PLEASE NOTE: it is not actually New Years Eve! Please put down that bottle of champagne and take of that ridiculous party hat, you fool.

Okay, soo I am prematurely eblogulating, but I know that I'll forget to do it closer to actual New Years Eve (which also happens to be my mother's birthday, so fingers crossed I'm too busy stuffing my face with cake to post a blog entry).

I wanted to do a 2011 recap... something profound and reflective, detailing the events of my year and how they fit into the grander picture of my life.

Sadly, my life is actually really, really boring. I don't have any exciting stories to tell from this year. I didn't do anything remarkable or life changing in 2011. I stayed in the same job. I didn't get married. I didn't even get knocked up! My friendship circle is more or less exactly the same. Any travel is limited to brief interstate work trips.

To be honest, I'm not upset by any of this. At all. But it doesn't make for very interesting reading. See? I'm always thinking of you guys.

But while 2011 has not been very exciting events-wise, I've felt more passionate and excited about stuff than I have for a while. 2011 has been a year of obsessions for me. I've become increasingly besotted with a number of things... most of which are insignificant and unexciting to anyone but me, but they're the things that have made my year fun, and inspired me, and got me pumped up for 2012.

K so.... divided into categories that pretty much sum up my entire life.

OBSESSIONS OF 2011

MUSIC

The Elected

Fave songs:  'Did Me Good', 'Biggest Star', 'The Bank and Trust', 'Who Are You' and 'My Baby's A Dick'.

Megan Washington

My living room dance sessions to 'Holy Moses' are out of control sexy.

PEOPLE

Courtney Stodden

I'm not proud of my obsession with this trainwreck of a human being. But her revolting facial expressions and airbrushed abs have earned her a special place in my heart. Not to mention her Twitter updates, which provide me with hours (okay... minutes... as I try to decipher wtf she's trying to say. Usually it's something like "I did a load of laundry today") of entertainment.

My Parents

 

(this drawing was from a blog post that never eventuated because I got lazy. Try to act surprised if I end up using it again)

Nothing makes you love your parents like rarely seeing them. Which is why my children will be kept in the attic and only brought out for brief moments at my whim.

FOOD

Instant Soups

I don't know why, but I somehow became besotted with these little packages of powdered sodium. Preferably not fully dissolved, to allow me to eat little chunks of the mixture solid. Yep... I am just asking for an early grave.

Caramel Popcorn

It started with a giant barrel of Poppycock purchased at Costco, and ended with me owning a popcorn maker, purely to enable the quickest, easiest creation of my own whacked out caramel/chocolate/nuts/marshmallow/sprinkles/m&ms/whatever popcorn concoctions. I have no regrets.

Gourmet Caramel Apples

I'd drooled over these on blogs for years, but had never been able to experience the magic until I discovered Applelicious, an Australian company. To make things even more serendipitous, they now also make caramel popcorn. God bless.

Dips on Pizza

 +

 

I no longer use tomato sauce as the base when I make pizza. Now, I use dips (yes, as in the substance you would usually serve with crackers, bread, corn chips, whatever). Please try it. It will change your life. (ANY type is awesome... trust me. I had my doubts about some flavour combos, but they have all rocked my world)

Protein Bars

This started because I found my usual 8963746 granola bars a day were simply not cutting it. I am a ravenous wildebeest and they just weren't satisfying enough. So I tried protein bars and got hooked. I know they're not great for you, so when possible, I try to go for the less artificial/super processed/full-of-fake-stuff variety. Sadly, Australia seems to be a bit behind the rest of the world in this, and there aren't a huge number that aren't 99% crap that I don't want to put in my mouth. If anyone wants to hook a sista up, I'd be down with that ;)

WEBSITES

Texts From Bennett

This Isn't Happiness

Jenna Marbles Blog

Etsy

I have nothing to say about these. Just go, read, watch, look, enjoy. Waste hours of your life that you'll never get back. I promise you, it'll be worth it. You probably weren't doing anything useful with those hours anyway.

EXERCISE

Elliptical Intervals

I know they are the most uncool, unhardcore, sissiest, lamest looking pieces of exercises equipment, but I LOVE the elliptical for smashing out some seriously badass interval workouts.The best bit is that, unlike running, I can sit my iPhone on the little tray thingy and watch amusing YouTube videos, while the other gym-goers anxiously watch me guffaw and choke on my water bottle.

Anything Tricep Related

......not that you'd know it from looking at me.

And that, my friends, is pretty much my year in a nutshell. I wish you all the best Christmas/politically correct holiday season EVER, and a new year that puts every other year to shame. I have high hopes and massive plans for 2012. Big, big smooches to you all.

SEVEN (very) SELECT EXCERPTS FROM 17 YEAR OLD LIZZI'S DIARY.

Alternate title: "When I was a teenager, I took a lot of photos of trees and had very limited respect for capital letters."

... I also eavesdropped a lot, and spent most of my time people-watching. I wrote down everything I saw, because I was terrified of ever forgetting.

I recently came across a bunch of old notebooks/computer files/photos, and the nostalgia left me feeling gutted and kneecapped and lobotomised. Because I had forgotten. It hit me hard, and I don't want to forget again, because those times were the happiest and saddest and luckiest and loneliest of my life.

