I Used To Be, But I'm Alright Now

My life as a bumper sticker...Be my valentine... yeah right...

2008-02-14T17:43:00.002+11:00

I love these... check them out here...

From little things, big things grow...

2008-02-13T20:52:00.004+11:00

Took the Children Away, Archie Roach, 2006

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Wednesday 13th February 2008

To quote Kerry O'Brien, journalist today 'Can't wait for the big things...'

And as always, Mez says it better...

From Little Things, Big Things Grow - Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody and John Butler - Make Poverty History

A bad case of the blah, blah, blahs...

2008-02-07T21:35:00.000+11:00

Driving home last night in the car, I caught the last half of Peter Gabriel's and Kate Bush's "Don't Give Up". I loved this song when it first came out in 1986 (1986 - hooley dooley!), even though it always made me a bit melancholy, though the Shannon Noll/ Natalie Bassingthwaighte version was a travesty.

So I listened to it, even sang along with Kate for awhile until I found myself tearing up... why I always cry while driving the car always puzzles me, should probably avoid sad lamenting songs, though even listening to talkback and something moving will make me cry... sigh...

Well, anyway... this song reflects a bit about whats going on with me and some of those I consider mine at present, and in listening to it again today I realised sometimes my mood reflects the man's laments and sometimes I find myself taking on Kate's role of comforter, hopefully a warm place in the dark...

And I'm also left pondering why I'm so drawn to people who walk that line between light and dark... and sometimes fall...

in this proud land we grew up strong
we were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

no fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
but no one wants you when you lose

don't give up
'cos you have friends
don't give up
you're not beaten yet
don't give up
I know you can make it good

though I saw it all around
never thought I could be affected
thought that we'd be the last to go
it is so strange the way things turn

drove the night toward my home
the place that I was born, on the lakeside
as daylight broke, I saw the earth
the trees had burned down to the ground

don't give up
you still have us
don't give up
we don't need much of anything
don't give up
'cause somewhere there's a place
where we belong

rest your head
you worry too much
it's going to be alright
when times get rough
you can fall back on us
don't give up
please don't give up

'got to walk out of here
I can't take anymore
going to stand on that bridge
keep my eyes down below
whatever may come
and whatever may go
that river's flowing
that river's flowing

moved on to another town
tried hard to settle down
for every job, so many men
so many men no-one needs

don't give up
'cause you have friends
don't give up
you're not the only one
don't give up
no reason to be ashamed
don't give up
you still have us
don't give up now
we're proud of who you are
don't give up
you know it's never been easy
don't give up
'cause I believe there's the a place
there's a place where we belong
(Peter Gabriel)

Miss Frou Frou has entered the building...

2008-01-28T12:40:00.000+11:00

Well, I'm back... not sure for how long... but am here anyway...

To any of you still checking in occasionally I have no excuses for not posting very regularly apart from the fact that I haven't felt the need to say much of anything.

What's been happening?

Working for the man... Well - I had a job interview early December, that didn't pan out - which is probably not a bad thing... but it's left me in a bit of a quandary - I feel restless and unhappy about some elements of my work, and there are lots of opportunities out there at present, BUT I love the team of people I work with and while there are days when I could cheerfully throttle others around the place, the team make it all bearable. I know I could go somewhere else, possibly earn more dollars, and also find a role that would reduce some of the stress I'm currently under...

But I'm wondering what is important... the fact that I've found a little niche for myself, working with a group of people I love and respect, who appear to love and respect me (on my good days) and tolerate my eccentricities and histrionics (on my bad days). Or the need to have a job that fulfills me in a way that my present one doesn't completely... and run the risk of finding the job, but not enjoying the people quite so much... (sounds a bit like my eternal quandary about men!)

God ~~bless~~ rest you merry gentle~~men~~ women...
I had a quiet, contemplative Christmas/ New Year that has rolled on into most of January. Lots of reading (2 to 3 books a week), watching TV (catching up on shows from 2006/2007), sleeping and even some quilty things...

Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home... it looks likely that I will need to find a new home sometime this year, as my landlords have decided against offering me a new lease, as they are thinking of selling. I got very, very depressed at this... this is my 4th year here, and it is very much my home. Initially decided if I have to leave, then I want to do it on my terms, and got even more depressed looking at what passes for decent, affordable housing around here. But discussing this with friends have decided to just wait and see what happens.

The Queen of stuff... Have spent the weekend sorting through my 1930s reproduction fabrics partly because I was inspired by stumbling across this post on the Happy Zombie - hooley dooley I'd love me a stash like that says I... then realised I've probably got close to a stash like that already! Have well over 200 different 1930s reproduction fabrics -let alone all the other fabric I've accumulated.

Now, considering Ms.J. has twisted my arm painfully (yeah right) to go along to a Dear Jane workshop and maybe start one of these suckers, I figured using 1930s fabrics might be the go, if I had enough of them (ha,ha, ha...).

But seriously, my fabric obsession seems ever so slightly out of control... I don't even know what I've got anymore... so, progressively working my way through and sorting and folding seems like a good idea... and maybe culling?

moar funny pictures
Am also doing the same with my book collection... with 7 full height bookshelves groaning under the weight of books, I'm going through and being ruthless... have I read it? Yes. Do I want to read it again? Yes - then keep, if no - dispose. If I haven't read it yet do I want to? No - then discard!

If I am going to have a move, then I need to get organised so that I'm not taking anything with me, that I don't want or need. I've still got boxes from the move 4 years ago, that haven't been unpacked!

A room of her own... Well, I've got a whole house, but have also got organised and bought myself a decent desk, chair and a new monitor and keyboard. I am currently churning out a suite of policies and procedures for work. Churning being the operative word... have been more productive this month in this area than I had been all year - I think primarily as I've been set up with remote access at home, and encourage to spend a day a week at home working, which is blissful without the everyday distractions of people popping in and phone calls.

I've discovered I can be quite disciplined with this working from home thing... hoping that when the current mad spurt of work is over I can roll that over into being disciplined to do some creative writing of my own.

The writing of anything for pleasure has gone by the wayside at present, too much professional writing happening to even get into the right headspace... another reason why I've not been posting much.

And so it goes... as for personal stuff... I'm good. Nothing momentous happening, just enjoying myself, probably being a bit more solitary than I normally would be at this time of year, but not unhappily so... though I'm busy organising a sort of birthday bash for mid-March which looks like being fun - dinner and dancing with some mates, and generally making mayhem!

Oh well.... need to get back to fabric folding... catch you later...

Dance little lady dance...

2007-12-08T22:25:00.000+11:00

We had our work Christmas Party last night... a torturous drive up into the mountains only to discover on arriving at the Restaurant that they'd lost power!

So what was meant to be a 3 course meal with a DJ to dance the night away looked like turning out to be a bit different...

BUT... one of the reasons I love my work is people seem to be able to make the best of situations... we had candlelight all over including candles in the loo's so we could see what we were doing... and a cold entree, 130 warm dinners cooked on one small gas cooktop and purchased icecreams for dessert!

The disappointing thing was the lack of music... but when one couple got up onto the dance floor and started to dance to nothing... I said to one of my colleagues, what we should be doing is formation dancing like The Nutbush, Bus Stop etc. She said, I'm game if you are... so out we went and started to do the Nutbush and then within seconds had about a dozen girls up dancing in perfect harmony...

Next thing we know the DJ, doing a wonderfully inventive improv of his own, rigged up his ipod to his laptop and with the aid of the emergency evacuation megaphone we had music... tinny, distorted but music... and we were off!

I then spent the better part of the night dancing, at one point teaching some of the others basic belly dancing so we shimmied and wobbled across the floor... but the best part of the night was dancing with Ms. J... one of my workmates who is just totally gorgeous and insane. At one point I kissed her smack on the lips and said I love you as you make me feel pretty normal in comparison to your antics. Ms.J. has a basic style of dance... dorky ala Kath and Kel! And she gets into it with such gusto that she had us all doing it... though she was the only one regularly flashing her knickers.

At one point the only 4 people left on the dance floor making monkeys of ourselves were myself, Ms. J. and 2 other work colleagues and we let it rip... bogan dancing to AC/DCs you shook me all night long. When a disapproving person made some wisecrack to my boss... she came up and joined us, much to the amusement of the majority of the others...

Am paying for it today... can barely move... but gee it was worth it... I had the bestest time...

For those of you not familiar with Kath and Kel just watch this, and watch Kath (silver permed foxy lady) to get an idea of what Ms. J and the rest of us got up to!

I hope I never....

2007-12-04T21:41:00.000+11:00

As I've been a bit of a slack-arse with both posting and keeping up to date with friends blogs I didn't realise that Karina had tagged me to do a meme and tell you 5 things about me I've never told before. Karina put a great spin on her meme and revealed 5 things she's never done... so I'm going to do the same but with a twist 5 things I hope never to do... or never to do again!

One: Work early morning shifts
My ideal job would be a job that started at midday... actually last week I did a couple of days where I worked till 8.00pm... it was bliss. Even though I started work at my normal time, I got so much work done between 4.00-8.00pm I am seriously thinking of asking if I can change my hours so that I work till 7.30pm (at least during the summer and daylight savings). Can't work till 8.00pm as I discovered last week at exactly 8.00pm the alarm activates... frightened me half to death...

Gone are the days where I will willing start work at 7.00am (unless I can work in my pj's!)

Two: Stand on the observation deck of any high rise building
I've discovered it's not heights I'm afraid of so much... it's falling. I can look out the window of a plane, can even stand at a lookout and look off into the distance... just don't ask me to look down! Famous at a previous workplace for going green at the gills and almost fainting when the electrician climbed over a guardrail and balanced precariously while trying to change a light globe. Equally as famous for refusing to walk into a training room with floor to ceiling windows in the high-rise Rialto building and then collapsing in a shaking heap when the trainer tried to reassure me by pressing his entire body against the glass.

I think in a previous life I was the virginal maiden sacrificed to the gods by being chucked into a volcano!

Three: Go to see the Monster Trucks, Car Racing, Motorbike Grand Prix et al.
I knew it was luuurv with Boomerang Boy when I agreed to go to the Monster Trucks with him one night instead of going for a walk to see the Christmas Lights along the Boulevard... sigh...

To make matters worse... he then proceeded to spend the rest of the night roaming around with his best buddy, turns out I was invited along to keep his mate's heavily pregnant girlfriend company so the boys could go watch their toys and dream....

Three: Internet Dating (those Lonesome Losers websites)
Conversation with the Nature Boy today about the ridiculous real estate prices at present that went off on a typically strange (for us) tangent:

MFF: I will probably rent for the rest of my life as I won't be able to afford to buy a house.
NB: Yes, you will.
MFF: Only if I find a man who wants to keep me in the style I wish to be accustomed to!
NB: Well, that'll happen too!
MFF: Do you think so?
NB: Yes!
MFF: I don't think that's very likely... in order to meet someone you actually need to leave the house!
NB: Well, eventually... but you could meet him and get to know him online
MFF (shaking her head furiously): Seriously... no way... the last guy I met online told me he had to leave early even before I got my coat off... and then ended up staying around for 3 hours, paying for my dinner, telling me he had a great time and would like to see me again and then a week later ringing me and saying he would like to stay in touch but he was pursuing other options and by the way he had found himself strangely aroused by me, had I been trying to arouse him and had I been aroused too!
NB (laughing): That is kind of weird...
MFF: That's the thing, he seemed so normal too... I think it's me... I bring out the odd in people
NB: Yeah, I can relate to that... (laughing)

Five: Go camping...
Back in the day when I advertised in the personals, probably a good 80% of the men who responded to my advert after telling me their name and occupation and the suburb they lived in told me they liked going camping! There was one memorable guy in his voicemail who said in a fairly decent Sylvester Stallone/Rocky Balboa voice 'Ummm... I like going fishin' and campin'... and ummm... walks on the beach, and ummm going to the movies, but I 'specially like fishin' and campin'...'

Before anyone yells at me... I realise that there are lots of people who like camping, including some females... but not this little fat duck! My idea of roughing it is a 3 star motel! And I once told Peter Rabbit that I really liked the great outdoors... as I watched it out the window on my way to the bed and breakfast!

I also told him earlier in the year, when he suggested that cuddling up in a sleeping bag was romantic, that I wasn't adverse to sharing a sleeping bag, or a tent for that matter... the man of my dreams will pitch that tent in the middle of the living room or better yet the penthouse at the Hyatt.

Songs to fall in love by... It Might Be You...

2007-11-28T20:28:00.000+11:00

Time... I've been passing time watching trains go by
All of my life...
Lying on the sand, watching seabirds fly
Wishing there would be
Someone waiting home for me...

Something's telling me it might be you
It's telling me it might be you...
All of my life...

Looking back as lovers go walking past...
All of my life
Wondering how they met and what makes it last

If I found the place
Would I recognize the face?

Something's telling me it might be you
Yeah, it's telling me it might be you

So many quiet walks to take
So many dreams to wake
And we've so much love to make

I think we're gonna need some time
Maybe all we need is time...
And it's telling me it might be you
All of my life...

I've been saving love songs and lullabies
And there's so much more
No one's ever heard before...

Something's telling me it might be you
Yeah, it's telling me it must be you
And I'm feeling it'll just be you
All of my life...
It's you..
It's you...
I've been waiting for all of my life...

Maybe it's you...
Maybe it's you...
I've been waiting for all of my life...

Have been playing the radio in the car lately, after weeks of total silence, and doing my usual channel surfing and finding myself listening intently to a variety of mushy love songs... one of which was this one... by Stephen Bishop - used to wonderful effect in the movie Tootsie.

And no - not falling in love... just being a bit wistful... and thinking it's probably not a bad thing to articulate what I want... I want to have someone to sing this song to... well the quiz on Xine's blog says nice things about me... mostly...!

Things I have learned... in no particular order of importance...

2007-11-22T23:07:00.001+11:00

Drooling and dribbling and sighing 'oh my god, look at the size of his hands' is probably not the most appropriate response when being introduced to the very cute, but very young (28) new guy at work...

I am not much of a team player... I love working as part of a team, as long as no-one else is doing MY job...

I do not delegate well...

Working 10-12 hours days for 3 weeks in a row in order to have a week off kinda defeats the purpose of having a holiday...

Particularly when you then go back to working 10-12 hour days on your return...

Telling men that you need to mother-proof your house prior to a visit has them thinking of p0rn and a drawerful of goodies... and their eyes glaze over...

As does telling them that you are going on a d1ck-free weekend with your girlfriends...

Having slightly hairy legs on a girls away weekend is probably better than attempting to shave said legs at midnight in the bathtub when you've spent the previous 48 hours doped up to the gills due to back spasm...

Legs bleed a lot...

Starting belly dancing lessons is probably not the smartest thing to do when you are in the middle of a full blown fibromyalgia episode...

People think it's funny that the one body part that gets injured after belly dancing lesson number one is your ANKLE...

Keeping quiet about the boobage and bum cramp after your first belly dancing lesson is probably not a bad thing...

Men, want to talk to me and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings with me, which is lovely...

Feeling comfortable enough to shut up and just jump my bones on occasion would be even lovelier...

Despite the fact that I often make reference to being a little fat girl, and my humour is self-deprecating, I actually like myself, a lot...

Which is probably just as well, as it becomes clearer every day that my world and the rest of the planet are often slightly out of kilter and it's likely to be a long while before a lovely man tells me to shut up and jumps my bones...

Just as well I'm an optimist... someday my prince will come... sigh!

Sorry... you know what they say... if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all... well... that's why I've been so quiet...

She's back.......!

2007-11-02T19:35:00.000+11:00

Hi all... have you missed me? Have you really missed me?

When I had a tarot reading a couple of weeks ago when she said that the next few months would be primarily focussed on work she wasn't kidding... pity this is what my work is life at present... sigh...

If you're feeling in the mood to laugh out loud often you'll find more of the brilliance of Doug Savage's Savage Chickens here.

And just 'cause... it seems a very appropriate at present... my life as a movie.... would be... wait for it...

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh.
You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum.

Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Drive-by blogging.... watch out for that tree... I mean fence!

2007-10-07T10:35:00.000+10:00

Further to my previous post, this is how I am currently feeling!

And on Thursday night, after 3 days of 10+ hours days and an average of 3-4 hours sleep each night, I decided to go with NPNP to see Hairspray...

Great movie by the way, want to go and see it again... they are doing sing-a-long versions already.

Glad I caught up with NPNP, and glad I saw the movie despite being utterly exhausted BUT turning into my driveway about 10.00pm, I stopped as I usually do to collect my mail from the letterbox, climbed back into the car and accelerated up the drive to the sound of crunch, bang...

As I'd turned into the drive I was closer to the fence then I realised and dragged the car's passenger side along the fence line taking the car down to base metal in several places as I caught the metal edge of the fence protector FENCE 1 CAR 0

I've driven up this driveway at least 5 times a week for the last four years... I just sat in the car and had a quiet sob for a few minutes... then came inside to toss and turn till 3.00am... and then slept for 3 hours to get up and drag myself off to work for a 7.00am start.

