Sometime this week, 34 assorted boxes of Stuff land from the UK. It’s the last bits of Tobermory’s personal possessions; plus an Ikea bookshelf and assorted gubbins, a Christmas present for me.

This will, of course, cause problems of the storage variety. Some of them will be solved fairly readily (via the construction of said Ikea bookshelf and it’s use in my craft room). Some of them will take longer, and require systematic reorganisation of the house.

I figure we might be done by Christmas. 2015.

Still, Operation 2012 continues as best we can. The craft room has been reorganised a couple of times (pending addition of epic bookshelf). Tobermory spontaneously suggested repainting, lying in bed a few nights ago. Partly in a “let’s make this house OURS, dammit” vein, partly in a “the wallpaper in the bedroom is horrible” vein… I don’t really care why, I’m just thrilled he’s finally decided that we need to repaint! I’ve been wanting to repaint since we moved in. Although, admittedly, I’ve only really had ideas about what to paint the place in the last year or so (and we’re on year four in the house now).

Four years. How did that happen?

I have other plans afoot. I’ve had an itch for months to recover a chair or something for said craft room. Having seen patchwork chairs on the internets, that idea took root. I finally found a chair in the style I wanted on TradeMe – and very sadly, it came with a two seater couch. All for $50! The material cost – I’m doing this properly, I’ve bought upholstery-weight fabric for parts of it, and the patchwork will be interfaced and stitched onto upholstery-weight calico for strength – is somewhat more extensive. But still, $300 for a two seater couch and armchair that I really love – at least, love in the abstract so far – is nothing to sneeze at.

The couch has the feline seal of approval. Tigra has adopted it as Hers, and is found there every night at present. Sweet little cat.

I don’t get to start on my project for a few weeks, though. I’m visiting Nay next weekend; then after that, going down to Wellington for the Salsa Congress. I am both nervous and excited by this prospect. Still, it’s all booked and paid for, I have clothes and shoes and makeup… all I have to do is get on the plane and convince myself to have fun.

Easy, right…?

Amongst the other things in my Foodbox this week, I had a 10kg box of cooking-quality plums. So far, we’ve had an epic plum crumble and eight jars of jam.

I’m on the road again next week, for work. This time, I’m fairly close to my hometown – so I’m driving down in my own car (although will be expensing the mileage), and I’ll swing past and visit Mum Friday night, Nana Saturday, and home that afternoon/evening. I’m looking forward to the trip – it’s awhile since I’ve seen Nana, and it’s an opportunity to drop off some of the ridiculous amounts of jam/sauce I’ve managed to collect in the pantry lately. Fortunately both Mum and Nana actually like jam, as 10kg of plums turns into a truly ridiculous amount of jam, even after I set some aside for plum crumble. We’re going to be eating this all year.

Tobermory’s taken over breadmaker duties lately. He makes a good loaf of bread! This is helpful, admittedly largely as a delivery mechanism for more jam. I also make my own yoghurt, and tend to make plain unsweetened yoghurt and flavour it myself. I suspect plum jam is going to feature highly over the next few batches.

I bought a clock for the snug a few weekends ago. The inflatable one I’ve had since high school gave up the ghost at long last – the clock mechanism, not the inflatable bit, surprisingly enough – so I bought a round, equally bright yellow, clock to replace it.

I have not been allowed to throw away the box.

NEWSFLASH – Candy and Tigra both sat on the couch with me last night. They were actually butt-to-butt, snuggling, beside me, and both purring. Astonishingly awesome.

I missed a ballroom class yesterday. I was absolutely shagged after work, and half-forgot and half-just-gave-up on it. I’m not enjoying ballroom the same way I enjoy some of my other classes; and it’s also quite hard to learn alongside zouk. Zouk is a lot more … flowing? The way you use the body is almost completely opposed to the careful way you should be moving for ballroom. And I’m not a good enough dancer to manage both. And I love zouk, so – zouk.

Also, I’ve inexplicably hurt my left foot. I was walking down the hallway on Sunday and my big toe joint just went “crack-pop” at me, which was a) quite painful b) somewhat sub-optimal for dancing c) quite painful. It’s mostly OK, but I do have to be careful not to tread too heavily on that joint.

