basking-shark.

I had big plans for the weekend in terms of making myself a bunch of sexy undies, but it seems like a waste of beautiful weather to hide myself away in my room. Gardening would be good I think. For serious, I get overwhelmed by weekend options sometimes and I want to do everything at once. I need two weekends! One for doing what I want to do, and the other for doing boring chores. Otherwise this ridiculous anxiety about not being able to do everything I want with my weekend will just continue. WOE.

I've instigated a new morning routine, because my previous one was entirely not working for me (as in: I was frequently late and horribly rushing). I've been going strong for the last two mornings, and it's really nice feeling awake and functional when I arrive at work. The routine is still undergoing some tweaking, but essentially it involves: getting out of bed at 7; giving myself half an hour to sit, read or write, and drink a couple of cups of hot water and lemon; taking coffee and toast back to bed and having breakfast with the Boy; showering and putting on make up; and then telling myself to leave for work fifteen minutes earlier than I used to (I NEVER leave on time).

This process is easing me into the day, which is what I was missing I think - the mornings have been crashing upon me dramatically and forcefully for far too long. There is an element of control in my mornings now, and I am nothing if not a control freak (YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST).

I had the most horrific series of toasted sandwich experiences at lunch time. I was hoeing into my delicious cheese-piccalilli-salami toasted sandwich, when a huge squirt of cheese flew out and all down the front of my white t-shirt. I rushed into the loo to try and sponge off the combined turmeric stain/grease spot, but of course the sponging merely rendered my t-shirt mildly pornographic.

Seconds later a second squirt of piping hot cheese dripped all over my fingers (coating them) and gave me third degree cheese burns. This was almost as painful as that one time I burnt my face with hot tomato juice and had a red blister on my chin for days.

Thus, despite the aforementioned delicousness, I was not very happy with my lunch. Toasted sandwiches = love/hate relationship.

I'm extremely excited because I'm commissioning a couple of illustrations (including a banner) for Self Conscious Posturing! This will be the first time I've spent money on the blog since the ill-fated vanity URL issue of last year . This isn't entirely dead as a concept but I think that I will use a '.co.nz' suffix in the future though. OWN THE NZ).

Anyways, the lovely Rebecca Ter Borg (who doesn't appear to have a website - you can see some of her illustrations here though) is going to be doing them for me! I'm so lucky because she's crazy talented, and   I love her work. I just need to do some homework now myself. Another thing to add to the weekend list?

WEEKEND LIST

• Coffee with Jo (ex roller derby)
• Plant out herbs in the front garden
• Make some progress on the sexy undies
• Brainstorming for blog illustrations
• Writing
• Reading
• My Laundry (I love doing laundry)
• Bask in the sunshine

♥ Looking like: I'm trying to embrace my aesthetic direction for the summer - white t-shirt, brown cable cardigan, green flower print skirt, brown cowboy boots. And fishnet stockings, which I (apparently) believe go with everything

♥ Listening to: Dudes, every time I get to this bit I bemoan my static music collection. This week I *shall* do something about this.

♥ Fad a la Mode: Having a single glass of whatever is on offer. This is surprisingly liberating as well as being a hell of a lot kinder on my pocket. Viva la ONLY DRINKING ONE GLASS!

♥ Watched this Week: Boardwalk Empire. AMAZING series. I love the costumes, but the whole thing is as compelling as Deadwood. In fact, it's quite a lot like Deadwood, but set during the Prohibition. And with Al Capone! And flappers!

Also, I've been re-watching Pride and Prejudice. The 1995 version obviously, because the more recent movie version is a laughable conceit given Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth's supremacy. Oh, and Mrs Bennett and Kitty and Lydia are so fabulously dreadful! Stoked because I still have two episodes waiting for me before I've finished the mini-series.

♥ Reading: I have a bunch of things on the go at the moment - The Surgeon of Crowthorne (Simon Winchester), A Literary Passion (letters between Anais Nin and Henry Miller) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which I never quite got around to finishing when we read it at book club.

♥ Webreading: My new fave is Daily Pep Talk from a Best Friend. Bless her, she also has a mobile site so you can get a pep talk on the go.

♥ Anticipation: Sewing to my little heart's content, sitting in the sun, exhibition opening at Te Papa tonight!