The Love of My Life

So, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, or gone on about it ad nauseum, but I'd shout it from the tree tops no matter what: I LOVE MY NUNNY!!!

(That's my grandmother, for those of you who don't speak Sarah.) She's the most beautiful, amazing, caring woman in the world. She pretty much raised my siblings and I, so I owe her so much. Unfortunately, I can't give her back the last 30ish years of her life, but I'd like to think I give back to her in other ways, like, not being as annoying and needy as I would really like to be. Don't get me wrong: I'm still incredibly annoying and needy by anyone's standards, but I manage to tone it down slightly for her.

Now, that's love.

So I've decided that I'm going to take the Love of My Life on a trip this year. Nunny's never really been anywhere. She was born in Trieste, trained it to Venice, got on a boat for a thousand weeks to Melbourne, then settled in Sydney. She hasn't been anywhere since.

One of her favourite things to do is tell everyone about how she's, "Never even been to Canberra!" I've tried many a time to explain to her that if she's so desperate to get the Canberra experience, we could just drive around a single round-about for the day. And then I offer to take her to Canberra, but she immediately declines and scoffs about one of her many old person ailments and how she couldn't possibly be in a car for that long. Or, my favourite excuse courtesy of last night, "Don't be stupid, Sarah - it's too cold there!"

Then she got to talking about a friend of her's from bingo who has just come back from Bali. She passingly mentioned that it would be a nice place to go, so I immediately leaped on that and decided that I would take her to Bali at the end of the year.

Done.

Or so I thought.

The next day, the first thing she said to me was that her leg was swollen, so how could she possibly get on a plane? No, we wouldn't be going.

Here's the thing about my nan: it's not that she hasn't had opportunities to go anywhere - she has. We've offered to send her on a holiday to Italy or somewhere else a number of times, but she always says no, citing some old people problem or something equally as excuse-y. She's really just scared. She's never been on a plane, or out of her comfort zone. Yes, she made the massive trek to Australia, but she was a lot younger then, and is now very settled.

So I have to get her to Bali. I think she'd love it, and once I book the trip she won't be able to back out because I'll just cry and carry on about how I've spent all my money. She'll then have to go and it'll be fabulous.

The only problem is, I don't really have any money at all, what with being an impoverished student (so impoverished I qualified for a healthcare card this week). So I've decided that my brother and cousin, who act their age and have grown up careers and grown up money, can pitch in a little for her flight. God I'm awesome.

I'll try and book it closish to the date we'll leave so she won't have too much time before we leave to back out or try and fake her own death. She totally would.

I also have to plan it at a certain time so my little sister can come too, because she would have a great time. The problem is, she starts year 12 at the end of this year, and that's a biggie, so we couldn't have her take time off school. I have a couple of months to sort through this timing predicament though, so of course I'll leave it all until the day we leave, because I am hella awesome like that.

Project: Complete!!

So, a month or two ago I bought a new bookshelf as my old one had run out of room for new books, even with books stacked on top of each other. I was also afraid there'd be a Flat Stanley moment when I woke up with it on top of me one day, seeing as it was a cheapie and was tilting at a very precarious angle.

So off to Ikea I trotted to buy a different type of cheap bookshelf, one that I thought would be able to hold a lot more books. As it turns out, it only just fits all of my books (probably shouldn't have bought a heap of books the day I bought the shelf).

There was a slight hitch in the assembly process, as one of the pieces was damaged when I got it out of the flatpack cardboard, but the Ikea people were lovely and arranged to send me a replacement piece.

When I finally put it together, with all the books it looked like this:

Before

Books everywhere, no co-ordination. I'd been meaning to do something with it, but really couldn't be bothered.

That is, until last night.

Insomnia's a terrible thing, but every now and then, sometimes it makes me incredibly productive. I decided to finally organise my preciouses.

During

Above you can see the piles of books being sorted. So much effort. I almost wanted to give up then, but I persevered, and in a lot less time than I thought it would take, I ended up with this:

Ta-daaaaah!

Colour co-ordinated books!!

Now, I know many people would hate the idea of separating books from the one series, but I'm not too bothered by that. The bottom two right cubes of the shelf are just textbooks that I didn't want to incorporate into the colour scheme. The books are ridiculously heavy and I wanted to keep them on the lower shelf, lest this cheapie end up on a scary tilt like my last one.

Now, looking at my books like this, I realise I need to be branching out in my literary pursuits: less white and yellow, more blue and purple.

Sorry about the blurriness of the photos. I must learn how to actually use that silly camera.

But I do love the effect. I'm just worried though because the shelves are completely full, and I know there's a bunch of books I own floating about amongst my friends, and a bunch on their way from Book Depository.