Daydreams and fairytales

Who knew that it would come to this. Long held dreams of finding a creative outlet, whether through the medium of print (as long as I can remember I wanted to be an author), through buildings (why else spend years years attempting to become an architect) or some other fancy (yes, I once thought I had a hope as an artist, as a singer...I soon came to the realisation that I was sadly deluded). But here we stand, and it turns out that the thing that I may be passionate enough to actually follow through on, the area where doubtful, dowdy and occasionally even frumpy little old me may have a creative bone, is in fashion. Specifically, in vintage.

Yes, my obsessive buying of old patterns over the years may have a good outcome. The sewing skills carefully harnessed and nurtured over the years actually have a purpose. I may be a nerd, but with any luck, I will be one who can pay her rent, and do it in style. I may sit in trackies or leggings and simply awful shirts while I work on it, and I may lack the motivation, but I may also make money off it now. All thanks to a little website called Etsy.

Forgive the excitement. It's not the first time I've used sewing to make ends meet. I've done bits and pieces for friends before, but never in areas that have interested me - making curtains is not an exciting occupation for someone with a short attention span - or that I've been happy with the outcome (turns out I need a bit more practice before making pants for other people). And work - my regular, every day office work, that is - has reached a particularly low point. So low that I've followed through on the threat to start applying elsewhere. So I am ridiculously happy at the thought that I may have my own thing, if I can make it work.

At the moment, it's just working with vintage patterns, but I have expansion plans. And there's been enough interest in my initial efforts to make me think that there could be something there. Here's hoping, because I'm moments away from losing it completely with customers at work. Or with the small children playing with a repetitive noisy toy outside my room right now. Thank god for itunes and for sewing...It might just be enough to get me through, and it might save my sanity. Not to mention L's nephews...

The male of the species

There have been a few run-ins with men over the past few days. Perhaps I'd better run them in chronological order...

I was on my way to training on Thursday morning when the first one happened. I know. It's strange. Me, heading to training. Not only that, me being out of the house before 7:30 in order to exercise. But it's true. I've been going ever since the second major incident of the back, and so far it seems to be helping. Except when it's making it worse, but that's a whole other story.

I wandered past a couple of workmen by their truck on the way there. They were the forerunners of a whole crew of workmen who would spend at least 20 minutes trying to work out the logistics of closing off part of a street in a one-way system of roads, that included a train station car park with one entrance before the closure and one after. It was apparently baffling, and had them standing in the middle of the road and scratching their heads as cars were forced to reverse into driveways to get back on track. When the rubbish truck arrived to empty the bins of the houses along the street, things got more confusing still.

But the intelligence or otherwise of these, ahem, fine physical specimens is not why I'm mentioning them. No doubt there were road crews across the city who were facing similar mentally taxing challenges. No, I'm mentioning them because of what was happening as I was walking past the first two of them to arrive. The older of the two was wandering, looking a little aimless, and fishing through his pockets for a cigarette. So far, so normal. The younger, however, was standing close to the side of the truck with his head down. As I got closer, I realised. He wasn't just standing there. He was peeing. On the side of the road. On his work truck. At 7:30 on a Thursday, right next door to a busy suburban train station. He didn't even have the grace to look shamefaced as I walked by him, even though I was smirking fit to burst.

My other run-in happened on Saturday night. I got a last minute request to play wing-man for a friend who, after much backwards and forwards, had lined up an outing with a dating prospect. The catch was, he had been spending the day with a friend and would only go out if the friend could come along. So I would be there to distract the friend, keep him occupied and entertained. I never realised I could be such a good friend. If I'd known going in just how good a friend I was going to be by agreeing, I would have said no.

I should have known when the tag along friend was at the bar and the date described him as "just like Alan from The Hangover". I should have known again when he was being encouraged to trot out his knowledge of geography in a Rainman like display of regurgitated facts. Or perhaps when we were encouraged to subtly get him onto the subject of Spain, only to see his bored expression vanish and his head fly up, to hear him speaking random Spanish phrases to demonstrate his fluency. But I didn't know, and neither did the friend I was accompanying.

I really started to pick up on it at the second venue, when I was dragged up to dance. And I mean dragged. I finally agreed to go, because it would have seemed churlish not to, and it gave my friend some alone time with the date. His dance style could best be described as original; if I'd seen other people pulling his moves, I would have thought they were joking. He wasn't. When he pulled me in closer to dance, alarms started going off. They should have gone off earlier, when he'd had his leg brushing mine quite a bit, but I'd just put it down to him being drunk. But there was no escaping his meaning on the dance floor.

He should have known I wasn't interested. I pulled away at every possible opportunity after the dancing. In fact, not even after the dancing. During. I walked a fine line between good friend (keeping him occupied) and self-preservation (keeping him at a distance). It was a knife edge balancing act, and I must have toppled off the wrong side, because when we went back to the friend's place to escape the noise of the bar (ie, for friend and date to come up with excuses for alone time), he still hadn't realised that I wasn't interested.

The date engineered a flimsy excuse for me to show him something about the house - he was a tradie, and my friend had been talking about a maintenance issue, so even if everybody else in the room failed to spot it for what it was, I picked up on the hint and took him upstairs to show him the problem. I should have seen it coming. The part where he turned around and launched himself at me for a kiss. His mouth was half open, his bloodshot eyes half closed as he put his hands on my shoulders and tried to pull me in. I should have seen it coming, but really, I didn't. Or at least I did, but only in time to turn him aside and tell him, "Ah, no," rather than in time to stop his lunge and grab. It was the first hint of actual humanity in him all night, as he got all embarrassed and pretended he was just looking at my necklace.

It was an awkward hour or so that we were left with. The happy couple disappeared not long after we got back into the room and left us perched uncomfortably at opposite ends of the couch, too embarrassed to speak. Rainman disappeared to the loo and I texted my friend.

"You have no idea how much you owe me."

Her phone was still downstairs in her handbag.

He returned from the loo and I went. I didn't know it at the time, but he called the date's phone while I was out of the room.

After half an hour or so of increasingly stilted conversation, he called the date again.

"You about ready? Yeah, it's Awkwardsville down here."

There was some relief at hand, finally.

"He said four minutes. I'm timing him."

With the end in sight, I began packing up, content in the knowledge that my run-ins with men could only improve. At least, after public pee-ing and unwanted kiss attacks, I certainly hope so, or I may be at risk of losing my faith in men all together. Not that there was much to start with...

Quaking

I've just done something. I'm hoping it was the right thing, but somehow doubting that anything will come of it.

For all my bitching and moaning a couple of months back, I have not left my job. I'm still there and I'm still miserable, most of the time. But tonight, in spite of the fact that I only got home at about 10, I have taken a step in what I hope is the direction of the door. I've actually gotten around to listing some vintage-related things for sale. And oh, god, I hope they sell. Because not only do I need the money, I need the out.

I've been clinging to a version of this particular dream for a little while now, and have taken a few steps along the path to realising it, without getting too bored. That's unusual for me, I have to be honest. For all the dreams I've had along the way, I've never really wanted to see any of them through. Not properly. It might be that my sister-in-law-of-sorts is also treading down a similar path with me this time that is driving it. Or maybe it's just that I'm finally finding something that I feel passionate enough about. Who can tell? And who on earth would have thought that it would have anything to do with clothing, if it is? That the sartorial failure would want to build a career around this?

But there again, it's not fashions for the now - it's fashion for way back then. So I guess it works for me, given that I'm something of a history nerd.

So here's crossing fingers, toes, eyes, ankles, knees, anything else I can manage to get across something else, that there are people out there who are interested in what I'm selling, and that they actually buy it. Because I want out.

A pocketful of happy

The weather here has finally taken a turn for the better. A false start a few weeks back was followed by some of the more miserable weather Melbourne has to offer. Howling winds, spring thunderstorms, hail, rain, and cold. Perhaps not London cold, but enough that I was back in my winter wardrobe after a brief flirtation with spring.

But last week saw the mercury rise a little. Not soar, no, but hover in a pleasant range. The winds died and the sun put in cameo appearances. It was time for the spring clothes to emerge once more. And I, for one, am extremely glad of it, but not for the reasons you might think.

Yes, I enjoy the warmer months of the year, although generally not spring. I think it's safe to say that no hay fever sufferer will endure a Melbourne spring voluntarily without contemplating a move somewhere else during the brief moments when they are free from the haze inducing allergies that hold them prisoner for three months of the year. But summer, sure. I'm only human. I prefer to be warm rather than cold. But it wasn't climate that had me smiling one afternoon last week as I shrugged into my lightweight linen jacket, just before heading out of work for the day.

It wasn't even that daylight saving has arrived, bringing with it the joyous moment of changing from work clothes into pyjamas during daylight hours (what can I say, I'm a slob, and not ashamed to admit it).

