Remind me to post about:

• My mum
  
• Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

But for now:

There's this jewellery box at Eastern Flair which I have wanted for MONTHS. It's grey, with pink cherry blossoms, and it has three drawers and lid with a concealed mirror. I love it. It's $149, but I don't care.

The only problem is: I don't have anywhere to put it. Currently, what passes for my dressing table is a low bookshelf Mark (I think) left here when he moved out, and it's way too shallow to accommodate this thing, which is deep and narrow.

There's no where for it to go, but I want it so much, and I'm worried that if I don't buy it now, I'll miss out on my opportunity and regret it for ages.

I think I'm going to end up buying it anyway, because I'm not going going to live here forever . . . I don't know where I'll put it, though, but at least I'll have it and it will be mine.

Ugh. I could never be a Buddhist.

I don't feel like I knew you. You were half-wild, and we never socialised you, and by the time we realised you had a tumour, it was too late. You wouldn't have liked the vet, anyway.

I feel guilty that you died without me knowing. But I think you had the best life anyone could have given you: we left you in peace and you lived and died in a nest with your sisters. It was warm and you liked your bedmates. I don't think human hands could have added to your life.

My mum called me up at work to tell me MJ had died ("Because he was the first pop star you really ever got into") and I smsed Andrew when I heard the news.

I put too much gin in my gin and tonic and now I am pleasantly pickled. Don't stop till you get enough.

Oh Michael. You were so awesome. I used to cry whenever I listened to Heal the World.

I'm losing my hausfrau!!!!!

And he's still willing to be my hausfrau!

AUGH!

There is a SPIDER hanging off the flap on our mailbox and we have MAIL and Andrew is at the LIBRARY and what am I going to do?????

I had an awful dream about an ISLAND OF SPIDERS this morning. I should have known something like this was coming.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Since Twitch died, we've been worried about Tiny being lonely. We take her out of the cage a lot - so much so that she now expects it every night - and let her roam around the bed or the couch, or the specially-built playground on the coffee table.

But we thought she might be getting bored with us, she might be wanting to interact with people further afield, of more varied disposition, than she could find at MiniJames.

So we got her a Twitter: tinywinemouse

Our Twilight drinking game was last night. The rules were as follows:

SIP when
* BELLA is clumsy
* a VAMPIRE looks nauseous or constipated
* the DIALOGUE is painful
* as NEEDED

FINISH your drink when
* there are SPARKLES

Somehow, despite this, despite the fact that is was almost necessary to drink every time Edward was on screen, I didn't get drunk. The fact that we had way too much food, or the fact that I was drinking gin and tonics, or the fact that I was on to water (which I dutifully gulped) when we got to the "SAY MY NAME, BITCH!" scene, may have contributed to this. Obviously wine is my fastest way to oblivion.

Afterwards we had a dramatic re-enactment of Twilight in Fifteen Minutes in which I nearly pierced everyone's eardrums playing Bella. Boo yah.

nitedula brought soft drinks and put them in the freezer, and admonished us several times to remember to take them out at the end of the night. We forgot. Sorry!

I really need a sparklepire icon for shit like this.

One thousand and ninety six days of the Candie Unit.

I know it's totally environmentally unsustainable, but I wish I had a dryer. Just for the winter, when there's so much more to wash (layers upon layers, and all those socks!) and it takes longer to dry. Or maybe I should just move to somewhere with a nice, year-round dry heat.

Twitch is dying. She just got old overnight. Her body is frail and small - Tiny is bigger than her - and her fur is thin. At least she didn't develop a tumour, like Gidget. But like Gidget, she's sitting peacefully in Andrew's hand, and hiding up his sleeve where it's warm and safe.

Poor thing. It's sad, but at least I know she's had a happy life.

Andrew says when I die, I can hide in his sleeve.

Walter got out last night, but we begged him to come home and eventually he conceded that yes, that Weetbix box might be more comfortable than hiding behind the couch, and yes, he would like to be moved into the new birdcage Andrew had made up for him (with multiple levels!).

Andrew says he will build me a giant birdcage to live in.

Fourteen degrees outside and I wore my winter coat for the first time since last year and there pig flu stories are making me cough.

But I have homemade pizza and a burning desire for order and regulation. So I'm going to write lists and get things done to the wonderful smells coming from my oven.

Damn I'm hungry.

"As long as they're not married they are still essentially on the market," Oakes said. (re: Cleo Bachelor of the Year Competition)

FUCK YOU. Fuck you and your 'married is the only legitimate stable relationship' propaganda.

For Nina's wedding I now have a pretty dress and a motel room.

And Andrew has the prospect of a three and a half hour drive and having to share a room with three girls all going "I can't find my shooooooooes!"

I've turned into one of those customers I used to hate, expecting to be able to buy a diary in March.

I want to write an article about the narrative of a romance novel giving the heroine satisfaction at every level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

biasED   biasED

The word is biased. You are not a cut of fabric.

Argh. I just tried to calculate my ecological footprint, and I kept getting results that don't make any sense to me.

The WWF one said if everyone lived like me, we'd need 2.2 Earths. Two point two! I changed my answer about what I ate - I went with the quick answer, "vegan" - to specifically stating that I never eat beef, I never eat pork, I never eat chicken, I never eat dairy, and suddenly my food rating went down. WTF WWF?

But still I get told I'm living to excess. But I can't figure out how. I don't own a car, I can't drive so I'm always "car pooling", I catch public transport everywhere, all my lights are energy efficient, all my energy is from renewable sources, I recycle my paper and my plastic, my toilet paper is recycled itself and I belong to a food co-op, so I rarely buy packaged and processed food.

What am I doing wrong? Is it that I live in an apartment? I can't afford a house! Is it that I fly a short distance a couple of times a year? I buy carbon offsets! Okay, so I do like IKEA a bit much, but half my furniture is from the side of the road and I spend as much at markets and second-hand stores on clothes as I do in new shops.

I just don't get it. What more can I do?

Dear Miranda Devine

I will take you seriously when you:

A. Stop using silly, immature epithets like "greenie" (what is this, 1982?)
and
B. Stop trying to simplify complex issues and assign blame to tragic situations (perhaps tragic in even the Shakespearian sense of the word).

Backburning may have lessened the loss of life or property, but so would a break in the drought, an end to the heatwave or a cessation of the wind - a combination of factors that could have been avoided, had the government listened to the "greenies" on climate change.

So please, for the love of sense, stop acting like you and your readers don't have an ounce of it between you.

Kind regards
Cassie