Car will take a week to fix... which means I will either have to take some time off... almost impossible to get from my place to my place of work by public transport, or see if anyone who lives in neighbouring suburbs might be give me a lift... either way I'm going to have to curtail my working hours.... the universe trying to tell me something do you think?

Note: Friday night sleep tally - in bed and asleep with the light on at 11.30pm - slept through until 9.00am! Last night... asleep by 1.00am ... awake at 8.00am... so may be the sleep thing is going to settle down.

Am going to try this week to see if leaving at a normal time (i.e. 5.30pm) and going home and fixing dinner etc. and then sitting down at computer to do some work after I've eaten, might help with the sleep thing... am sure leaving work at 7.30pm and eating dinner at 9.00pm isn't a healthy thing!

Also as a result of Friday's meeting with Safety Inspector it's clear that we need some additional resources to manage the current crisis... so will be talking to the powers that be about bringing in a contractor to help out... either that... or I curtail some of my projects as this level of craziness is unsustainable!

Drive-by blogging.... working for the man

2007-10-04T22:42:00.000+10:00

Sorry I haven't been around much... some major dramas at work that have seen me trying to do my own job plus someone else's (working 10 hour days)... combined with a mega bout of insomnia (have averaged about 3-4 hours sleep a day all week) and the odd panic attack... is it any wonder I've been quiet!

Hope to be back soon... maybe not posting... but at least getting around to read what everyone else is up to ...

Love of my life wanted, must love cats...

2007-09-26T19:38:00.001+10:00

More tales of the Boomerang Boy
MFF: Hi, how are you?
BB: Not good, I tripped down the stairs and I've hurt myself
MFF: How did you do that?
BB: Mrs Boomerang's bloody cat was scratching my bag and I chased it and slipped
MFF: (laughing) - Oh poor you...
BB: Damn cat! I told her it had to go ... so she's given the cat to her mother
MFF: Seriously?
BB: Yep, told her either the cat went or I did
MFF: You know what I would have done if you said that to me, don't you?
BB: What?
MFF: Let me help you pack your bags sweetie...
BB: (laughing) See, that's why I didn't marry you!

Indiana has a blog post today about single women getting rid of their pets if they want to date! With the utmost respect to Indy, he can bugger off!

I've had pets all my life, and one of the things I missed most when I moved out of home was the presence of animals. I love cats and dogs, but do believe with my lifestyle that a dog would be an indulgence. But have two cats, getting Gertie the year I moved out, and then Gracie the following year to keep her company when my nephew moved out and she was spending a lot of time on her own.

We are a package deal... and I'm aware that there are men who do not like cats, which is why I tell prospective dates about mine early on... I'm not going to waste either his or my time if he has an allergy or an active dislike of them.

In the same way that I don't date men who have children but don't play a role in their lives (unless there are circumstances like distance etc. that prevent it) I wouldn't date a man who would expect me to give up my animals...

What the.....? Misunderstanding Men

2007-09-25T09:06:00.000+10:00

It's really simple... Women speak subtle. Men do not.

It's that easy, you want a guy to know that you like him and you are interested in having him pursue and chase you, then you need to be less subtle...you don't want to be too obvious, but you need to be less subtle... Indiana

The above comment was left on my last post... You Say Potato, I Say Potato... Misunderstanding Men

And a few weeks ago Midwest posted about advice from Wombat on Kiss & Blog that goes as follows:

1. Don't initiate anything with a guy (not even friendship), ever
2. Don't initiate anything with a guy (not even friendship), ever
3. Don't initiate anything with a guy (not even friendship), ever

Is it any wonder that I am so totally ambivalent about dating!

I think I might do better becoming lesbionic... sigh....

You say potato, I say potato.... Misunderstanding Men...

2007-09-18T19:20:00.000+10:00

More tales of the Boomerang Boy...

MFF: Hi, it's Frou

BB: Oh, hi - what can I do for you?

MFF: Um... is there something you wanted to ask me?

BB: No, why?

MFF: Ohhh... I'm sorry... I've been mistaken, sorry to bother you

BB: No, wait... what do you mean?

MFF: T said you had asked her if she thought I might go out with you if you asked. She's obviously playing some sort of game... trying to embarrass either you or me

BB: OH... no, that's right I did talk to her about it... what did you tell her?

MFF: I told her yes

(Awkward silence)

MFF: Umm... so... are you going to ask me?

BB: Ohhh... I thought you might ummm ask me....

MFF: B, why do you think I rang you in the first place?

BB: OH! Yeah... right... so you're asking me out... Cool!

I should have ran... I really, really should have...

And new tales of Boof...

Boof: Hi, what are you wearing?

MFF: Heah, you have no right to play those games...

Boof: Why?

MFF: Girlfriend, remember?

Boof: Oh yeah.. but nothing wrong with indulging in wishful thinking

MFF: You had your chance mate, and you blew it...

Boof: When did I have my chance? There was never a chance... was there?

MFF: What did you think I was doing all those nights hanging around at work till midnight sitting out on the back steps drinking coffee while you smoked?

Boof: Having a break from work?

MFF: And why did you think I volunteered to take the minutes for you when you were Football Club President?

Boof: You liked football?

MFF: And why was it that my girlfriends all accidentally bumped into us those nights at the pub and joined us?

Boof: Shit... they were checking me out! Seriously? You were interested in me?

MFF: You are an idiot!

Boof: But, but... that's not fair... I didn't know...

MFF: Doesn't matter now, does it... like I said you had your chance...

Email later in the day:

Boof:I still think you can't blow a chance you didn't know you had to begin with

MFF: Don't sulk, it doesn't become you...

And now for the Nature Boy

MFF: Can I ask you something? As a member of the male species, who knows me reasonably well?

NB: Sure!

MFF:Am I flirt? My girlfriends all claim I am a terrible flirt...

NB: No, not at all... you're very playful and full of banter but not at all flirtatious

MFF: Ok, thanks

MFF: (Unspoken thoughts) I seriously need to lift my game... cause for a brief while back in the beginning I actually was flirting with him... !

So, I'm pondering...

Are men clueless?

Or am I pathologically incapable of understanding them?

With my body I thee worship....

2007-09-16T10:44:00.000+10:00

Boomerang Boy: She's a 'what you see is what you get' kind of girl
Miss Frou Frou: And I'm not?
BB: No way!
MFF: Seriously? What do you mean?
BB: You're like Forrest Gump's Chocolates... you never know what your going to get until you bite into it...
MFF: But you like chocolate?
BB: Yeah, but I want to know what kind it is before I eat it!

The above exchange took place about 4 years ago, as part of a discussion about the kind of relationship BB wanted into the future, and why he was marrying someone else, even though he still professed some feelings for me.

It lead to some interesting conversations with friends at the time, as I tried to understand what he meant. Most of my friends saying they thought I was open and honest and very much a 'what you see is what you get' kind of girl... though interestingly a conversation with MLF (my first love who I've known for over 25 years) was illuminating...

MFF: He said I wasn't a 'what you see is what you get' kind of girl
MFL: He's talking through his arse... you're a straight shooter
MFF: Thanks... even way back when we first meet and we were going through all that 'will we/ won't we' stuff of our relationship?
MFL: (silence - laughter) .... Oh yeah, I see his point...

All of this is playing out in my head at the minute, as B and S at work are dead keen on turning 'find Frou Frou a man' into their next project... wanting to put my profile up online etc. and I am so ambivalent about it all... and I'm wondering why I am so unenthusiastic...

What also keeps playing through my head is a conversation with Nature Boy earlier in the year.

NB: Do you realise every time the subject of men and relationships comes up you either snort dismissively or you do the eyeroll thing?
MFF: Yeah, well that's because the whole men/relationships thing and I don't fit very well ... always ends up in tears before bedtime
NB: You're not very confident about yourself, are you?
MFF: Oh, you've misunderstood. I am very confident... I know I am an amazing woman and some man would be extraordinarily lucky to have me.
NB: Umm... ok... (looking at me like I'm an alien)
MFF: Where I lack confidence is in the single men out there and they're ability to see me for the Goddess that I am...

Extra! Extra! Read all about it... Miss Frou Frou unmasked...

2007-09-13T20:35:00.000+10:00

One of my favourite bloggers, Candid Karina recently posted her response to this great new meme.

The Rules: A blogger interviews you, and you post the answers on your own blog. Then you invite readers to volunteer to be interviewed, and you interview THEM, and they post it on their blog, and on and on we go...

I volunteered to be interviewed and below are Karina's great questions and my long-winded fluffy waffle in response... Anyone that would like me to interview them... leave a note in my comments...

1. First, let's get the obvious out of the way: Tell us the when, how and why about the birth of your blog.

I started blogging in February in a typically round and round the garden Frou Frou way... I met the Nature Boy just over 12 months ago... and almost from the get go we had these games of email tag. He's the King of short responses, a skill I've yet to master (no really - says everyone!) but he used to enjoy my mini-stories and general lunacy... and constantly encouraged me to write... something he continues to do... which is unbelievably lovely.

Around the same time, I happened across the blog Reasons You Will Hate Me and became an avid lurker, enjoying MsFits and her fans and detractors, Friday Q&A becoming a must read every Saturday morning over my Vitabrits. And from there started reading others, and got a bit of a hang for how this all worked... had heard of blogs but never read one... what can I say... I'm technically backward... only buying a DVD player a year ago, and cracking everyone up today trying to connect a USB to a laptop... but I digress...

So, started to think that blogging would actually suit me. I like writing, have always been comfortable with email as a form of keeping up with people, and blogging is just a way to do it on a much broader stage. Those that know me, say my emails are like having a conversation with me, reading my words and they hear my voice... and friends in RL who have read here say the same. (Though there aren't many RL friends reading anymore... or if they are they are lurking... come out, come out wherever you are).

2. Your blog name...explain please.

My friend Roz's former husband, K was a mad Englishman who introduced me to soccer, beer with lime, "Dirty Old Town" drunkenly sung, and the phrase... I used to be, but I'm alright now... every time you were making conversation and said something like "I/he/she/they/your like, want, are ....., etc. his response would be "I used to be .... but, but I'm alright now" often to much jocularity...

Try it...

You're nice... I used to be nice, but I'm alright now... She's skinny... I used to be skinny, but I'm alright now etc.

He did it so often, that I used to end the sentence for him, and then started saying it myself, something I still do...

3. So, you're a single woman, and have recently said you might be ready to get back out on the dating scene. You've told us what you would want in a man, but tell us, what are the things you miss most about relationships?

My relationships have always been unconventional, with none being similar to the others, and have spent more time single then coupled in my life.

What do I miss?

That lovely butterflies in your tummy feeling when you're going to see him, or you hear his voice... kisses... cuddles and hugs... someone to share the end of the day with (the mental debrief sharing tales of woe and silliness)... a sense of belonging, I'm his/ he's mine and the comfort that comes from that feeling... someone to scratch the middle of my back when it's itchy... and to tell me when I've tucked my skirt into my underpants again!

4. To borrow a question asked of me in my own interview, tell us about your worst date ever.

My first recollection on reading this was the date with a guy from the personals who seemed like a nice guy, but had unfortunate teeth... he had fangs! Though really, apart from the fact there was no way I was ever going to kiss that face, it wasn't a bad date.

So, my worst date... is complicated.

Around the same time I meet Vampire boy, I talked to Jay who turned out to live a couple of streets away, and ran a local myotherapy clinic. When I spoke to him, he was funny, quick, clever and a bit arrogant (all things that interest me) and he seemed really keen... particularly when in response to a question from him I told him I'd had over 100 responses and I was talking and meeting quite a few guys over the coming weeks. We talked a couple of times and then organised to meet for dinner at a local pizza place.

Sitting in the restaurant waiting for a stranger is always nerve-wracking... and my nerves only escalated when a very attractive, nicely dressed Jay wandered in and introduced himself. Now, I know I have wonderful qualities and that people love and have loved me... but Jay was just... I don't know... too good looking, too cool, too smooth, too confident... and in a weird way that calmed my nerves.

Figuring it was unlikely I'd ever go out with him again, I just relaxed and enjoyed myself. We had a great dinner, which he insisted on paying for and he offered to walk me to my car. On the walk to the car he said, I'd like to see you again, much to my surprise. I said I was busy for the next couple of weeks, which made him laugh, and he said - so how about I ring you in a fortnight. (I now realise this was all about Jay needing to stay on my list... not necessarily because of me, but a competition thing... he could choose not to see me, but didn't want me to cross him of my list of 100 - he used to constantly ask how many people were still on the list, and I used to laugh and say how do you know you have even made the list!)

Still, I was surprised when he did as he said and rang me in a fortnight, and asked me to come over to his place after he'd finished work one night... something I wasn't prepared to do at that point.

But he pushed, I want to see you again... so I said I was going out to a local Irish pub on Friday night with some friends, he could meet me there if he wanted to and in the conversation said to him, if you're going to be a bit uncomfortable about fronting up with a whole bunch of strangers you could bring along some of his friends.

Friday night... really, really crowded pub... hanging with my mates, keeping an eye out for Jay and I spotted him and said to Miss La De Da 'Oh there he is, the blonde in the leather jacket standing by the leadlight window' and she turned and looked and then turned back to me and said 'what - the guy with his tongue down somebodies throat?'.

??? I looked and sure enough he's deeply kissing a pretty young thing! Jay stopped, and then put his arm around her, and then another girl came up and the three of them went up to the bar, with the original girl hanging all over him.

MLDD said are you going to go up to him, and I said no, I'll let him come to me. And we sat there, and waited while he scanned the room looking for me, passing his gaze over me several times, but not actually making eye contact. It was like I was invisible, or else he had forgotten what I looked like...

This went on for almost an hour... he deep in conversation with both girls, occasionally scanning the room I'm assuming looking for me, and occasionally kissing the pretty blonde. And all the time I was sitting in plain view about 4 feet away from him. Eventually, Jay and the two girls left.

He rang me the following day... "Hi - what happened last night, I was there but didn't see you?". "I know" says I, "I saw you".

"Why didn't you come up?" says he. "You were a bit busy at the time" says I dryly. He laughed out loud... and then asked "What did your friends say?"

"My mate said you were a 'root rat'!" Again, he laughed. "Oh, I kick 'em first to make sure they're still breathing! What did you say to that?"

"I didn't care if he was a 'root rat' as long as I was the rat he was rooting!"

Again, he laughed... declaring I was the funniest girl he knew and he really wanted to see me again. To which I replied "Sorry, one of the things you need to know about me is I hate standing in queues".

I never dated him again, though he persisted for a few weeks, and for a couple of months we used to occasionally bump into each other around the neighbourhood. Haven't seen him for a few years, and the myotherapy clinic is gone... so don't know where he ended up.

5. If you could have dinner with any celebrity, alive or dead, who would it be, and why?

I'd like to host a dinner party (not cook... just host) and I'd invite:

Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson - they can have a cook off!
Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - cause it would be nice to see them together one more time and Kate is my hero...
Robert Redford, Johnny Depp and George Clooney... gorgeous men who have/ do make interesting films and George cause he's the archetypal funny, quick, clever and a bit arrogant man...

Remember, if you want me to interview you, leave a not in comments.

Members wanted... The All Over the Shop Choir...

2007-09-07T20:52:00.000+10:00

Can you - sing Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass, preferably all within the same verse?

Can you - when you can't remember the actual words, convincingly fluff around, emote and make weird vocal noises that imitate singing?

Can you - dance like a dork, completely out of rhythm with what you're actually singing, but nevertheless keep swinging those hips?

Can you - make mistakes in 2 out of 13 songs, but manage to ensure no-one in the audience notices?

Can you do all of these things and still have a ripsnorting, ripper of a time?

If this sounds like you, Miss Frou Frou and Miss La De Da, Choir Leaders
are recruiting for the All Over the Shop Choir...
experienced singers need not apply!

Life is too short for self hatred and celery sticks...

2007-09-04T21:12:00.000+10:00

And so begins a new series of blog posts... My Life as a Bumper Sticker (Button/ T-shirt)...

I'm a big girl... as has been mentioned several times since this blog began... most notably in response to Sheila's comments about the Little, Fat, Funny Girl tag on the blog back in the early days... so I don't need to harp on the fact that I'm a short, lush, curvy, womanly woman... and fairly happy to be so.

BUT...

I don't obsess about my weight, rarely hop on the scales so it was a shock when I did spontaneously on Friday and realised I'd gained 3kgs since I last weighed myself and have gained close to 8 kgs over the last 12 months.

This is the heaviest I've been since a major change in my life 5 years ago saw me lose a tremendous amount slowly over a 12 month period... not because of dieting, just a change in eating habits and general lifestyle. I'm still a long way off my heaviest weight and don't imagine I'd go back to that... but I'm not feeling very healthy.

And I'm certainly aware since my brother's bout with kidney cancer in January, that being on the heavy side and not very fit is ok when your general state of being is wellness, when you are ill carrying extra poundage can have a significant impact on your ability to cope with ill-health.

