i want the one i can't have

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Today after a three and a half hour meeting I was reading through CLEO magazine and found the list of CLEO/Palmolive Nutra Fruit Wonder Woman nominees. OooOOOooo, I thought, I wonder if there's any cool new bloggers to discover in the blogger category. Then I saw my own name listed. What! I'm a woman who is potentially wonder-ous! I made my manager read it to me to make sure I hadn't just imagined the whole thing.

Okay, I'm not quite sure what being a Wonder Woman means, but the winner gets $5000.

Let's be cold: There are some seriously brilliant and famous women nominated for this, people out there doing really cool, creative things. Within the blog category alone there are some high-profile sites that I, a more-or-less unknown and I'm pretty sure the only food blogger, am up against. Spose the fact that I think my blog is basically the awesomest blog in the whole of New Zealand doesn't count for much against established networks and fanbases.

Every time I stop to tell myself this isn't a big deal and it's fun just to see my name there and I don't even really know what it all means anyway, the glint of the money gets into my peripheral vision and I start to get all hopeful and hyped up and imagine the wonderful things I could do with that money. The harder I daydream the more I want that $5000 and the more I tell myself I'm pretty stupid when there are all these other high profile people in the running. I'm teetering wildly between "what is this anyway?" and "I WANT THIS!" Look at what money makes us do - maybe you shouldn't vote for me after all?

For what it's worth, if I did find myself $5000 richer, here's the two things I would do:

1) Throw a big dinner party and cook for all my friends - maybe make a vat of pasta and an equally giant pan of rich, slow-simmered homemade tomato sauce and let everyone help themselves, with a huge bowl chocolate mousse for pudding (and maybe some partying in there, I don't know, homemade chocolate mousse is pretty exciting to me).

2) Travel somewhere with Tim. Tim and I met overseas in 2005. When we moved in together once back in New Zealand in 2006 and started university, it was pretty well settled in our minds that as soon as our graduation-hats were thrown in the air we'd be boarding a plane to travel again. Since that confident decision we have travelled...literally nowhere...which is not so much a bad thing as realistic, but all the same 2005 feels impossibly far away, and sometimes it seems like I spend far too much time observing Broadway shows open and close and change casts from afar. We could go to Poland - I loved it so much during my brief time there - go back to London, visit people from the performing arts school we worked at, go to New York to see a Broadway show, see what the Baby Sitter's Club were on about in Super Special #6 New York, New York, maybe (while I'm being indulgent), Idina Menzel will have some kind of live gig happening and I could finally, finally see her in person. I could buy a pet capybara! A bouncy castle! The capybara could live in the bouncy castle on our roof! (Err, $5000 would stretch as far as all that?)

With your help, this could be what my roof looks like!

I guess this blog post has demonstrated that maybe I'm not quite Wonder Woman material, I mean look how out-of-hand I get when just presented with the opportunity to simply daydream about getting $5000.

If after all that voting for me is something you want to do, then please email cleo@acpmagazines.co.nz with WONDER WOMEN in the subject line, and "Voting for Blogger: Laura Vincent - hungryandfrozen.blogspot.com" plus your name and contact details in the body of the email. I feel a bit funny asking, but not so funny that I won't ask, you know? Gigantic thanks to anyone who does vote!

Title via: The Smiths, keeping me honest (although I did consider quoting "god I hope I get it" from A Chorus Line, there's no real way to do this without the wanty-want-want selfish overtones is there?)