Flip Side

Five things which are irking me today:

1. My ear is threatening to secede from my head. Seriously. I'm suffering some sort of wierd flap-between-my-head-and-my-ear disease (scientific name: FBMHAMED) which must bear a close relation to SMRD. The end result is a painful behind-my-ear cut thingie, which oozes and crusts and is in general pretty feral. I'm just glad it's not visible to the average person. The worst bit (besides it just being utterly gross) is that it HURTS LIKE A BIOTCH when DH swabs it with an alcohol wipe (to be rid of said crustiness.) True love, that is - wiping clean your wife's crusty ear cut.

2. I have now proven that it is quite impossible to leave work, find my car, drive to school, find a parking spot, pay for parking, walk back to school, change uniforms, grab my knife kit and other paraphernalia, and be prepared to start the prep for a night of paying customers in the 30 minutes I have to do all of this. Oh, and then stand there for 6 hours while the morons around you need 3 HOURS to prep for ONE dish, when you need less than 30 minutes. And the morons are making salad.

3. The inefficiency of my workplace. Disclaimer: I love my job and (most) of the people there and etc etc etc. Disclaimer over: I hate the fact that they throw away thousands of dollars of food, have NO standard recipes (or if they do, nobody seems to use them), can't seem to get their ordering right...you get the idea. Makes me want to scream, "You people have NO idea!" Then I remember how much they pay me, and that I almost never start work before 7am, and I think, "Bugger it. Be inefficient. Gives me more work to do."

4. I am a person who likes her own space. I find that a couple of times a day I just need "quiet time" - a few minutes to just decompress. DH is working from home, which means he is always here. While I adore him - with him here it's very hard to get that decompression time. He is GREAT about leaving me to my own (to blog, read, pee, whatever) - but I am finding it hard not having that time to myself, as in TOTALLY ALONE. As a result it's making me less than loving to him - for something which is not his fault - and I feel guilty about that. With the kids coming home earlier (and me often picking them up on the way home from work), alone decompress time is getting harder to come by. As a result I feel like a very wound-up spinning top and sadly DH is bearing the brunt of that.

5. The fact that I went to Google "Top Chef" (see #3 below) and I inadvertently found out who wins this season. I hate that!

Here are five things which are totally making my life worth living:

1. Twice in one week I've eaten at Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder. Once for breakfast, once for brunch which moseyed into lunch and then a cheese platter and then afternoon tea (yes, really). The food was fab, the service brilliant and the company was indulgent - in both cases female chefs I admire and adore and who don't mind my loud incessant talking.

2. My digital camera is back! Photos of food and experiences and kids and life and probably my ugly mug coming soon.

3. The return of Top Chef to cable TV. Season Two is now airing here in Australia. I *heart* this show. Especially since I think I could compete in it....and while I'm not good enough to win, I'm good enough to look cute on TV. Plus I'm glad they got rid of Katie-Lee Joel. We hate her because a) she stole the Piano Man from under my nose, and b) a more wooden TV host you have never seen.

4. The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is coming. I might not make it to any of the events (I want to, I need to, I should...) but it just reminds me of how much of a foodie city this is.

5. Again on food, a few mornings ago I had the last skerrick of my Mom's Cafe Elite which she left behind. I'm not a coffee drinker, but every once in a while I like a taste of home so I have some of this. Finishing it off put me into a strange, temporary depression so on the way home from school I swung into Alex's - the local Jewish/Israeli supermarket thingie. There I was met with my childhood - products like Achla Hummus, Krembo, Bissli of several varieties, Bamba...a veritable cornucopia of yummy, fattening, wonderful Israeli stuff. It made me feel SO MUCH better, especially since I bought some to bring home. I *heart* Israeli convenience food. Nobody does strange unhealthy snack food as well as they do, with the possible exception of the Japanese.

So what's irking/keeping you alive this week?