January 17, 2011 - Get juicing

I am almost at the end of the giant fruit and vegetable box, save for a few stray apples and oranges and a large quantity of lettuce. Can you juice lettuce? (If not, it will be a good excuse to buy a bunny.)

I did try Googling "lettuce juice" but I only found sites telling me that lettuce juice could treat cancer and prevent "habitual abortions". As of yet I do not have an abortion habit, but perhaps it is worthwhile to establish a lettuce-juice-drinking routine should this situation arise.

I have a large, overpriced and difficult-to-clean juicer to assist me in this task. I bought it when I was on an orange-and-carrot-juice kick several years ago and it has been parked on top of my pantry ever since. I feel sorry for it.

4 days on the wagon.

January 16, 2011 - Kill the snooze button

At the moment I have six different alarms set in my phone and they each have 15 minutes of snooze. Today I pressed the snooze button a total of five times. I really need to just get up, yes? I've taken to wearing my gym clothes to bed so I do not have the its-too-cold-too-get-dressed excuse.

I have set my snooze time to one minute because I cannot turn it off altogether.

The bed-making resolution is really not working out. I have decided that the rumpled sheets and excess of pillows add an insouciant, devil-may-care ambiance to the room, in the manner of an overstyled magazine shoot.

More successful has been the decision to eat more plants. This is what showed up in my home-delivered produce box this week:

3 days on the wagon.

January 15, 2011 - Drink 8 glasses of water

I once worked in an office where a few of us used to bring empties of those three-litre juice bottles to work, fill them with water, and then have a water-drinking race. It was a fairly stressful environment so excuses to go to the bathroom were always a good thing. I suppose I could have just gone to the bathroom anyway, just washed my hands or something, but then I would feel bad about lying. Much better to drink the better part of a gallon of water and let nature take its course.

I don't work there any more so I don't drink nearly as much water, though I should because I spend a lot of time at the gym and it's not airconditioned. People leave there looking like they've taken a shower with their clothes on.

By cruel coincidence my gym is on the same street as my favourite cafe, the one with the beer-battered fries and aioli, thus setting up a perpetual cycle of fries --> spin class --> more fries.

It is also time to send another fan letter.

"Dear Microsoft,

When I was twelve, I bought my own Playstation so I could play Need for Speed: High Stakes without having to wait for my brother to finish with Dino Crisis.

We bought an Xbox even though the salesman at JB Hi-Fi told my boyfriend he should get a Wii "for the chick." I was lied to about cake. I watched an elephant get electrocuted. I shot the engineer, with the rod gun, and set it on fire, because I didn't like Veronica Dare.

You know, if it weren't for those Foxtel-on-Xbox commercials, I never would have realised that I was supposed to use my Xbox to watch crappy pay TV. But now I have a problem. I don't actually have three dimwitted, scantily-dressed friends to come around, ogle my boyfriend and coo over my shiny television. Do the friends come with the Foxtel package? This would explain why you're charging $20 a month. Surely people aren't paying that amount purely for the privilege of watching several dozen channels of lukewarm American sitcoms, complete with commercials. 

I'm really excited about Kinect though, since the existing Xbox controller doesn't fit in my girly little hands.

Sincerely,

Jayne."

2 days on the wagon.

January 14, 2011 - Have nice nails

I can eat whole raw lemons. They are delicious. For this reason, those bottles of bitter-tasting stuff you  can buy to paint on your nails to stop the biting have no effect on me. You might as well make it chocolate-flavoured. I wouldn't eat that.

Instead I am going to use an overwhelming force of sheer willpower to stop biting them, and also to start doing all those nail-type things I read about in magazines. Filing them. Pushing back cuticles. Buffing, too, I guess. I will be able to go to a beautician without fear she will recoil in horror at seeing my mutilated little hand-stumps.

Unlike most of my resolutions this one has an incentive, whereby if I can go a whole month keeping my damn hands away from my teeth, Imma gon get me a fancy manicure, with polish and everything. I'll keep a count down the bottom of each post.

P.S. The bird is the word.

1 day on the wagon.

January 13, 2011 - Remember to floss

Because dentists need love too.

Yesterday I ordered a box of home-delivered local fruit and vegetables. It arrived today and it is the size of a small car. I am baking a carrot cake to try to make a dent in my carrot collection. I have three fruit bowls now. I could open a juice bar.

I put a bunch of the onions in the slowcooker with five pounds of pork. This should work out well.

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like Darth Vader?

January 12, 2011 - Buy handmade

I am lucky that my city has an excellent farmers' market. They have lovely things like olive oil and fresh coffee and big wodges of Brie. One time I was there I went to buy flowers and I wound up being just short of change and so I went to put them back and the lady said "no, keep them, just fix it up next time." Which I did. My point being, you can't do things like that at Woolworths.

On the subject of handmade - look at this mother-effin' challah, right here:

That's right Baker's Delight you can just sod off now. I got this.

To celebrate my handmade pledge I went to Blackbird Corner and bought many things. It was FOR THE BLOG you see. Especially the book of iron-on transfers with a distinct unicorn-and-rollerskates theme.

January 11, 2011 - Feed the piggy bank

I am going to save all my gold coins and put them in my piggy bank. When it is full I will spend them on something awesome like this nifty coffee drip thing we had at a Vietnamese restaurant.

I don't want my silver coins taking up room in the piggy bank but I have found a way to dispose of them by using all my twenty-cent pieces to pay for groceries using the self checkout at Coles. It takes a while but I am still quicker than the people who try to self-serve a whole trolley full of groceries including the fruit and vegetables you have to weigh. Those people kind of suck.