i have spent a chunk of the weekend watching twenty years of oprah. i have a lot to be grateful for. the thing about oprah is we are very similar. like me, she was deeply moved by princess diana's life and her passing. and she mentions it at every opportunity. and she asks the hard questions that everyone wants to know the answers to. like how she asked lisa marie if she ever had sex with michael jackson. the answer was a surprising yes.

i've done other stuff besides watch oprah. but i can't really remember it. i'll stick to the highlights:

• chris brown and rihanna at the tsb area. chris brown is cute. rihanna is beautiful. and they both know how to put on a show. i suspect a lot of training and rehersal on their parts. highlight of the night was the encore performance of umbrella, where they dueted. however, this didn't stop me wondering when either chris brown or rihanna were going to kill it like ice cube. it never happened. note to self: buy shares in supre and fake tan. this is what all the girls - and there were thousands - were wearing.
• brideshead revisited. too much of the girl characters, not enough of the boy characters - but still quite a lovely relationship between sebastian and charles. 7/10
• young @ heart - i cried at one point, but basically this documentary about a group of 70+ singers who reinterpret more modern songs had all the character in the world, but as a documentary it wasn't great. worth seeing just for the performances at the end. and for louie. 7/10
• rain of the children - i avoided seeing this until now. the life of puhi, an 80 year old woman from tuhoe, is retraced. and it plays like a love letter from vincent ward to her, twenty eight years after her death. the movie is proof that history repeats. 9/10.
• my nephews are in town. ice cream outside the zoo is my new favourite activity.
• i am going to a ball on tuesday, so had to buy a new dress. think red chiffon. needless to say, i keep pulling it out of my wardrobe just to admire and pet it. i hope i am as much of a hit in real life as i am in my imagination.
  

i feel like a playboy bunny that has been picked out of the mansion and now has to find a new place to live. oh, hold on .... that was a movie i saw tonight. 4/10.

although, i do actually feel a bit like that. tomorrow my secondment ends. and even though i have been tempted to turn to prayer to make this day come more quickly, tonight i got yelled at over the phone because obviously i'm on call 24/7 and it made me feel a little retarded and like i needed to stick around to redeem myself. plus i got a present and a card so sweet that made me want to cry. being kicked out of the mansion is making me all emotional.

don't cry for me though. because i'm making plans to go to miami in november. to art deco it up with the cuban hotties and hulk hogan.

hello all you hulkamaniacs out there. are you living by the three demandments? if not i'm gonna bring my atomic leg drop and make you hurt just like you were rowdy roddy piper and it was 1989 all over again.

actually, that picture of hulk has helped no end. i'm down right chirpy again. which hopefully means i'm ready to start on my ambitious craft project: making a dress out of my business cards. if it takes more than ten minutes though i cannot guarantee it will hold my attention. wish me luck.

to start... a treat. the cutest thing you have ever seen.



when i imagine my life as a movie it always ends up a five part australian mini-series from the eighties. a bunch of loosely tied together memories with burnt earth in the background. and a bit earnest.

opening memory: eating kfc at my aunts house where i stayed each year between christmas and new year and how i always got homesick. and waking up at six am to go and clean the wainui pool as my holiday job. but hello i was seven.... not so much cleaning as playing.

rewind to the first time i saw the sound of music. fast forward to how i liked grease 2 infinitely better than grease until i was like fifteen.


rewind to having my photo taken by a professional photographer (think pixiefoto) when i was about two and a half and fastforward to my brother and sister having to share their equivalent of a pixiefoto with me and how even then it was just mum and dad's friend taking a photo of us with their flashest curtains as the backdrop.


long sequence, some kind of time series of how i used to turn the tree in our backyard into a house with the base of the tree being the kitchen and the two bedrooms being the two best climbing branches.


rewind to chasing butterflies in our neighbour's garden without asking and hre telling me off.

rewind more to how krispa biscuits were the best treat in the world.

fastforward to my dad trying to get me to help him catch a mouse and how it ran over my foot to get away and how I HAVE NEVER EVER RECOVERED. and probably never will. oh well.

fastforward to being babysat by a teenager who wore black nail polish and was obviously the living end. and arranging the kylie, jason and bros posters on my bedroom wall which took a whole weekend.

rewind to how i was certain the minister at church was god cos you could still hear her in the crying room even though you couldn't hear anyone else and how she used to give me books about christ every birthday. until mum stopped going to church. which meant i only got like four of five books out of god.

anyway, today i've been at pete's gravestone unveiling. that may explain why today i've been thinking about my life movie a lot. pete's life movie was played in highlight form today. and it was pretty awesome. he features in my life movie too. with the chocolate eclairs he made for his daughters birthday parties and the paua fritters he made us whenever there was a special occassion at mum and dad's. which most recently was my sister's wedding. with how gave sloppy kisses that you were best to avoid and with his 40th birthday in wainuiomata, which was one of the highlights of my tweenage life. and with how he made me include him in the plans for my dad's 50th birthday and with how he adored my dad, which is just as well cos i adore my dad too.

anyway, it was a good day, and even though my eldest nephew literally fell in a rubbish bin head first at the cemetary and then got hyped up on triffle and chocolate custard squares i remembered how awesome it is that my family all live nearby. tomorrow at ten pin bowling though that nostalgic love could disappear....

ps: the cutest photo you ever saw is of my youngest nephew teaks on christmas day in my living room.