I don’t want to go too deeply into it because the roughness is due to a range of factors. Some of those things are totally out of my control, some are things I can influence, and some are squarely my own damn fault.

I don’t want to be whiney so instead of sharing my woes, instead I’ll share one of the things keeping me upright over the course of a pretty crappy weekend:
Benadette Peters and Steve Martin singing a gorgeous song from The Jerk. I’ve probably listened to this dozens of times over the last two days.

I know things will come around, but for now I’m just trying to keep my head up.

Our relationship with our landlord started well as we are absolutely stellar tenants in the rent-paying and property maintaining departments if i do say so myself, but has faced many challenges in the last year when we demanded some totally unreasonable things like electricity in the laundry room, an oven that actually operates, and repairs to the faucets that don’t just drip, but leak steady mouse-tails of water.
He accused us of keeping a pet against the mandates of our lease, a local stray-but-super-sweet cat. When we proved she wasn’t ours, but merely walks across our yard of her own volition, he went on to accuse other tenants in the building when she’s clearly just homeless and friendly.
It’s also been revealed though conversations with him that our landlord also harbors some opinions that make it difficult for us to regard him with even a modicum of respect.

So when I received this letter informing us that he’s declined to give us the opportunity to renew our lease when it expires in November? My feelings on that matter can be summed up with the title of this post.

I’m getting really angsty about renting. I feel like we’re at a point where we really should be buying a home and escaping the rental grind except whoops! All of the cities we would actually want to buy in are expensive like whoa. I know we’ll remain in the tenant boat for a while yet so dudes, I need some commiseration.
Do you have any terrible landlord stories? Tell’em in the comments or better yet, post them on your blogs and link to them so I can read them and we can have a bitchfest about these goddam deposit-stealing assholes together.

Jerks.

So we all have those songs we listen to when we need a pick-me-up; one of my dearest friends likes to power through room cleaning by blasting Alice Cooper. I’ve been known to belt out a Go-Go’s song or two whilst mowing the lawn or trying to psych myself up to do something thrilling like say, my taxes.

But dudes, I’ve got a problem. My go-to songs just aren’t doing it anymore, and I fear heavy rotation has worn the magic thin.

I beg you, tell me: What songs do you love when you need a pick me up?
Gimme youtube links or just artist/song titles and I’ll dig up the tunes. I know you’ve got the goods, Share!

Despite early aptitude, my spelling prowess has gone downhill in the years since. Obviously, I blame spellcheck. That little red dashed line has made me soft, made me doubt myself. This increased dramatically when I had to replace my laptop with one made for the Australian market with it’s excess of the letter u in words that totally don’t need a u. Did I really misspell neighborhood? NO I didn’t you jerk computer. And the word realize? It’s spelled with a z. Which, incidentally, is pronounced ZEE.

Denouncing technology for my own failures aside, I have noticed myself struggling lately with words that I learned to spell when I was about 8. A prime example is the word genius. I can never seem to get it right. Even when I wrote it just then, I started with genious, genous, geinious? This obviously states quite clearly my relationship to genius-ness.
In fact, I just put the um, “word” geniusness into thesaurus.com and it asked, “Did you mean heinousness?” Um no, but point taken.

The Mister and I have approximately two weeks to decide which country we plan to live in forever/a minimum five years. We had come to a decision a while back, but until you actually pay the immigration fees and storage fees and customs fees and fees on top of fees decorated with little icing fees. Oh, and plane tickets; we need to purchase approximately $4000 worth plane tickets. So yes. Until those wheels are actually turning, those decisions are just words and every option is open for close inspection.
So now that it’s decision crunch time we’re basically freaking out in a calm and rational way. Except when drinks come in to play, then we run the risk of a freak out in the not-at-all calm or rational way.
Australia or the US? High pay rates and state funded health care in Oz or low home costs and huge career opportunities in America? Cheap travel opportunities to Europe and the Americas due to proximity or cheap travel opportunities to Asia and the South Pacific? NYC or Melbourne? Great thrift store shopping in the states or fantastic fruits and vegetables in tropical Australia?