The moment of pure bliss came when I fished into the jacket pocket for my car key. I'd dropped it in there that morning, one less thing to carry as I juggled office keys, handbag, lunch bag and laptop from the car to the office. The steps I have to negotiate to get into the fish bowl are not steep, but they carry hidden puddles for the unwary in open shoes. Getting the keys out to drive up the road for lunch, I noticed that there was something else in the pocket. I didn't remember putting anything else in there, so I was naturally curious. I find all sorts of things hidden in the pockets of clothes, sometimes before they go in the washing machine, sometimes after. Feeling the paper-ish crinkle of this, I assumed it was a receipt and twisted it from the pocket fully intending to just throw it in the bin. I'm so glad I looked at it first, though.

It was $50.

There is nothing more welcome than an injection of funds in the week before pay day. I wasn't down to brass tacks but I could certainly see the last farthing on the horizon, and it was coming up with a rush. A fifty made me feel rich, like winning the lottery - or rather like winning one of the smaller prizes in the lottery. It was a brilliant warmth in my stomach, a buzzing lightheaded sensation. It was bliss. And yes, I'm fully aware of just how pathetic it seems to be so overjoyed by the appearance of a note that can be withdrawn from an ATM, assuming you have the cash in your account in the first place. And therein lies the reason for my excitement. I had no cash available to me. My lunch run was going to be to the supermarket, because all I had available was a denomination too small to be removed at an ATM. Like I said, the week before pay week. It's almost always a diet of baked beans that week, even when it's not a month where I've moved house, booked flights for a Christmas trip, and paid off my car rego. No wonder fifty dollars seemed like finding the welcome stranger.

I spent the rest of the afternoon merrily plotting not only how to spend it (anything that wasn't sensible, really), but thinking on where it could have come from. I wasn't sure when I'd last worn the jacket. I knew it had been some time this year, but I couldn't say if I'd ever put my hands in the pockets. Some good fairy, evening out the karma stakes a little? Making up for the torrent of crap that rains over my desk at work every single day? Or perhaps a visit from a leprechaun who had been through the currency exchange on his way into the country? A parting gift from the old flatmate, as a reward for being "the best flatmate ever", for simply being clean, not hogging the bathroom, and not being smelly?

It was almost the end of the day when my reverie was brought to a mundane end. I remembered when I'd last worn the jacket, and where the money had come from. Turns out, I'd worn it to Mum's birthday dinner, and the cash was the payment from my brother for his share of her present.

I think I prefer the karma fairy. But I can still hold out hope that she's out there somewhere, just trying to find her way through the crap.

Hello Old Friends

The big move has happened, during a downpour, no less. The soaking I got while moving loads of stuff out of the old place and into the new has landed me with a cold. So once again, I'm sat at home with my trusty box of tissues, my collection of movies and books, and surrounded by half empty boxes, but with little enough idea of where the rest of my stuff is.

There's an added complication with the new place though. Because right now it's feeling like I'm not just sharing it with L. I've been home from work three days due to separation anxiety with my tissues. And of those 3 days, I've had unannounced visitors on 2. Because L made the horrendous mistake of giving her parents a spare key.

They mean well, I know they do. The first visit was to drop off L's surprise birthday present, a ladder that they left set up at the end of her bed. Today's is to make some adjustments to some dodgy plumbing in the back yard. So it's not like they're dropping in to have lunch in the house, or something. But as a person who is not related to them, and whose own parents would never dream of stopping by a shared house without giving some kind of heads up first, I find it strange. It's especially awkward given that I'm still in my pyjamas today. I mean, I could have been coming out of the shower, or anything.

It makes me a little concerned for the future of the sharing. Because I like my own space, and I like it to stay my own space. I find it a bit strange and off-putting that someone else's parents can - and will - just randomly drop by unannounced, even if we're not home. I'm not saying that they shouldn't visit, far from it. But I'm getting the feeling that sharing with L when her parents are half an hour away is going to be very different to sharing with L when they're half a world away. And I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to work.

Thank god she is planning on getting the keys back off them when our other old London flatmate C comes to visit at the end of the month. Maybe then it will feel more like it's my home, rather than having a sense that I'm just dossing.

Emotional baggage

It's that time of year again. The bit where I pack up my life and move house. I've done it so many years in a row now that it seems like second nature. I'm packing boxes, it must be September. And this time there are so many more boxes to move.

It's funny, though, because there are a couple of boxes that were never unpacked after the last move. They have stayed, intact, in the bottom of my wardrobe. No doubt they will do the same thing in the new place. Although perhaps not the wardrobe, given that it's somewhat smaller than the present model. But somewhere, out of sight, these boxes will sit until my next move.

They are memory boxes. One is filled with my childhood. Toys, dolls, bits of paper. It stays there against the day that somewhere in the future, I will have children of my own and will want to show them what it was like for me to grow up.

I remember being fascinated when my own mother pulled out her last link with childhood, a doll whose eyes no longer opened, whose hair was made of moulded plastic a slightly different shade to the head it was part of. Looking back now, it's a little sad that this was the only link she had kept to her childhood. Her girlhood moved house with her at the end of last year, a small blue suitcase that held nothing from the time after she was married. A few letters from the time when my father was working in a country town; odds and ends that held some value for her.

My own version of this case is in the second box that moves with me, untouched. It's a plastic crate filled with the random bits I have collected in my travels. Tickets to shows, exhibitions, on trains and planes; programs, photos, trinkets. It all means something to me now, evokes some memory of a time, place or person. In a few years, it is sure to mean less and, if I ever open it, I will probably feel the need to get rid of most of it, much like I did with almost all of the reminders of my school years when I finally cleared the bottom of my childhood wardrobe. But for now it stays in one piece, the baggage that I carry forward into the new house.

Swooping season

The sun was shining brightly and for once the wind had stopped howling in the valley. It was a quiet day. Apart from the insane pecking and fluttering of a lone magpie lark. They're not the brightest of birds, and this one - I'm sure it's the same one - is a frequent visitor to the office I work in. He has been working his way around all the windows and doors, attempting to scare away the other bird he sees reflected back at him. A year on, and he's still doing battle with himself several times a day. He's obviously stubborn beyond mere human understanding.

In so many ways this bird, pecking away at the glass, fluttering to try and make himself seem bigger and more important, is representative of the residents of the estate I work on. In fact, I think they should take him as their mascot. We're in the process of commissioning artwork, a series of totem poles to be erected near a major pathway. Birds will feature pretty strongly. I'm putting forward the mud lark as my suggestion. The only other bird that could even be considered is the greedy sea gull, who appear to have become confused enough to think that the lake is a small inland sea. They are greedy, noisy, and leave a mess behind for me to clean up after them. But they still have more brains than the mud lark.

I stand by my first verdict. If you have to choose a bird to represent our residents, it has to be one of the most stupid, petty, stubbornly aggressive birds in the country. The magpie lark it is.

Raging Bullsh*t

I feel the need for a rant. Much the same way that I felt the need to yell at slow drivers, slow pedestrians, stupid people and anyone who happened to get in my way on the way home from work. If I'd thought it would have changed anything, I would even have contemplated yelling at people at work, like the guy who drives me insane at the best of times, but burst out laughing for no apparent reason when I was the only person nearby.

Most of all, I would have gone to the guy in human resources who manages payroll, and I would have given him a memorable bollocking for screwing up my bonus payment - or hopefully screwing it up, because otherwise I'm getting taxed at a rate somewhere north of 50 cents in the dollar. I don't make that much money in the first place, but to lose half the bonus that is supposed to even the playing field a little, makes me see red, feel red, be red.

Yep. Once again, my lovely employers have short changed me. And this time it's not through anything stupid I may have miscalculated. After waiting patiently all day for the money to land in my bank account, I nearly fell off my chair when it did arrive. Less than half the figure I had been told as the before tax amount. When the rushing sound in my ears went down a little, I began to consider my options and do some calculations. And I'm out of there. One way or another, I'm leaving. It's all a question of how soon I can get my ducks in a row and skedaddle.

I'm sick of the crap conditions, the annoying people, the pathetic pay, and the fact that being in government means we are under constant scrutiny and don't even get to let our hair down with a decent Christmas party. I hate that I can spend a day in head office and the only person who talks to me is the guy beside me, who says hi when I sit down and bye when I leave, and my brother's girlfriend, who works upstairs. I. hate. my. job. It's reached the point where I'm angry and frustrated enough to do something about it, beyond ranting on my blog.

It might not have been so bad if I hadn't found out a few other things today. Like my brother's much less qualified girlfriend is on significantly more cash than me. Her colleague, who is in a role junior to mine, is also on more than me, although not much. Her bonus is almost $2000 more than mine, however. Anyone who didn't know would think that I don't work bloody hard dealing with the morons and fielding the front line enquiries, keeping things on an even keel and burying how much I dislike what I'm doing, having sold out almost every belief I assembled during all my years of study.

So come Monday, when she's back from leave, I'm asking my boss if she'll be a referee for me. Tomorrow, I'm stomping my way to pay roll and demanding the rest of my bonus. And now, I'm consoling myself with the thought of what takeaway I can pick up from somewhere close, even though I've already changed into comfy trackies and a hideous by cosy cardy. Hell, last time I checked KFC didn't have a dress code on the drive through. I'm going to be cruising job sites and marking out potentials. I've already updated my CV recently. And until I can start sending it out, I'm looking at vintage dresses. Yep. Junk food and shopping, soothing the savage beast within. Or they would be if my bonus hadn't been so pathetically small that I can't really afford to buy anything. Stupid bastards.

