Arriba!

Okay, I’m going to confess something: I’m not sure which sound I should be making for Morocco. Instinctually “Arriba” feels both appropriate and completely wrong. I guess this means I shouldn’t be wearing a sombrero either. (Side note: I tried to write “misfitting” and the Mac, being all ignorant, corrected it to “mishitting” which I read as “mis-shitting.” Tee hee).

Aaaanyway, the main thing to take away from the first paragraph is that tomorrow night Mark and I are flying to London Stansted (where we’ll spend a lovely five hours touring the airport and sleeping on seats) before heading to Morocco. Arrrrrriba!

Sorry, again.

I shall report on how we both came down with a terrible case of something unpronounceable when we get back.

In other news – I hope you’re near the toilet because I’d hate for you to soil yourself with excitement – we are no longer homeless! We signed a lease for a two-bedroom apartment in Schwabing West today. Our landlord is all kinds of lovely and went to great lengths to explain the contract to us. We didn’t really need the explanations (our gazillion or so sub-leases have practically made us experts in the field of German property law), but it was mighty entertaining anyway. At least two of his examples involved a mysterious death in the apartment. Who knew legalities could be so much fun?

If all goes according to plan we’ll be picking up our keys on the 26^th of April and moving in promptly afterwards. If somebody could call Ikea and forewarn it about the tornado of flailing, excited limbs that are about to hit it, that would be great. 

Friendship contract; an explanation

Hey gang (aka Yuri)!

Do you remember Yuri? He’s pretty special, so you should remember him. You should also notice when he gets his hair “cut” because the extra 2mm of growth really makes a difference to the dimensions of his face

For those of you who have never in fact met Yuri, let me explain. Yuri has short dark hair. Legend has it that when grown out, it turns into a beautiful afro (although we’re still waiting to see that miracle transpire). It is the one thing that I really want from Yuri for my birthday, and just in case you’re not on board with that horrendous event, you should know that I’m turning 30 in just under 9 months. Ew.

It goes to follow that if Yuri really loved me he would grow his hair out and allow me a few moments of true happiness before I realise that my 20s are over and sink into a drunken stupor. But Yuri refuses to grow out his fabulous fuzz on the grounds that when it reaches anything beyond 7mm, it has a devastating effect on the rest of him. I believe I can best illustrate his exact argument through pictures:

Yuri with hair 7mm or shorter:

Yuri with hair longer than 7mm:

A few weeks ago I told Yuri just how much it would mean to me to see him with an afro (a proper one) for my birthday. He fell into a blind panic. Not wanting to refuse the tragic birthday girl-to-be, he did the only thing he could think of: he tried to buy me off and play Simon against me. It didn’t work. Disheartened, he sought comfort in mojito cocktails. After a couple of long, terror-filled hours he came up with another plan: he borrowed my eyeliner and lipstick and drew up a totally adorable friend contract.

It reads:

„The parties to the contract, Agnes and Yuri hereby enter into the following agreements. In consideration of Yuri’s enduring love and affection, Agnes agrees to remain friends for life notwithstanding any straight couple and children.“

He then made me sign it with a kiss (that giant red thing on the right...poor Mark). Do you know what this means? I can no longer threaten him with the termination of our friendship if he doesn’t grow an afro. Quite ingenious, really. But you know that if he loved me (really loved me) he’d do it. Right?

The silver lining

Being a freelancer comes with perks, not the least of which is hanging out in bed with my laptop in my lap (the way the inventors of its name always intended).

Still, there are a few things which are less-than-glamorous, including my wardrobe choices. I am a little ashamed to say that on some days I take a shower and then get right back into my pyjamas to save on doing laundry.

I hate laundry.

This makes no sense because I'm into clean clothes, I love the smell of laundry, and I even like the sound of the washing machine (it makes me feel productive), but there you have it.

At Block 130 I blamed my lack of enthusiasm on the fact that our washing machine was in the basement. Can you imagine? I spent several months wearing nothing but pyjamas.

Our current place has a washing machine in the bathroom and a dryer in the kitchen, which is the height of luxury. When we first moved in I patted them both fondly and heralded my plans of wearing outfits not based around trackie-dacks for the following six weeks.

“I’m going to be a changed woman,” I cackled to myself in that half-maddened way that makes Simon and Dumpling very nervous.  (Mark doesn’t get nervous, he only has two gears: “comfortable” and “uncomfortable,” and since my cackling doesn’t fall into either category it doesn't exist as far as he’s concerned.)