So to recap, our options are Australia, the USA, any commonwealth country so the UK, Canada, India, South Africa, New Zealand, and a whole bunch of other ones we’re probably not interested in. Oh yeah, and the EU. The Mister is a dual citizen with an EU passport in addition to being Aussie, so most of Europe is an option as well.

If someone could just decide for us that would be great, thanks.

Growing up in the Seattle area, spring is the slightly warmer version of the wet and chilly normal but with added drowned earthworms on the sidewalk. It’s not uncommon to find northwestern children on summer vacation yet still fretting about of the possibility of the Independence day fireworks being rained out and wondering if the time will ever come where they can light their roman candles, spinning pagodas and sparklers. Obviously, since we were still stressing about rain in July, it’s a solid given that March/April/May were total soakers as usual.

Now New York is a different story. New York actually has spring and it’s GLORIOUS but notably fleeting. The issue you face there is that the island area of NY State faces a significant climatic variance from neighbouring communities across the Hudson river and above the southern tip of the Bronx. Just like how neighboring Oakland and SF have radically different weather, NYC and the adjacent area face a similar albeit slightly less drastic incongruence. The primary result of this meteorological discordancy in regards to spring is that it ends up being blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quick before BAM! Summer! Sweaty eyelids!
The ridiculously brief spring season was clearly illustrated to me during my first year living in Brooklyn. I moved to the city mid-winter and was anxiously awaiting the first non rain-out spring of my life. I was surprised to find that I had to wait quite a while, and on the last Sunday of April it snowed one final time. Less than three weeks later however, it was 90º and stayed that way. Did you see it? Spring? Yeah, it went that way.

So anyway, the result of my geographical locations through life means that even in my thirties, I’ve still never really experienced an undeniable springtime. You know, the cliché kind with rain, sun, cheeping birds, buds of flowers poking up through fresh earth and months of getting used to it by frolicing, picnicking and kite-flying or whatever it is people do in places with spring. I’m not complaining, I don’t feel like I’ve been given the short shrift on weather experiences that people should have – no, that goes to the millions of adult Australians who still have never seen snow. That said, I certainly wouldn’t spit on living through an awesome cartoon spring.

So Brisbane. I never for a moment expected Brisbane to have spring. One, obviously because I don’t really acknowledge spring’s existence in general; two, it’s August and even though I now live in the southern hemisphere my internal calendar is all screwed up and I still have ingrained expectations; lastly three, this is the sub-tropics! We’re less than a day’s drive to the equatorial zone! What do we need Spring for? BRING ON THE SUMMER!
This morning I spent a not-insignificant amount of time grumping around about the “manic” weather. One day it’s gorgeous and sunny, the next raining as if it wasn’t aware that excuse me, don’t you know we’re in a drought? AND I’m trying to job hunt here? Sheesh!
I looked up the weather forecast and came upon a video of a local newstation’s weather broadcast. While I was happy to hear the weatherman proclaim a bright sunny weekend ahead, I’m sure you can understand the jolt of surprise I felt when I heard his statement of this being a typical spring in here in Queensland and that it’s sticking around for a couple more months before the long subtropical summer kicks back in.

So it seems it’s finally springtime in my life, let the picnicking begin!

What’s your favorite season?

Given all that, it’s no surprise that I felt like I had won the lottery when, at 12 years old, my mom thought it would a fun idea if we went to the Tacoma Mall to get our Glamour Shots taken. Yes, that’s right. Glamour Shots.

Behold!

Done laughing yet?

This photo is pretty incredible in that it makes my underweight prepubescent self somehow look like a chubby middle-aged woman.

I wish I had a normal non-glamorous photo of myself at that age to show you for comparison, alas they’re all either with family or in my storage unit in Queens. Suffice it to say, at 12, I was 4’4″ and 75lbs. I was tiny. I didn’t look like a pre-teen, I looked like I was 8.
The transformative power of the soft focus filter, sequined tube top, excessive teasing and poofing of my crazy curly hair, and orangey pancake makeup on my then-flawless child skin is shocking and HILARIOUS.

