other stuff not renovating - what there's other stuff ??

6 things you may like to do that have nothing to do with renovating anything.....except maybe your heart and your music collection

1. do yourself a favour and check out Gotye's fantastic video mash up of Youtube covers of his own song

2. go and see the movie The Sapphires and listen to the incredible Jessica Mauboy singing What a Man

3. listen to one of my favourite singers  Sia    I go to sleep

4. check out Clairy Browne and the Bangin' Rackettes, great Melbourne band, singing Baby Caught the Bus

5. visit The World Needs More Love Letters  - a sweet and touching concept and maybe write your own and leave it somewhere to be found

6. and while you're writing love letters visit Bentlily because the world needs more poetry and sign up to receive a poem by Samantha Reynolds every day in your inbox just like this one

It rained on her a lot

When I am gone
someone will read all these poems
and think

it rained on her a lot

so let it be known
I love the way it sounds on the cabin roof
like hearing my old tap dance class
from down the hall

and the way the soil here is thick and heavy
like a sponge
like a happy drunk
a million hopeful saplings
digging their feet into the pulpy darkness
dreaming of sky

and all the oily slugs and worms
I like their languor
rolling slowly across the sopping grass
there is a serenity to their journey
a suggestion that we are
in this submerged moment
quite safe

so when I am gone
when someone reads all these poems
let them think

it rained on her a lot
what luck
what a wet
juicy
life. 

wishing you all wet juicy lives

Katerina x

liquid amber ain't liquid gold

dear people living in houses that don't require renovation
Yes you can sit back and read this with a air of contentedness....smugness even....it must be lovely living in a cosy house that has a kitchen that doesn't pre-date the war, and I'm talking World War 1, to have windows without SLAYER sprayed in red on them

and to have 'nice' bedrooms not alleged 'bedrooms' that would be fit for the remake of The Bride of Frankenstein.

the scene of many award winning horror movies

I am pleased to say that the Psycho Room setting of the Frankenstein nuptials is no more, and amazingly once the alleged 'curtains' were removed and summarily destroyed, sunlight streamed in and the room was in shock. 

Back in the front yard I was learning all about liquid amber trees. Hitherto I have been blissfully ignorant of liquid amber trees. It sounds like such a pretty name......liquid amber....sounds golden and gorgeous......oh you have a liquid amber in your front yard......how lovely for you.....they're beautiful in autumn........no they're not! they're evil, spreading their enormous roots under the house and through every underground pipe you have...silently wreaking havoc while you're distracted scrubbing SLAYER off the leadlight windows. My renovation guru George Ace Handyman nods knowingly when I tell him,' Ah yes liquid amber.....you'll have to get rid of that luv before it destroys the foundations.' 

Ah the things I'm learning, all about Liquidambar styraciflua  and the musical works of Slayer and Slipknot. All in a days renovation.

from under the branches of the liquid amber tree

Katerina xx