Aussie Expats Update – Domestician Extraordinaire!

Happy Friday everyone!

Before we get caught up in the exciting whirlwind of talking about my recent adventures (stay calm, they’re honestly not really that exciting of late—sorry), I’d like to first let you all know that I’m well aware ‘domestician’ isn’t actually a word. But that being said, I really do feel like my efforts last week deserve some kind of special, completely-made-up-for-the-occasion-word to mark how much time I spent in the damn kitchen.

James and I probably didn’t really discuss in depth how much we were going to do for this BBQ; I mean both of us forgot about it until about Tuesday, which was probably a sign that we weren’t overly prepared. Then, as I mentioned last week, our initial Thursday night attempt at making Neenish Tarts didn’t go very well. So it meant that they were just another item on the looong list of foodstuffs to fix or create last Friday. I’ve put in these photos so you can ooooh and ahhhh at my culinary brilliance [Disclaimer: I’m actually not brilliant but I do need your validation after last Friday. It was a long day]. I actually feel like this photo doesn’t properly represent the contents of our fridge.

Anyway, all in all, I started in the kitchen at 8 am, took a short break and ate something when James was home near 2ish, then didn’t finish again until after 5. I made pavlova, lamingtons (why, oh why, does my computer want to correct this to laminations? They’re not tasty at all), fairy bread, sausage rolls, repaired Neenish Tarts, marinaded the chicken, made a salad and put potatoes on to roast only to find out later that the oven wasn’t actually on. Sigh. My feet ached and the kitchen was filthy, though I did a lot of cleaning up as I went along. To add insult to injury, I later semi-dropped a bowl full of whipped cream. If you’ve never semi-dropped something, two points to note. 1: I’m an expert and can definitely give you lessons, but 2: it usually means it makes just as much mess and now your clean black jeans are covered in cream as well as the floor. But as you can see in the photo above, it was a serious dessert-fest. I made sausage rolls too! James found a recipe on Pinterest (saving people’s dinner parties since whenever it was created) and I just whipped these up.

Newsflash: they were damn delicious. Also, Americans have no idea what sausage rolls are. They literally think you mean a hotdog in a roll. Pfft. But I think we can safely say it was a pretty successful evening. I had to be social, which is enough of a challenge when I know the people I’m talking to and I’m not wrecked, let alone when neither of those things are true, but I survived and I think most people had a pretty good time. James even got a fire going, so he was happy!

In other news, today marks the end of my last week of uni break. Le sigh. Next week begins Trimester 3 for 2016 and another two subjects:  my second intorductory psych subject and an Ancient History subject looking at ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. So, that being said, I can’t really complain, because I am studying some seriously cool stuff. Today also sees the start of the 3-day completion period for The Great Flash Fiction War: inspired by a ‘something’ (seriously, I have no idea what it’s going to be, but it can be a quote/idea/something crazy) 1000 words including the title, with the winner and fourteen finalists to be published in an anthology next year! I’m really looking forward to this new challenge, though of course there are a few butterflies going in my stomach right now.

James broke our bed this week. Minds out of the gutter, please and thank you: we’ve recently (ok, it’s probably been going on for a month or more) gotten into the habit of leaping onto the bed like breaching whales while yodelling our surnames at the top of our lungs: it’s weird, I know, and I can’t really explain it. Anyway on Wednesday, James did what has become a fairly routine activity in our house, and the wheel snapped off the bed frame base. Needless to say, we collapsed in peals of laughter until I was crying and couldn’t breathe. We now have no bed frame, so the adventure continues!

My novel is at a bit of a sticky point, so I’ve been (trying) to do some plotting and get some of it typed (I’m up to about 50 000 words typed, so that’s actually going kind of well), but I’m looking forward to getting my teeth back into it next week and wrestling it into submission. Then when the hideous first draft is complete, I can start ploughing through the myriad of weird as all hell other ideas I have. I think maybe getting into some flash fiction pieces – just for the purpose of getting some flitting thoughts out of my head and written into something – could be in the future.

We’re off to some compulsory fun with James’ unit today and I’m wearing colourful socks… So pretty much nothing can go wrong. I wonder if people would judge me if I took my cross-stitch and sat there embroidering? I’d like to finish it soon so that I can give it to my grandmother for Christmas (eight years in the making actually, so it’ll be a real celebration!)

Have a great weekend everyone!! I’ll upload some photos of my epic Halloween cupcakes (oh god, fingers crossed) and maybe some cool (or not so cool) Halloween outfits we rocked the shindig with, next week.

— Ana.

Kudos, yet again, to Google to providing the memes/ecards we all need in our lives.