this is hardcore

what have i gotten myself into this time? it's my last day of uni break (still havent read all that stuff about the aztecs) and i find myself surrounded by fiends floozies and fuzzballs!!!

i'm house sitting.


two years ago i spent the week of my birthday housesitting for my longlostsecondcousin Lisa and her husband Daniel. (they became unlost about two years before that) at that stage they had Toya the Tonkinese cat, who was small and cuddly, and Jarvis Cocker, the cker Spaniel who was (still is) even prettier than his namesake.

This time though, there's Betty Cocker, who is a week shy of five months. And, in the words of Daniel "a fucking firecracker." So that's three animals I'm being chased around by, and chasing.

It's 10.30am, Lisa & Daniel left at 7. I think I heard them cackling as they left.

Because two pets are sweet, they curl up with you when you're drunk, they jump on your new tattoo and dont mind when you call them rude names, they play fetch and steal your underwear off the line right as you're trying to introduce them to your boyfriend. Two pets are sweet.

Three pets is bloody hard work. About five minutes after their parents left, the pets decided to gang up on me, spill my coffee, Betty peed EVERYWHERE, Toya managed to escape and Jarvis has been wandering around sighing like some sort of romantic poet. So I've spent the morning cleaning up after an excitable puppy, trying to entice a dumb cat back inside and keeping the existential dog away from my philosophy books. I'm under no illusion that this is a holiday. It's not. It's three weeks of work.

On the plus side, being away from home means I can wear as many patterned things as I like at once, and my mother, sister & grandmother can't say anything. To prove the point, I'm currently wearing my new shirt, which has been christened The Boyfriend Shirt because its a big manstyled white thing with black spots. I was going to call it Chris or Daniel, to make the point that all my friends have boyfriends called Daniel or Chris, but that was odd. And on my bottom half, I'm wearing the Confetti skirt, which my mother bought for me yesterday. Photos and story soon. I have a new dress and a new cardigan too, both of which go some way towards satisfying my current 1940s obsession. My mother's so lovely when she thinks I'm being abandoned. Lucky thing gets to go to Europe next week, I'm jealous. Then again, she's going with my father....

Oh dear. I don't speak cat, and Toya's yowling.


GOALS FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS
1. keep up with uni
2. learn how to do victory curls, pin curls and rag curls
3. use the oven at least once, instead of living on soup and coffee
4. keep the pets alive. that one's probably important, yeah?