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Hello, Mr You here. Flossy has been tagged by Isay. As she has already done this a few times a mental block has been hit in her prickly pumpkin patch mind. So I have agreed to be a guest blogger and list a few random things about her from my refreshing perspective. Firstly I kind of view these things a bit like 21st century chain letters, which in the 20 th century - when i got one - i cut into a hundred pieces, pulped over night, blended, dried in the shape of blob for a few weeks and then burnt in the BBQ on the next full winters moon. No 7 years bad luck mojo gunna get me on that one. Don't get me started on pyramid marketing.. no i really don't need 10 tubs of 20 kg hi-concentrate dish washing powder. Anyways here are 5 random factoids about this blogs heroine. 1) Her belly button looks like a unique smiley happy emoticon. Its like a really big cartoon smile with one eye throwing up the massive-est of winks. Kind if like this ;) but the right way up and way more tweaked out. Its v-cute and a good friend i must say. 2) When she was 2 her parents moved to Ireland to try and live for a year. ( thats not the fact) While there she carelessly tripped in her grandma's yard on a clothes peg, her forehead landing and splitting on the edge of an aged concrete stair. Ouch. The scar of which can be seen residing in a bed-sit above her left eye to this day. ** *** ** this may explain her matching coloured peg fetish which has been mentioned before i believe. *** details may not be factual. she may have been looking for a peg? 3) flossy-p has denied Mr You the freedom to make what was previously listed for #3 public to the world. It was WAY too embarrassing, and some of his facts were embellished which made it even worse. It started with the line...It was on the back of a flat bed truck in Australia's most famous "gay" street. It was lunch time on hot summers day... And ended with... Oh i wish i had seen that one. And although I got a good laugh out of it, for the sake of our friendship that's all you're gonna know! (as a trade-off I will let it be known that for some unknown reason I rub my tummy as I brush my teeth - have no idea why and am usually not conscious of it).4) Her toe nails are peculiarly rectangular. I would say they are the shape of old television screens, kind of elliptical rectangles. I imagine they are hard to cut. So small and so distracting when Bold and the Beautiful appears on them mid snip. Damn that Sally and her meddling ways. 5) Has no real middle name. Her father decreed she would haf no tween name as he did not. I find this very frustrating as it severely limits the names i can make up and call her. Being a true post-renaissance man i have composed, over the years my very own middle name for her. Its quite good, more of a sonnet really and on last count has 11 words and 21 syllables. Its been so successful that some members of my family now refer to her with elements of it. Theres a formula to it too, if you need to make your own. 6) ...oh i could go on forever. Regards, Ramsis F. Yousefp.s i will hand back to flossy to propagate this p.s.s i don't really view meme's that harshly, im just bitter i dont gots any of these nice bloggy friends shes does.
heh-heh, thanks Mr You!!!! But, a-hem, you forgot to choose 5 of my nice bloggy friends to tag (or threaten with 7 years bad luck) ;)
 This is: "Me taking a picture of myself in the mirror with my favourite accessory." Because my new octopus necklace arrived just a few days ago from adorkable's etsy store, it is of course my most favourite new thing :D But before it arrived, I was all set to select my rings as my favourite accessory for this weeks "this is" meme. I NEVER wear rings all at once like this- pimp stylen'; usually just one at a time, but I love each of them. I have selected my favourite few for show and tell... 1. The top one on my thumb I wear every day. It came from my mum's jewellery box years and years ago. She used to only wear gold, so she gave this to me. It used to have intricate vines etched into it, but they've almost all worn away now. I wear this on my thumb as it's the only finger it fits on. I have worn it for at least 13 years. 2. Today my pointer finger is modeling the ring I had made when I was in Greece. It was my first time out of the country, I travelled around Europe on my own, and my first stop was Greece. This ring was in a jewellery shop on a Greek island. The jeweller re-made it overnight for me so that it would fit on my skinny fingers. It originally came with 3 rings that sat together to look like one piece, but I sadly lost one of them when washing my hands in the bathroom at my bosses engagement party. :( I love this ring, it reminds me of octopus tentacles, and Greece. 3. The big sparkly one was also from my Mum's jewellery box. I think this was "dress up" for her, and it was for me too for some dress-up party at some stage. But now I wear it seriously... only very occasionally... and only when I'm in the right mood. 4. Although this is about 3 years old, this is the newest of all my rings. I got it from a young jewellery designer at Paddington Markets. I love it because it's one single piece looped around twice. From one side it looks like you see it, and on the other side it looks like two separate rings. I always thought symbolically the design would make a beautiful wedding band. 5. The ring on my pinky isn't shown very well in this photo. I got in in Melbourne. If you take it off and look at it from above it is actually square, with a round finger whole cut out of the centre. Each side is identical, inlaid with mother of pearl. I loved the concept of a square ring, and the subtly of the pearl and silver together. I love rings, but like I mentioned I only ever wear one, maybe two, at a time, only ever on my right hand, and usually only ever on the middle or ring finger, 'cause the others are too skinny to enjoy human jewellery.