A Blinding Flash

I've often had the thought that I must be getting old now. It started to creep up on me around my 30th birthday, and has been getting clearer with every passing day since. I'd long ago accepted that I now only qualify as "relatively" young - that's relative to my parents, not to those who are genuinely young. And now, several things have forced me to accept that I'm fast approaching nana-hood, with or without grand children in tow.

The first real hint came when I wrecked my back. Since then, I have done what a young person would never do. I find myself making a quiet "oof" noise when I haul myself out of a low seat. I did it tonight several times, most obviously when clambering from a couch where I'd just inhaled high tea as part of a friend's much belated birthday celebrations. That one wasn't so much a quiet oof as a huge heaving grunt worthy of Maria Sharapova.

But the true realisation of impending doom, or maturity, whichever you prefer was neither the noisy raising of my butt, nor the "I can't believe these young folk and the clothes they wear", or even the "kids have no respect" thoughts that rattled through my head at intervals today. The real kicker came when we left the movies later tonight. We'd gone to a six o'clock session, because it fitted better with our high tea. The movie itself was perhaps a little Nana-esque - The Help, an excellent movie set in Mississippi during the civil rights era, focusing on the maids who worked in white households, I thoroughly recommend it for both the amusing and thought provoking storyline and for the lush sixties costuming - but not too terrible. The crushing realisation came as we left the cinema, making a beeline for the ladies as we went. Standing over a basin and washing my hands, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I not only felt tired, but I looked it. It seems that even having a week away from work wasn't enough to make me feel rejuvenated.

I was ready to just head home then, but allowed myself to be persuaded to stay out for a little longer. Now it's 11 on a Saturday night and I'm all tucked up in bed, unattractively attired in a threadbare pair of flannelette pyjamas.

Yep. It's official. I am a nana, in attitude if not yet in numbers. Heaven help me by the time I reach my sixties.

Laneways and Byways

I've been wandering memory lane lately, strolling through the late 90s and feeling all nostalgic. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to sit down and work my way through episodes of Buffy, a character who is pretty much the same age as me. Funny how the more modern supernatural heroes are largely similar to me in age - must be something about my generation. First Buffy, then Harry Potter and co. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that, although the books came later, Bella Swan was actually born in the late 70s or early 80s as well. But I digress, as ever. From memory, the idea to revisit Sunnydale came from reading an article about a conference Monash University was hosting a couple of weeks back about female superheroes. Buffy was one of the illustrations used.

Watching these brought back all the things that were going on when I watched them the first time round. I'll always associate Buffy with major events, thanks largely to the fact that it was because of Buffy that I saw the second plane go into the World Trade Centre in real time. If I hadn't flicked my TV on to channel 10 for a little late night Buffy, I would have had no idea what had happened until the morning. Of course, the early years of the show were much more fun-filled than the later years. I think by September 11 she must have been defending the world for the fourth or fifth year - I can't remember, now.

But gong back over old ground makes me think I wasn't quite as much of an awkward nerd as I thought I was. Sure, I wasn't kicking butts all over town and looking hot while I was doing it, but neither was I being, say, Willow before she became a witch. I had hair that, on its good days, was as good as Buffy's - and was naturally honey blond, back then when I still saw sunlight on occasion, rather than the roots-showing die job that she often sported. My skirts weren't quite as short, and I never wore pants that looked like they were made of giraffe skin, but many of our other fashion choices matched. And Buffy was made before the size 0 fad hit, so even though she's incredibly fit - and as far as I know, Sarah Michelle Geller really was incredibly, realistically fit thanks to the training required for the role - she doesn't look like a strong breeze would snap her in half. I was just as socially awkward as the characters and, if I didn't have a huge night life, I also had my gang of close friends to see me through. But just as my friends have changed over the years, it seems that Buffy's might change as well.

There's been talk that they will re-make Buffy, new cast and all. It seems that we've hit that point in time where things that I remember loving the first time round are being re-hashed. Buffy. Dirty Dancing. Footloose. Next thing you know, they'll be doing Pretty Woman 2.0. I understand the nostalgia for things, I really do. Hell, I wander through the past quite happily. But do we really need to re-make a perfectly good cultural icon? We all know what happened when they tried to re-do Fame - and if you don't know, then that just proves my point. Sometimes it's better to let the original stand. and Buffy is one of those things that should be left alone, especially given that it's less than a decade since the original hung up her stake.

As a side note, I heard an interesting stat today. Yes, there is such a thing. Apparently, for every hour of television you watch, you lose 22 minutes off the end of your life. How they arrived at this figure, I shudder to think, but what it translates into, as far as I can tell, is that when you watch an hour of commercial television, you basically shorten your life by the same amount as the ad breaks take out of your hour. It's official. Ads are killing us.

The new kid in town

I've been a bit absent from blogging lately. I'd love to say that there was a good reason for this, but really, there's not. In fact, there's a few reasons that I should have been blogging, but the sad fact is that I've been lazy. So, to continue with the laziness, I've decided to roll what could have been several detailed, and no doubt hugely amusing posts, into one. Because it's 11:45 on a school night, and that's how I roll. Or rather, that's how I lie in bed typing. Whatever.

The first thing is by way of general announcement. I am an aunty again, this time to a nephew. His parents had the wisdom to name him H, which is moderately unfortunate given that our surname also starts with H. HH. He's going to get teased at school, I can see it now. The argument over his second name is still ongoing, I think. I'm guessing my brother is making a case for something region specific, given that he asked me about the origins of our surname, and was very disappointed to discover that our family are only from England, not the wilder parts of Scotland or Wales. He cheered up a little when I explained that it was the wilder parts of England - although perhaps not by the current standard.

Either way, the little man has the look of an old soul. The first photo I saw of him, he looks like he's already aware of his surroundings, taking things in. He did not look like a baby less than an hour old. The follow-up snap shots look equally old. I'm curious to see how he grows up, what sort of person he is. Is he going to be as stubborn and strong willed as his big sister? Or will he be completely different to each of his parents, and take on some of his grand parents' traits? One thing's for sure, though, his aunt is planning on teaching him a few things about how to be a decent guy, right now.

I had a date last Friday night. The guy had seemed reasonable enough, quite intelligent, not bad looking. But I was having a terrible wardrobe day, and nothing looked right on me when I raced home from work to get ready. Which meant that I wore a dress I probably wouldn't have otherwise worn. Girls love this dress, a home made number, but guys just don't seem to have the same appreciation for it. I knew there wasn't going to be a follow up date from the moment that I took my coat off and saw the guy run an appraising eye over me in the most obvious way. I don't think he was impressed with what he saw, and I most certainly wasn't happy with being sized up like a piece of meat. My nephew is going to learn that while it's fine to check someone out, it is not so fine to judge them solely by looks. And it's not cool at all to be so obvious about it.

I'll say this for the guy, he didn't have one drink and leave, but the drinks did drag on a little. A 7 o'clock meeting usually signals dinner to go with the drinks, assuming things are going well, but 10:30 came around and we were still in the bar, on our third drink each. Almost as soon as he finished, he was getting out of there, it was obvious. It was not a terrible date, for me at least, but it was definitely not a great date. So little H is going to be taught how to gracefully extract himself from uncomfortable situations, because his aunt feels that this skill is something that would have stood her in good stead sometimes.

Have to admit I was disappointed with first viewing of the guy as well, but I like to think I hid it better. That's the other thing H is going to learn - how to avoid the necessity of internet dating. Because it is a necessity when you aren't going out anywhere to meet people, but still want to stand a chance of dating. As my sister-in-law says, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. All well and good for those who have found their prince, I'm sure. I'm still trawling through the frogs. And H, well, he may look a little froggy now, with his lose gummy mouth, but he's not going to grow up to be one, even if it means taking him aside regularly for instruction.

You'd think he was my kid the way I'm talking about him, the lofty ambitions for the sort of person he'll grow up to be. But I'm a childless aunt. It's my job to look out for nieces and nephews. And if he's anything like his sister, he'll have a will of iron to stand up to anyone who tries to bend him anyway he doesn't want to go. The old soul already looking out of his eyes is hopefully the soul of a gentleman, that way we both get our way.

So welcome, H. I look forward to spending a whole lot of time with you. And eyeballing-date-man? I look forward to not spending any more time with you.

The Valley of Decision

It all began with a text message.

Well actually, it didn't, it began long before that, but it went up a gear when I got the message on Saturday.

"Holy crap!!! I just bought a house!!!"

Yep, L has finally found her dream home and managed to buy it on the first try. And when she stopped shaking like a leaf and reality set in, she repeated an offer that was made a long time ago, way back in London, in fact. She asked if I'd consider sharing with her again.