Now I could get all feminist analytical on you here and go into a lengthy ramble about how screwed up it is that the bombshell archetype is one of the only specifically female, yet obviously powerful and respected figures in children’s media, but I’ve got better things to do. Specifically, laugh at terrible photos of myself as a preteen.

Despite my current adulthood, I still have yet to find myself in ownership of even a single floor-length ball gown. I’ve never smoked, so those long holders are a no-go, and while I actually have owned a couple pairs of long gloves, most have been of the fuzzy woolen sort that are long just to protect your wrists from the biting winter wind.

So where are your hilarious photos? Glamour shots, sullen prom glares, family camping trip fashion malfunctions, or school yearbook hair mishaps. I know you’ve got them. Share!

There was just one major obstacle in this goal of mine; despite living with a parent who was totally supportive of the possibility of me banging away in her living room, I didn’t have access to any drums with which to learn.
I was incredibly lucky in my youth that both of my parents always valued and encouraged my creativity by providing me with whatever lessons or supplies I needed if we could afford them, and often even if we couldn’t. At the moment in history that my desire to drum came to light, we were either broke or more likely, my mother decided it was lesson time. Regardless of how much I wanted to play and how much my mother spoke of her support of that desire, it was clear I was on my own to figure it out.

I sat on my drumming ambition for a while, angsting all over the place about the NOT FAIR and the EVERYONE ELSE’S PARENTS WILL BUY THEM WHATEVERs. I didn’t actually say those things mind you, I just brooded them. Verbal angsting was strictly forbidden in our household and noncompliance with that rule resulted in a dramatic decrease of sympathy and patience for my woes and also generally hailed a chorus of thumb-and-index-finger “tiny violins” playing for my sadness.

After an extended period of remaining vocal about my itch to drum while keeping adolescent melodramatics to a minimum, I came home from school one day to find a gift of a set of drumsticks and a VHS tape on rock drumming basics. She wouldn’t buy me a kit, but my mom was willing to concede the arms of our sofa, the dog’s back, the phone book and whatever else I could find to take the place of snares and cymbals.

All went well for about a month while a drummed every pillow in the house into submission, but as I grew more comfortable coordinating my limbs, I also grew hungry for the sharp smack of a real snare and the metallic ting of a ride cymbal. Mom suggested I find work to purchase the drums I desired and I knew she had the right idea. The problem was, at only 15, my employment options were pretty limited.
There was a mall near my house but most of the shops wouldn’t even consider applicants under 16. I was a full six months away from that magical age of employment options. I couldn’t wait, my future drums couldn’t wait, I needed a job NOW.
I went to the mall again and again determined to find something, anything and eventually the day came that I departed for home gainfully employed having landed a job with a marketing research firm.
Yes, that’s right. My first job was annoying survey-taker at the mall.

Two months later I had saved up the heavy sum of two hundred and forty dollars and mom and I went to the pawn shop to pick up my red sparkle drumset. Standing in the store, I faced a brief moment of crisis when I learned that drumkits aren’s sold including cymbals. The basic cymbal and stands I needed would cost an additional hundred bucks that I didn’t have. I can only assume that seeing my crushed expression after all that work, mom acquiesced on the lesson-teaching and loaned me the hundred bones needed to get the kit in playable order. Overwhelmed with gratitude, I was on cloud nine. I HAD MY DRUMS!

About a month later, I repaid my debt and later that day we headed to a family function.
That night, sitting at my grandparent’s dinner table, I was asked about my new musical inclinations and was startled to have her cut me off to rave about my responsibility in saving, borrowing, and repaying the cost of the drum kit. I honestly hadn’t given it much thought after finally getting my hands on the drums, I had been too busy playing them.
To be praised by my entire circle of loved ones for my tenacity in accomplishing my goal of drum ownership felt strange and unexpectedly incredible.

