Aussie Expats Update – Our First Halloween Party!

Well peoples,

It’s been a bit of a mishmash week. Getting back into uni again for Trimester 3 has seen me chasing my tail a bit (and I only did one other blog post this week: what a sissy!), and James is working his butt off to finish his last essay for his Masters, plus we’ve recently started a new training program in the gym involving a lot of (very, VERY) basic bodyweight movements… And I’m fried. It’s really hard work, but also pretty cool. That being said, if I can’t do the splits, a full static handstand and a couple of other seriously epic things in the next week or so, I’m going to be pretty pissed that I’ve tried so hard and not become a world-class gymnast more quickly. Basically.

But, I know you’re all sitting there, tapping your fingers against your desks and rolling your eyes, and thinking ‘sheeeeesh Ana, get to the point: tell us about the Halloween party last weekend!’ Ok, ok: I am a slave to the masses. For anyone who missed this thrilling development, James and I were invited to a Halloween party last Saturday night, which was (very conveniently) being held next door. Unfortunately, it also coincided with the weekend of The Great Flash Fiction War of 2016: though the prompt was released on Friday, we were at a work shindig for James for most of the day (like FIVE hours people), and then I got incredibly sunburnt, so I wasn’t overly enthused about anything. I mean, look at it:

So anyway, covered in aloe vera and coconut oil, that meant I had to write the story on Saturday, AND go grocery shopping for the week, AND make something to take along to the party. Like those super cute cupcakes I showed you all last week! But it all made Saturday a big day and meant I couldn’t have a nap. Not cool. Then, to add salt to the wound, I really had no clue what to write about for my entry. The prompt was “I can’t leave her now. She’s already gone.” And I was fresh out of ideas: though I’ll concede that I stayed up typing down some thoughts on my phone Friday night after James had fallen asleep: then also woke up before him and lay in bed drafting some stuff. Hardly very professional or inspiring, but there you go, and I was pretty desperate to come up with something: anything. Besides, in the end I managed to get something done, got it beta’d and also did some beta reading for some amazing women who I got involved with during the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge (actually, marks should be out for Round 2 sometime soon, so keep your fingers crossed for me!). I’m hoping that once the results are released from the Great Flash Fiction War, I can share my story with you all!

But the cupcakes:

In all honesty, you could probably call them a rousing success. I mean: aren’t they cute? Weird and cute as all get out? (Answer: yes, yes they are). I mean, of course, there were a few teeny tiny issues in getting them made. The recipe called for a cup of hot water to be added to the water (which, incidentally, I’ve never ever done in baking before), and I may or may not have dropped said cup into the mixer. Then when I was trying to turn it off, I knocked it to superspeed. Oops. Our kitchen and I may, or may not, have looked like a delicious chocolatey bomb had gone off. Sigh. As for costumes…. Well, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say we hadn’t really planned that out. At all. While I was knee-deep in writing my first draft of my flash fiction piece, and waiting for the cupcakes to cool so they could be iced, James offered to go out and buy some bedsheets so we could go as ghosts. But we went one better:

WE’RE A SAMMICH, PEOPLE! A beautiful, tasty tasty PB&J sammich. 

James is the PB because he’s kind of nutty, and I’m jam (or jelly, if you’re an American!) because I’m so sweet: I can’t back up that James is the crazy one in our relationship, but I’m really lucky, because he’s conveniently provided some photographic proof of this fact! Needless to say, we were a hit… Although one small child kept telling us that he wanted to chop us into little pieces. I tried to tell him that any PB&J sandwich that’s grown huge and come alive obviously probably has some other kick ass skills/sweet magical powers, but sadly that didn’t work. What’s he got against sandwiches anyway? But everyone else thought it was awesome, which is great for us because it was probably as last minute (ok, ok, it was about last ‘2 hours’) as you can get. So we’re winners.

Back to uni this week and early starts mean I’ve gotten five solid mornings of writing in and I’m really tired, both physically and of getting out of bed when it’s dark. I think I’m getting close to finishing the first draft of my novel which is both exciting and terrifying, because I’m going to have to go back through and figure out what I’ve actually done in the whole damn thing! At the moment, I’m just attempting not to get overwhelmed by it: keep writing, keep writing! We’re thinking of going rock climbing this weekend and I’m definitely going to find some time to nap somewhere, because I’m really proud I actually managed to write this blog post semi-coherently, and I’m feeling a little weak at the knees of having to do any more adulting in the near future.

Have an amazing weekend everyone! I’m looking forward to catching up on everyone’s work this weekend and seeing what you’ve all been up to while I was being a sandwich 🙂

— Ana.