And yet here we are three (or is it four?) weeks later and I can assure you that my current look wouldn’t win me any graces with Rachel Zoe. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that Bjork, and possibly Peter Alexander, might be into it.

Another thing that keeps me from looking my best (ha!) is that most of my clients are in Australia, so I’m often up till the crack of dawn. This doesn’t bode well for the area directly beneath my eyes or for Dumpling, who spends whole paranoid hours pondering why I’m awake – and if it’s to catch him by surprise and turn him into a dress…or a hat.

But there is a silver lining: on those days I get to see the sun rise over Munich, and right now as the trees are recovering from a puzzling winter and heading into a (hopefully) glorious spring, I’m rather glad I’m awake. I also like hearing Dumpling discontentedly chirping to himself. He’s going to make a fabulous throw pillow.

Bombshell

Since everybody (aka three people) have been banging down my virtual door begging for photos, I shall show you stage one of going platinum:

Our lot in life

Firstly, I’d like to start this post by pointing out that you know what they say about keeping New Year’s resolutions (it don't happen, fool). And since I’m very much in favour of supporting clichés - I believe they're important for sustaining critical cultural traditions and beliefs - it would have been utterly irresponsible of me to write on every weekday in 2012. Tomorrow I plan to rent a car and park it really slowly. I'll then haphazardly smash it into a tree.

Secondly, we’re very close to being homeless (again) and have been hitting the local real estate sites pretty hard in search of a place. We want a nice inner-city apartment with a kitchen and room for a little zebra finch (and three of his best friends). You think that wouldn’t be such a big ask. Munich disagrees. Munich is of the opinion that it’s fun to make us sweat, and it would be even more fun if I got a stress-induced stomach ulcer or shaved all my hair off in a fit of panic.

Speaking of which (hair, that is, not stomach ulcers, stress or shavers), I’ve decided to go platinum blonde. The idea is to look like this by the end:

 But since I’m starting out like this:

Me according to Mark 

It has to happen in stages. Stage one happened last weekend. I am now blondish. It's strange. For those interested: thus far I’m not having any more fun, although that’s bound to change over the coming months. When it does I won't notice because I'll be busy building a submarine with windshield wipers and giggling.

What else? What else?

Oh yeah, this: 

And this: http://mlkshk.com/p/D2W7

That pretty much brings you up to date.

Also Dumpling says, “Get me out of this prison!”

Ignore him. 

The Dumpling Chronicles

On the subject of love

Dumpling is a go-getter. He goes from one end of his cage to the other and gets seeds. Ha. Ha ha ha….I’ll be here all week folks.

Seriously though, the bird has plans. Big plans.

Right now he’s looking for the love of his life; a bird with good conversation skills, a nice pair of legs and a dazzling cloaca. He hasn’t discovered the online dating space yet, but ever since we’ve moved into the new apartment he’s bumped up his singing to let the ladies in the hood know that he’s in town. And, actually, he hasn’t done too poorly. The other day he attracted a large-ish brown bird.

She wasn’t attractive or brave enough to approach our apartment, and there’s no way she would have fit in the cage, but hey it’s a start. Right? It’s certainly bolstered his spirits. We haven’t told him that he’s doomed to be alone forever.

We’re waiting for his birthday. 

He has no birthday. 

Ha! Sucks to be Dumpling. 

The other thing that Dumpling feels quite passionate about is the new seed bowl that we bought for him. It’s pretty cool. 

We’ve made a terrible mistake!

The plural for “cloaca” is “cloacae” not “cloacas”.

And now I’m all, “who’s heard us say cloacas?” (which really just means, “who do we have to kill?”)

I fear it’s quite a few people. Although maybe we can just pretend like we were saying “cloacae” the whole time. Yes, yes, that’s it; everybody just heard us wrong. It’s alright, it’s going to be allllright.

Alright, alright everything’s gonna be alright!

Alright, alright, everything’s gonna be alright!

Alright, alright, everything’s gonna be alright!

Alright, alright!

It’s really alright!

We are the seed of the new breed,

We will succeed, our time has come.

We are the new, these words are true,

Let the light of love shine through…

Whatever happened to East 17? I was quite fond of them back in the day. They had rhythm and charisma...and while I can't really recall their fashion sense, I believe something good was happening with the hair gel. Something unforgivingly 90s and vaguely hedgehog-ish, no doubt. 

Fuck it, let’s just kill everyone. 

Made me spit my drink out!