My problem is that I've never been much of an exercise junkie... I like exercise that occurs as a result of some activity like dancing or going for a walk etc. but the thought of actually doing exercise for the sake of exercise just gives me the blahs... hence the treadmill parked in front of the TV for the last month has become a great place to hang the ironing... sigh...

It's also not that I eat too much... it's that I do not eat enough... I can go all day without any food at all, and don't often actually feel the sensation of hunger. I've fallen off the dieting wagon many a time because there is too much food to eat, not that there is too little...

As someone who is often distracted by some creative idea I can regularly forget to feed and water myself!

All of this is linked a lot to the fact that I'm so cerebral... I live in my head most of the time, rarely if ever acknowledging my physical self... until it turns on me and smacks me upside the head and says enough is enough... which is what it's doing at present... with ongoing viral problems and muscle fatigue and aches and pains.

I'm never going to be a slim girl... well - I could be if I hit the gym on a daily basis and existed on celery sticks and water... and that sure as eggs isn't ever likely to happen. And actually, don't think I'd want to be a skinny, skinny girl... I'm quite happy with my curves and bumps... even if they are rapidly heading earthward as gravity and mid-life sets in.

BUT... as well as feeling unwell there are a few too many lumps on my bumps at present for me to feel comfortable...that's vanity... and I'm happy to admit to it... and dropping those 8kgs would make me feel a whole lot better I suspect... both physically and psychologically.

I'm talking about getting back on the dating scene, and to be positive in that atmosphere means I need to feel positive about myself... at the minute, the only time I'd want to be naked with someone would be if he was blindfolded (tied to a bed would be good too... but that's a whole other blog post... )

So... I'm not dieting... I'm getting healthier... my friend S (who is studying for her personal trainer certificate) is making up an eating plan for me that is realistic... we looked at one of those services that supplies all your food, but most of it is that horrible plastic reheat in the microwave stuff.... yuk... yuk...

She's creating a plan that includes food I like to eat, that is easy to prepare for one... and will allow for me to go out for dinner etc. with friends, which I do a lot and don't want to stop doing.

As we work together she's going to act as my coach... reminding me to eat... often! And a group of us are starting to go for a daily walk at lunchtimes, which will be good for me on a number of levels as most days I work through lunch, grabbing a quick sandwich if I remember. I'm clearing the ironing off the treadmill and will at least try to use it every 2nd day... if only for half an hour...

And setting myself a target of going shopping in late November for a Frou Frou dress for our work Christmas Party... I'm going to buy myself something gorgeous, get my hair done... and then let my hair down... and party the night away... preferably with a nice boy who likes blindfolds and being tied to the bedpost... !

Night and day.... dum, de de dum....

2007-08-30T21:54:00.000+10:00

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day"... Vincent Van Gogh

Have you ever realised how much the world is designed for 'morning people'...

I am not a morning person... never have been. My mother laughingly tells the story of me as a school aged child, and later as a young working woman living at home, she would awake to the alarm, get up, come in and prompt me to get up, have a shower, prompt me to get up, feed animals, prompt me to get up (by this stage very loudly), have breakfast, prompt me to get out of the shower (where I was usually half asleep under the spray), put a load of washing on the line, and then discover me staring dreamily into space, sitting on the end of my bed, with a towel wrapped around me and one sock on...

When I lived at home, there was someone to keep me moving and active, if still in a zombie-like state, and hustle me out of the house and onto school or work. For many years, I drove my mother to work on my way in, and was therefore forced to keep a particular schedule, which was probably a good thing, as I also had jobs that required me to open up the office or to start a shift.

At the same time there was also someone to prompt me to go to sleep... when us kids and Dad was still at home, I disappeared to my room early... usually to listen to music on headphones in the dark... till the wee small hours... or to read... until I nodded off over a book or my Mum came in to screech that it was 2.00am and if I didn't turn my light off I wouldn't get up in the morning.

In one of my early jobs as a mailsorter, in order to get to work on Friday mornings for a 7.00am start, that required catching a 6.00am bus, I would set my alarm for 4.00am, get up, shower, make coffee, and then hop back into bed semi-clothed for an hour or so, listening to music so I could be awake enough to trust myself to leave the house.

At the Architectural practice when ~~some bright spark~~ the Managing Director, decided to schedule marketing meetings for 7.00am so they'd be over before the workday started, I declared the only way they'd get me there was if they supplied breakfast... so there was a danish and a coffee waiting for me... and I'd arrive with dripping wet hair and no makeup and converse in growls and grunts until my brain woke up. The same deal was negotiated with my summer school classmates a couple of years ago, if they wanted to start the day earlier, they needed to provide me with caffeine... and there was a different boy waiting patiently with coffee and a donut each day as I dragged my arse across the campus, bleary-eyed and ragged.

So... it's not a recent thing that my body clock is out of whack with what most people would consider the norm... But, living on my own, I can indulge myself a lot more.

There are days now when I have been up and prepared for work, but I have to lie down for 15-30 minutes, sometimes even an hour and then I will feel up to facing the day... those days are usually when I haven't woken up before the alarm has gone off. I don't respond well to alarm clocks or being frightened awake... it's like my system goes into shock or something, and it's almost impossible for me to bound out of bed and race into the day.

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do)"... Dorothy Parker

But the world is not kind to us night owls...

At one workplace with an agreed core hours that varied between 7.00am - 7.00pm, 2 colleagues were able to negotiate 7.30am - 4.30pm workdays, but I was told that I couldn't work a 10.00am - 6.00pm day... it was too inconvenient...

This was despite the fact that I had been able to work the same hours for 5 years prior under a previous manager... and because other departments were working till 9.00pm, we had a much better coverage of hours, often for the last hour or more of the day I was the only one in the office.

I'm lucky now, in that I have a boss who is understanding of my early morning struggles, and accommodates me, knowing that I keep track of my hours. Though there have been grumblings from some workmates, who fail to acknowledge that while they're out the door at 5.00pm on the dot, I'm often one of only a handful of people still in the office at 6.00pm... and often hitting my stride workwise about 3.00pm!

It's not even the work situation that annoys me most. It's the remarks by friends and acquaintances... the snide remarks and suggestions of laziness... that I am wasting time, that I should be doing something productive with my daylight hours...

I'm not lazy... I'm at my most productive, when most people are nodding off for the evening. Just because getting up at the crack of dawn rocks your boat, doesn't mean I have to... actually most of these bright and shiny, happy morning people are also those scary pod-people who confess to liking camping, and 5k runs in the pre-dawn.

I'm not wasting time... I am usually doing a pretty good imitation of the 'living dead' before midday... so why wouldn't I choose to actually sleep during that unproductive time.

You want to wake me up early, it better be because more than the sun is up, and you want to indulge in exercise of the carnal kind... and even then, you need to be gentle about it... otherwise... bugger off!

I've discovered over the last few days at home, that it is not so much that I suffer from insomnia, it is that my system doesn't need to sleep until well after midnight... and if I am allowed to wake naturally, I am able to be awake, and reasonably alert without much strain or effort by about 9.30am. And a 30-60 minute nap mid afternoon is more than enough to keep me feeling calm, centred and rested.

And it would be nice, when we're talking about endangered species that someone would give a shout out to us 'Night Owls' and recognise that we too need to be protected... Night Owls of the world... stand up and be proud!

"Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.”... Groucho Marx

TO DO LIST:
* Get a job that starts at midday and finishes at 8.00pm
* Preferably somewhere that celebrates siesta
* The next time someone jokes about giving me an early morning wake up call... let them... then ring them at midnight and babble for an hour

I've got the music in me...

2007-08-27T15:46:00.000+10:00

Oh, wow... hard to tell you all about Saturday, except that it was the most magical experience.

I still will not profess to being much of a singer, have no idea whether I stayed on pitch or not, but I was able to follow all of the instructions from our Choir Director, Vicki King, even when she mucked up at one stage and didn't give us our cue for a verse of a song... a minor glitch that only the choir and soloist noticed.

Was on the verge of tears several times, but managed to keep it together... though all of the soloists coming back onstage to reprise My Island Home at the end had me blinking rapidly and squeezing Miss La De Da's hand tightly.

I struggled a little with my back injury and sore feet from standing up, but the pain disappeared the minute we stood on stage, and started to sing... and then returned with a vengeance once I got off stage... hence this reasonably short blog post and still being a bit tardy in getting around to catch up with everyone else's blogs.

Am home for a couple of days, mostly sleeping and reading and doing some applique while watching TV, with the heatpack applied. OH - and attempting to dye my hair back to the chocolate brown colour that I was 12 months ago has left me an interesting shade of maroon/brown/red! I like it - it matched my t-shirt!

If you want to listen to some of the amazing soloists and musicians who played with us on Saturday, check these out - most have music you can listen to online.

Akasa - made up of Vicki King, Diana Clark, Heidi Bradburn, Andrea Watson - sang Walking Song and Vicki sang lead on Walk with Me with the choir... that's one of my blubber songs!
Kavisha Mazzella - I am such a fan of this woman and her music now... go down to the bottom of the page and listen to a track from her album... hope to see her at Darebin Music Feast
Diana Clark - sang Breathe into Time, and also sang two songs with the choir.
Doug de Vries - brilliant guitarist... played Elegy for Rita
Tali White - wrote a wonderful song called "Wave Building" especially for the choir, as he said, think mix between rock opera and bollywood and you'd have a bit of a feel for it... he is a bit of a whirling dervish... Tali is involved with The Guild League and The Lucksmiths
Valanga Khoza - sang Thula Mama with the choir - another emotional song... gorgeous, gorgeous voice
Paulo Almeida from the Dili Allstars - sang with the choir on O Hele Le
Lou Bennett - oh, wow... she was amazing... sang Lingmarra with us at the start of the concert and then came back to do the most emotional version of My Island Home with us... I'm hoping to see her during the Darebin Music Feast
Liz Frencham - played Double Bass and taught the crowd and the choir a lovely song that we sang along with
Ron Murray - wowed us with his didgeridoo... both in the opening song, Lingmarra and later in the encore of My Island Home

There were others, including a performance by The West Papuan Culture Group that was very moving... and the wonderful Dani Fry belting out a great gospel track with us.

Now, all I need to do is go chasing up albums for all these wonderful people, and prepare for concert two on Friday night... still plenty of tickets available for any Melbourne readers... not so many of us singing this time ... only about 160! Miss La De Da and I have been having a quiet nightmare about her and I being the only Alto 1's in attendance...

Ain't got no troubles in my life, no foolish dreams to make me cry, I'm never frightened or worried, I know I'll always get by... I've got the music in me, I've got the music in me....

Blogindipity strikes again! Found this quiz at Chicken-Scratch... I can live with this one!

You are Schroeder!
Take this quiz!

It's the end of the world as we know it....

2007-08-24T20:37:00.000+10:00

You know what they say, it's not over
till the fat lady sings.... guess what?

Yes, tomorrow is the big day... first Choir Concert - which is sold out... 450 seated and approx. 200 standing... and me and 250+ of my closest friends singing up a storm...

Sorry I've been a bit out of the loop this week... at rehearsal last Sunday I pulled a muscle in my back that has seen me very, very uncomfortable sitting, standing and lying down all week.. so I've limited my time on the computer...

Who knows what I'll be like tomorrow night after about 8 hours of standing... most of which will be singing... or at least pretending to sing... am still struggling a bit with the phrasing of one of the songs... so can expect a bit of mumbling and fudging tomorrow...

Some of the songs we are singing are so haunting beautiful that I cry when I sing them... so will be interesting to see what it's like tomorrow on stage... more like others will be crying at my singing!

Anyway, will promise to catch up with everyone soon...

Your heard it here first, folks.... I iz complex!

2007-08-20T23:38:00.000+10:00

You're Watership Down!
by Richard Adams
Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

No - I iz crazy!

Anyone remember Harvey?

Nothing to see here folks... am exhausted, but excited...

Choir concert in 5 more sleeps... and then 3 days of solitary bliss... not sure what pleases me more to be honest - this spending time with people thing is hard work!

I should be...

2007-08-19T12:58:00.000+10:00

I should be...

Doing Housework
Doing ironing for the week ahead
Practising the Tahitian song of welcome that I'm struggling with for choir
Working on the short story I'm thinking of submitting to SPICE briefs that Shiloh mentioned on her blog
Or getting down on paper the idea that came through yesterday's meditation ... we meditated on the Knight of Cups (the Knight in Shining Armour of legend) and I had the loveliest meditation about a strange, geeky girl... would make a very sweet historical
Doing some more work on The Wishlist - haven't written a word in weeks - this is why I didn't do Sven!
Working on the CFA Bushfire Quilt projects

Instead I'm trawling the blogosphere, and suggesting you go and check out Post Secrets - this project always makes me laugh, cry, sigh and generally feel that us homo sapiens are a weird lot, but worth it...

And Solitaire's the only game in town...

2007-08-18T10:01:00.000+10:00

Miss Frou Frou --
[noun]:
A hermit living in the big city

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

How weird is this? Though I'm pretty sure the meanings are random, if I put Miss Frou Frou in more than once, I'd get more than one answer... but still this is a bit weird... considering my current mood...

With 8 weeks of Sunday choir rehearsals, and meditation classes and catching up with friends and other social activities and work I'm getting a bit frazzled...

Am seriously looking forward to next weekend, after the first two Choir Concerts, and a friends birthday party on Saturday night ... I have 3 days off... am going to spend them on my own, I hope... not speaking... shut away in my little bolthole... I'm not sure if I can wait that long...

This is what worries me most I think about having a serious relationship with someone else, my need for solitude... which can come on unexpectedly at times... will someone understand my need to regularly hibernate... to be still and quiet?

Though Jeni B, my tarot reader/ teacher keeps telling me that the 'right' person will understand that need, and more than likely have the same need. She keeps reminding me of a theme through my meditations over the last 2 years of myself, in a little cottage, in a room that is mine, with my books and crafty things and an open fire and a desk by the window at which I write. And in all of those meditations, there is either someone working alone in another room, or someone else close by... a footfall at the door, a shadow, the anticipation of someone expected... sigh... I wish...

Of course, in the Tarot, the Hermit symbolises much of these feelings. A time to withdraw, to be introspective in order to gain perspective. Soul-searching, time for self-illumination, truth and wisdom of the higher self. It can also represent a guide, a wise woman/man offering others that same illumination, truth and wisdom. I sometimes wonder if I'm meant to take both meanings, I'm definitely someone who searches my soul... but am I also required to share the results of that soul-searching?

Note: When I put in my real name I was told that it means "tastes like chicken"... lol

Someone to watch over me....

2007-08-15T22:31:00.000+10:00

There’s a saying old, says that love is blind
Still we’re often told, "seek and ye shall find"
So I’m going to seek a certain lad I’ve had in mind...

Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key

Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed
Follow my lead, oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me...
Someone to Watch Over Me...George Gershwin

Well it seems the general consensus is that I should go for it... this online dating thing...especially as some of you think I should share all the gory details of my quest... so in fact, I'm being selfless and doing this for you!

Have been thinking a lot about what kind of man/men I'd like to meet, what would make my heart go ping... and other body parts reverberate...and prompted to think even more following some recent blog posts... doesn't help that I've been listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing the Gershwin Songbook... boy that man could write a melancholy love song...

Mez recently discussed Love or List?... should you make a list of attributes that you might want in a partner, and what if people don't meet the requirements of the list. And Indiana talked about that Dreaded Question - why are you still single? and gave what I think is a wonderfully succinct and heartfelt response "I am yet to meet someone I can rely on to be both there for me and to be the person I need, not just want. I am yet to meet someone whom I can believe enough in to give up my own total self-reliance"

And so, we come to me, and what is it that I am looking for - I've mentioned different things in this blog since I started in February... most recently stating I yearn for someone who gets me... someone who is clever and funny and kind and kooky ... and wants to wrestle naked...no doubt I'll be doing some more thinking about this but here goes...

ADDENDUM: Need to clarify the list below is not a checklist, have no plans to meet someone and then determine whether they are right or wrong based on the below... I'm someone who goes a lot more on gut or intuition in my responses to people, both male and female. It's just a bit of fun about my ideal man... and by putting the desire out there into the universe I'll be curious to see how many of these attributes can be found... though the Naughty, Lusty, Kissable and Available things are non-negotiable!

