Escape (the Australia Day long weekend)

After all of this, I felt claustrophobic and depressed when we came back to our apartment and it's cluttered balcony. The only nature we have here is a very determined infestation of moths and three pot plants in various states of senescence. I am sure the mint is not recoverable so really we only have two plants.

I feel like I am surrounded by stuff. Stuff without a place to be stored. Stuff with limited purpose.

I am more determined than ever to convert the store into a place for environmentally connected products. Things that are beautiful and useful. Things that last.  More determined too, to get rid of some of the build up in my house of abandoned craft efforts and small toys and clothing I don't fit and CDs of who knows what (why so many? and where did they all come from??) and the plaque caused by having too many hobbies.

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This year I have been taking time every day to write down at least one thing that I am grateful for. It has made for a very happy year so far, though I recognise that it is still stressful and not without aggravation - I see every day something that I can hold onto and love and today I am grateful in hindsight for learning how to use a cameras manual settings (Thanks again, Analiese) and even though I am a complete noob, I am grateful for these moments - captured and filed - and attached to memories that are full of the sounds, and the smells, and the stories that go with these visual moments. 

And this face. I love this face... (these faces I suppose I should say)

Eleanor and Eleanor

I read a book.

An 832 page monstrous book, and it was wonderful.
Not just because I liked the book (which I did) but because I feel like I have accomplished something. I read very fast, and have a tendency to abandon books if they can't hold me attention or if they are too long (this one is very long) my interest also wanes when I read books that wax too lyrical in descriptive prose, so to finish a book this size and in this style is unheard of. I like hearing characters voices and seeing their actions, and though Catton described all of her characters, the firmest picture I have in my mind of all of them is of their characters and personalities rather than the detains of their dress or particulars of their height or even hair colour. I can't go past a mystery though, and after forging though all the clues that were collected in the first (and longest) part of the book I chewed through the rest of it, keen to know what had happened, to whom.

I haven't reviewed a book since high school I think, or even before then, so I don't know that I am especially qualified to do so - so I won't. If you have read it and have an opinion of it, then share it with me, because I am full of opinions, and I loved how several details were left out of the resolution - leaving it up to us to decide what may have happened.

The thing that I loved the most though, about this whole book reading adventure - was that I went looking for this book because Eleanor is my name too, and Eleanor Catton was born the same year as me, and while she wasn't born in New Zealand she works there now, in Auckland where I was born - and I like to see my peers (if I may presume to call her my peer) succeed. Especially ones called Eleanor. 
The book is full of mystical themes like pre-destiny, fate, astrological connection, and so as I read it tickled me to think that it had been something that I was meant to do.

In any case. I am glad that I have finished it and can at last move on, knowing what happened to Emery Staines, and Anna Wetherell, and that poor bastard Crosbie Wells (though I probably as most sympathetic to Mr Sook...) I started reading in November and 'The Luminaries' can probably be pointed to as being the chief reason why my NANOWRIMO attempt this year was so pathetic - though that's not entirely honest of me to say.

This isn't a usual blog post for me, but it has been so long since I posted anything I thought that I should. I have been re-doing everything here, and on the shops website for a relaunch in March. It's nice to do some non shop related things.