Monday afternoon at the Housie:

The Housie got a little mini-makeover this weekend with a cute pine chest of drawers my Mum sourced for me for freeee. Since Mum was also reorganising the study in her own house, my childhood writing desk (which my little brother had been using) got returned to me, too, so I had two new pieces of furniture to find a home for in this fairly small space. I spent most of Saturday shuffling and setting up, but the Housie is kind of amazing. Every time I reconfigure the arrangement in here, I manage to fit more in without making it less spacious. I'm quite in love with this chest of drawers. It's nothing special as far as furniture goes, but somehow it just suits. I've filled the drawers with my DVD and CD collections (with a couple of drawers left over; I'm thinking art supplies) and moved the squat little bookcase usually assigned to this purpose into a different corner. It now houses my Penguin paperbacks, books on wordcraft, and stacks of magazines.

I love that the living room looks a little more spare and maybe a little more masculine as a result (shared and public spaces shouldn't be too girly, right?). My brother Tain looked it all over and told me my house looks "like a library." I'm taking that as a definite compliment.

And my half-bedroom-half-office is reorganised just in time for the return of uni, which has started up again today. It's my final BA semester, which is impossibly hard to believe. Three years has gone by entirely too fast!

I've only got three subjects this time round, since that's all that's left to complete my degree: Creative Non-Fiction, Medieval History, and Themes in Australian Literature. Each unit is appealing to me for different reasons, but I'm especially excited about creative non-fic. Really well-written, true writing is an art form all to itself. I'm keen to learn lots more about it.

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Conversations:

Amanda -- sensory overload! I think it was easier to process in real life than it is to look at the pictures.

Un -- yes. It would've been cool to have visited in the early days and then again now, towards the end of the project.

Sarah -- glad you enjoyed the pictures! It was a fun experience to wander through.

Two weeks of my life, briefly, in list format:

Last time I wrote, I said my cousin was coming to stay. I was wrong. My cousin came. My goddaughters came. And my sister and her babies came. It was, as predicted, a blur of joy.

+01. Apparently I not only possess the world's cutest niece and nephew, but I also have the world's squishiest. After five days of firsthand exposure, I am convinced that the fatter the cheeks, the better. I am also sure that blue eyes may just be the most heart-melting. And I am happy to be known to my little niece as the aunty with lots of pretty beads for wearing.

+02. It was enormous fun to hang out -- really hang out -- with my sister properly for the first time since she was married two and a half years ago. Other visits have always been much shorter and much busier, or devoted entirely to other things. This time, there were late nights for sitting and chatting, girly movies to watch, and shopping trips. We may just have come up with solutions to major world crises while we talked, too.

+03. My cousin Annie hadn't changed a bit, except that she's more fun, smart, and gorgeous than ever. It was "beyond huge" (to quote a movie we incessantly repeated while she was here) to get to show her around Brisbane, introduce her to our church homies, and catch up with mutual friends. When she left, I found myself more thankful for my awesome cousins than ever (and that's saying something).

+04. When the happy whirl came at last to a stop on Sunday, I re-entered earth's atmosphere and was shocked to hear of the carnage caused by the Victorian bushfires. Fire is an expected part of an Australian summer; the death of so many is not. There has been an eerie sense of watching a bleak history being written as I repeatedly visit ABCnews and watch the death toll rise. Authorities are calling it Australia's worst natural disaster. All I can do is pray.

+05. In the meantime, my own life goes on unstrangely (and unfairly) unaffected. As I write, the next issue of Whatsoever Magazine is being printed, and this morning I put the finishing touches on a project I've been commissioned to design for Homespun magazine. It's a beautiful publication and I last did some work for the team there about five years ago, so I'm excited to be involved again. I'm excited, too, to be doing some hand stitching; it feels like too long since I pulled the sewing basket out and experimented. I'll post a little sneak peek soon.