 My Illustration Friday attempt for theory. Bettina, battling to get her head around string theory.
 It's been raining here non-stop for so long that half our clothes, all our shoes, some furniture, and at least one wooden spoon have all grown a coat of mould. But at the moment it is not raining... the sky even looks blue... so I'm going outside right now (while it lasts), heading down for a walk on the beach and to suck in some non-mouldy air.
 This is: What makes me laugh out loud.Five months ago we moved from inner city Sydney to a small coastal town. Since then we have discovered a new hobby; collecting amusing clippings from the local papers. The local press is strewn with typos, bad grammar, great colloquialisms, and things that, well, just crack me up. We've started a scrap book to hold our ever growing collection, and it's sorted into themes. This clipping is from the "local advertising" section. It cracks me up every time I see it. It's not just the service that it offers, it's the way-too-eager expression on the woman's face too! ...(Kind of like she's hiding a roll of gaffer tape behind her back, and she intends to use it... strap you into your chair with it, gag your mouth, and do unspeakable things to your toes... and she can't wait!).
 I hope you had a sweet day yesterday, in your own way, where ever you were, and whatever you did. I was super-lucky (whoa! I accidentally just typed super-licky there, that could have been taken the wrong way!).. anyway, now that's cleared up, where was I?... Oh, that's right, I was super-LUCKY yesterday to have been given the most amazing book from Mr You. It's called The Arrival, and it's an illustrated fiction by Shaun Tan. It's amazing! No words whatsoever, simply the most detailed intriguing drawings that tell the story of a man who leaves his family behind to go to a new land in an attempt to find work. It's the story of immigration. I haven't read it all yet (read? looked at it? perused?)... but from my flipping I can see curious creatures coupled with peoples realistic faces and hands. It looks wonderful! So, I think I may have come out on top yesterday; all Mr You got was this skating whale, and one of the best chocolate brownies in town! (which he shared with me). Yep, I definitely came out on top this year. :D 
I’ve mentioned our new government before, so I’m not going to go on and get all political on this blog. But I do want to talk something through…. The Background:Yesterday our new Prime Minister presented an apology in parliament to the Aboriginal people of Australia for what has been named the stolen generation. It was broadcast practically everywhere and was a huge event. (Again I’m not going to go into all the history and details, but it’s well worth looking into, so I’ll put some links at the end of this post for those who would like to become educated about the topic).A-ny-way… The Catalyst:In general I have avoided facebook like the plague, but yesterday there was a movement for people to change their status to “is sorry”, i.e. "flossy-p is sorry". My friend Henna noticed that one of her facebook friends (I’ll use her initials) had changed hers to: “KH is not going to apologize for something she didn't do, it goes against all of her principles.” Henna was livid at this and has apparently "challenged her on her wall". Again, being a non-facebooker I don’t know what this entails, but it kind of sounds like it may require the use of jousting poles. A-ny-way… it got me thinking. My Point:There are two types of sorry aren’t there? There’s a sorry of apologizing for something you’ve done, and there’s a sorry that offers sympathy and love and asks forgiveness. It got me wondering why people have trouble saying sorry. Is it because those people have apologized for things (it’s generally one of the first manor-related things we’re taught as children), yet they have never had the opportunity to learn how to be truly sorry? I mean, as an example, it’s the kind of sorry you say to a friend who's parent or child has just died. Of course you may never have known that parent of child yourself, and you are not personally responsibly for them dying, but you still offer your sorry, your deep sympathy, as a way of summing up all the other things you're feeling ( I didn't know them, but if I could have I would have changed the way things turned out... I'm hurting deeply just thinking about what you've been through, let alone having to go through it myself, I'm so sorry it's you that has to do that... I’m sorry this is so painful for you… I'm sorry that no matter what happens this is going to scar you forevermore... I'm thinking of you... etc) That type of sorry is the acceptance of responsibility too, but it’s the kind that demonstrates an intention for you to step up, be strong, and give a part of yourself to those who need it. A promise that you will do what you can to improve the future for that person (or those people). It takes strong people to be able to be open and selfless enough to extend those heartfelt sentiments, without resorting to feeling defensive. In fact, come to think of it, the first kind of sorry I mentioned; apologies, may benefit a whole lot from a pinch of the second kind. Some Links:So anyway, for the specifics of why the “sorry” that was shared yesterday had such importance: - What is the stolen generation- What was said during the apology- An article about the day around the country- One man's personal reaction
 My Illustration Friday attempt for choose. "Little Miss Pink fell down the sink,
How many gallons did she drink?"Then, out of rhyme and no longer singing, we'd say: " Choose a number."  That was the little ditty we used to sing as kids to go along with these paper thingos. We didn't have a name for them, but I seem to remember referring to them as 'snap dragons' at some point (although I may very well have made that one up myself). There are some great comments on this post about what people called them. And before you ask, we may have redbacks but we never had cooties here, so we didn't need catchers. hehehe... Anyway, back to Little Miss Pink, let's hope she chooses the right drain to escape.
