The Secret Life of Bebe

Now I don’t want to be repetitive, but I want to talk about hockey again…

I felt sick before my first full game tonight. It’s really hard to try something completely new, be really bad at it, and keep coming back for more. But this week I was a little better than last week, and next week I’ll be a bit better again.

In my life so far, I have always tried to put my all into anything I try, and I usually find that I can do well at it. It’s an unfamiliar feeling to be an absolute beginner and have no clue what I’m doing. But I am determined to get better!

And I feel so lucky that I have a really supportive team, and an awesome boyfriend who tells me I’m doing great and that he’s proud of me. I’m having so much fun and he’s right there beside me cheering me on. It’s such a good feeling.

I think my favourite painter is Vincent Van Gogh, and my favourite painting by Van Gogh is definitely Starry Night. I just love the colours and the form of this painting.

I’m listening to the Dixie Chicks on heavy rotation at the moment. I particularly like I’ll Take Care of You. I like it because it makes me think of being a mother to adult children – that I’ll always be there for them, no matter what.

For some reason, it’s set to scenes from Zena Warrior Princess. YouTube is a strange and fascinating place:

Hmm, fan fiction. I can honestly say I have never read or written any fanfic. I am simply not that kind of geek.

For those of you who don’t know, a fanfic is a story written by a fan of a book, movie or TV show. The fan-writer takes the characters and plot of the original book or show, and develops them in new and interesting ways.

When I think of fanfic, I think of Star Trek.

According to Wikipedia, Spockanalia was the first modern example of a fanfic. It was a fanzine (magazine written by fans) published from1967-69 and had four issues. I can only image what it contained…Star Trek fans can be a *little* strange.

I have to make the sad confession that I have read some of William Shatner’s TekWar series. Not exactly fanfic, but as geeky as I get. I vaguely recall that they were interesting enough, although not especially well written.

I sometimes wonder what Star Trek actors and writers must think of the fans. I suspect that William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek, quite enjoys the attention. Other than writing sci-fi novels, he attends Star Trek conventions and was involved in a documentary about the TV series. It seems to me that Star Trek is a universe of it’s own, complete with action figures, collectable trading cards, comics and fanfic.

And there we go, I made it back round to the topic in the end!

I just finished a book that I’ve been trying to read for years – Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity. Because I’ve been really struggling to read any book in the past couple of years, I got this one as an audiobook from Audible. I listened to Richard recount his life as a successful entrepreneur on my morning runs – it was a very enjoyable way to spend some quality time, just me and Richard and the cold hard road.

Like I’ve said before, I really love listening to audiobooks, and Audible is a quick, cheap and convenient way for both Stephen and I to enjoy books we would otherwise not get a chance to read. We have a subscription that gives us one audiobook of our choosing each month, and I find that’s about the right amount of time to get through a medium-sized book. We’ve even built book-listening into our weekly routine. ‘Date-Sunday’ consists of us going to our coffee place (chosen because it has comfy sofas and good cake) and listening to whatever we’ve each downloaded that month. It’s great together/apart time, and is a precious part of my week.

The book I am currently reading (or trying to!) is The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. It’s the follow-up book to one I mentioned earlier – Oryx and Crake. Broadly, it is a dystopia story, set in a time in which corporations rule, and the world is starkly divided into the haves and the have-nots. So just your standard sci-fi fare really.

But I really love the way that Atwood builds a story, and how she breathes life into her characters. I’m about a 3rd of the way in and although I love reading, and really want to sit down and absorb this book for a day or two, I just don’t seem to find the time.

Hockey, skating, dancing, running, socialising, working, eating, sleeping, wife-mother-nana-ing take up so much damn time!

Stephen and I have been on the hunt for the perfect pancake pan. We like to make pancakes together – sometimes on a Saturday for lunch with the Frompson crew, and sometimes just the two of us on a Sunday morning. We have yet to find the perfect pan for our pancakes.

A few weeks ago, Stephen found the perfect single-egg pan (photo: top right). Jealous, I want a perfect pancake pan. It needs to be small, and much shallower than a normal frying pan to make it easier to get the pancake out. And today, I thought I had a contender: it was small, round and shallow (photo: bottom left). It advertised itself as a non-stick pancake pan.

Well, I can tell you now, the advertiser LIED! We took it home and tried it out. According to Stephen (our chief pancake-maker), it is the opposite of a non-stick pan. It is a stick-to-me-like-glue pan. It’s going straight back to the store tomorrow.

We also found some fun little cooking implements – a pancake flipper and an egg spatula. The little egg spatula is great, just what we needed. The pancake flipper was also an EPIC fail. It MELTED onto the pan. It’s going back tomorrow too. And until we find something better, we will continue to cook our pancakes in the perfect egg pan.

I also burned the top off my left index finger with the stupid pancake pan, so I hate it extra. If it wasn’t so expensive, I would destroy it with my wood-chopping axe.

Every photo of me ends up on Facebook within 8 minutes of the event, so I had trouble finding something original for this challenge.

Here it is: me getting my eyelashes tinted. I took Bronwen with me, she was fascinated by the whole process (and took a million pictures).

I have taken literally thousands of photos in the past few years. I hardly know where to start!

Because most of the pictures I post are of people, I decided that this one should be something that isn’t a person. That narrows my selection somewhat. Here is my choice:

I took it in November 2009. It’s the view from about half way up Conical Hill, at Hanmer Springs. I have been to Hanmer in November the last four years. I love this place, and I love this view.

Can you just image getting to this point on your trek upward, sitting on the bench to rest, and taking in the view? Just beautiful.

This picture was taken at the beginning of 1990. I was 17 and my son Antony was about 16 months old, and I am also holding my sister’s son Scott, who was 12 months old. I look ridiculously young and felt completely grown up.

Wyatt is now a little older than Antony was in this picture, and his mother Grace is the same age as I was here. Funny how life works.