Just Another Tuesday

Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday ended quite nicely. :) Deb and Graham came over to see the garden and our new nightstands/lamps. Both had a go at the new Sleep Number bed too and looooved it. Yay! Beebs and I ended the day with a Mexican pizza I made (basically just nachos on a puff-pastry crust instead of chips) and then we went to bed. Or, I should say, he went to bed and I was awake until 3 am....I need to stop doing that! It wastes my whole morning sleeping the next day and I hate that.

One of the reasons I was up so late is that I have started a new book called The Hickory Staff by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon. It's a fantasy book about a bored asst. bank manager who discovers a 135 y/o safety deposit box that had stood unopened since the day it was commissioned.... until he finds the key in an antique store and opens it discovering a portal to another world inside. ooOOooo I haven't read far enough into it to know whether it's any good or not, I'm still in the plot building stage...but here's to hoping it's a good one. :)

I was really disappointed today because I was supposed to go to my friend's house for morning tea but TOTALLY forgot to set my alarm last night and overslept. She came over to pick me up and I was in bed. :( I hate this memory of mine, it's totally useless. I am cursed to be forgetting things the rest of my life, I only pray that my future children won't hate me for it....well, at least not anymore than they'll hate me for how messy I am. :)

Bean went to the Dr. yesterday and is "in exceptionally good health." Yaaayy! He gets his little balls cut off next month which should cut back on his extreme feisty behavior as of late. ;) He has become fully intrigued by the toilet and spends a good portion of the afternoon sitting on the edge and batting at the water...until he inevitably falls into said toilet and trails the water all over the house....I need to remember to close the door to the bathroom! I've tried closing the lid on the toilet but it's the cheapo thin plastic lid that bows at the front instead of closing all the way (not purposely, it's just cheap and has bent I assume) so he STILL ducks through the gap and the front and gets into the water.... crazy kitten.
<=This picture of him is what we call his "dinner plate eyes" face. He makes this face right before he attacks something, it's too cute!! He was stalking me from around the hallway. Speaking of kittens, I got two new kitten mugs for my mug tree over the weekend which makes my Rachael Hale Kitten Mug Collection (that's the official title ;) ) complete! I have 6 mugs now which fills the whole mug tree. I now need to start my Christmas mug collection so that I'll have all 6 by Christmas!
These mugs are just TOO cute! I love the one with the little witch hat, he will be my Halloween mug. :)

_______________________________________________
I just gotta vent on this one for a minute:

Someone said something a while ago that really irked me, like REALLY irked me. I was talking about how we'd had a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone last year for Chris's birthday and how much everyone seemed to enjoy it and that we were thinking about doing a Halloween party this year just for fun where we could eat candy and watch scary movies and people could dress up if they wanted to although I probably wouldn't....and this guy is like, "Why?"..... ..... ummmm because it's fun?? "But we don't have Halloween here, what is even the point of Halloween?" So I explained the history behind it and that it's mostly for kids but that it's fun for adults to get to be a kid again for a day and put on a show for the kids when they trick-or-treat to make it fun for them. He (rudely I might add) made it clear that he thought it was ridiculous for me to want to continue American traditions that don't exist in Australia. I tried to suggest that if he moved to a foreign country and there was like, no more Christmas or Easter or something he'd probably want to share that tradition with new friends and family in that country and he insisted that he wouldn't...(Uhh..okay, Liar.) But whatever....and then I was talking to some people at Cole's about different foods that I can't find here (namely good ingredients for Tex Mex) and someone said something about "can't you just get used to what we have here?" ::sigh:: I think it just bothered me because if I was like, Indian or Chinese or something and wanted to continue the traditions of my culture here absolutely no one would question it and DEFINITELY wouldn't suggest that I leave them behind me for fear of being called a "racist." I mean, I know that if it's hard for me here it's gotta be a basquillion times harder for people from non-westernized countries....but you'd think maybe I could get a little slack?

There are a lot of Australians (mostly older Australians) panicking over the "Americanization" of their country, so maybe this is why people can get so defensive when I mention wanting to continue celebrating my culture here. It's just SO ignorant though, it makes me want to scream. Maybe it is ignorant of me but I believe the Australian culture is still forming. There are only about 22 million people in Australia at the moment which puts them, population-wise, where the USA was in the mid 1840's. Australia's population in the 1840s was about 170k. Now, I'm not trying to say Australia doesn't *have* a culture because there is definitely a strong one here but, when you consider the sheer population boom that is upon us here in Australia, the culture *will* evolve and new sub-cultures will form. It's just inevitable. Australia will never mirror the USA entirely because the mind-set of the people, the economics and the government here are completely different than that of those in the US...Australian's Egalitarian mindset and distaste for corporate giants alone is enough to ensure that they will never become an America, that they will always be their own nation. So, people of Australia, just accept that, when your culture is based on a population of immigrants, it is going to evolve as the cultures of those people integrate into your own. It is inevitable AND absolutely doesn't mean that your identity as a nation will be lost in the mix. You aren't who you were 150 years ago any more than you will be who you are now 150 years in the future. So cut it out with the paranoia.

Long story short, me celebrating the 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving isn't going to turn Australia into America AND it doesn't mean that I'm rejecting the Australian culture for my own. I'm just integrating my traditions into the traditions of this country. If you don't like it, you're not invited to the party anyway. :P bahahaha