 This is: Sunday lunch.I shuddered when I read the topic for this week "Sunday lunch". You may have been expecting to see a nicely laid out table with an interesting selection of food... well, that's not exactly the case. I don't think I've ever had any special Sunday lunch tradition, either with my family or as a grown-up. Sundays are usually all about a bit of a sleep in and a late breakfast. Sunday is usually the day we'll have something fancy for breakfast, and when I say fancy I'm talking sunny-side-up eggs on toast, that's fancy for us, no hollandaise or benedict or anything. So we're never really hungry for lunch until the afternoon when we're likely to have a quick sandwich or something. Yesterday, I'm not sure what came over me. I have a list of things I still need to finish making for other people, and was on my way to doing them when an urge to paint a canvas hit me. Now, I may only have this urge once a year, so I ran with it. I was so immersed in it that I didn't even realise the time for lunch had come and passed until Mr You brought a sandwich and glass of water to me. To tell you the truth it felt kind of revitalising having a day doing something for myself. Not for someone else, or an activity with a goal, which is what I spend all my time doing, just doing something for the sake of doing it. I had no plan, no idea, and no goal. It was freeing in a way. I'm still only half way through the painting. Hopefully the "urge" will stay with me long enough to finish it (but that doesn't always happen). And as for Sunday lunch, well, thanks to Mr You I have something to show, otherwise I may have forgotten about it altogether.
 My Illustration Friday attempt for blanket. (I'm not really happy with the way this one turned out. I wish I'd drawn Michael Jackson's youngest son instead. Damn it.)
 I Heart Mirabel is another great charity event. Meet Me at Mikes has opened an invitation for people to make hearts to hang in their front window on Valentines Day. Each heart will be for sale for $10, with all profits going towards the Mirabel Foundation (children who have been orphaned or abandoned due to parental drug use). This bunch o'retro jungle hearts is my contribution. I picked this uber-retro fabric up really cheap at a country op shop a few years back, and have been holding on to it waiting for the right project to come along. (I have a few metres of it. I have no idea what to do with the rest.) Anyway, hopefully these wee softie hearts will have a fun Melbourne holiday, before finding a nice new home to dangle in.
 The Lovely Hearts show for this year has officially opened! It appears to be even more diverse and lovely than last year. My contribution this time is 'TigerHug'... mmm snuggly. If someone buys it, 100% of the purchase price will go to the Breast Cancer Research foundation. Two of my friends have lost their mums to breast cancer... so along with buying copious amounts of daffodils once a year, this is the least I could do.
 This is: my collection.I've discovered a new group activity thingo, actually it's been called a meme... either way I'm doin' it! Started by Three Buttons, it's called "This is..." and each week it's something different. Sadly I missed "my favourite cup", and "what scares me", but this week "this is my collection", and I'm all over it. So... this is my collection of buttons. Actually it's a small sample of my collection of buttons. I don't even know how it started, a few from an op shop here and there, then Mr You's mum offered me my choice from her amazing vintage stash, then friends started giving them to me, one friend made some for me, and the next thing I know they're coming in from all angles; arriving in the post from distant relatives I barely know. But collections are a bit like that aren't they? Sometimes I think a collection would be better if no-one knew you collected that item, so you could only collect the cream of the crop over years. Not that I don't love all my buttons - don't get me wrong, I love each and every one and appreciate all that I've been given. But I remember having collections as a kid, and how quickly they got out of control when everyone starts getting you one of "them" for every Christmas and birthday. Soon enough you're overrun and having to publicly announce an end to that collection before you find yourself on one of those "Weird and Wacky People" TV specials. Anyway, buttons are small and easy to hide in a hurry when the Ripley's TV crew turns up unannounced. They're functional, decorative, and sometimes inspiring. I made a couple of these button broochy things a while back, and maybe I'll make some more now that I've been reminded of how many pretty pretty buttons I have to share.
 My Illustration Friday attempt for tales and legends. This is Icarus: a character from Greek mythology. As the story goes, his father Daedalus, fashioned a pair of wings for himself and his son, made of feathers and wax. Before they took off Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax would melt, nor too close to the sea, as the wax would dampen. Overcome by the sublime feeling that flying gave him, Icarus soared through the sky joyfully, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted his wings. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea...It's always been one of my favourites.
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