I considered it. I weighed it against my other options. One one side, there's my current flatmate, the bane of my existence and the reason that I now understand the difference between being messy and being dirty. For anyone who's confused, I'm the first one, and she's the second. I never knew how frustrating it must have been for the OCD L to share with my messiness, until I was confronted with someone who was fine with leaving chunks of food in random places in the kitchen, who has yet to learn that bathroom basins need the occasional clean, and that floors don't mop themselves; until I found myself turning into my mother and bitching about doors left wide open and letting the heat out. From another angle, I could scrape together the cash to live alone once more. It would mean writing off my travel plans for the next while, and probably putting off all sorts of other plans as well, but it could probably be done. And then there's sharing with L, someone that I know both can and will drive me nuts on occasion, but will also let me raid both her bookshelves and her DVD collection, will clean up after me in a most considerate way, and will make me laugh.

In the end, the decision was a no brainer, so I called up the property managers of my flat to find out about the logistics of extending my lease long enough to allow L to settle on her house and get herself organised. After a brief misunderstanding where they thought I was wanting to renew for another 12 months - panic stations - it's all organised. All except telling my flatmate.

In a twist, she's been the perfect flatmate since I made the decision. She's emptied bins, replaced toilet rolls and chatted away like she hasn't since I first met her way back in February. And I have to go and spoil all of that. It's going to be awkward, if only because when I go I'm taking all of my furniture with me, and that includes the bed she sleeps in. But what can I do? What else would I want to do?

Now to screw up the courage for the big conversation...Yep. Decisions. They can really make me stressed.

Philanthropic romance

It was lunchtime and, for a change, I was working in the city. I decided to brave the gale force winds blowing up Collins St and headed out to buy my lunch. I'm on a sushi binge at the moment, so that meant heading to the Purple Peanut, near Spencer St. It's a tiny little cafe that is always crammed come lunchtime thanks to their fantastic authentic Japanese fare. Heading over the bridge across Wurrundjeri Way, I noticed a man standing unobtrusively off the side of the pavement and holding out a cup for money.

"Spare change, miss?" he asked. I looked at him as I shook my head, and saw that he wasn't that old. He had startling blue green eyes and a plaintive facial expression. I genuinely didn't have any change but felt bad about following my usual rule of not giving cash to beggars. But it also reminded me of a couple of things. The last time I gave money to a beggar was on the first date with the Talker. We both delved deep and the Talker engaged him in conversation. Based on what I later learnt about him, I'd say this was not his usual practice. I think it was done to impress me, to show how compassionate and giving he was, and that he had enough cash to be able to splash out and help the homeless pay for a night in a hostel somewhere. A guy I went out with in London tried the same trick.

And it worked. Each time I've seen this done, I've respected the guy a little more than I otherwise might have. Something about seeing a philanthropic side to my dates makes me weak kneed. I like a man with a social conscience. Or maybe I just like the idea that he can empathise, but still has spare cash. So why is it that, while I admire this trait in my men, I never actually follow through with the donations myself, unless I'm also on a date? I'm sure I'm trying to show exactly the same things as the men are, but I'm always that half a step behind because I don't normally give. Perhaps what I'm really seeing in these men is the hope that he'll take me under his wing and give me everything I want - obviously, alcohol plays a part in the delusion that this will ever happen. And in the end, if it's a false act, what do you really achieve?

In the case of the Talker, it was another two dates before I woke up to myself and realised that he was not really the gentlemanly empathetic philanthropist, but was instead a misogynist who would quite happily chain me to either the kitchen sink or the bedpost, depending upon his mood. So perhaps it's time I reversed things. I might have to start donating to beggars when I'm walking alone, and keep my coin to myself when I'm on a date. Given the way things have worked out in the past in this respect, it might be the safer course.

It all ends

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock would know that the eighth and final Harry Potter movie was released last week. The press has covered it exhaustively, from both a "Thank |God it's over" standpoint to a "wow, it's all so brilliant, you simply must see it" perspective. I've always been a fan, first of the books and then of the films. I was out at the cinemas last Tuesday night, watching the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in preparation for the latest movie. I was hardly alone. I think it would be rare to find a full cinema for a movie that's about a year old, without it having become a cult classic. Even more rare would be the look of the audience.

I know there are certain films shown in certain cinemas where people go along to participate and dress up. The Westgarth used to run the Blues Brothers regularly; the Moonlight Cinema showings of Grease end up attracting a huge crowd of fans. Rocky Horror Picture Show, in particular, is known for audiences in costumes not normally seen on the streets. Harry Potter seems to be in the same category. The hard core fans were out and about on Tuesday night, complete with robes (or rather, academic gowns, most often), hats, wigs, brooms and scars. My friends and I all felt very old as we got our money's worth out of the ticket just in watching our fellow audience stream in. We certainly felt a strange combination of under-dressed and old, sitting in our tame street clothes. There again, we weren't going to be backing up our 9pm session of the old movie with the midnight first screening of the new one. Part of what made us feel old was the realisation that, before we became mature adults and had to turn up in a reasonable state for work on a regular basis, we would have been in the midnight show. Sure, we wouldn't have dressed up, but we would have been there.

There's been a whole lot written about how many of the fans have grown up with the characters. They started out the same age as Harry when they read the first book, and have reached adulthood and maturity at the same time as him. Little has been noted about the generation of fans who measure their adult life in comparison of Harry, as well. Close reading of the novels will show that Harry, the character, should be about my age. The headstone on his parents' grave puts their death in 1982, meaning he was born in 1981. He, like me, should fall into the awkward gap between Gen X and Gen Y, forever feeling just slightly out of place with those on either side of the generation gap. We're too young to have children in tow when we go to these films, but too old to feel comfortable walking through Crown Casino dressed up as a death eater. But at the same time, the Harry films, at least, have coincided with some big things in my own life.

The first Harry film came out when I was 21. I was legally an adult everywhere, and taking my first steps into a properly grown up world. It was the year that they kicked us out of university to go and work for a while, to learn just how much we didn't know about being architects. I used at least part of my year to take my first overseas trip without adults - actually, my first since a trip to New Zealand as a three year old. I saw the movie alone, sitting in a late afternoon session on a miserable day in Cork, Ireland. I felt like a complete outsider as I sat there waiting for the lights to go down - although in Ireland, like the UK, they never go down completely the way they do in Australia, so it felt even more strange. Then, for a couple of hours, I was transported to places that had suddenly taken on a new meaning for me, given that I'd just experienced the wonders of Kings Cross Station, of London for the first time. The sense of wonder Harry felt when he arrived at Hogwarts for the first time was nothing compared to the awe I felt as I stood in a London phone booth (this was in the dark ages, before Skype, before everybody travelled with a mobile phone, hell, before my parents had worked out how to email) and told Mum that I'd arrived safely. She still remembers how excited I sounded, even after not having slept for almost 36 hours. I may have been ten years older than the fictional character, but I could relate.

Since then, the world has grown increasingly dark for both the fictional wizards and the real life me. We aren't threatened by an evil dark lord, but the rise of terrorism following September 11, less than a month before I made that first trip, and the current financial woes have cast a shadow over the adulthood of my in-between generation. We emerged from childhood into a world where we were told we could have everything, much like Harry discovering the wizarding world. The first years of the rest of our lives were bright, with sudden explosions of doom, until about four years ago when the first rumblings began. Around the time of Order of the Phoenix, actually.

So here we are, and Harry has saved Hogwarts once and for all. There's no doubting now that I'm all growed up, even if I do still have a liking for kiddie tales. Here's hoping that the lighter side of the final scenes of Deathly Hallows Part 2 will presage brighter times ahead for my age group, a lighter future for the Gen Yers who went to so much trouble with their costumes. One can only hope.

The road more travelled

It's been hard to avoid a sense of being left behind lately. Everyone seems to be sorted out, whether it's in relation to their careers, their finances, their relationships, or their families. Everyone, that is, except me, stuck in a place where I feel that I've never completely grown up.

Of course, there are advantages to not growing up. You can get away with star fishing in a massive bed, because you're not sharing it with anyone. You can spend your time however you want to; if there's a TV show you want to watch, the only thing that might stop you is another equally appealing show being on at the same time. Your sleep is undisturbed, and you never have to fight for the bathroom. You owe nothing to anybody, unless of course you've borrowed it first. If you want to take off to the other side of the world, the only thing stopping you is your bank balance. Yes, there are definite good points.

But the bad seems to be out weighing the good recently. In my family, I still feel like the little kid. I'm the only one left who is not partnered up, one of the only two without children and a marriage. Even my younger cousins are now all married. My younger sister-in-law is due to pop out her second child sometime in the next couple of weeks; the cousin a year younger than me is not far behind her with her first. My boss earns twice the cash that I do, owns two houses and has a partner that she is planning a family with; she's three years older than me. My closest friends either own homes or are looking to buy. They are in jobs that they enjoy, and they're well paid. Many of them are also in relationships.

And then there's me.

I'm single, with no prospects on the horizon. I am extremely badly paid in a job that, on a good day, I tolerate but never love. I have no idea what to do with my life, and have been drifting along without hope of improvement for years now, dabbling around the edges of the problems but too chicken to actually do something that will decide one way or another for me. I tried living on my own, and found that I could barely keep my nose above the financial waters, so had to go back to sharing a house. Although I am older than at least half of my female relatives, I do not have a family of my own; wanting does not bring anything into effect in that area, and my existence is too precarious to risk a solo effort. While everybody else seems to have progressed in at least one area of their life, I have comprehensively wallowed.