I got the breadmaker out on Monday night. Lovely light wheatmeal bread – rose like a champ, hit the top of the breadmaker and sunk. The loaf is thus mostly square, but oh it’s delicious. Tobermory and I have eaten most of it – breakfast and lunch for two days isn’t bad going for a loaf, though.

Plus, cheap. Cheap + tasty = win. Next on my list: sweetcorn and capsicum bread, and/or “whatever looks interesting in the next Foodbox” vege loaf.

Operation 2012 continues. I am unsubscribing from all the Daily Deal websites, and other assorted mailouts and junk that come through my inbox on a daily basis. Aside from anything else, that should reduce temptation to buy Random Unnecessary Shit That Clogs Up My House.

This is day nine of the eleven-day workweek, six days of which were spent out of town. It’s lovely coming home to husband cuddles, and super-affectionate Boomer in the Cone of Shame, and snuggly cuddly Candy and – for the first time in years – Tigra adopting the lapcat position. All three of them are locked indoors – it’s far easier to manage than trying to keep Captain Satellite Dish indoors on his own.

Turns out, he knows how to operate the latches on the cat flap. Tobermory realised this when he had to extract a stuck Cone of Shame with attached Boomer from the halfway-through-the-cat-flap-and-stuck position on Monday. Duct tape has solved that particular problem. We then had to shut the last couple of open windows in the house. Boomer worked out how to open the laundry door and shimmy out the laundry room window – and he knows how to stick his claws in the window screens and wiggle until they pop open. That cat is too damned smart.

Feline relations in the house seem pretty casual right now. Tigra and Candy haven’t been fighting, which is a pleasant change. Boomer is sleeping on the bed – which is fine, until 7kg of cat elects to take position on your pelvis for half an hour, and you wake up in agony as he tries to knead your hip joint into submission, or as I like to call it, dislocation. He’s a happy little buddy, Cone of Shame and all.

I’ve returned to zouk classes this week – or more accurately my teachers have resumed for the year. Toward the end of last year, I learned the move suicidio. In theory, anyway. In practice, I couldn’t get it right. Couldn’t lock my core in the right place, couldn’t balance correctly, fell out of the move onto my knees or wobbled in the middle and landed on my arse. Monday night? NAILED it. It was the BEST feeling.

I may have slightly overcommitted myself. Mondays, going forward, will be zumba and zouk (improvers/intermediate). Tuesdays, ballroom (which includes waltz, chacha, foxtrot, and rock’n'roll). Thursdays, salsa, which I’m now doing at intermediate level. Then there are social dances on Thursday nights, Sunday afternoons, and Sunday nights. Not that I go to all of them. Or possibly more accurately, not that I go to any of them, except on rare occasions. Still, I should. I love the social nights, when I do go, and the more I go, the more people I know, so the more dances I’ll get when I do go.

In June, there’s a holiday weekend, and a salsa congress in Wellington that I REALLY want to go to. It’ll cost me the better part of a grand – tickets, hotel, flights. Better start saving now, huh?

I’m out of town this week – work. As such, Murphy, who is a cruel bastard, has ensured one of my boys is sick. Not Tobermory this time, but Boomer. Poor little bugger has been in a fight, or walked on something, and has an infected, leaky, foot. And yes, he’s been to the vet. Poor wee sausage.

I’m out of town as part of the deployment of a big project at work. The project manager is a wonderful woman, I think I want to be her when I grow up. Today, after the training sessions that I’m there to run, she (out of the blue!!) said “let’s go swimming!”

What the hell, right, why not. So we went to buy her a pair of togs – I’m an over prepared freak and bought mine with me – and bought towels.

Although I haven’t swum for five years – in fact it might be closer to six – I haven’t lost it. I wasn’t breaking speed records or anything, but I did a very creditable set of laps. I lost count somewhere after 20, and as it was a 33 meter pool, I’ve swum at least 600m. I doubt I hit the full kilometer, but I am, I feel justifiably, proud of myself.