I do think it's interesting that the commentors to date who have expressed horror have all been male... lol

The ABCs - Miss Frou Frou's Ideal Bloke needs to be:

Available - both physically and emotionally - i.e. live within in a reasonable distance, and actually single
Blokey - I actually don't mind blokey blokes - the blokier they are, the more girlie I become
Clever - not looking for a Mensa candidate, but someone who can hold their own conversationally on a gamut of interests
Dependable - I don't mean a doormat, but if you say you're going to do something, you do it or least let me know if you can't
Employed - don't care what you do, but you need to have some form of work, preferably something that you are passionate about. If you have a mundane job that provides an income for you to follow your muse, that's ok too...
Funny - if you make me laugh, you've almost won me over...
Grounded - for all that I enjoy foolishness, I want someone who has a clear idea of who he is and what he wants, partly cause I need someone to pull me back to earth on occasion
Honest - I will forgive most things, but not lies
Imaginative - linked to funny, clever, lusty, naughty and uninhibited... use your imagination
Juggler - capable of keeping several balls up in the air, work, family, hobbies, me...
Kissable - kissing is important... but I'm not a girl who will kiss someone just because... I need to want to kiss you... and you need to want to kiss me - often!
Lusty - sorry, have no interest in having a purely cerebral relationship... you need to want to play - often!
Manly - I like guys who are masculine - and all that means, not prissy, not afraid to get their hands dirty, a bit hairy, hard in all the right places.
Naughty - I'm pretty open about a lot of things... anyone who is a bit on the conservative side just makes me want to be more and more outrageous
Open Minded- I like odd things... am very tolerant and interested in all sorts of people, you'd need to be a bit the same or we'd bump heads
Persuasive - I'm a hard nut to crack... confess to being high maintenance - you'd need to be somewhere between persistent and pushy - if you pushed to hard, particularly if you dictated, I'm out of here...
Quixotic/ Quirky - fanciful, impulsive, unpredictable but all in a good way
Romantic - not your traditional hearts and flowers type romantic (though that's nice) but someone who would see the romance in small things ... dancing with me around the house, making me a special mix tape, picking flowers out of the garden, singing me to sleep
Sane - while I walk a fine line between slightly eccentric and raving lunatic - you'd need to be well versed in the land of common sense and practicality, but prepared to let go of all that on occasion and come over to my side for awhile
Tactile - I'm a touchy feely girl, when I'm comfortable with someone... think cat... I purr when I'm stroked...
Uninhibited - puritanical and prudish just does not cut it
Verbal - I need to talk, and need someone to talk to... if your main form of communication is grunting, I am not the girl for you
Wise - again, not talking about a Mr Smartpants, but someone who is worldly and discerning.
X Rated - linked to funny, clever, lusty, naughty and uninhibited... I told you already - use your imagination!
Young at Heart - am over the much younger boy thing, but I'm still not quite grown up yet, so am attracted to men who are a bit childlike... not terrible two's childlike... not in to tantrum throwing... just playful
Zany - if you can't see the absurd in things, how on earth are you going to love and treasure me for the dingbat that I am?

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy....

2007-08-15T00:17:00.000+10:00

Two of my favourite people are having birthdays today... so this is just a blogosphere shout out to both of them!

Moon Girl - she of the wicked sense of humour, shopping centre pimpage and the healthy and nutritious lunches, I luvs ya ...

But if you bring pom poms to the choir concert I'm going to squash you like a bug next time I see you... Happy Birthday....

And it's also the Nature Boy's big day... he of the un-Leo like persona, great food recommendations, snarky elitism and general ~~weirdness~~ normalcy.

I keep telling him if I ever get anything published I'm going to acknowledge him in the dedication pages... this will have to do for now!

Birthdays Rock.... now where's the bloody cake!

Death by Dating...

2007-08-09T23:33:00.000+10:00

"How many of you have ever started dating
because you were too lazy to commit suicide?"... Judy Tenuta

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to get back onto the online dating merry-go-round... argh...

Over the last couple of weeks there have been several conversations with friends at work about how to get me out there meeting people. For the most part, my close friends are female, those male friends that I have are either married or in relationships or frankly clueless... seriously, have never seen the benefits of having male friends who can hook you up with their mates... this has never happened to me!

Of course, when pressed over the last couple of weeks about the type of guy I'd like to meet I've been at a bit of a loss... oh, I'd really like to meet a man who attracts me, who is equally attracted to me, but will facilitate between interest and total disinterest over a number of years, and basically treat me badly, and then tell me that he values our friendship... cause at least then I'd know what to expect!

"They keep saying the right person will come along,
I think mine got hit by a truck"... anonymous

I have no idea who the right person is... so when Ms B. at lunch the other day said we should put you up onto a well known singles site to say I was a bit ambivalent would be an understatement. Though she has said when she returns from holidays in two weeks we'll take some photos and work on a profile - so she wants me to think about what I'd like to say.

"A good woman is worth, if she were sold, the fairest crown that's made of purest gold"... John Wodroephe

I've not had much success with this before. I did ok with the newspaper based personals, where you had a print ad, and then people could ring and leave a voice message. Well I did ok at getting a lot of responses, even if it was mostly lots of first dates.

As I said to Ms. Chief at dinner tonight... I'm obviously good at marketing but not necessarily at sales... can get them in with the razzle dazzle, but rarely close the deal. Though in all honestly, it was often me who backed out rather than them...

Problem with these online things is they are so regimented and restrictive... a virtual shopping list of features, single, separated, divorced, even married. Wants kids, has kids, doesn't like kids. Slim, athletic, average, a bit overweight, largish... interestingly I rarely see men describe themselves as largish... even when it's obvious from their photo's that they are! Smoker, non-smoker. Political and religious persuasion. Do you want 'em young, old, short, tall - living within a 10 klm radius or interstate. What kind of music do they like? What about movies? Books? Sport?

Apparantly 2/3rd of the male population of Australia love The Shawshank Redemption, rarely read anything other than the newspaper and think enjoying going camping often is a positive thing (I'll write a whole other post about the likelihood of ever seeing Miss Frou Frou pitching a tent and peeing in the woods)

"A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are"... Chauncey Depew

But still... there's a part of me that would like to meet someone... a yearning... to share... to have someone to belong to... someone who gets me... someone who wants to wrestle naked...

Someone who is clever and funny and kind and kooky ... and wants to wrestle naked...

"An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her"... Agatha Christie

And I'd really like to meet this clever, funny, kind, kooky naked wrestler before all my soft and wobbly bits slip and bunch up around my ankles!

The last time I advertised in the personals it said this:

Before I turn 46 - next March -
I would like to make love (as often as possible)
with a man I like a lot - last 6 words are the important part!!!

ME? 45, funny (both funny haha and funny weird at times). Smart, without being a show off or know-it-all. A great conversationalist, can guarantee to provide opportunities for weird and wacky conversations. Genuinely curious about how the male mind (and other bits) works. I'm not stunning, but you wont need a paperbag either. Am not slim, but as long as you don't try to carry me across a threshold I doubt you'd sustain any serious damage. I don't bite, unless you say please first.

The wording was quite deliberately provocative... a male friend had looked at my original draft and said I was too subtle and men didn't do subtle. So this was my attempt at being direct and still there was confusion, with most people reading the opening paragraphs as... blah, blah, blah, make love (as often as possible), blah, blah, blah - which translated further into she's up for it... sex, sex, sex!

I pulled the pin after a month or so, as I got sick of explaining the intent behind the words... though I did meet 1 guy for a dinner who then rang me a week later to say he liked me a lot and was 'strangely aroused' at dinner.... had I deliberately tried to turn him on? Ummm... that would be a no...

So considering my experience to date... what do you reckon? How do you like my chances if I used something like this? Of course, easiest thing to do would be to get prospective suitors to read this blog... if they read my mad scramblings and were still interested I'd be interested in meeting them, if only to see just how crazy they were!

Six Degrees of Miss Frou Frou....

2007-08-07T23:04:00.000+10:00

Is my life both ordinary and bizarre? Discuss!

Most of you have heard of Six Degrees of Separation, a theory that all of us can be connected within 6 degrees. And there is the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon... a game devised by college students where you try to link actors to the actor Kevin Bacon in the least number of degrees.

Well... I think something similar has been happening to me over the last few years... but particularly in the last 12 months.

Case Study One: Boomerang Boy was a bit obsessive about keeping me a secret... while I would occasionally speak to them on the phone when I rang him as he was still living at home when we first met, I never met his parents, only ever going to his house when his parents where away.

But I had met Xena - the family dog... a gorgeous malamute with distinctive markings... the lighter markings on her face were all around her muzzle, so she looked a bit like the Joker from Batman - a permanent smile etched on her face. I used to call her Xena the smiley dog.

Mum's cat Scully had to have an amputation of part of her paw at the 24 hour emergency vet one Sunday evening, and as I collected her the next morning, a very distinctive dog bounded out of the next examination room being dragged by an attractive older woman and danced all round a distinguished gentleman waiting in the waiting room. I recognised the dog... and as I stood at the counter confirmed that yes this must be BBs Mum and Dad when I saw the name on the credit card she used to pay the bill.

To say that BB was slight horrified is an understatement! The telephone conversation that evening went a bit like this:

MFF: What's wrong with Xena? Why was she at the vet's today?

BB: What drugs are you on? She wasn't at the vet today!

MFF: Are you sure about that?

BB: Mum! Did you take Xena to the vet today?

BBs Mum: Yes, she needed her shots

BB (quietly): How did you know that?

MFF : I was there!

BB (still quiet): What did you say to them?

MFF (brightly): What do you think I said?
Hi, Mr and Mrs Boomerang - I'm the woman shagging your very much younger son!

BB (audibly gulping)

MFF (laughing till I made myself hiccup)

Case Study Two: - I am working in a role that was vacated by someone who took a similar position at another government authority in April last year. The person who replaced me at the role I left in April last year, had worked in the role that my predecessor had taken.

That's right... we had done a triangular shift... the 3 of us effectively shuffling places... with some small stopovers along the way... I've joked that in 2 years or so, we should all do it again!

On a related note, a guy who took over my role at my last job for about 9 months 4 years ago, sat at my table at a Conference in Sydney earlier in the year... he left my work and took a similar role to my current position at a similar organisation.

Case Study Three: Boomerang Boy again... he is now married, and I haven't seen him since just before his wedding 5 years ago. I've never met his wife, as far as I'm aware, she does not know that I exist, that whole secret thing again... so it's been a bit disconcerting to discover that 2 people I know (a former work colleague and a current work colleague) have worked for the same organisation that she worked at - in one case, in the same department!

Case Study Four: - First day at choir rehearsals, I looked around the hall at the 150+ people there and noticed a couple of familiar faces. One was N - a Health and Safety Representatives from my last job, the other was P - a woman I had been affiliated with when I worked for an agency providing support for children with disabilities in childcare services between 1990-1995. Two rehearsals later, another face walks past me and I think who is that? This was M - someone else I had known back during that time working in children services.

Following week standing around in the teabreak I said hi to N and realised she was standing with P and M! How did they know each other? N & M have been sopranos together for the last 3 choirs and have become friends. P lives near N and gives her a lift to rehearsal each week. So not only did I bump into 3 people from different times in my life, these 3 people all know each other because of separate connections!

Case Study Five: - last Saturday I went on a Chocolate Tour through the city ... a social club activity I organised at work. My mate FBG came along with me, which was fun... but again, the 6 degrees of Miss Frou Frou at work... turns out FBG knew Nature Boy's girl because they both worked in similar roles for two different organisations in the late 90s and knew each other because they were part of the same professional association. I have known FBG for 17 years and Nature Boy and his girl less than 12 months. One of the reasons I wanted FBG to meet NB was because from the beginning he has reminded me very strongly of her... they have a similar conversational style... and they both make me smile... often...

Now you might not think any of this is odd... but you need to understand, Melbourne is not a small hick town... we have a population of well over 3 million people... and its starting to seem likely that in some way or another, I'm going to eventually meet all of them!

THINGS TO DO:

Start playing connect the dots

If I look confused it's because I'm thinking... Samuel Goldwyn

2007-08-06T19:53:00.000+10:00

What things there are to write, if one could only write them!
My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious,
moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest,
those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson,
flutter away beyond my reach. ~Logan Pearsall Smith

I've been quiet... as both Rhian and Sheila have pointed out... have struggled to write anything here... not because there isn't anything to write about, but because there is! Nothing momentous, or life altering to anyone other than me!

As I said to someone today, my life is very ordinary and at the same time so surreal and bizarre, I really don't need to write fiction...

It's like the last 12 months have created a series of small, tiny events, each one inconsequential but each leading on to the next thing. Changing jobs, meeting particular people, being encouraged to communicate, starting this blog, discovering all of you wonderful people out there who engage me with your words and ideas, and respond to my own.

I have started to write several things recently about some of the things happening both to me, and around me and how they make me feel.

So many things flying through my head, I can barely pin a thought down, but at the same time a sense of clarity and understanding that I don't believe I've ever felt so acutely before.

It is as if a part of me is sitting outside and watching... this more than a little bit crazy girl trying to hold it together and pondering the how, when, where's and more importantly, the why's of her life.

And I wanted to share them, but have been reluctant to. Possibly because some of the people involved are frequent or infrequent readers here. Though I don't think that was the main reason, it's just that more recently, I've realised that this blog, at this point in time, my only real public outpourings for me as a writer, has changed... with meme's and Thursday 13s and other fun things, the reason why I started this in the first place has drifted away.

And I want to get back to that original purpose... the musings of a little, fat, funny girl waffling about life, love and all that jazz... but I'm strangely fearful... but of what?

So, bear with me please... I'm good, I know this is all a bit cryptic, but I'm fine... choir rehearsals are wonderful and joyous but the nerves are kicking in as we approach the concert dates, I'm doing some quilting, and reading and writing lots. Alternating between wakefulness and sleep, and a bit frail physically (week 5 of this awful flu/virus) but emotionally feeling really strong and positive.

I'm just processing some stuff prior to the next step... a bit like The Fool in the Tarot... wandering along gazing at the heavens, almost about to step over a cliff. Is that foolhardy, or is that brave? Will I fall or will I fly? Only time will tell....

And by the way, everything in life is writable about
if you have the outgoing guts to do it,
and the imagination to improvise.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal... Albert Camus

2007-07-25T23:20:00.000+10:00

Your Quirk Factor: 70%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal.
No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

How Quirky Are You?

So is it a sign of my quirkiness that this score pleased me? Considering even my Director at work not that long ago smiled at me and shook her head and said "You're a little crazy aren't you?" I guess it's safe to say I'm no longer expending unneccessary energy...

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who
insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being"... Oscar Wilde ##

Told the Nature Boy the other day that my ideal man would be a bit like Oscar Wilde... but maybe not gay... and definitely not dead...

To Do List:
* Find me a man who will celebrate my quirkiness

The Moaning Meme...

2007-07-23T19:03:00.000+10:00

"I need not suffer in silence while I can still moan, whimper, and complain" Anonymous

I probably should be moaning about memes as I got tagged THREE times in the last week... but I ain't complaining.

My friend, Candid Katrina - who writes great things and has the best Wordless Wednesdays by the way, so go check her out, if you don't read her already... tagged me for this one... created by The Freelance Critic.

He says: "If you've ever listened to people talking on a bus you'll know that most of what they say is negative. They talk about things they hate, people that annoy them and boyfriends that let them down before they even think about mentioning the 'nice things.'

All of us do it. We find it natural, when with a friend, to moan.In fact a recent study has shown that the most effective form of human bonding is moaning and gossiping.Yet our blogs, the social tools of the 21st century, are populated by memes listing our 'favourites,' or our 'blessings,' or our 'funniest' moments. In our efforts to be readable we have denied others the one thing that makes us interesting - our whining, moaning, complaining selves.And so I am pleased to present the first ever Moaning Meme! The meme that will teach us all a bit more about each other and ourselves.It's time to spread some Personality... "

The Moaning Meme

5 people who will be annoyed you tagged them.

1. Wylie

2. Rhian (only cause I think her answers to this will be a crack-up)

3. Starrlight - cause she tagged me!

4. Anne

5. Gabriella

4 things that should go into room 101 and be removed from the face of the earth.

One - Low Fat icecream - seriously, if I'm going to have icecream, then I want the highest level of fat available

Two - Compound Chocolate

Three - Late night infomercials - what happened to oldey, late night movies, so if you couldn't sleep you could at least watch something interesting while you did your ironing at 3.00am

Four - The assumption that just because you're round, you are also tall! Am sick of chopping 5 or more inches of the bottom of pants... though maybe if I wasn't so particularly about 1 and 2 this might not be a problem

3 things people do that make you want to shake them violently.

One - Be rude to wait staff or telephone canvassers... somebody has to do this job... be nice

Two - hog parking spots, so that you can't get in front of them or behind them

Three - complain about the rain... we're experiencing a drought people... you should be thankful

2 things you find yourself moaning about.

One - why I can't meet anyone who wants to race me off...

Two - spoonfeeding people at work, which means I never have time to do my own work

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself.

I'm not very tolerant of people who are intolerant! And I obsess about food, a lot!

RULES:*Link to the original meme at FreelanceCynic.com so people know what it's all about!*Be as honest as possible, This is about letting people get to know the real you!*Try not to insult anyone - unless they really deserve it or are very, very ugly! *Post these rules at the end of every meme!Finally remember, cynical is sexy. At least that's what I'm hoping...

Unconscious Mutterings #11 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-07-23T18:55:00.000+10:00

Free association is described as a "psychonanalytic procedure in which a person is encouraged to give free rein to his or her thoughts and feelings, verbalizing whatever comes into the mind without monitoring its content." Over time, this technique is supposed to help bring forth repressed thoughts and feelings that the person can then work through to gain a better sense of self. Each week ten words are posted at Unconscious Mutterings to which you can respond to with the first thing that comes to mind. If you want to have a go register by clicking the logo at left above or the link included in this paragraph.