It's tough being alone in this world, too. Everything is geared towards couples, from travel to restaurants, to advertising, to radio competitions. Couples and families. The assumption was always that I would have been married and settled by now, a couple of kids in tow. It hasn't happened - not just for me, but for many women I know. Failing that, I was going to have dazzled literary circles with my writing, designed award winning houses, done something to have an impact on the world, rather than becoming the person who holds up people's dream homes because their design is 10cm too close to a boundary. I was supposed to at least make enough cash that I would be able to afford my own place, somewhere to hide my miserable self. It seems that I have failed comprehensively.

I usually try not to get down about things beyond my control; if I did, I'd be in a permanent state of misery. But today, for some reason, I have succumbed to the temptations of chocolate and junk food, to misery, fear, and loneliness. Tonight, it seems too hard to keep up the smiling face of the fat person, the cliche of crying within is ringing a little too true. Tonight, I feel that everybody else is moving forwards, and I'm going backwards. About the only signs of increasing maturity are the soft laughter lines around my eyes, and what I'm starting to believe are silver, rather than golden, strands that occasionally reveal themselves in the thick mass of my hair. I'm tired of pretending that I don't care, that it doesn't hurt to see someone with the life I pictured for myself.

Tonight, of not on other nights, the walls can come down a little, and I can say, with complete honesty, that family functions are a bitter pill to swallow. I may gripe about them a little at other times, but the reason never really comes out. The truth is, that when my outspoken, bitter and twisted grandmother comes out with her barbed comments about weight, about the idea that I have ruined my life by travelling instead of settling down, there are times when I almost believe that she's right. There are times when I look at the life of my cousin, my oldest and probably closest friend, and, whatever I think of her husband, I wonder why that never comes to me. When I look around the table of coupled up people, and find myself seated opposite Nana, as the only other single around the table, and I wonder if this is what life will be like for always, the sense that everybody else is happy, and I alone am not. And you have to wonder, where did it all go wrong? Was it in wanting things that were never meant for me? Or was it in trying too hard to do everything, to be everything? Perhaps it was in wanting it all, and not narrowing my focus. Or maybe it was just never the right thing for me and I'm pining for things that would never make me any happier than I am right now.

Or maybe it was in disappearing down a worm hole of 'What if?'

Criminal Mastermind

I was having a conversation with my brother last week, and it came out that he was at a community function in Glenroy earlier that day. Glenroy, and neighbouring suburbs of Coolooroo an Jacana, have been in the news a lot lately thanks to a series of fire bombings and shootings. The Police had decided to try and get the community a bit settled down by hosting an afternoon tea in a local park. It seems that the smallest member of the police air wing stopped in to impress the kiddies, and my brother overheard an interesting conversation that I feel compelled to report.

A local wandered over to where the helicopter pilots were standing by their bird.

"Oh mate, she is fully sick, huh," he observed. Somehow the local accent doesn't come through when typing. The police smiled and nodded.

"So, you got the keys? We take her for a spin?" The pilot laughed.

"Nah, mate, this one doesn't start with keys. It's a button."

The eyes of the local light up.

"So she would be easy to steal, then, huh."

As the title says: criminal mastermind.

Two strikes

It's been one of those days. It started with allergies, cleared up in the middle, and is ending with some sort of nightmarish sequence of stupid events and unhealthy levels of failure at anger management. Perhaps I should just start with some of the good bits, and let it progress from there.

Today is my sister-in-law's birthday, an occasion that my mother used as an excuse to test the waters of my brothers' new tolerance for each other. It's a long time since they would be able to be in the same room with each other, let alone the slight thawing of their demeanour which has seen them both participating in the same conversation - although still not talking directly to each other. Between them cracking jokes at either end of the table, and my two year old whirlwind of a niece playing up for her audience, the night was going pretty well. Some quiet chat with Mum and Dad afterwards - yes, I know, it's sad, but when you're single and broke you have to make the most of all interaction, not to mention the free food that comes with one of Mum's cooking spectaculars - and I was ready to head home and throw my phone on the charge. A bit of light reading before bed while I got some juice back into the batteries, to make sure it would last the night and wake me up in the morning. It just flashed at me with a battery warning light when I tried to make it do something. Note to self: leaving the MSN app running in the background all day chews through batteries like nothing else.

So I packed my many bags of goodies and headed homewards, feeling pretty safe in the knowledge that the flatmate would have arrived home before me and, if not warmed the flat, at least put the bins out. Sadly, no. As I parked my car, I drove past both of the bins which should have been on the nature strip. A quick check of the letterbox revealed that it was also not as it should have been. Thinking flatmate mustn't be home yet, I trudged up the stairs and rummaged in my bag for my keys.

Not there.

A vision came to me of throwing them on my desk at work, and another, later vision, of them being under a pile of papers. Still. And my phone was dead. But when I reached the top of the stairs, thinking to have another good rummage in my Tardis of a handbag, I noticed that the security door was ajar. Flatmate must be home, thank god, I thought, willing to overlook transgressions of bin and letterbox maintenance in return for being let in. I pushed the button for the doorbell, and waited.

Fine, I thought, when two more pushes had failed to yield a flatmate. She's probably in her room - where else would she be, actually? - so I'll just knock. Now I have a truly fearsome rap when I'm trying to get in somewhere. Not only has it terrified schoolies into quietude in beachside hotels, it has brought the rowdiest of neighbours to turn down their stereos. It's a knock worthy of the old ladies who live downstairs and sit in judgement on the goings on of the flats. A truly fantastic weapon to have in your arsenal when you're locked out and your apparently partially deaf flatmate is inside. Make that completely deaf. She didn't come to the door. OK, I told myself. It's 10:30, she might just be security conscious. I called out. Nothing. I thought I could hear running water inside, so I waited for it to stop and then tried again. Nada.

By this point I was fuming. Not only had she not put out the bins, but she was leaving me locked out on a bloody cold night. And this following hard on the heels of the Great Cooking Mess of 2011. Not going well at all, here. I knew what I had to do, but I was dreading doing it. Finally getting angry enough, I stormed downstairs and back to my car, bag of leftovers over my wrist. Throwing the car into gear and speeding onto the roads, I headed back to Mum and Dad's to pick up my spare keys, just hoping that they hadn't gone to bed yet, and that a knock on the door at 10:45 wouldn't give them heart failure.

An angry rant and a serious risk of speeding fines later, and my spare keys let me into the flat. The only sign that flatmate had been home, other than the unlocked wire door, was the firmly closed bedroom door, as opposed to the slightly ajar state that it gets left in when she's not home.

Banging and clattering around for a bit to get my own back, I decided to open the mail. One of the letters was a warning about an outstanding amount of rent, which I had tried without success to chase up before. This time it was different, and I felt like screaming. The amount listed as the rent we should be paying is $4 a month more than the weekly calculation suggests it should be. That's the difference in the rent that they are chasing. If they really want the extra 84 cents a week, the bastards can fight for it. I'm in no mood to be trifled with, and, based on the mounting headache, it's a mood that will linger through until morning. That this is the second time they've attempted to extract the cash from me has made me think that, as much as I love the flat, I may be moving on come September when the lease is up. Heaven help them if they fight back against the logical arguments I will attempt to make. Because I sure as hell won't.

Domestic Bliss

It's a few months now since the decision to get a flatmate. She moved in, and nothing has really been quite the same since. You'd hope I meant that in a good way, but really, no. It's not that we hate each other, or bicker, or anything drastic, really. But there is a chronic incompatibility looming on the horizon, and I don't think she's even noticed it.

She's a nice enough person, I suppose. Quite friendly, not hugely annoying, and keeps very much to herself. In fact most of the time, I'm not entirely sure if she's home or not. I have to peek through cracks or look for light shining under doors to get a sense of whether I'm alone or potentially have company. The general consensus is that it's an odd relationship in the flat. And that was before she started eating all of her meals in her room, as well spending the rest of her time holed up in there. In some respects, I guess she's the perfect flatmate. She pays bills on time, she's quiet, and she never hogs the couch or forces me to watch TV shows I don't like. But although I'm never sure of her current presence or absence, I can usually tell when she's been around.

Now I'm not the greatest with all things housekeeping. I vacuum the carpets once a month if I'm lucky, and do the shower once a quarter. Dishes are washed only when the pile on the sink gets too precarious, or there's a danger of being so many that need washing that they won't fit on the dish drainer. If I remember to change my sheets regularly, and actually have them washed by the time it occurs to me to change them again, I'm doing pretty well. But there are some things that I figure it's only fair to keep on top of when you're sharing. I think it would have been even more important if that sharing involved the use of someone else's things. But no, apparently not.

