Today I committed one of the most heinous automobile care crimes ever. Well, it seemed like that once I got home and confessed.

I was aware that my tyres were in need of pumping up, but kept putting it off because it was too scary and time consuming an undertaking. I'd never done it before, only watched as others did it quickly. However, realizing that it is just one of those things that need doing - like filling up with diesel, "arrgh" even dumb girls who don't know what an onomatopoeia is can do that, then so can I. - I went on the mission to fill the tyres after a rather uneventful morning at the library.

I did the normal tyre thing, unscrew - try not to loose the screw cap - stick the air thing on to the hole thing and wait for the beep. I won't tire you with all the details. [sorry, couldn't help that one...] I wondered why the second tyre was taking so very long to fill up. I looked down at it and gasped. It was flat as! Because I hadn't bothered taking any notice of any real flat tyres in the past I wasn't sure about the level of flatness my tyre was at. So I drove home.

That was my crime, driving on the flat tyre.

How could I?!
It was only a four minute drive, my logic was that it would surely hurt less than me ringing up Dad and all the fuss that would ensue.
But apparently I was wrong. Thankfully Dads and brothers aren't so harsh when it is revealed that ignorance was the cause of the misdemeanor. They changed the tyre for me and then discovered that I am a useless person to care for cars in yet another way. My warrant of fitness had run out [months over, gulp!].

[This isn't actually a pic of my tyre, thanks google.]

It's not officially "my" car, so it had never occurred to me to check those kind of things. I'm not making any excuses I'm just telling the plain truth. I think all these issues stem from my attitude towards cars. Although I think they can be rather pretty in some circumstances, or even very, very fun to drive; I still only think of them as a vehicle. They are just my vehicle to get somewhere, it's just a thing that you use and it serves you. It's breaking down or having issues never really crossed my mind because it just takes me from A to B, it just does it's job I ask nothing more.
"Just work car! Or, if you are going to break down make sure you give me full warning like a computer generally would."
The problem is that I just can't detect those warnings. I don't have a good person to car relationship. On my little drive home with the flat tyre I concentrated, gripping the steering wheel and feeling with all my might. But based on that feeling I wouldn't have been able to tell you if all my tyres were pumped up or flat, let alone one being so flat it bowed to the pressure of fingers.

I think it's weird because I can usually tell when things don't work/how they work or whatever, but with cars I am at a total loss.
I was going to say that things don't usually break down for me, but then I remembered that Mum's stick blender broke [it started smoking] in my hands this afternoon. Augh, perhaps I just break things? What a horrible thought! Perhaps my problem is that I just don't care enough to take notice or take care of things unless their breaking down would put anyone in danger, so I push them so hard or let them get in such a bad state that they just break. How about that for a hypothesis? [Yes I know that flat tyres cause crashes.]

Are you a lame car person like me? Or do you have an innate sense of exactly when to change the oil and what a cam belt is? Any embarrassing stories? Please tell, it would make me feel so much better.

Today it is raining and definitely not summery weather. I am wearing a jersey and struggling to resist the wintry urge to put on a pair of socks.
The question of what to have for lunch is an easy one in this weather; rice risotto. So at twenty minutes to twelve I put on some sweet Beethoven and looked for an onion. I know that mum is growing shallots and spied a bulb thing on the bench. Thinking that it would be a nice little bit of onion and not too extravagant [although I really love big chunks of onion] I peeled the outer layer of dirty skin off it. "Strange!" I thought, "Shallots must have a slightly different texture and... smell... to them." I chopped it up into fry-able slices.
Overcome with the lack of onion smells which weren't wafting off the chopping board I second guessed that I had actually been attacking an onion. I asked the little sisters who giggled and said that it might be a bulb. Visions of someone handing over some precious bulbs as a gift to my mum came into my head. Oh no! What if it was a lovely lilly or something that I had just destroyed!
Although I was feeling guilty, I ran outside giggling at the strangeness of the situation.

It turns out that I almost ate a daffodil bulb for lunch. Thankfully it wasn't precious, mum had apparently rescued it from a bad spot in the garden.

What a relief. But I still feel very stupid. But hey, who knew that onions and daffodils looked that similar!

Here is the rice risotto that I had for lunch. I managed to find an onion after all and those black bits are it... yup, I burnt them which is why the rice has that healthy looking orangy glow about it.