+06. I am generally a little hermit soul, but I'm getting all eager and bouncy about my upcoming trip to Tasmania with my family. Most of us fly out on Valentine's Day for two weeks, and I'm already having dreamy thoughts of cooler weather, glorious old buildings, not setting my alarm, reading out on the balcony, bakeries and cafes, and the gorgeous city park. Oh, and picture-taking, of course. It'll be delicious.

What can't you wait for just now?

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conversations:

Celeste -- so I'm not the only one who tried a little eyebrow break-dancing after watching that clip? :D

The Beginning of the Adventures of Miss Inflexible Homebody

Chapter One:
In Which Our Intrepid Heroine Finds Herself With Surprisingly Itchy Feet

There once was a girl called Inflexible Homebody. She was kind of obsessed with paper, wrote multitudes of stories, liked organising things, and her desk drawers had a habit of getting filled up with Stuff. Mostly paper stuff.

She liked adventures, but particularly the sort that she read about in books, which was a good way of keeping them organised. She could, quite possibly, spend all her days enjoying such adventures. And she would have, if she had not had brothers and sisters who liked adventures of the kind found out of doors, in trees, relating to wild cows, and climbing windmills.

Inflexible Homebody's penchant for the world of words and quiet afternoons inside continued into her teen years. She might well have become a hermit if it weren't for her father's gypsying ways. As it turned out, she got to travel a lot and lived in many unique parts of Australia, which was pretty cool.

The time came when Miss Homebody was actually more of a woman than a girl. She kept following her gypsy father, and the real-life adventures consumed a lot of time. It seemed that there was always someone in some state she had once lived, who was turning twenty-one or getting married or having a baby. And so Miss Homebody ran hither and thither and quite liked it, especially if she knew it all well in advance and could be organised beforehand.

However, home is home and she loved it. On the rare weekends when she could actually be there, she thought nothing would be more wonderful that tidying out her desk drawers (which still filled quite mystically with Stuff), eating lunch late, and reading a book whilst curling on the couch.

When her family suggested having a holiday, she would say, "Life is a holiday. Why don't we stay home once in a while and just do the stuff we never get to do normally?" She was thinking of things like tidying out her desk drawers and reading a book whilst curling on a couch. Her family rarely agreed with those thoughts, however.

In fact, they poked fun at her inflexibility. The worst of it was that Miss Homebody realised their teasings was all true. But there seemed little she could do about it. After all, who can help their personality?

But then, when Miss Homebody was getting nearer being really grown up and further from being a teenager, something began to change. In the books that she read on those rare Saturday afternoons on the couch, she started to notice how wonderful all the Places in books were. Places north and south and Places where people had strange accents and homes carved out of rock and ate food they'd taken from the blue seas and the green mountains.

Curiously enough, Miss Homebody began to feel drawn towards the idea of seeing these far-off Places someday. At first, she wondered if she were quite sane. Miss Homebody, with itchy feet? It was impossible!

But no, the feelings remained, and when friends and family began to travel to these far-off Places, Miss Homebody sat drinking in their tales and dreaming of seeing these Places for herself. It was wonderful -- and very very curious.

So now Miss Homebody finds herself with a new thirst she never imagined she'd feel -- a desire to see wonderful Places, someday. She doesn't know if she ever will see those Places, and if she does, the time is probably far, far away. There would have to be miracles before it all happened.

Chapter Two remains to be written. But for now, it is enough (and simply remarkable) that Miss Inflexible Homebody has itchy feet and dreams of Places.

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conversations:

Bethany -- Thank you! Wasn't the portrait of Dad the cutest?

Suzanne -- ha ha! Thank you! Inspiration from little bros is the best :).

Simplythis -- what a fun idea! I want to paint a wall right now, thanks to you.

Caitlin -- Oh you noticed its disappearance :). I had thought maybe no one really wanted a moment-by-moment account of my days so I whisked it away. But I'll put the micro-blog back just for you!