Amazing, thy name is Alissa

Can we please talk about the amazingness of Alissa? Because I think we need to.

Quite separate from her general, all round, sort of amazingness, are some particularly amazing things that I think I need to mention.

First of all, Alissa has become the highly talented queen of craft.
Ever since she returned from her overseas sojourn earlier this year, she’s started to produce gorgeous brooches, gorgeous rings and GORGEOUS Christmas decorations.

“Is that FELT you have there?”, her luvah asks suspiciously.
“Why yes, it certainly is!”, she replies with glee. “For I have a project! I am crafting!”

At Alissa’s suggestion, we didn’t buy each other Christmas gifts last year. Instead we handmade presents. Please view exhibits A through C below. I expect that you will want to oooh and ahhh with delight. 

Exhibit A

One of the best qualities about Lis is her attention to detail – look at the perfect stitching on these Christmas decorations. My grandmother would be well pleased with this handiwork.

 

Exhibit B

I love owls. A lot. I especially love slightly dopey looking owls. This is the cutest brooch in the whole world. I am sure of it.

 

Exhibit C

A ring made of flower shaped buttons! Yes! That’s right!  A ring made of flower shaped buttons! Many exclamation marks!

 

Lis bought herself a button ring at a market in London. When I first saw it, I tried very, very, hard not to turn a delicate shade of green. It was almost a physical challenge. Lucky for me, Lis made me one of my own and I am jealous no more.

 

Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous Christmas presents.

 

Secondly, Alissa’s can describe books/movies/TV shows/music in such detail, that it feels like you’ve actually read/watched/heard it yourself. 

 

At school, if I ever missed an episode of a show I loved, I knew I could rely on Lis for a detailed summary the next day.

Sometimes I start watching a movie and get confused. “Have I seen this before?’,  I wonder. But no, it’s just that Alissa has at some point given me a detailed synopsis. 

On the other hand, when I watched ‘Failure to Launch’, the whole thing seemed so familiar that I was sure it must have been a movie that Lis had told me about at some stage. I knew everything that was going to happen. Then Ian came home and said ‘Oh, that movie. Remember when we watched that a few months ago and I fell asleep because it was so boring’. But I’m digressing here.

 

Thirdly,  Alissa also knows every actor and actress in hollywood, every writer on the face of the earth and every musician that ever was. She is also the most amazing researcher in the world. Yes she is.

 

If she sent ME an email that read “Do you know who that hot English chic is that I think was in The Practice but doesn’t seem to be on their website and is she the same actresss that is on Lost?”, you would get back a “Huh? I don’t know and why are you asking me”. But if I asked Alissa that question (and of course I have), the response would be more along the lines of “I think you might actually mean Rhonda Mitra from Boston Legal. Rhonda has also been in X, Y & Z.  Evageline Lily is the actress from Lost and she has stared in Blah, blah and blah.” 

 

Fourthly, she used to be a Sagittarius which is one of my favourite star signs. And now that the zodiac has changed, she’s the cool new star sign, Ophiuchus 

 

Fifthly, she’s a librarian by trade. How cool is that?! My friends at work think that having a librarian as a friend is the cutest thing in the world. I don’t have the heart to tell them that she doesn’t actually WORK as one. They always refer to Lis as my “Librarian friend”. “Oh,you are seeing your LLIBRARIAN friend tonight”.

 

Sixthly (if that is actually a word), she is the fastest reader I have ever met and she reads more genres than anyone I know. She is a reading GUN! I can’t actually sit anywhere near her when she is reading because she turns the pages so fast that it makes my eyes pop out of my head and my jaw hang down in shock. It’s a terribly unattractive look.

 

I’ve always wondered how many books she reads in a year. And do you know what the answer is for 2010?

 

80. Eighty. Yes, you did read that correctly. 80 BOOKS IN 52 WEEKS. I don’t think I have done 80 of anything in 52 weeks. 

 

And she’s not reading short books. No siree. Her favourites are high fantasy like the Wheel of Time series. These books are aout 800 pages each with type font of about 1 mm per letter.

 

So there she is. Alissa. If she isn’t the fastest reader in the world, well then, she’s certainly one of the most amazing people in it.

 

Alissa (left) with her sister Erin (who is also quite amazing)

 

 

Husband

Another cute Ianism is something he does that he’s not even conscious of.

While watching TV or reading, Mr Jackson always needs to be twisting a piece of paper or flipping a coin or button in one hand. Sometimes when I’m drifting of to sleep while he’s still reading, I hear the sound of the blinds moving and it’s comforting. I know it’s because Ian’s twisting their cord through his fingers.

But something not as cute is how much trouble I get into when I forget to refill the ice cube tray or put the cold water back into the fridge. And this week, because it’s been so hot, I’ve been in trouble an awful lot.

Ian seems to think that some day I’ll learn. But I lived with Raph for almost as long as I have lived with husband. And she never managed to get me to put the water back in the fridge either.  I don’t think there’s hope for cold drinks in our house really. Lucky the tap water in Sydney is such stellar quality.