Hey, have a guess at what these are:


Can you feel my excitement!?

Clocking Jane Austen.

Did you know that teachers don't know everything? That they aren't worth more to your quiz team than a brainy laborer who reads newspapers?
Did you also know that librarians don't know everything about books? That some so called 'book worms' haven't read every piece of classic literature? They may not have even read any Tolstoy! Or Scott! Or even Dickens!

I recently told a friend that I hadn't read all of Jane Austen. I have been working my way through them, having read some of them several times I managed to read Mansfield Park for the first time this January. But alas, I am still to conquer Emma. I have no problem with the quality, or even perhaps what some might call difficulty of any of her work, it's just that I haven't managed to get around to it. We don't own Emma and I haven't been organized enough to order it at the library and then have the time... ah, the excuses.

I'm not really an avid reader, not anymore anyway. I used to read heaps of books, when I went to the library every fortnight I would come back with a stack of about four-five novels. I would generally read them all. Not to mention I was lying down most of the time back then, I kept getting sick. Once I was sick and had nothing to read. Mum went to the library for me, sadly I didn't trust her to get anything quality. She arrived back with The secret garden. Although I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, after that I made sure that either my shelf or library bag were sufficiently stocked to last me through such circumstances.
I first read Hamlet when I was very sick, it was my most enjoyable Shakespeare experience ever!

I am totally off track, I was about to admit that the only Dickens I have read is A Christmas carol.

Are you sufficiently shocked?


[I wasn't counting listening to Great Expectations being read out on tape, I think listening to something isn't the same as reading it for yourself. You don't get as much out of listening, you can't stop and re-read the page again.]

So, there I've said it. My Dickens knowledge is very limited.

Have you recovered yet?

Bleak House is on my 'to read' list, which is more likely to grow in size this year than diminish. My course books take up most of my reading energy. Emma is currently on the top of my list though, I really want to 'clock' Jane Austen and finish it all so that I actually know what I'm talking about. After Emma it's Lady Susan, do you think that book should count?

gluten-freesia

Sometimes people in my family say it's unfair, as they look greedily at my seemingly delicious food. They are only jealous because they are only able to imagine how the normal gluten version tastes. Their gluten mindsets would say that my lame versions of the wheaten food could only possibly taste like the original. They don't. But the thing is that I don't care, well, not that much. The idea that my versions might taste something like the wheat version is amazing and enough to make me enjoy the food that I have made.
Today at lunch, which was just a few minutes ago, little sister and big brother were complaining that I get to eat much nicer food than them. Some rash words used were "greedy," "unfair," "glutenfreeisms."
I could have been really angry, I felt like throwing maize cornflour goo somewhere. But then I remembered how I felt when my big sister became gluten-free a few years ago. She got to make toasted cheesy nachos in the oven at 9pm and eat it in front of us. I remember being amazingly annoyed, I was only allowed one piece. But I didn't realize that I could go and make myself cheese on toast. I didn't understand that she had to work hard to make her food nice, or at least seem nice.
There is something strange that happens when you lie in bed thinking, the day before your world changes into a gluten-free one. You have two options of what approach you are going to have to your gluten-free world:

1: complain, eat sawdust bread and tell everyone that it tastes like sawdust. You can feel amazingly sorry for yourself yet do nothing to fix the problems. You can eat one flavor of instant rice because it's the only one you like. You don't even put veggies with it.

2: Try, try and try some more to eat food that makes you feel good. Keep trying, but this time try not to complain, no matter how upset you are about your porridge-like pancakes. Laugh at the flops and eat it anyway but with a bit of cheese on top.

I made up my mind to be like option two. So when the others were saying I was greedy, I tried to control myself and only said that I am sometimes excessively jealous of them and their food. I explained that if I want to eat something nice, I have to stop my study at 11:15 or 11:30 to make my lunch when they can just sit down and have the toast brought to them as soon as they sit at the table.
I get comments about how delicious my food looks and how jealous they are all the time. Sometimes I just respond with a "good!" and a look which means; 'fair enough, I'm jealous of your marmite on toast.'

These two pics are of my recently discovered homemade [make the dough, roll it out...] pasta.
Gluten-free ravioli with spinach and cheese filling. Then today's lentil lasagna. It was delicious, but not as good as the gluten version. It looked great though and big brother managed to make me trade some for a glass of coke.