Deputy :: Dawg

Name :: of the Rose

Arrested :: Development

Trade :: Union

Old :: Fogey

Fingerprint :: Ink

Dwarf :: Zee plane, zee plane

Newspaper :: Print

Gabriel :: Angel

Certificate :: of Currency

Thursday Thirteen #10... Me, Myself and I...

2007-07-18T23:39:00.001+10:00

This is my 100th post, and for my 100th post I wanted to do the 100 things about me, but it so happens it's also Thursday 13, so I've fudged a bit (I am nothing, if not creative!) and come up with 13 categories, that include 100 things about me...

ONE: WE ARE FAMILY...
1. I am the middle child of three with a younger sister and an older brother

2. I am 11 months younger than my brother, and 15 months older than my sister

3. Yes, this meant my mother was almost permanently pregnant for 3 years

4. My mother met my father when she was 8 and he was 11, when her sister married his brother, though she doesn't remember him being around much till around her 17th birthday

5. My parents were married at 19 and 22, with a ready made family by the time my mother was 23

6. My parents divorced when I was 23

7. My sister is the only one of us kids to have married, she met her future husband at 17, married him at 20, had 2 children by the time she was 25 and was divorced at 33 - she almost replicated my mother's life...

8. My father died 4 years ago unexpectedly, from the complications from a cold... which is odd, considering he'd survived multiple suicide attempts, tuberculosis, hepatitis, liver and bowel cancer, alcoholism, a broken hip and 3 major surgeries to relieve pressure on his brain.

9. I had divorced him... breaking off all contact with him after he'd asked to be left the f@#k alone, 18 months prior to his death...

TWO: YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A BEAUTIFUL BABY...
10. I was born on a Friday, and Mum chopped a load of firewood, left my brother with a neighbour and took herself off to the hospital in a taxi on her own. She didn't have a visitor until the following afternoon

11. I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and was taken out of the delivery room and my mother didn't see me again until 5 hours later... she thought I had died!

12. My Dad didn't see me for almost 3 days, as he'd gone on a bender with his mates and didn't come home till Sunday, to an empty house and a note on the door to tell him where Mum was

13. I was allergic to my mother's breast milk... as well as most types of formula

14. At 6 weeks old my mother propped me up in my high chair, surrounded by pillows with pantyhose tied around my waist to hold me in, as I screamed blue murder if they tried to place me in another room... I needed to be where all the action was... nothing much has changed

15. I walked at 10 months, long before my almost 2 year old brother... he only walked because I used to steal his toys from him

16. I never talked baby talk, going from silence to full words... and I haven't stopped talking since

17. I had a mop of blond curls, blue eyes and dimples... and by all accounts was a pretty, happy baby... smiling more often then crying...

THREE: YOUNG AT HEART...
18. I went almost 12 months eating nothing but plain boiled rice and spaghetti and baked beans... I still love all three...

19. Watching a TV program where a man stuffed cotton wool in his cheeks and up his nose to disguise himself, I attempted to do the same... but instead used the beads from a broken necklace of my mothers... and managed to have one bead lodge at the top of my nose, close to my eye, that had to be extracted by a doctor

20. At 3, I dressed up in my mother's hat and gloves and an old handbag, and told her I was off to the doctor. She went along with me, and only realising after an hour of quiet that I had actually learnt how to unlatch the front door and had disappeared. We lived in a street that backed on to Ripponlea Mansion and the back gates and had been left open, so a search party was established, fearing if I'd wondered into the grounds I might be lost for days. Instead, I'd walked up to the main road and had walked across the pedestrian crossing. A driver starting off from what he thought was a clear crossing, felt a slight bump and got out to find me on the ground in front of his wheels.

21. I won the Kindergarten fancy dress competition, dressed as Mavis Bramston, in a black chiffon shirt, a black wig, Jacqui O sunglasses, and a cigarette holder... I won a picture book of The Three Little Pigs.. I was 4

22. I used to wet my pants... not because of some nervous affliction, nor because of any medical condition... I just used to get engrossed in some activity and forget to go to the toilet until it was too late and then I'd have an accident... don't pee my pants anymore, but I often forget to eat and drink because I'm concentrating on some fancy

23. My mother always knew when I had pee'd my pants as I would take them off and put them in the laundry hamper, wherever we happened to be, and go bare-assed for the rest of the day

24. I had an imaginary pony, called Tony! He lived under the kitchen table and ate pretend carrots...

25. An aunt trying to coax us into bed one Christmas Eve took us to the window to tell us if Santa came and we were still awake he wouldn't leave presents. What must have been the tail-lights of a plane had us convinced it was Santa and Rudolf... so we scurried into bed, but I stayed awake peering through my lashes for half the night, not wanting to miss seeing Santa come down the chimney... but we didn't have a chimney...

FOUR: STORY OF A GIRL...
26. I could add, subtract and multiply double digits before starting school, because my uncle set me homework every time he came to visit, but interestingly enough, I couldn't read before I started school

27. I made up for that with a vengeance, by reading the entire 1st year reading material before the end of 1st term, and then the 2nd year material by midway through the year. My teacher encouraged my mother to get me a library card!

28. My mother talks about me coming home from my first day at school most indignant, as only the children who cried got sweets, whereas those of us who were brave were not rewarded at all... my sense of justice was well and truly in force already

29. I was one of those nerdy kids who loved school... I used to cry if I couldn't go.

30. I was a clever clod, but also very friendly, so apart from being pushed down the stairs by a boy in my final year of primary school because I won a student scholarship, I managed to straddle the divide of popular and nerd reasonably well

31. My mother allowed us to be exposed to a variety of religious experiences, we went on Methodist picnics and to Greek Orthodox Sunday School

32. My father, on the other hand, blew a gasket when a note came home from school with suggested dates for my first communion... we were not Catholic

33. The nun who provided Catholic studies at school thought I might have had a vocation, why else would I have passed myself off as Catholic. She was very disappointed to have me tell her it was because the Junior Catholic Bibles had lovely coloured pictures in them

34. I was and still am a clumsy clot... totally unaware of my physical self... so spent most of my childhood covered in bruises and scabs

35. I've never been very sporty... totally uncoordinated, though I have danced on and off for most of my life. At school I was part of a group that used to learn a traditional folk dance, and then we would teach the rest of the school... I love Zorba the Greek to this day...

36. Though I was a mean Wing Defence till a fall, splat, straight on to one knee, ended my netball career, and resulted in my wearing a knee brace and having a walking stick for almost 6 months. The knee is still a bit dodgy... and aches when it's damp...

37. My mother talks about the time I told my brother to get f@#ked... I was probably about 7 at the time, and I was told not to say that word... so asked my favourite question - Why? Cause, you shouldn't say words if you don't know what they mean, to which I replied - but I do know. Mum called my bluff... "ok, smartypants, what does it mean?" she asked, to which I replied "its when a man and a lady get stuck together!"

FIVE: TEENAGE DIRTBAG...
38. I was a bit of a good girl, but had my moments of rebellion... was always getting into trouble for completing my work and then distracting the other kids by talking

39. My high school was very progressive, so instead of being in a class with students my year, at the end of the first year they assessed students and placed them in one of four units... Unit One, being the most relaxed and informal going up to Unit Four, which was predominantly traditional class room style, though Years 7-9 together - guess, which unit I ended up in? Yep, one...

40. Imagine about 100+ kids roaming around a huge open room with half a dozen teachers, and you've got an idea about 3 years of high school for me... we created our own language with it's own written and oral rules in English class, developed our own societies, experimenting with a variety of governing styles, built cubbyhouses, fiercely debated everything that came out of our teachers mouths and generally created chaos... I loved it!

41. Of course, when I got to the equivalent of year 10 and they started prepping us for exams etc. it was a major shock... what do you mean I have to produce written material?

42. Consequently I failed my HSC ... and was so miserable my last two years of high school it took me over 20 years to go back to study... and even now I struggle within the confines and restrictions of formal education

43. I got drunk for the first time at 16 during the lunch break, on Southern Comfort, and then fell asleep in my English Literature class, which was taught by the principal

44. My first trip to a pub at age 17, sitting in the beer garden of the Yarra Hotel in Collingwood, the place was raided by the cops, with underaged girls flying off into the toilets, only to be hauled out and away. An older guy, said to me, "go up to the bar and buy a jug of beer", which I did, and then casually brought it back to our table. My friend and I and he were the only ones not spoken to. And when the cops left and I expressed relief, he floored me, but saying "yeah, me too - I've got a baggie of pot tucked into my underpants"

SIX: I AM WOMAN...
45. From my mid twenties till about 35 I was invisible... I had friends, most of whom are still around, but I would and could be introduced to someone multiple times and they would not remember me

46. I went away on my own on holiday the year I turned 28, and did not speak to another living soul for a week and for the first time discovered my need to go into hibernation in order to survive

47. While away I made a list of things I wanted to achieve before I was 30 - the first and only time I have ever made such a list. I promptly forgot about it, until I found it at around 32 and just mentally adjusted the timeframes to 35, then 40 etc.

48. The list primarily was focused on having a place of my own and a child of my own... but makes no reference to having a partner

49. I'm obviously a late bloomer, or a late rebel... getting a tattoo at 38, around the same time I started tap dancing, and now joining a choir at 46

50. A friend wanted to know what was I going to do next.. and I said.. I don't know - stand up comedy? To which she replied, "actually that wouldn't surprise me at all"

SEVEN: DO YOU THINK I'M SEXY...
51. My first proper french kiss was a guy called Burkey... it was horrible... and worse, he told everyone, and I didn't kiss anyone again for a number of years

52. I had a major crush on a guy in high school who referred to me as Blob... I used to call him Shithead... he once said to me "What are you going to be when you grow up? You can't be an elephant in disguise all your life!" starting me on my path of being fatally attracted to sarcastic, clever bastards!

53. I mooned over a boy through primary and high school and only discovered at my 20 year high school reunion that he'd had a crush on me too...

54. For most of my teens and 20s, I thought I was not attractive as a female... an 'honorary boy' who used to hang with the guys, talk to them, but they rarely tried to grope or kiss me. It is only now looking back that I realise quite a few of them were probably interested in me, but I was totally oblivious and clueless.

55. Flirting is much easier when I'm a bit liquored up... now that I rarely drink, I find it difficult to really flirt... I miss it!

56. Because I am naturally curious about people including all things male, I've often found myself having the weirdest conversations about men and sex... and it confuses men no end, just cause I'm happy to discuss sex doesn't mean I actually want to have it... well, not with you, anyway!

EIGHT: WORKING FOR THE MAN...
57. I started working part-time in gift/record/lotto shop at 14, earning the princely sum of .75c an hour. Within a month, I was doing all the lotto bookwork and continued to work part-time until I left high school

58. I left school and went straight into a full time job, and I've never been unemployed since

59. I have been a mail sorter (specialising in postcodes - almost 30 years later I can still remember most Melbourne suburban codes), receptionist, secretary, reception clerk, book-keeper, payroll officer, office manager, executive assistant, project officer and now, an OH&S advisor

60. I have worked for hotels and motels, a major arts festival, an independent economic research institute, a disability support service, an architectural practice, a major cultural institution, a TAFE college and now a local government

61. I still haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up...

NINE: A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME...
62. I moved into a share house at 19, my room was a hexagonal room (former dining room) with lime green and yellow flock wallpaper so bright that sometimes I could still see it on my eyelids with my eyes closed.

63. The one guy who lived there (married to one of the women) was caught with his eye to keyhole of one of the other girl's bedrooms (his wife's sister).

64. I was the only person who worked full-time, the others all students with waiting jobs, so I would come home to discover they'd used up all the milk and bread and taken the 'kitty' money to buy fish and chips.

65. I hated it so much, that I started going home on weekends, supposedly so that I could do my washing, that gradually extended in to staying 3 to 4 days a week, and I discovered I'd slowly moved most of my belongings back

66. I moved back temporarily, and agreed to take over the mortgage with my brother when my parents separated so that my Mum didn't lose the house, and ended up staying for almost 20 years

67. I moved out 5 years ago... after agonising over having the conversation that I wanted to live on my own for nearly 12 months, and did the big blurt and was gone in less than a month

68. I live with Gertie and Gracie, two tortoiseshell cats... Gracie spends most of her time hiding under furniture or under the doona sleeping, only appearing briefly to eat, and occasionally when she's really tired, have a cuddle

69. Gertie, on the other hand, is my girl... wherever I am, she is... or at least she makes sure I am in eye contact... she is curled up on a beanbag at my feet as I write this, occasionally stretching out to give my foot a nudge

70. I never realised until I moved out on my own how much I crave silence and my own company

71. I don't think I will ever willingly share my home with someone again...

TEN: WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS...
72. One of my closest friends sat next to me in prep class... apart from family, she's the person I've known the longest in my life and I love her to bits... a single mother of 4, she's off doing a "Shirley Valentine' in Greece - away on her own for the next 3 months, the first time since she was 18... I am so proud of her

73. My friends are my family... and while different people move in and out of my life, I have amassed the most amazing group of friends, who make it possible for me to be me...

74. As I get older I find that what male friends I had have, for the most part, drifted away. A lot of them finding it impossible to maintain a friendship with me once they have partnered up or married.

75. MFL is one of the exceptions... I have been in love and now loved him for over 25 years... and while we don't see each other often, I know if I need him he will be there for me, as I will be for him

ELEVEN: DAMN, I WISH I WAS YOUR LOVER...
76. While there have been men through my life that I have been attracted to, there are only 3, possibly 4, that I think of as being important

77. If I like you, then we can be friends, but I need to more than like you to be your lover

78. Boomerang Boy told me that from the beginning, there was nothing casual about me, which is ironic really, as I never placed any expectations on him or a future together, other than I wanted to be with him... for how ever long it seemed right

79. I'd like to think that there is one more 'great love' out there for me...

80. If I can't have one more 'great love' than I guy who makes me feel lust in my panty region on a regular basis would do...

81. Oh, and he has to live within a 10 klm radius, be available to satisfy that lust whenever I want him to, and fete me as the goddess I am...

82. And cook too...

TWELVE: SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS...
83. As previously stated, I haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up yet...

84. Though I always dreamed of owning a bookshop and/or being a writer

85. Through this blog I've discovered that maybe I could be a writer, though I've yet to determine in what forum

86. I'd find it difficult to write full time, my style is anecdotal - I am a storyteller... a participator rather than a spectator... in order to write, I need to interact with others

87. It has been suggested, more than once, that I would make a good therapist... as I am interested in what motivates people, and that I am a good listener, this might be a good career choice for me

88. I, of course, scoff at the notion - with echoes of "physician heal thyself" flashing through my mind

89. That's not to say that I wouldn't be interested in doing some study either in transpersonal therapy or psychology

90. I dream of making a difference... even if that difference is just that I've impacted in a positive way on those people I have met and allowed into my life

91. I've also dreamed of accepting an Academy Award - triple award winner - for writing, directing and starring in a fantabulous movie... oh and singing the theme song!

92. Of course, my Oscar date is my friend with benefits... Mr Clooney...

THIRTEEN: THE FUTURE'S SO BRIGHT I'VE GOT TO WEAR SHADES...
93. I am eternally optimistic... a glass half full, Pollyanna type of girl

94. I have to believe in basic human decency... though I realise that the world is a scary place these days

95. But on a personal level, these days are, for the most part, good...

96. I'm still a 'gunna' - gunna do this and gunna do that... but I'm happy to be that way... for the first time, genuinely happy with my lot.

97. I feel like I am still at the beginning of my life, though my physical self occasionally has to remind me that that is in fact, not so.

98. It is the journey that is important to me, not the destination...

99. And my fervent wish is that many of you will continue to share my journey with me as I bumble along... singing out of tune, dancing like a dork and laughing like a loon...

100. To be continued...

Holy crap, you talk about sex a lot...

2007-07-18T00:05:00.000+10:00

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* sex (19x)
* crap (2x)
* penis (1x)

Not going to use that other word - it's wwwude...

Help me if you can, I'm feeling .... verklempt....

2007-07-15T09:34:00.000+10:00

OK, well... you have no idea how tempted I was to sign up for Alison Kent's 70 Days of Sweat Writing Challenge particularly as most of my favourite people (Rhi - I'm turning into you cause I keep typing peeple or peeps!) including Rhian, Thomma Lyn, Joely, Shiloh and, last but not least, Red are taking up the challenge and I suspect the blog traffic will be a bit slow while they've got their heads down and bums up trying to churn out 4-6 pages of writing a day for the next 70 days.

My 'gunna' personality (I'm gunna do this and I'm gunna do that) kicked in to top gear and I thought "I could do this", it would be a fantastic kick start for me who has a multitude of ideas floating in my head, as this would force me to commit to putting ideas down on paper.

I'm putting it down to slightly flu induced insanity... and cooler/ calmer heads prevailed when I thought about my next 70 days... I have to either draft or review and redraft 32 policies and procedures for work by the end of the year, so that's a big chunk of writing time in my working hours (you know that thing I do, called a job!).