So I started typing them all out, and it was very satisfying. And because I felt like posting something, but didn't actually have anything new or interesting to say, I figured I might as well share them here..... hugely censored, but here nonetheless.
(for everyone's sake, I omitted the "WHY DOESN'T HE SEE THAT WE ARE SOUL MATES?! WHY WON'T MY BOOBIES GROW BIGGER???! I HOPE I ACE THAT CALCULUS EXAM. PERHAPS THAT BOY WILL LOVE ME IF I GIVE HIM A BLOWJOB IN THE CARPARK. I WONDER IF I WOULD LOOK PRETTIER IF I HAD FAKE NAILS." entries. Yep. You're welcome.)

This will probably go down in blog-history (blistory?) as my one and only semi-serious post. Although... 'sticky little fingertips'? I don't remember what that was about, but it's definitely got me giggling.

So, anyway... here we GO!

ONE.

Tea, biscuits, blossoms and freesias. Slices of apple and little crumbling chunks of cheese. My head is full of bees and words and music notes, and I wish on every blade of grass that someday I will wake up less romantic; more poetic.

TWO.

She sat with her back to us, with her silky blonde hair and her Venus of Urbino body, killing the mood; very, very quietly suffocating it, with nothing but her bare lower back and her existence.

THREE.

You grew and stretched out of my words

(and became a little thinner from all the pulling).

You are not literal these days; more metaphor than person.

I like your wide and tight-lipped smile; slowly, slowly becoming less of a mystery (but still so electric).

I wish you days upon days upon days, from my split ends to the tips of my roots.

I hope these days stretch like you. Sort of like you. Sort of like my bloody bones or your bony wrists between my sticky little fingertips. Sort of like that, I suppose.

FOUR.

i remember her well (i think).

she tied an orange ribbon around my wrist.

sarah laughed a the sunset and kissed me for good luck ("for everything").

we smoked menthol cigarettes with our hair tucked behind our ears and our eyes too bright for that night (it felt too real).

the daisies froze solid and the next morning they had snapped.

we dressed in jeans and ex-boyfriends' old t-shirts,

orange ribbons in our hair.

orange ribbons in the apple tree from sarah's climb (and fall).

orange ribbons still around our wrists.

good luck sarah (for everything).

lily and the moon send their love.

FIVE.

we sucked our histories into our lungs. we drew in the day. you held on to it all, grabbing and pinching and pulling it back inside you and towards me, with greedy, selfish fingers. breathing out and it all poured back into the air; drifted away, found somebody new.

i cried that day, for the first time in years. i tried not to breathe in case more of us escaped through the tiny gaps between my teeth. blossoms on the apple tree and ice on the fish pond hit me hard. nostalgia brought me to my knees; the smell of old books and green tea left me shaken.

our collection flew away from me;  they were sucked out and ripped from my fingertips. i thought i'd hidden them well, tucked them away beneath other, more pressing things.

let them rest, we'd said. let them gather dust. tie them together with faded brown string; mark them with fake labels. leave them for us (just us - only us!) for some other day, later later later.

but they flew. they stormed away, blinking in the light and testing their wings. they took to the sky and let anyone breathe them in and spit them out.

the rustled the leaves as they passed, they tore through the field, they skimmed the fish pond and ran with their ancestors; the ones i'd let escape long ago.

now, there is just a pile of broken string left. i tie the pieces around my wrists some days, to remember the memories and to help us forget.

SIX.

Here, I am surrounded by people who got sick of being unattractive, so became eccentric instead. Quirky by way of odd haircuts and bright lipstick. Big vocabularies and unlikely music choices.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

SEVEN.

I wish I could take to your life with a pocketknife, and carve - sharply and deeply - "I was here. I was here."


What I can ascertain from these diary excerpts: I had much too much spare time, probably should've been doing my homework, and very much needed to have someone shake me and yell in my face "ELIZABETH. STOP ROMANTICISING THE FOLIAGE. NOT EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR."

Imagine if they formed some kind of SUPER GROUP?! The world's axis would reverse.

Somebody recently told me that you can tell a lot about a person (or yourself) by looking at their history of concert attendance.

I'm not sure if they were talking out of their ass, but it sounded legit at the time...something about the 'suite' of artists providing an insight into their values and desires and overall view of the world, blahblahblah somethingsomething I don't remember.

I'm almost 100% positive this is bullshit and/or stating the obvious (the two often overlap, I've found), but nonetheless, I started thinking about some shows (the major ones... there are 783678345 other, smaller gigs) I've attended in the past few years....

 

Elton John

(I cried.)

 

Tori Amos  

(I...err.... saw her three times.

I also cried three times.)

 

Eminem

(I cried. Then some dude grabbed my tits while another squeezed my ass.)

Nick Cave 

 (okay, this was actually a tribute show by a lot of other really awesome artists, but I figure it still sort of counts. And besides, I cried.)

 

Lil Wayne

(I cried. Because I wanted - so, so badly - to be one of his ridiculous backing dancer girls.)

 

Britney Spears

(I cried.)

Side note : here are some pictures of me dressed up as post-breakdown Britney...

 

 

I pulled it off a little bit TOO well: discuss.

So, what can we deduce from my taste in concerts?

• I like people who are undeniably a little bit crazy.
• I tend to value theatrics over musicianship.
• I am a sucker for men who seem to not like women very much.

 ....awesome.

How about you?? What shows have you been to recently? Do you think your concert attendance patterns suggest anything about your inner weirdo?