In retrospect, it was clearly a moment of parenting triumph for my mom, but it was also when I learned that there are very few things more satisfying in life than attaining a previously unimaginable goal through your own tremendous effort.
It was, and still stands as one of the proudest moments of my life.

So what does this story of a determined teenage drummer have to with anything?

Yesterday, I fixed my website theme.
After my last “I HATE EVERYTHING AND GIVE UP F THIS” post, I heavily sighed and got to work writing a comprehensive list of everything that was broken/ugly/messed up and/or bugging me about the look and functionality of this website. It was a pretty long list, and most of the items it contained I hadn’t even a vague idea of how to repair.
Maybe you’re a web designer so all this stuff is no bigs in your world, but after hours and hours of googling, research, pleas posted to coding forums, and plain ‘ole trial and error in my theme’s seemingly-incomprehensible css and php files, I managed to cross off every item on that list and in the process gain some really valuable knowledge about how websites are built.
Over the space of two to three days, I went from feeling totally helpless all the way to confident and competent.

16 years ago, my mother taught me that work brings rewards.
It still remains the best feeling ever. Thanks for the lesson mom.

So despite it being the absolute dead center of “winter” here in Brisbane, there are still multitudes of flowers blooming everywhere such as her royal gorgeous orangeness shown here in the act of dominating an ugly wire fence near my house. I know that native Queenslanders, or even Australians from the southern, more season-possesing cities are totally unsurprised at this flashy display of sub-tropicality. But man, I just never get used to it. WOW people. Seriously! look that that color!
Here, lemme give you a better view:

Anyway, besides it’s obvious beauty, I bring up this plant give you an idea of how I’m feeling lately. Not to say I’m a beautiful orange creeping vine, but that I’m feeling really tenacious, determined and optimistic. The job I’ve held for the past six months ended last week; peacefully, wonderfully, and all parties are sad to see it happen but it’s kinda out of our control for reasons I’m not sharing with the internet. I’ve spent the last three days job seeking and I’ve already found two solid “no positions are officially available but things might be changing soon wink wink nudge nudge” leads and one “absolutely yes, we are hiring” all with businesses I would be super psyched to work for.

So that’s that. Fingers crossed all goes well and I get something before the money grows thin. I know I should have started looking before my old position ended, which I did, kinda. But the truth is, I think I didn’t want to admit that it was ending and also it’s a total pain to look for a job when you’re busy working one.

In other news, we got a new neighbor in our building and she seems very friendly and charming.
I’m pretty relieved as we share a porch with her and the previous occupants of that apartment were a euro backpacker couple who had significant difficulty understanding my vocabulary and accent. I’ll admit that I’m a word-loving dork and my verbosity earns me the occasional raised eyebrow on a semi-regular basis, but the accent thing I never understood. I mean, I know I’m a foreigner here, but I’m from Washington, not New Joisey. American television is everywhere! Why did these people have such difficulty with my tuh-MAY-toe?
Anyway, it was awkward. I felt like some snobby jerk with my three dollar words and hoity toity accent so I’d find myself trying to talk differently and end up sounding like some toddler/robot doing a bad Aussie accent.

So the new neighbor seems to understand me fine which, yes, fantastic. I chatted with her at length today which was great except for having to bear the bad news that yep, the boys in unit 1 are pretty loud albeit very friendly and actually the real estate totally lied when they told you that the washing machine in the back was communal, we were pissed about it as well.
It’s never that great to deliver crap news like that to someone on their first day in their new place, but she seemed to take it in stride and remained upbeat about her new place.

The one thing I failed to mention to her though was our landlord.
Internet, I need your help with this one.

Our landlord is an extremely elderly man who hangs around the property quite a bit trimming hedges and painting walls and lurking in general.
He’s also openly racist in the way that 80+ year olds unfortunately often are. Our new neighbor is not white. Should I say something to warn her? Let her figure it out on her own? Opinions and advice would be totally appreciated.