When I moved into this flat, everything I owned was new. Except my couch. And my kitchen table. And the antique bits and pieces. But you get the picture. The plates had never been eaten off. The sheets had never been slept on. The towels had never been used. The saucepans had never cooked anything. It was all still in quite good shape when she moved in. That can no longer be said about some things. It's to the point where, after helping me out while I was laid up with my back, my mother has been forced to offer me advice on how to get the saucepans back into something like a good condition, after months of things being cooked onto the sides. You can pick which pans she uses most often; they're the ones which are the most filthy outside, to the point that I can't get them clean even with steel wool, and have a soap scum residue inside them. You're supposed to wash pans AFTER cooking, not before.

And I could write it off if it was just pans, even if my pointed scrubbing of pans I haven't used has failed to have an effect (passive aggressive behaviour? perhaps, but direct suggestions for a cleaning roster have failed to have any impact). But being flat out with back pain and seeing your flatmate take the vacuum out for the first time ever, only to do her own room, having never cleaned the shower, never mopped any of the floors, it's getting a little much. I think the final straw came this weekend.

I haven't been using the cooktop much recently, at least partly because of the depressing state of my pans. But it drove me to the point of action on Saturday. I tried to clean the cooktop, because it was beginning to look like a bio-hazard; baked on sauce, overspill, actual chunks of food. But it wouldn't just wipe down. It required an actual cleaning product. I've never had to use a product to clean a cooktop before, I've always been able to manage it along the way. When I picked up the metal grate that covers the jets and found it was sticky and coated in a thick layer of baked on sludge, I was fuming. It drove me mad, to the point where I actually finished a cleaning job and looked for more - an unheard of phenomenon. I vacuumed. I spot cleaned the carpet. I swept. I mopped. By the time my sister-in-law popped in for a visit, the place was worthy of my mother's stamp of approval. I even changed the tea towels on the kitchen rail - yet another something that seems to fall into my area of responsibility. The flat was gleaming. The stove looked brand new. It was pristine. Then I headed out for dinner.

I was out again tonight. When I got home, there were once again unwashed saucepan lids on the stove. There was also cooked on sauce and a chunk of unidentifiable vegetable. There was also a load of washing that had been sitting in the washing machine all afternoon. Too bad if I needed to use it.

Individually, most of the problems I'm having with this girl aren't major. But the whole package, from the way she acts like she is responsible for inspiring any physical activity I take up - hello, woman, I have 2 prolapsed discs, you think I'm going to be taking up marathon running right now? But you're the only reason I might decide to start an activity? Or wait, you're the one who "inspired" me to take regular walks all summer until my back got screwed up, even though you didn't move in until February? Genius - to her complete inability to realise that you need to clean the kitchen floor when you spill stuff on it, or that pasta sauce will stain white cupboards if you leave it caked on dribbling down the front of them for a week or more, it all adds up and it's all driving me completely insane right now. And I'm at a loss for how to approach the problem in a way that won't blow up in my face, because clearly just leaving it until she notices have absolutely no impact at all.

How do you tell someone that you think they're a slob and that if they don't pull their finger out you're not going to be letting them use your stuff anymore? How do you suggest to a flatmate that the experiment isn't working, and that they should find somewhere else to live when the lease is up for renewal? And how do you bitch and moan to a friend who is about to buy a 4 bedroom house, without any intention of accepting the invitation to share that house?

Because L is about to take the plunge into the real estate market. She wants someone to share her mini-mansion, and I fit the bill quite nicely. She knows I'm fed up with my current living arrangement, she knows we rub along well enough as flat mates - or at least she knows she can put up with my more annoying habits, and that I won't kill her for hers. But I don't think I'm ready to go and live in her house, and that's another conversation that I don't know how to have. That said, I think I have more clues on that one than I do on how to kick out my current flat mate. If I could re-negotiate my rent, I'd be happy enough to stay here on my own. But dear god, something better change soon.

After a fashion

There's something about a good costume drama that sucks me in every time. I'm currently fathoms deep in love with Downton Abbey, and the love affair is showing no signs of easing. Whether it's the ability to sit and gloat as Lady Mary gets thrown at any man with a suitable fortune and/or title, safe in the knowledge that I do not have to worry about such things, or the poor footman, William, being subjected to the sort of workplace bullying and victimisation that we have laws to stop these days, or from some deeper enjoyment of watching things which recreate a by-gone age - supposedly more innocent, but really just different - I don't know.

Actually, I do have some idea what part of it is. It's the costumes. I'd love to have an excuse for wearing something like the gorgeous gowns they showcase - although perhaps not the corsets required to achieve the tiny waistlines. God knows I have enough problems at the moment without adding a tendency to faint due to lack of oxygen because I've been laced too tight. Instead, I've been trying to figure out ways of updating the look, getting some of it into my own wardrobe, at least my work wardrobe, which has become surprisingly ladylike for a girl who didn't own a skirt or dress that wasn't a uniform from the age of 15 through to 19.

I hate the expression ladylike, though. Or I should, as a believer in women's rights and equality. But somehow even though I don't want to live my life in a ladylike fashion - all staying at home and looking after the children, being subservient and second class, swooning at the drop of an embroidered handkerchief - I love the concepts associated with it. My favourite periods are almost all those where women wore "ladylike" clothes, yet still managed to show that they were up to whatever task was thrown at them. The suffragettes, the flappers, Rosie riveters, they all had awesome fashion. And dear god, what does it say about me that I've reduced some of the women who pushed the boundaries of society to the dresses they wore? Ah well, tis sad but true. We are what we eat, but we're also what we wear. And what fabulous things they were.

Life in the fast lane

Just when I thought things were looking up, I figured I was safe to go out of the house heading somewhere other than work this weekend. So I spent the better part of yesterday doing the rounds of various fabric outlets, spending far more than I should have on some beautiful materials which will someday be turned into something equally beautiful. As if lugging a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff around wasn't enough to test my back out, I decided to really push my luck and play with my niece.

She's two, but she's about the size of the average four year old, a mini giant who will one day be a seriously tall one. Imagine a slightly less coherent but far more opinionated Dora the Explorer, and you're getting pretty close to the hyperactive bundle of energy that my brother helped bring into this world. Ever the optimist, I thought I'd be able to manage some of our usual games - the catch and spin, the whizzy dizzy, the throw over the shoulder, the threaten to throw in the bin. It was only the last one that made me certain it probably wasn't one of my better ideas. But there's no easy way out when your arms are full of squirming, shrieking little girl and you're standing on concrete. Not like the moment when you first began to doubt your own wisdom and simply made it more fun by dropping her on the conveniently located bed.

Not content with that, I headed out and about today, driving to various locations around town. The true lightening bolt moment of the day came as I was driving on the Ring Road, along one of the three lane stretches. Driving down the left lane, I noticed signs telling me to merge right. Checking the mirrors, I waited for a speeding car to pass me, then moved over at about the same time as the car in front of me pulled in front of the speeder. Funny, it was kind of like it happens in the movies - slow motion, obvious what the next step would be at every stage. Rather than braking, the speeder began to shift into the right lane. They didn't check their mirrors, or look out their window, even, and didn't see the car that was already in that lane until it was almost too late. With bare millimetres between the two cars, they both suddenly became aware of what was going on. The car already in the right lane swerved a little away, but the speeder, as they had done all along, completely over reacted. Braking hard and wrenching left, the driver lost control of their car. Smoke was screaming from the locked wheels as they skidded and spun across my lane and the left lane which had not yet ended. By the time they reached the emergency lane, they were facing the wrong way and started to cross back into the left lane before coming to a stop, at last.

You can imagine what braking from 100 in a hurry did to my back. Even the adrenaline kick from being so close to potential serious danger didn't stop it hurting as I watched the speeder once again getting back up to and then beyond the speed limit. The few things that I had to get at the supermarket were almost the end of me, or that's how it felt. I've been back in the horizontal position on the couch again since I got home. The pinging sensation that I felt when I got up earlier tonight make me think I'm still going to be sore tomorrow. The cars avoided damage, but I apparently did not. The car that had sparked all the drama in the first place probably hadn't even noticed what was going on, disappearing around a bend before the speeder had even finished spinning.

Baby steps

It seems that my entrepreneurial side has taken over while my mobility has been limited. Yes, that's right, the threatened back seizure happened, and I've had a week of enforced inactivity. And during that time - particularly during the long weekend that fell in that period - I've had plenty of time to mull over various things. Funny how much the mind works when the rest of you doesn't, when you need to call for help to get out of bed without almost passing out in agony - and I wish I was exaggerating that particular detail, but my mother can confirm that slightly panicked phone call that went out last Friday morning, before the lovely pain killers kicked in, before my 2 year old niece kissed me better.

During that time, I was fussing and fuming about the lost sewing time I had planned for the three day weekend. And some wheels began to turn. Slowly, yes, but then again, and avalanche starts with a trickle. It picked up a little speed tonight, though. After last night's effort on eBay buying up vintage patterns to add to what is already an extensive collection, today I registered a business name and a domain name in preparation for being able to sell the products of my efforts.