And then I had the internal conversation "oh - I could not write a lot during the week and basically just churn during the weekend" - I am 100% certifiably nuts!

I have 3 hours of choir rehearsal every Sunday for the next 7 weeks, and am barely scratching the surface and need to put some extra hours in so I can actually learn these bloody songs as I am now performing in not 1, not 2 but 3 concerts and what's more have people coming to watch these performances... I'm tired and emotional just thinking about it... add in twice weekly tarot/ meditation classes and housework (which I hate to do at the best of times) and really... What was I thinking?

And it's not like I even have a concrete story idea to flesh out ... as previously stated there are little snippets written down, but most of these story ideas are buried deep in my brain and there is nothing I could just pick up and go 'right - I'm half way through and need to write another 50,000 words to finish'.

So, have decided instead of setting a ~~totally unrealistic for me~~ goal of writing 4-6 pages a day, that I would settle on ONE idea and try to flesh it out and write as much as I can, when I can over the next 70 days.

This is where I need your help! I have not 1, not 2, but 5 story ideas, and need to get a bit of a feel for which ones to try to expand on... would be interested in feedback from any/or all of you as to which story you would most like to read:

IDEA ONE: late 30s/early 40s single quilt shop owner is ~~bullied~~ persuaded by her girl buddies to do the personals thing... so story is a humorous take on singledom and dating. Add in a nerdy, slightly pompous guy who buys the building next door to create his own bookshop to the mix and all sorts of things happen... have a rough draft of the scene where he meets her for the first time, that involves pouring rain, a cat having a litter of kittens, and a very well rounded bottom covered in a sodden pink chenille dressing-gown and bunny slippers (oh, did I say she's a bit of an oddball?) protruding from under a crate.

IDEA TWO: Family of women, mother and 2 sisters, over a 15-20 year period in a small country town and the men they are involved with. One sister, the pretty princess type, the other the shy, brainy one. Main male characters are the local small town boy made good, his estranged father and shy, brainy girl's best friend.

IDEA THREE: 7 friends, 2 sets of brother/sisters, one Aussie, one Greek, growing up in Collingwood during the 60s and 70s. Main story arc is the return of one of the men after being overseas for a number of years and the changing dynamic on the group, who have known each other since primary school but are now adults... Settings include a bookshop run by one of the women, and a bar run by one of the men... some of this comes from my own teenage years growing up in the area.

IDEA FOUR: this is a weird one... something I will definitely explore as fiction at some point, but may need to think about some more. Based on a very realistic dream that I recorded about a decade ago, that felt like a story. A woman in her early 30s, at a business retreat, should have been unconscious but wasn't when the area was investigated by (not sure, aliens? people with special powers? government agents doing an experiment?... all a bit unclear). On discovering her conscious and aware, one of the group (a man of around the same age) takes her with him... and there are various scenes, that indicated that she'd been drugged or brainwashed into not remembering what happened, but at the same time had some deep connection to this man that played out in dreams as she went on to live her life. Told in an alternating POV or possible alternating chapters.

IDEA FIVE: this is the story I've got furthest along with... based on a series of short stories I wrote several years ago... about a relationship between a couple and their exploration of a sexual wishlist... this would be considered erotica in it's present form, I guess. Not hardcore, but relatively frank in its subject matter. Rhian has read one of these stories already, there are probably about 4 or 5 more... would just need some work to write the surrounding story around them to create a cohesive structure.

To be honest, it's idea one I've had the most fun thinking about in the last little while... it's genesis was a similar story about quilt shop owner and her buddies and the dating thing, except in the original story all her dates were being attacked and the slightly pompous guy was the policeman investigating these incidents. Wrote about 10 or so pages, before I decided I didn't really enjoy writing that involved inflicting harm on someone so dropped it, and have been working through alternating scenarios ever since.

So which one would you read? Why?

Thursday Thirteen #10... 13 Things about Pluto and Firing the Grid

2007-07-12T23:00:00.000+10:00

Today's Thursday 13 is what the Nature Boy would call me and my 'fluffy chakra, airy/fairy stuff'... so ...

One: The Galactic Centre is the centre of the Milky Way, 30,000 light years away, and hidden from optical view by dust clouds, but is said to include a massive black hole. You can see a fantastic photo here. Astrologically, the Galactic Centre is located near the end of the sign of Sagittarius.

Two: Between December 2006 and October 2007, Pluto, the slowest moving planet (I know, I know, it's not technically a planet any more, but) will align or conjunct with the Galactic Centre. The three critical dates were it is in alignment are 29 December 2006, 17th July 2007, 28th October 2007

Three: Pluto was discovered in the early 1930s and has been linked to the rise of fascism, the onset of the Great Depression and the creation of atomic power.

Four: Pluto takes approximately 248 years to orbit the sun, and the last time it was in conjunction with the Galactic Centre was in 1745 on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution.

Five: Astrologically, key words or phrases that represent Pluto are transformation, renewal, death/rebirth, evolution, degeneration and regeneration. This Planet's energy is often focused on the masses and what the collective will do. Asking us to look inward (and to our subconscious) to see what's there.

Six: At 11.11am Greenwich Mean Time on Tuesday 17th July 2007 (the 2nd Pluto conjunction with the Galactic Centre) there is a worldwide plea to Fire The Grid of the earth to send healing energy to the earth's core.

Seven: Its simple... on or around 11.11am GMT (9.11pm here on the east coast of Australia - here is a link to a time clock for you to calculate your own time if you'd like) people of all faiths and beliefs, either alone or in groups, are being asked to pray or meditate for one hour to help to heal the planet and to reflect on our individual inner journeys.

Eight: Shelley Yates has a website Fire the Grid, were she discusses her own personal journey and explains the premise behind firing the grid in more detail.

Nine: Whether or not you believe fully in Shelley's story is immaterial. I think this would be a lovely and worthwhile thing to do anyway, to reinforce a sense of faith in both ourselves as humans, and the planet we live in. It's an hour of our time, that can be nothing other than beneficial, if only to give us a brief respite from what seems to be a world racing ahead of us or to provide some personal insights.

Ten: I know personally, and in conversations with friends I know I am not the only one, that this year has held a sense of change, that I myself have been going through a strong sense of personal transformation, a feeling that I and others are on the cusp of something that has never been experienced before and with that comes both excitement and fear.

Eleven: As I am still not feeling very well, I had already resolved to nourish myself both physically and emotionally a lot more than I have been doing lately. As someone who lives almost exclusively in her head, I am often forgetful of even the most basic human needs like sleep, food, drink... if it wasn't something by body did automatically, I suspect I'd forget to breathe.

Twelve: So on Tuesday evening I will be trying to leave work at a normal hour, to come home and have a simple dinner, change into sweats, burn some essential oils, play some calming music, light candles and meditate, and hopefully then sleep.

Thirteen: If you decide to also participate, and you feel comfortable doing so, I'd love to hear how you went. I'll be recording any feelings/ impressions in my meditation journal.

And the Dorks shall inherit the earth...

2007-07-09T20:41:00.000+10:00

The wonderful Rhian has created a new award, and I'm lucky enough to be one of the first recipients,

Now some of you may be wondering about what makes me so special, but of course, this is not my only claim to dorkiness... I'm such a uber-dork I have my own categories.

Dancing...
There's the How I was a Human Bowling Ball and lived to tell the Tale...story that was my award winning entry.

And there was my tapdancing debut. Do you remember The Village People's Do the Shake? Now, imagine a 38 year old, little fat girl, dressed as a cow, tapdancing badly to this song. We stomped onto the stage, and at one point I was so nervous, that I had disorientated myself, and instead of ending up with the rest of the troops at the back of the stage, I had moved forward, so doing an involuntary solo... another couple of missteps and I would have gone over the edge of the stage!

Year two wasn't any better... doing a gangster/ showgirl routine to Madonna's Hanky Panky. Except, I'm not showgirl material, so instead of a gold, tinselly sexpot I looked like a gold, tinselly sausage... crammed into a dress that shed all day in a major heatwave in a theatre without air-conditioning. That was ok... but a fellow dancemate and I, losing our place, and jumping 2 verses ahead of everyone else wasn't... and with my teacher's mantra running through my head of whatever you do, don't stop dancing... I made up my own little interpretive dance that was a mix of Shirley Temple and whirling dervish.

Fashion...
Those of you who have been reading the Tales of Miss Frou Frou from the beginning will be familiar with one of my earliest posts about my various fashion faux pas...

Dating and Food...
Sigh... I'm the girl who always manages to miss her mouth when eating and trying to make an impression. Two examples that spring to mind, going to take a drink out of a megacup of Coke at the movies on a date once and squeezing the cup just a little too hard and ending up with half the cup in my cleavage.... or even more embarrassing, laughing at a date's joke just as I took a sip of hot chocolate and ending up spraying it out my nose... and no, surprise, surprise... never had a second date with either.

Slips, Trips and Pratfalls...
Apart from my human bowling ball routine, I also regularly trip over ants...

Fell down a flight of stairs at Flinders Street Railway Station once... one step, and I bounced all the way down and was still hanging on to a suitcase and a shoulder bag when I hit the bottom... actually they were the cause of my, minor, injuries... a bump on the nose from the suitcase hitting me in the face all the way down and a twisted finger as my denim shoulderbag straps had twisted around my finger.

But the most uber-dorkish moment was arriving for a football match that MFL was playing in on a day when it had rained incessantly. Walked up to the car my godmother was sitting in, and did the big dramatic 'ta da' and went arse over tit in the mud. My godmother burst into laughter and the woman sitting in the drivers seat was asking 'where did she go...?' My beautiful new red chenille top was covered in cold, wet, sloppy mud.

But that wasn't the worst... luckily I was going to stay the weekend, so had a change of clothes in the car. Took my young godsister with me, while I changed in the car, she was supposed to play lookout and let me know if someone came along who could see. Got stripped down to my undies and changed and only then noticed the man sitting in the car parked in front, looking avidly into his rear view mirror. My godsister's response when I asked why had she not told me he was there... you said, tell me if someone comes along... he's been there all along!

There have been way too many examples of tripping both up and down stairs, or slipping on uneven floor surfaces too keep track... my knees and shins have callouses.

I'm not going to award a Uber-Dork award to anyone else... not sure if there is anyone else beamed down from my planet... but feel free to share your own uber-dork stories.

I will regard this great honor not so much as an award for what I have achieved, but a standard to hold against what I have yet to accomplish...
Eve Harrington, All About Eve, 1950

Unconscious Mutterings #10 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-07-09T19:16:00.001+10:00

Happen :: Stance

Terribly :: Posh

History :: Never Repeats

Master :: Blaster

Petrified :: Forest

Moan :: and Groan

Attack :: of the Killer Tomatoes

Picture :: Tells a Story

Students :: Snotty-nosed

Potter :: Harry, of course!

Thursday Thirteen #9... 13 Random Thoughts from a Space Cadet

2007-07-05T19:04:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm sorry I've been away... head cold turned into a major dose of flu, still not quite up to scratch, but getting there slowly. Thank you to all of you for lovely messages... nice to know I was missed a little...

So, today's Thursday Thirteen - the week that was for me...

One - learning to sing songs in another language (koori, polynesian and east timorese) is a bit difficult when you feel like you're walking around with a bucket on your head... could barely hear anyone at 2nd choir rehearsal

Two - singing in a group is also a bit of a waste of time in the same circumstances. Miss La De Da was asking me if I was actually singing, to which I replied, yes - loudly from my end - she thought I was miming! Maybe I was practising how I'm going to survive the concerts? Though singing the chorus of Singing in the Rain with my tongue out, knees bent and bum out as part of the warm-up exercise was great fun.

Three - for someone who struggles to sleep, I think I've made up for this year's insomnia in the last week... though fever induced dreams are often less than restful.

Four - I'm going to struggle to look a work colleague in the eye next time I see him considering the fever induced dream I had about him... though I was a bit disappointed on briefly waking that I didn't go back into the dream... hooley dooley... if I didn't already have a fever I sure did after!

Five - Feed the cold, starve the fever they say... pity everything tastes so bloody awful... knew I was really sick when even chocolate couldn't tempt me.

Six - Is it just me, or do other people hate blowing their nose? I hate it, such an inelegant thing to do... particularly when you're full of head cold

Seven - and speaking of noses, why is it that one nostril always gets blocked and the other drips non- stop?

Eight - I am so glad that I kept all my daggy, soft flannel shirts and leggings. I've lived in them for the last week, with big fluffy bedsocks... what with ratty hair, and a red nose and cracked lips I looked a treat... just as well as I live on my own... fancy coming home to that!

Nine - I had a quiet sob to myself at one stage, cause I was on my own... all I wanted was someone to give me a hug... it's hugs and cuddles that I miss more than anything about being single

Ten - Despite being full of snot, I managed to get to my Winter Solstice ceremony, it was lovely, though my meditation was probably temperature induced, had visions of a cavern with a circle of fire rising up to meet a circle of stalactites, which melted and smoked... was told I needed both fire and water, need both to be balanced.

Eleven - If you're going to be a bit spacey, might as well make the most of it, so have been reading Harry Potter - have read the first 3 books pretty much back to back, am now started on number 4.

Twelve - Engaged in even more spaceyness, by spending all of yesterday curled up on the couch watching the first 12 episodes of Heroes... wow, what a fantastic show... perfectly suited my wants and needs...

Thirteen - I've had 12 days of sleepy, dozy, spacey, snotty, achey, shakeydom (only need 1 more and I've got my own version of the seven dwarfs - have you met my friend pukey?)

We interrupt our broadcast....

2007-06-28T21:26:00.000+10:00

Sorry, no Thursday Thirteen today... am still struggling with major head cold.

A word to the wise... probably not a good idea to take 2 antihistamines when you're not used to them... it can result in feeling a lot like this...

Normal transmissions will resume as soon as I return from la la land...

Birthday Meme... tagged by Chicken Scratch

2007-06-27T18:07:00.000+10:00

I got tagged by Xine the other day, just haven't had a chance to play yet!

Here are the rules: You go to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and type in your birthday (only month & day). Then you write down 3 events, 2 births, 1 holiday, and then you tag 5 friends.

Me, being the wild and crazy non-conformist I am - have added some comments of my own!

MARCH 10

EVENTS:

1. 1831: The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Phillippe to support his war in Algeria. Oh.. I love a man in uniform... Beau Geste, anyone?

2. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call by saying "Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you" Had to pick this one... considering what a phone girl I am... Call me, Call me, now....

3. 1982: Syzygy: all 9 planets align on the same side of the Sun. How cool would this be? Will need to check out the astrological ramifications of something like this... this was the year I turned 21, and on arriving home for a quiet birthday dinner was told my 30 year old cousin had died of a heart attack.

BIRTHS:

1. 1903 - Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke - jazz musician

2. 1958 - Sharon Stone - actress. When I once announced at bowling that Sharon Stone and I shared a birthday, my nephew, 14 at the time, announced sotto voce, "I know whose birthday party I'd rather be going to"... which had the group laughing out loud, and Boomerang Boy telling the brat to run for his life before I caught him...

HOLIDAY:

1. Doctor's Day - Venzuela Couldn't find much information on Doctor's Day. Here in Victoria, every couple of years, the Labour Day holiday is celebrated on March 10, and that long weekend was also the Moomba festival - home of the great Birdman Rally. As a child I used to think the festival was all for my benefit. What was believed to be an aboriginal word for 'lets get together and have fun' it has since been discovered that Moomba is vernicular for 'up your bum'

Tagging:

1. Sheila - Aubirdwoman
2. The Cats Mum
3. Starrlight
4. Gabriella
5. Dr. Bill

Unconscious Mutterings #9 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-06-26T18:39:00.000+10:00

Compulsion :: Blogging

Spiritual :: Growth

Spray :: Bottle

Compatibility :: Difficult

Pursuit :: Trivial

Fake :: Boobs

Mobile :: Phone

Ceremony :: Solstice

Ribbons :: Girlie

Mozart :: Here Wolfie...

Sorry, not great today... sniffles developed into full blown head cold... mind of mush...

See I really couldn't sing, I could never really sing, what I couldn't do was... sing!

2007-06-24T19:48:00.000+10:00

Today was first choir rehearsals, and I'm reminded of a conversation with a friend awhile back.

Frou Frou: Singing and dancing are like sex, you don't need to be good at it, to enjoy yourself.

Him: Yes, but the worse you are, the harder it is for others to enjoy themselves.

After today, all I can say is I MUST BE A DUD SHAG! Wildly enthusiastic, just 3 beats behind, sigh...

Seriously, had the bestest time, am still never going to be comfortable singing solo, I managed to hold my own in the group situation. Only difficult bit is a series of oh oh ah, oh oh ah, oh ahs, that reminded me of funk tap and my cross-eyed struggle to maintain the rhythm ... I was oh ahing when everyone else was oh ohing, and only got worse when the Choir Leader tried to help me.

For those about to rock, we salute you...