Things are really kicking off around here. I'm planning not only to make, sell and - eventually - design clothes, but I'm also plotting ways of funding travel through this. Think of it - Killi's London Blitz, a tour for fans of the wartime period in London...stopping off in Paris and Amsterdam for a couple of days as well. Now I just need to get some product to sell, some research into the whole travel issue, a website up and running, and, well, any kind of clue how to turn this into something that I don't get bored with. Hmm...But the first steps have been taken, anyway. And now I'm kind of vertical again (although not right now, thanks to heading back to work before I was really ready), I can get on with the realities of what is required. Fabric shopping this weekend. I can hardly wait to watch my hard earned flow through my fingers...

15 minutes

It's funny the things that can get you annoyed. Sometimes it's big things - outrage at social injustice, laws that allow on the spot fines for swearing, stripping the powers from the equal opportunities commission, arguing against a carbon tax that could help slow environmental degradation. Sometimes it's pettiness - that newspapers and magazines feel compelled to devote so many column inches to people who just happen to have won the genetic lottery. Today, apparently, it's the completely insignificant that is getting my goat.

I'm on the final stretch of the assignment run. The last one is due tomorrow, and I'm within sight of the finish line. It's so close that I allowed myself a break to watch some TV - Winners and Losers an amusing little comedy/drama about the lives of four women who win the lottery. It was supposed to start at 9, an annoying enough time to start a show in a land where hourly shows start on the half hour or thereabouts, but manageable. Or it is when Channel 7 don't run so far over time that the show is 15 minutes late. And all because of Australia's Got Talent. Australia apparently has so much talent that it can't be edited to a reasonable time slot. It's not like the show is live, folks. They're quite happy to edit other programs so they can cram in more and more ads, but this one they stretch out to make sure there is enough time to repeat the bloody phone numbers for voting lines over and over again.

So here I am, sitting on the couch again (it's a common theme lately, and clearly I've been doing it too much because my back is feeling like it's about to give up again) and silently building up an impotent rage. Because what can I do about that fact that a TV network decides not to follow it's own programming guide? And then it hits me just how pointless the whole thing is anyway, given that it doesn't affect anyone in a life and death way, and I get angry at myself for being too caught up in something so insignificant, and the cycle repeats ad nauseum until my head explodes, or I find my way onto my blog to blow off steam. I think I might just be sufficiently calm to get back to writing about teaching humanities in secondary schools...Although it's on Channel 7's head if something along these lines creeps into the section on civics and citizenship, because Australia may have talent, but Channel 7's programming department is lacking severely in the clock department.

Only the Lonely

The universe is conspiring against me at the moment. My study reading has me looking into the concept of emotional intelligence, the pressures to conform to societal norms. I'm tired, I'm emotional. And I'm listening to 'Gotta be Somebody' by Nickelback and feeling the urge to hit the repeat button and get a little teary at the thought that perhaps there may not be somebody out there for me. All of this follows a conversation with a friend on the way home from my birthday drinks about what would happen if I never found 'The One'. What if I stay single? What if Nana was right when she was telling my mother - at my birthday dinner with my family, no less; now I remember why I usually spend them overseas - that the four years I spent overseas had ruined my life. I was going to be just like a woman she had known when she was younger, who had left behind a fiance to go travelling for two years on the grand tour, only to return and find her fiance had found someone else, and she would remain a spinster for the rest of her life.

I never set much store by that story. I've heard it before, and it's only ever made me angry, that Nana was so narrow minded she thought it would be better to be married to a man who was obviously not in love with her enough to wait than to have had the wonderful, amazing, enriching experiences Mabel had while she was travelling. Nana never mentions if Mabel regrets missing 'her chance'. For all I know she led a perfectly happy and fulfilling life. The only part of it that I ever hear about is that she never married and ruined her life by travelling for so long. Just like I have done. Mind you, earlier that same night, she had only just held back from insulting me to my face. "You don't eat much, do you. You shouldn't be so --" Happy birthday to me.

And to top off the emotional fiesta that is my night, I had an email from the Talker today, just wanting clarification on what I meant by saying we should 'cool things' and offering to be friends in whatever way I was up for, whether that was just hanging out, or dating or whatever. And the mood I'm in right now, I'm tempted by it. Because even Chatty McStepford seems more appealing than spending another day, week, year, eternity sitting on this bloody couch alone.

Best in class

I've been working on my main skill base over the past few days, focusing on the areas where I'm strongest. The result? I have confirmed that I am even better at procrastination than I thought. But on the plus side, I'm also going to be a little better organised and stronger out of this particular bout. Because I've not only tidied my sewing table enough to mean only a couple of things have to be moved if the urge to create comes upon me (and during a procrastination binge, that has been known to happen), I've also re-arranged the furniture in my bedroom so that things kind of work better, apart from one awkward corner (far better than the whole wall of awkward that I had before). I've purged my wardrobe, my chest of drawers, I've sorted my vintage pattern collection, I've gone to a vintage fair, I've attempted - unsuccessfully - to see The Hangover 2, and successfully wandered to my brother's for a refresher viewing of the first one.

About the only thing I haven't yet managed is the dishes (that's my next task) and the actual study I'm supposed to be doing. I think I've finally reached professional levels in my procrastination. I've hit my peak, and I'm debating upping the ante again, by deferring next semester while I re-evaluate how much I want to study for at least 2 years more to go and spend my days somewhere that may or may not suit me. How enthused I am at using my entire allowance of annual leave for the next three years on practical experience rounds. Or whether I should just take the advice of my brother's girlfriend and get into the clothing thing a little further, since, as she observed, I'm clearly quite passionate about it.

Yes, that's right, I'm apparently passionate about something other than books. So perhaps I'm studying the wrong thing. Perhaps I don't actually need to study at all, and have all the skills I need. But whatever I decide, I have about 5 hours to pull together my next assignment for submission if I fancy keeping my options open about this particular path. And I can't face it. So instead, I'm off to clean the pan I used to make pancakes earlier today (yes, I'm studying, so all semblance of a healthy diet has gone out the window, even if I haven't achieved any actual study).

So, that's another 20 minutes wasted. Clearly, I excel at this whole thing. If only I had something that would lead me to study as procrastination...

The lesser of two evils

I've just let the Talker know that it's unlikely that there'll be any more dates. And I feel like a complete heel for doing it. Because on the whole, he's a pretty decent guy, it's just there were too many niggling doubts in my mind for me to continue with it. I spent too much of the time during our dates (the parts before alcohol befuddled my mind, anyway) trying to convince myself that he was right for me. I'm not generally into self-delusion, so I've decided that it was best for everyone if I just ended it.

Maybe part of the reason I'm sensing a distinct odour coming from my own behaviour is that I did it by text. At 10pm. In response to a text from him saying that he was feeling really good all day on Saturday after our Friday night date. And I used a slightly more wordy version of "it's not you, it's me". Yep. World-class shit, sitting right here at the keyboard.

But why is that? Sure, my timing sucked, but isn't it better that I told him up front than going the ignore route that I would have taken had he not been such a decent guy? Or that I took the time and trouble to come up with an explanation for my reasoning, that gave him some clarity for why it was happening, and an idea that it wasn't because he was a crap date? Yes, my method of delivery was cowardly and pathetic, but we'd been on three dates. It's not like we were living together or anything. And this was they guy who told me he wasn't looking for anything serious (I may have used that against him in the "we have to talk" text...but it's kind of true). So what did I really owe him? I've been on the receiving end of the fade out after a third date, and it wasn't hurtful. I did consider doing that with this one, but thought it required a more definite response. So for being a responsible adult, I get to feel like crap.

I swear, if dating doesn't get easier, I'm asking my parents to take over and arrange a marriage for me...At least then they'd have to handle the break-up.

In my home town

At the risk of seeming self centred (hello, I've been blogging about my life for almost five years now, and still stamp my foot a little when I realise just how few people have come back more than once in that time. What, my ramblings aren't worthy? But I digress. Hmm, perhaps that's the problem?), I'm about to blog my personal life again. Yes, that's right, folks, welcome to another world of the completely insecure embarking on a dating exercise.

The boy I've now seen twice - let's dub him the Talker, for his ability to talk the leg off a table - has suggested meeting up this weekend. But he hasn't suggested any locations, obviously assuming that with my many years living in Melbourne I'll be able to suggest somewhere suitable. I knew it was a mistake to come across all "oh yeah, you have to try this place" on the first date. So I've just spent almost an hour googling ideas. And you know what I've come up with? A sleazy, vile pool hall; ten pin bowling. Then I hit the joys of suburb-based streets; Brunswick St, Fitzroy; Fitzroy St, St Kilda. Really? I lived in this city for most of my life, and that's the best I can come up with as suggestions for what to do? Where are the cosy venues with great food and cheap drinks? Where is the quirky back-alley basement bar? Because the truth is, when planning a night out in my home town, I'm a dead loss.

Meanwhile, you guessed it, it's coming to the end of semester. I'm in full procrastination mode. And that might be why I'm planning on doing a whole lot of research into suitable date venues over the next few days. Procrastination task at the ready? Students, stop your engines...

Wanted: Forward impetus

I'm not sure what it is about me that makes me so restless, but I'm currently having a serious bout of career blues. I'm bored senseless at work most of the time, and sick of spending my nights studying to try and get somewhere else. I think it might really just be the onset of a Melbourne winter, and it being just on a year now since I left London. I think I'm entitled to a little angst, to be honest.

So, anyone who isn't prepared for a bit of self-pitying moaning, look away now. I promise that the next post will be more upbeat. Probably.

Everyone who hears about my current study plan gives such a negative response that I've started to believe them. What started out seeming like a great career move for me - get to read kids books without anyone looking at me strangely, get 10 weeks holiday a year, don't need to have the greatest attention to detail - is becoming more and more like something that I will end up hating. Sounds like a familiar tale, to tell the truth. So what do I do about it all? Do I keep studying, in hopes that it works out OK in the long run? Or do I call it quits now and find whatever it is that I'm really supposed to do? Knuckle down, rent a cottage somewhere with no distractions, and actually finish writing any one of the four or so books that I have in various stages of completion so that I can attempt to get them published? Chuck everything in and just work as a temp until I find myself a career that fits? Switch out of my current job into something similar that at least pays better? Or find myself a rich man and live a life of ease and luxury on someone else's dollar? Perhaps hold off and attempt to score myself a job in academia?

That's always been the problem with me and careers, though. There's always been too many choices on the table, and not enough will to narrow it down. Too much dreaming, not enough reality. Not to mention not enough specificity in my skill base. Jack of all trades, master of none. The only thing I know for sure is that I need to make some kind of change. My current work is driving me to distraction with the lack of challenge, and that's without factoring in the monumental levels of stupidity in the people I deal with on a daily basis, from the co-worker who is unable to shut the fridge door (and then unable to hear the annoying beep it makes when she does this), to the nut job residents of the estate, or the lazy arse council workers who take three months to act on something, but still manage an appropriately surprised voice every time you talk to them.

I have to find myself a grown up mature job sometime soon, though. It's too early for a mid-life crisis, and too late for me to be still in kidulthood. I'm a thirty-something. Surely I should be settled in some area of my life by now, rather than in an eternal state of limbo. But no. I'm still in exactly the same position I was in six years ago. And three years before that. And god knows how many years before that. Dear god, I need momentum. Someone give me a shove, please...

Better the devil you know?

I've known L for quite a few years now. We first met in a dance class back in 2002, I think it was. I shared a flat with her in London. She's an occasional reader of this blog - very occasional - and a regular contributor of inspiration for content. Today's post will be no exception, although she might be surprised to read descriptions of her self that are bound to follow. Because as good a friend as I consider her, there are a few things about her that I would dearly love to change, and I don't just mean her obsession with the idea that she is fat because she doesn't neatly fit what she has come to believe is the perfect body shape. There are reasons why we very rarely discuss politics, and one of those reasons reared it's head today.

In many respects, we have similar backgrounds. Our father's both trained as teachers, although mine left the profession when I was still in primary school. We both went to the local state school before moving on to private secondary schools and then to university. We both know what it's like to be in a family that has to scrimp and save, that there's a difference between something you really want and something you really need. And as long as we avoid certain no-go areas of conversation (religion and politics, the twin minefields of most conversational gambits), we get along like a house on fire. But in those areas, our views are such polarised opposites that conflict is bound to arise, and I find myself compelled to challenge her on how and why she can come from where she has, yet still hold the ideas that she does. At the same time, I'm rational enough to think that there's no doubt she has similar queries about my views.

Anyone who has read this blog more than once over the many years I have been writing it now (I think there's one of you out there...) would know that my own leanings are so far to the left that I'm a virtual socialist. I get fired up about the big issues of social inequality, by prejudice, by ignorance. I admit, ironically, I'm not terribly tolerant of people who don't agree with me on these points. Luckily, L and I were friends long before I discovered her inbuilt prejudices against what she today described as "total scum".

Now don't get me wrong here. There are people in the world who would merit that description a million times over. People who lie, cheat, steal, and plenty more. But I don't think that you deserve the epithet simply for being poor and, if you're lucky, working class. Last time I checked, there wasn't a means test on the right to consider yourself a decent human being. Nor was there any reason to think that because there are people of "reduced means" living in an area, people who get their hands dirty for a living, who may not have had the same chances as you or may not have had the same inclinations as you, that it must be unworthy of your attention. Poverty certainly is no justification for being branded scum. Yet L, an otherwise rational person, is so blinded by her prejudice - and acknowledges it - that she would not consider living in an area where there were such people. Nor would she look at an area that was home to many migrants, a large gay population, or any of a wide ranging variety of groups she is prejudiced against in the abstract sense. She is capable of suspending her judgement when faced with an individual case - I think it comes more from an innate politeness that stops her from giving offence - until she actually knows a person and then is more likely to consider them on their merits. Her judgement is so irrational and arbitrary that her definitions are flexible; the English, for example, are not migrants.

Bearing in mind that this is an intelligent, well-brought up woman living in the twenty-first century. You'd be forgiven for thinking that her views were those of a ninety year old woman back in 1952. Although progressive in some ways, she holds firmly entrenched views that cannot be swayed by any logic, views that, until recently when Tony Abbot's political aspirations saw the culmination of a slow drift to the right in Australian politics, most would be wary of expressing for fear of being considered as almost a fascist. I'm not calling her a fascist - I want to make that perfectly clear - just saying that, as much as I verge on socialism, she verges on fascism, the opposite ends of the political spectrum. I might lightly banter with her on the subject of her prejudices, but I sometimes want to hit her over the head about them, until she sees how far to the right she occasionally gets. I'm sure she feels that same feeling about my leftist, pinkish politics. So we avoid the topic when we're thinking clearly. When we're not, we manage to steer into safer waters soon enough to avoid a storm. But I wonder, sometimes, if that's the right thing to do. Because my understanding is that prejudices should be challenged, especially where they appear illogical. Where people who see the world differently sit quietly by while others grow in bigotry, trouble can brew. Sure, she's my friend, but if I can't challenge my friend, what do I do when I see the same bias in a stranger? Where does it end?

On that entirely too serious note, I should probably explain the context of the statement. She has been looking to buy a house, so we were doing the rounds of the open houses today and found ourselves in an area that she was probably less familiar than she might have been. "I guess it's not likely that complete scum live around here, is it," she observed, leaving the rest of us spluttering. No, we assured her. The ones poor enough to fit her definition of scum would not be able to afford to live in the area. They, like her blogger friend, would be forced to rent something a little further out of the city, on the wrong side of the upside down river that messily divides Melbourne's suburbs from each other.

I don't think she'll be buying the house in question, but no doubt she'll end up with something in a similar area. And I can't help but think that the cafes that line the streets where she will live will be filled with a certain type of person, someone who goes out on the weekend to sit with a chai latte and read the newspaper, smugly congratulating themselves on being able to afford to boost property prices to the point where a person earning an above average wage can't get a loan to buy a vacant block of land on the fringes of the city, let alone afford to build a house on it. Patting themselves on the back because they have been fortunate to escape the "scum" of the city, even though the parts of Melbourne where they live were for decades the slums where the scum thrived. And I wonder at the vagaries of a world where two people who have so much in common can find themselves on opposite sides of a fence, staring across a yawning divide that neither one is prepared to cross; the Yarra river of ethical and political debate, and I wonder if I find myself on the right or the wrong side, and if there is any way to make her see that the world is a richer place on this side.

Just one of those days

Some days, you wonder why you bother. The days when you don't want to get out of bed. When you don't want to leave the house. You don't want to spend two hours standing talking in circles with one of the world's most persistently annoying people, while his wife is in tears beside him protesting that you don't know what she's going through. Actually, you know in excruciating detail what she's going through, because you've heard it for the past two hours. And that's just on this one day, in this one meeting. When he husband called you four times the day before, you heard it again then. And when he comes back into the office later that afternoon for another crack, you know exactly what he's going to say. Because part of his persistent annoyance is his ability to say exactly the say thing, over and over again, without even varying the wording.

This particular man is one of those people who is a shade of grey. Not even a shade with an exotic of impressive name, like French Grey. He's just grey. You get the feeling that he repeats himself so often, because experience has shown him that nobody really listens to him the first time around. He's one of life's victims, the sort of person that nothing ever goes right for. I have to wonder if it's a chicken or the egg situation though; which came first, him being a boring, anal retentive, leech, or his inability to get people on-side? Scratch the wondering, I think I know.

So, it was one of those days. The kind where you work hard all day, even if it's just prying lose the tick of a purchaser who has burrowed into your skin and is slowly poisoning you, but don't actually achieve anything - not even getting rid of the tick, or any of the others like him who have filled your voicemail box while you've been dealing with him. A day where you get home and want to have a drink to get rid of the day, only to find that there is nothing in the house to drink, not even the dregs of a month old bottle of wine in the fridge that was saved for cooking.

It's the kind of day that can make you start looking for a new job, only to realise that your references are all out of date, and you don't think putting your current boss down would do the trick. Where you find quite a few jobs that seem pretty well paid that you think you're qualified for, but you also don't think you should apply for them because you know you're studying and that you're going to need to take some time off soon to deal with the practical rounds of teaching that will be coming up soon - something that new employers won't like at all.

Yep. It's just one of those days.