2007-06-24T10:36:00.000+10:00

One of the coolest blogs I read is Hear Comes a Storm... the life and times of Starrlight and her Kidlet... so it was a lovely surprise to have Starr award me a Rockin' Girl Blogger award.

She said: I Love her posts. She has a quirky sense of humor and her Thursday Thirteens are a favorite and early stop for me. And how can I not love a girl who when asked for a word association for "riding" gave "crop" as an answer?

Well considering she makes me laugh out loud, often, and she has great taste in music, the feeling is most definitely mutual. If you haven't checked her out yet, rush over and do so now!

The rules of the award, are that I must now anoint 5 more Rockin' Girl Bloggers, and the difficulty was limiting it to 5, but here goes:

Rhian/ Crowwoman : How can I not pick my girlie Rhi... she has opened me up to the most amazing world, she is funny, just a little bit odd, and righteous, and I love her to bits!

Miscellany: One of the first blogs I ever read, and still one of my favourites. Mez writes always with humour and compassion, but often creates interesting debates about the state of the world as we know it.

Julia: She writes amazing poetry, and interesting posts about the writing process, at the same time she loves movies, yeah! and her stories about her family and her daily life is always fascinating.

Have the T-Shirt: Oh, I love reading her slice of life posts, about her childhood, about her boys, and her relationship with B. Also love her regular posts on T-shirt Google searches that stumble across her blog... too funny.

Xine: - Queen of the short but powerful blog post. Her writing is just magical, and she has the best linkage between words and images that I've ever seen.

Am going to cheat a little, as there are way more than 5 Rockin' Girls in my book... I'd also recommend that you check out Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf (great book reviews), Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum, Savannah, Red's Pages.

And as I'm not a huge fan of gender specific awards, I can't overlook the boys... check out The Dog's Name, Fallen Scorpio, 2 Blog or Not to Blog and Sheepdip (except Phil appears to be AWOL at present, reading through his archives is still good value)

Thursday Thirteen #8... A Hazy Shade of Winter

2007-06-21T19:11:00.000+10:00

Today is the Winter Solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere so I bring you 13 things about the Winter Solstice.

One: Solstice is derived from two Latin words: "sol" meaning sun, and "sistere," to cause to stand still. The winter solstice -- the first day of winter, when it is the shortest day and the longest night. From this point on, each day will progressively lengthen till the summer solstice on December 21st

Two: The Winter Solstice can also be referred as Jul, Yule, Yuletide, Midwinter, Feill Fionnain, Alban Arthan

Three: The earliest recorded Australian Midwinter bonfire was lit in Moonta, the night leading into June 24, 1862 by Cornish immigrants carrying on the European Midsummer tradition. The Midwinter bonfire holiday also began in Burra soon after. Currently, Yulefest is observed by various Australians, often starting on a weekend in late June.

Four: In Ancient Greece, the winter solstice ritual was called Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women. In the forest, a man or bull representing the harvest god, Dionysus, was torn to pieces and eaten by Maenads. Later in the ritual, a baby, representing Dionysus reborn, was presented. By Classical Greece, the human sacrifice had been replaced by that of a goat and the women's role had changed to that of funeral mourners and observers of the birth.

Five: In celtic tradition, the solstices and equinoxes all occur at about midpoint in each season. While the Solstices were not as important to the ancient celts as the major fire festivals; Lughnasadh (August 1); Beltane (May Day, May 1); Imbolc (February 1- Bridgit); and Samhain (November 1, Halloween), many believe there was celebration. Of the solstices and equinoxes, the Winter Solstice was the most important, since it marked the rebirth of the sun after the shortest day.

Six: Soyalangwul is the winter solstice ceremony of the Zuni and the Hopitu Shinumu, "The Peaceful Ones", also known as the Hopi Indians. It is held on December 21st, the shortest day of the year. The main purpose of the ritual is to ceremonially bring the sun back from its long winter slumber. It also marks the beginning of another cycle of the Wheel of the Year, and is a time for purification.

Seven: The solstice commemorates the death of the Holly King identified with the wren bird (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the robin redbreast Oak King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow)

Eight: Other deities associated with the solstice are Lucina, Frey, Nerthus, Woden, Herne, Atthar, Sunna, Sul, Amaterasu, Isis, Osiris, Apollo

Nine: In the present day, some see this as a good time to make reflect on the last 12 months and meditate and make affirmations for the coming year

Ten: On Monday night, a group of friends will get together and meditate on the Winter Solstice. We will each bring something from the earth, either food or foliage and a candle/s that symbolises what we would like to bring forth for the coming year.

Eleven: Candle Colours (based on chakras): Violet/Purple - Self knowledge, spiritual awareness, Indigo (deep blue) Intuition, the unconscious, physic powers, Blue - Self Expression, communication, speech, wisdom, Green or Pink - Love/ Self Love, Yellow - Self Worth, Curiosity, connecting the ego and intellect, Orange -Self Respect, the freedom to be yourself, remove inhibitions, social and independence Red - Self Awareness, Connecting to your physical self particularly your sexuality, strong connection with the earth

Twelve: I went shopping for candles today, and found myself buying a pink, a green and a blue candle. Having found before that on the day I suddenly feel a need for a different colour, I'm covering some bases, and will take all three with me, and possible a Purple one as well and decide on the night

Thirteen: I am looking forward to this night... it starts the beginning of another term of meditations, having only met sporadically over the last few months, the group of 6 as a whole decided that we need to meet more regularly. I'm not sure whether it is the meditation itself or the love and support I feel from this group of remarkable women, but it always feels like sanctuary when I walk through the door, and while meditating is often difficult as I struggle to switch my brain off... I always feel profoundly altered, calm and energised at the same time.

"And from that day on, we've honored and celebrated it. It's a time of rebirth for our wishes and our dreams. A time of coming together in joy and peace. It's the shortest day of the year and the longest night. But on this special night a new light, a new chance, is born to us all. So it's a time for miracles and goodwill towards all living creatures. That's why the Winter's Solstice means so much and touches us all so deeply"... Gabrielle, Xena Warrior Princess

My string of pearls...

2007-06-19T19:43:00.000+10:00

"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything
very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but
just those that bring simple little pleasures,
following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string"
Anne Shirley, Anne of Avonlea, Lucy Maud Montgomery

Sorry, I haven't been around much... stuff happening, all small stuff, but stuff... so a quick catch up of random things from me...

* I've packed up my office as they are renovating, was told we needed to be out by this coming Friday, and then it was changed to end of the day Monday (yesterday) and then when I arrived at work told we had an hour! So, ironically, as the Safety Advisor, I am working of a tiny round table, just enough room for my PC.. working out of boxes, cheek by jowl with a colleague... just as well we like each other!

* Have had both high brow and low brow recreational activities, both organised by NPNP. The highbrow, saw the Bell Shakespeare production of Othello last week, was excellent, but we were sitting so close to the stage we got to see the actors spraying spit all over each other as they articulated!

* The lowbrow was NPNP coming over for what was supposed to be a trip out to the pub for dinner and a few drinks and maybe a check-out of the local talent, but ended up with both of us sitting in our tracky-dacks eating turkish bread, dip, potato chips and Mars bar slice, while getting ever so slightly inebriated (I slowly slid off my chair at one stage!). Again irony, forgoing the opportunity to meet men while we lamented how hard it is to meet men! Though NPNP has decided she needs to meet Mr Darcy or was that Colin Firth?

* I've had more alcohol in the last fortnight then I've had in the last 12 months... but have behaved myself (sliding off my chair not withstanding)

* More bloggy serendipity... our Public Affairs department asked us to review a draft of a handout for Careers Night and they'd changed all our names. I said I wanted to pick my own name, and my Manager said, you should be Roxanne... or Roxie... with that little husky voice of yours. And then I go to Silver Expressions and see their Stripper Name Flash Fiction post and see my stripper name is Roxie Glitter Bomb!

* I am very nervous as choir rehearsals start on Sunday... my manager said to me yesterday, I didn't know you could sing... to which I replied, I can't! But I couldn't tap dance either, and that didn't stop me...

* Am listening to the rehearsal CD so much that I am now dreaming some of these songs. Weird, almost hallucinogenic dreams, that involve friends and work colleagues tribal dancing in various states of semi-nakedness...

* While I am feeling emotionally well, I'm feeling physical unwell... a hovering cold, sneezy, stuffed up, headachy and tired, even blinking hurts at present. My throat is scratchy and I'm so cold... bed is the warmest place to be... so that's where I'm heading...g'night!

Which Anne of Green Gables character are you?

You are most like Anne Shirley. You love to day dream, read romance novels, and TALK! Yet, you are starving for love and attention, that is, till you come to Green Gables and meet Matthew, Marilla, and Mrs. Lynde.
Take this quiz!

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Unconscious Mutterings #8 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-06-19T19:28:00.000+10:00

Riding :: Crop

Actress :: Bishop #

Flowers :: from my love

Making :: Whoopee!

Robot :: Klaatu ##

Enjoy :: Yourself

Identify :: Empathise

22 :: Catch

Busy :: Busy

Forward :: Floozie

# When I told the Nature Boy recently that he had an oral fixation, he said, so said the actress to the bishop, which made me laugh... oh... and the reason for my statement about his oral fixation is 'cause every time I see him he's either eating or drinking (get your mind out of the gutter!) Though to be fair, I think I'm guttercrawling a bit considering some of my responses - you bring the flowers, I'll bring the riding crop and we can make whoopee!

## From The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) great sci-fi movie... scarily relevant today... The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly...

Thursday Thirteen #7... the 13 Wants of V...

2007-06-14T21:17:00.000+10:00

There are only two tragedies in life:
one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it
Oscar Wilde

Well, I've played the "What Does V... need?" game, as have lots of others... but I was curious to see "What Does V... Want?" To play along, simply type "(your name) wants" into Google's search engine and be amazed, astonished and astounded...so without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the 13 Wants of V...

One: V... wants to be fatally gorgeous... aren't I already?

Two: V... wants to be a duck... been there, done that... and have the feathered arse to prove it... A fatally gorgeous duck I was too... tap dancing on stage to Singing in the Rain... and no, you can't see the photos.

Three: V... wants to do gospel. She is the only person who can sing the telephone book in Swahili and make it sound good! ... um, yeah right, but I'll soon be able to tell you, as I start rehearsals next week for the Melbourne Millennium Chorus, and am fully expecting them to look at me kindly, while they offer me a full refund and show me politely to the door...

Four: V... wants to be great and to receive the love and applause of an adoring audience... singing quietly... I have confidence, in confidence alone... besides which you see, I have confidence in me... oh crap!

Five: V... wants to go out tomorrow night ... yeah, she does, and she is, have been invited to go eat Spanish food with some lovely lads and lassies from work ... (I know that sounds funny, scottish folk eating spanish food.. but I kid you not I am going to a Scots pub famous for its paella and sangria!)

Six: V... wants to write now... well, actually not right now, maybe later... am so tired... (oh, I've used that line before... but it was when someone asked for something else!)

Seven: V... wants to sleep now... see I told you...

Eight: V... wants to spend every day as if there was no tomorrow. Although Vikki may seem immature and childish she in fact is very wise, intelligent and caring... couldn't resist adding the following sentence... see, I iz all grown up, so pfft!

Nine: V... wants some men with big feet... well you know what they say about big feet! All the better to help me with item eleven! Though the plural men has got me worried... truly, just one man would do...

Ten: V... wants a hero to idolize and adore, someone to wholeheartedly admire and be proud of... with really, really big feet!

Eleven: V... wants risky sex... I think that means the sex where her mum says "I'm just going to get some milk" and you have to have REALLY fast sex on the kitchen table before she gets back... I swear, that was the actual following sentence... sex, sex, it all comes down to sex ...

Twelve: V... wants it all - love, sex, art, sex, life, passion, - all that plus the butterflies in the stomach feeling of a new romance! ... who me? Well, if you insist...

And finally... to end on a serious and cultured note:

Thirteen: V... wants her name changed to Tricksy McF@#ckalot ... I am speechless...

My wish isn't to mean everything to everyone but something to someone... unknown

2007-06-13T07:31:00.000+10:00

I've been studying the tarot now for about 4 years, but will often ask my teacher to do a reading for me, either when I have a concern about something and I want some guidance, or just as a bit of a check about what's around me and whats ahead.

I had a reading last week... not that there is anything wrong at present, just wanting a bit of a barometer check, life is good and I wanted to see if that would be reflected in the reading (which it was!)

I'll write about the reading in more detail at another time but as usual the question of relationships and romance came up, and as usual, I was told there was someone out there for me, but the universe wasn't going to send him, until I was ready...

HEAH, I'm ready! Really, truly, ready!

Impatiently, and a bit antsy, and really, really frustratingly ready!

And then, as usual, I read the weekly postings on Post Secrets. There is something immensely powerful about viewing and reading these images and words, knowing there are people behind these stories of joy and pain and loss and loneliness. There is usually something that resonates strongly with me, and this week there was this...

I keep thinking back to that silly Fortune Cookie Generator - better to have lost a lover than have loved a loser... and I think never again... happy to have relationships end, because they need to end... but...

I realised I am ready, truly ready, for the first time in my life, because for the first time in my life, I believe that I am a weird, amazing, remarkable woman... and it's ok for me to be weird, amazing and remarkable... and he, whoever he is, will come along when he is ready... and I'm happy to wait...

There might be a bit of antsy, toe-tapping, scanning the horizon, mumbling under my breath, hurry up already's in my future... but that's ok... need to stay vigilant, so I can recognise him when he comes...

"In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from
one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people"...Judy Garland

My archetypes all have seperation anxiety...

2007-06-12T20:08:00.000+10:00

Like Savannah, I too love doing online profile tests... as if you couldn't tell from the majority of blog posts this week. Though I realised what other bloggers have said, it's harder to find things to write about when life is good! In the meantime, I'm having fun doing various online profiles, including the test that Savannah blogged about a mindset profile at ActualMe.

It tells me that I'm a Motivational Visionary...Ideas and options are what you're always creating and doing... thinking and processing is what you love to do most. Yes, you're a holistic thinker that is always asking the question "How?"

Your thinking process is mostly intuitive and analogic. However, you do use facts and logic to back up your intuitive thought processing.

Change, particularly in ideas, is never-ending for you. There is no timeline or deadline for your accomplishments. That is why in school or at work you procrastinate until the last moment to finish a paper, an assignment, or a project.

Every so often paradoxical thoughts attract you. You're attracted to the unknown more than the known. You're drawn to what's unusual about something rather than what is ordinary about it. What other people see as facts, you may see as shades of facts or possibilities of different facts. Your world is the world of possibilities and visions.

You're an excellent communicator with individuals and small groups of three, no more than four people. You listen attentively to what people say, how they say it and what feelings are generated. You have an unusual awareness for what is happening to the person and others that are participating. It's almost like a sixth sense. Sometimes, people distance themselves from you because of this sensitivity and your feedback.

Every so often, you'll be inspired enough to positively motivate people to follow you as their leader. Your words will flow fluidly and touch the hearts and minds of those listening. However, you should know that, once the mission and goals have been accomplished, you're quite satisfied to return to being the thinker and sensitive communicator.

Sending this on to some friends, one of the reminded me of the Myers Briggs Type Indicators, based on Jung's archetypes. And I did the test again today and came out an ENFP (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling Percieving). Funnily enough, my memory of the last time I done one of these tests I was an introvert!

"She’s just not my archetype really"

ENFPs are charming, ingenuous, risk-taking, sensitive, people-oriented individuals with capabilities ranging across a broad spectrum. They have many gifts which they will use to fulfill themselves and those near them, if they are able to remain centred and master the ability of followng through.

ENFPs take their relationships very seriously, but also approach them with a childlike enthusiams and energy. They seek and demand authenticity and depth in their personal relationships, and will put forth a lot of effort into making things work out. They are warm, considerate, affirming, nurturing, and highly invested in the health of the relationship. They have excellent interpersonal skills, and are able to inspire and motivate others to be the best that they can be. Energetic and effervescent, the ENFP is sometimes smothering in their enthusiasm, but are generally highly valued for their genuine warmth and high ideals.

The full portrait of an ENFP is here. And it seems very reflective of me, at this point in my life. And it's interesting that will all the possibilities opening up to me at present with this blog and through my interactions with both new friends and old, that the possible career paths for an ENFP include a psychologist, teacher, counsellor, writer/ journalist, all things that have been suggested to me as possible careers lately, though I did scoff at the suggestion that I would make a good psychologist/ counsellor - a bit like physician heal thyself!

"Freud: If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother" - Robin Williams

Wow - just found this test online and it too says I am an ENFP! Sex - playful - oh yes, best fun you can have without laughing... though laughing is always good... Holding on to bad relationships? - ah .. let me see... anyone want to say Boomerang Boy?

Your Love Type: ENFP

The Inspirer

In love, you are passionate and eager to develop a strong bond.
For you, sex should be playful, creative, and affectionate.

Overall, you are perceptive and bring out the best in your partner.
However, you tend to hold on to bad relationships after they've turned bad.

Best matches: INTJ and INFJ

What's Your Love Type?

Unconscious Mutterings #7 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-06-10T15:59:00.000+10:00

Acoustic :: Guitar

Sanity :: Who me?

Mambo :: Papa loves...

Session :: Therapy

Hound :: of the Baskerville

Cat :: on a Hot Tin Roof (that's me at present... sigh)

Coward :: Howard

Trunk :: Tree

Hold me :: close

Psychological :: damage

My Mother told me... you better shop around...

2007-06-09T18:35:00.000+10:00

I found this at Starrlight's blog, Here Comes A Storm... and couldn't resist...

The Window Shopper

Random Gentle Love Dreamer (RGLD)

Loving, hopeful, open. Likely to carry on an romance from afar. You are The Window Shopper.

You take love as opportunities come, which can lead to a high-anxiety, but high-flying romantic life. You're a genuinely sweet person, not saccharine at all, so it's likely that the relationships you have had and will have will be happy ones. You've had a fair amount of love experience for your age, and there'll be much more to come.

Part of why we know this is that, of all female types, you are the most prone to sudden, ferocious crushes. Your results indicate that you're especially capable of obsessing over a guy you just met. Obviously, passion like this makes for an intense existence. It can also make for soul-destroying letdowns.

Your ideal match is someone who'll love you back with equal fire, and someone you've grown to love slowly. A self-involved or pessimistic man is especially bad. Though you're drawn to them, avoid artists at all costs.

BEWARE: The Hornivore (RBSM)

CONSIDER: The Gentleman (DGLM), The Loverboy (RGLM), The Boy Next Door (RGLD)

Your exact female opposite:
The Stiletto

Deliberate Brutal Sex Master

Link: The Online Dating Persona Test @ OkCupid - free online dating.

Talking...it's a puzzlement

2007-06-07T23:26:00.001+10:00

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
Robert McClosky

Thursday Thirteen #6...It was a dark and stormy night

2007-06-06T19:45:00.000+10:00

My 13 Favourite Bulwer-Lytton Contest entries.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton wrote the following opening paragraph in Paul Clifford, 1830: It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals,when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest, sponsored by the English Department of the San Jose State University first started in 1982 and can attract 10,000 entries each year for composing the opening sentence for the worst possible novel. There is a website where you can find the rules of the contest and some of the past winners and dishonourable mentions. Compiled below are some of my favourites from the 2006 contest.

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean. Jim Quigli, Carmichael CA - 2006 Winner

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?" Stuart Vasepuru, Edinburgh, Scotland - 2006 Runner Up

It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream. Chris Harget, Campbell CA - Dishonourable mention - Adventure, 2006

When Debbie decided that Salt 'n' Pepper Beard was the most attractive pirate on the ship, she realized that choosing him was due to the advice of Sylvia, her new Life Coach, to be realistic about her own age and to open herself up to romance where it lay, unlike the troublesome past where she would have wished that only the younger pirates take advantage of her. Jim Guigli, Carmichael, CA - Dishonourable Mention - Historical Fiction 2006

Lisa moved like a cat, not the kind of cat that moves with a slinky grace but more like the kind that always falls off the book shelf when he's washing himself and then gets all mad at you like it's your fault (which it wasn't although it probably was kind of mean to laugh at him like that), although on the bright side, she hardly ever attacked Ricky's toes in his sleep. Debra Allen, Wichita Falls, TX - Dishonourable Mention, Purple Prose, 2006

Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking. Dan Winters, Los Altos Hills, CA - Runner up, Romance, 2006

Herr Professor Doktor Weiss' reputation was made when he conclusively proved the fraudulency of the Mayan codex that claimed to show that that ancient people knew the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter to an exactitude unknown until modern times, in his article, "Bye, Bye, Mesoamerican Pi." John L. Drost, Barboursville, WV - Runner up, Vile Puns, 2006

Cheralynn posed before the unblinking mirror, panting weakly, as her private surgeon hovered around her, tightening the straps on her custom-made girdle, and it dawned on her for the first time in her pampered, overindulged 49 years, that it was only a matter of time before she would succumb to Furniture Disease, and her chest would fall into her drawers. Tracey MacDonald, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Dishonourable Mentions, Vile Puns, 2006

Butch glared balefully across the saloon at Tex, who had been stone dead since the scorpion he had unwittingly sat on had bitten him on the butt some half an hour or so ago, little suspecting that this was going to be his toughest staring contest since the one against old Glass-eyed Juan, during the great sand-storm of '42, at the height of the Arizona conjunctivitis epidemic. Geoff Blackwell, Bundaberg QLD, Australia - Runner Up, Western 2006

Getting the performance rating of highly successful, although clearly nothing to be ashamed of, left Blevins somewhat oddly dissatisfied, like when you realize, upon having the triage nurses greet your ambulance, that your underwear, as far as you can determine, is in pretty decent condition, but you'll, nonetheless, never pull through the surgery. Jim Lubell, Mechanicsville, Maryland - Miscellaneous Dishonourable Mention, 2006

Ah, yes, it was a beautiful face with skin smoother than pumice and breath fresher than a twenty-five-day-old tuna sandwich stored for safe keeping in a Wichita schoolgirl's lunchbox, and I found myself beset, nay, overcome, with twin urges: to ravish her there and then on the cash register, or to slough off the skin of my calloused feet on the stubble of her chin. Cathy Bannister, Kaleen, Canberra, Australia,Miscellaneous Dishonourable Mention, 2006

The day was like any other, except that this was a Wednesday so it was really only like 1/7th of the other days. Randy Wilson, New Albany, IN, Miscellaneous Dishonourable Mention, 2006

Frank took one look at Tina's moderately shapely legs, her adequate waist, her decent bosom, and her not-unattractive face, and said to himself "Well, hello Miss You'll-Do-Until-Something-Better-Comes-Along!" Lawrence Person, Austin, TX, Miscellaneous Dishonourable Mention, 2006

Madness Takes it's Toll.. please have exact change

2007-06-06T00:03:00.001+10:00

Being a bit frivolous, farcical and Frou Frouish...

* I'm glad I slept half of Sunday away, leaving me wide awake that evening because it meant I got to see Garden State - a little gem of a late night movie with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman...

* How is it that despite the fact that work is crazy, I'm enjoying myself immensely? I think it's because my colleagues have become my friends and the insanity that is work creates an environment where we all laugh like loons... it's either that or cry... or bay at the moon... work feels more and more like home...

* Woo hoo... NPNP has been working and studying so hard that now she is on a semester break she is in the mood to play... I'm looking forward to going out and getting snickered with her at the weekend... I've missed her and her snarkiness...

* I'm going to see Bell Shakespeare's production of Othello... and realised today that I've never seen Shakespeare in a theatre, but only on film... I'm very excited...

* I am currently in a mood that has meant I've had to struggle to stop from spontaneous outbursts of singing ... I'm feeling happy... and unusual for me, am not the slightest bit interested in dissecting why, but am merely enjoying myself... if I were to write the story of my life at present it would be a musical!

* I'm also in a mood that sees me constantly saying 'oh why not' to almost any suggestion, which is not my usual state of mind at all. Pity there isn't a slightly handsome man around with devilment on his mind... would take very little for me to be reckless and abandoned... maybe if I get snickered enough this weekend someone will take advantage of me... make that an R-rated musical... sigh... I wish...

FROU FROU'S TO DO LIST:
* Stop thinking
* Drink copious amounts of alcohol
* Flirt outrageously
* Regret nothing

Someday my Spence will come...

2007-06-05T07:33:00.000+10:00

Your Score: Katharine Hepburn

You scored 14% grit, 38% wit, 42% flair, and 9% class!

You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women.

Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the
Classic Leading Man Test.

Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

FROU FROU'S TO DO LIST:
* Find a funny, sarcastic, craggy, grumpy man of my own

Unconscious Mutterings #6 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-06-03T20:11:00.000+10:00

Savage :: Sooth the

Warrior :: Princess

Daisy :: Chain

Schedule :: Out of control

Rock, paper, scissors :: I win

Medical :: Emergency

Jade :: Cold

Elevator :: Muzak

Drain :: Pipe

Goldfish :: Bowl

Happy Birthday to you...

2007-06-03T01:03:00.000+10:00

Spell with Flickr http://metaatem.net/words/

Fortune Cookie... oh my ....

2007-06-02T22:57:00.000+10:00

Your Fortune Is

It is better to lose a lover than love a loser.

The Wacky Fortune Cookie Generator

And to all those people in real life who know me well, SHUT UP WITH THE I TOLD YOU SO's....

FROU'S TO DO LIST...
* Stop falling in love with losers

This house is protected by killer dust bunnies...

2007-06-02T11:11:00.000+10:00

Nothing much to say at present... life is good... am working hard at a job I love, even though it's insanely busy and I've brought work home to do this weekend. I'm getting out and about and making friends and consolidating existing friendships... talking and Frou Frou flirting with lovely boys and girls...who make me smile...

This weekend will be a combination of housework and work. I am not naturally domestic by nature, can think of much more exciting things I could be doing with my time than housework... but this place is now at the point that even I'm annoyed... it's not dirty, it's just not right... but my Mum's coming next weekend, it needs to be in a better state before she gets here, or eyebrows will be raised. So I will spend most of the weekend humming Sadie, the Cleaning lady under my breath as I do the sparkle and shine thing...

That would normally depress me, but I have found a routine that works for me. Set the cooking timer for 45 minutes, and do 45 minutes of housework... and then set the timer for 30 minutes and do something else... like read blogs, or quilt, or read or play with cats. Then repeat...

I know, I know if I just knuckled down I'd be able to get everything done earlier... but I can't work that way. Found this was the optimum way for me to study as well, if I didn't set timeframes I'd just procrastinate.

Am off to take Mum's dog to the vet, and then to catch up with some girls from work for some major retail therapy and then back to Mum's to transform me into a luscious blonde... catch you later.

Thursday Thirteen #5...A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul... Phillip Moffat

2007-05-31T20:13:00.000+10:00

I rent my home, and it meets my needs more than adequately, but it's not mine! So, I look at the online real estate sites and look at houses and floor plans and imagine my things inside them. Oh, I like that kitchen, yuk that paint colour is awful.

I moved out of home into a share house at 19, and had a miserable experience, and moved back to my parents home, temporarily, 18 months later. And didn't leave again, until 5 years ago... instead, with my brother, I bought the house - it is ours, though it will always be my mother's home - and hence I will always need to live elsewhere. Because I moved out with almost nothing, I had the advantage of money in my pocket and the ability to plan and pick what I wanted, and I surprised a lot of my closest friends when they discovered when it comes to house furnishings I'm fairly old-fashioned. Not sure why they were so surprised, as I've always loved old and kitschy things, trawling trash and treasure markets for bargains... like Bakelite canisters, and funky vegetable shaped crockery... I even have a set of flying ducks on my entry wall...

Anyway, if I were to built the house of dreams, these are the 13 things I would have... in no particularly order of importance...

One: An Attic I prefer houses that have lots of different rooms than big open spaces, while I can admire warehouse style living, it's not for me. And ever since I was a little girl, reading about the March sisters in their attic, I've dreamt of having one... whether as a space to retreat or as a bedroom

Two: Bath I love to play in the bath... and a bath big enough for two is my idea of bliss. I could live out every Cleopatra fantasy I've ever had in this bathroom.... milk bath anyone? Only think missing is a bookshelf... and the odd semi-naked man slave...

Three: Bedroom isn't the open fireplace gorgeous.. and the wing back chairs, and the white bed cover. A big soft bed, with lots of pillows, a fireplace, somewhere to sit while you put your socks on, lots of natural light... perfect!

I have a 1930s era cast iron bed, that sat in the shed at Mum's house for years, but I sanded and painted it cream when I moved. It's got a high head and foot, and stands close to a metre off the ground... everyone laughs at how high it is, asking if I need a footstool to get into it... MLDD calls it my Princess and the Pea bed... I love it.

Four:Conservatory isn't this an amazing space? Of course, during an Australian summer this space would be unbearable, but during autumn and winter it would be well used.

Can easily imagine curling up on the chaise lounge reading a book, or cuddling with a boy, listening to music and talking and fooling around. A glass of wine, a plate of fruit, cheese, crackers... Beulah peel me a grape!

Five: Guest Suite I have a spare room at present, that is also my junk room, ironing, filing cabinets, baskets of quilt fabrics and projects... anything I want to keep out of my living room.

It would be lovely to have a room that could be kept for guests. A nice bed, a comfy couch, a table to write at, a small bookshelf of bedtime reading.

Six:Country Kitchen considering I am a self-confessed undomestic goddess, I'm particular about kitchens... I want a white and timber kitchen, with lots of space to display all that funky and kitschy stuff I've collected. It needs to have lots of natural light, and lots and lots of cupboards... I like the bookshelves too.

I think even I'd cook if I had a kitchen like this.

Seven: A Library this is a must have, a place for all my books. And again, I like light, bright spaces. While I can admire the dark timbered libraries, I'd much prefer something like this.
With a mandatory soft and squishy couch, and preferably an open fireplace and lots of lamps. Bit of a theme being established here... isn't there. To be honest, I'd have bookshelves in every room of the house, if I had my way.

Eight: Breakfast Nook don't ask me why I like these, I just do. MLDD's family used to live in a 1930s era house that has a built in eatery, and I loved it.

Imagine playing footsies with someone here on a Sunday morning while you have a big breakfast and sharing the papers.

Nine: A Wrap Around Verandah warm summer evenings, sitting outside watching the world go by.

An afternoon tea party, with butterfly cakes, and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and a pot of tea, or homemade lemonade, served on mismatched china covered in rosebuds and violets.

Ten:Quilt Studio oh, how lovely it would be to have a dedicated space for playing with needle and thread. Doesn't the wall of colour look amazing... I would be so inspired to create more if I could have a space like this, instead of everything crammed into boxes and baskets stored all over the house.

Eleven: Windowseats something else I'd love to have in every room of the house.

Welcome to Miss Frou Frou's house of laziness, indulgence and sloth...

Twelve: Sadie, the Cleaning Lady Meet Sadie... she's the second most important part of my wishlist (see 13!) If I'm going to have all this room, this is not a nice to have but a necessity. Repeat after me - UNDOMESTIC GODDESS

Thirteen: Seriously, do I need to explain this?

Destined to become an old lady with lots of cats...

2007-05-29T21:03:00.000+10:00

Recently I joked around with the Nature Boy about wondering what people would think of a 40 something insomniac, who stays up half the night surfing the net, listening to music and dancing around in her pj's while she did the ironing ...

And on The Dog's Name I talked about how halfhearted I was about getting out there and meeting boys... winter... warm house...pc/tv/music... pj's...cuddly cats are way more appealing then strange men...frocking up...awkward conversation... disappointment. To which Indy replied 'Ah but if one of those strange men should prove to be perfect for cuddling up in said PJ's wouldn't it all be worth it?'...

Well of course it would, but seriously would you like to go out with this woman? And more importantly, would you want to dance with her?

“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.” - George Bernard Shaw

A woman should ...

2007-05-29T00:33:00.000+10:00

My friend S, sent this to me today. I'd seen it before, but never realised it was written by Maya Angelou, who also wrote a Phenomenal Woman, a poem I truly love, but am not ready to claim for me just yet.. just call me a phenomenal work in progress...

But in reading through this today, I was quite pleased with myself and how far I've come that I could answer in the affirmative for most of these shoulds...

Don't ask me why, when work is insane, and I'm still not sleeping, and I'm as alone as alone can be, that I seem to be in such a happy, mellow, contented mood... of course, another week or two and I'll be all hormotional again... but I'm making the most of the feeling that life is good in my little corner of the world and all things are possible... gosh, I'm being such a Pollyanna it's almost enough to make a girl want to hurl...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
Enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
Something perfect to wear if the employer
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill,
and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
One friend who always makes her laugh...
and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by
anyone else in her family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
Eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
Recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
a feeling of control over her destiny...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
How to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
How to quit a job,
break up with a lover
and confront a friend without ruining the friendship

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
When to try harder...
and when to walk away...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
That she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
That her childhood may not have been perfect...
but its over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
How to live alone...
even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Whom she can trust,
Whom she can't,
And why she shouldn't take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
Where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...
and a year...

FROU'S TO DO LIST:
* Learn how to cook
* Buy a new dress
* Buy a cordless drill
* Work on a juicy future so I can have a juicy past

Unconscious Mutterings #5 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-05-27T20:22:00.000+10:00

Dancer :: Dorky

Intellectual :: Property

Direct :: Deposit

Tolerate :: Faults

Post :: Coital

Instinctive:: Reaction

Brink :: of Madness

Regain :: Sanity

Repulsed :: Turned off

Distressed :: Damsel

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it...

2007-05-26T10:52:00.000+10:00

Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation

made us more attractive? If "needy" were a turn-on?...Broadcast News

Well considering this seems to be going around the blogosphere at the speed of light, I should play. You just plug in your name in the search bar at Google along with “needs” and then post your results. Frou Frou didn't work - Vicki/Vikki did...

Some of my favourites:

Vikki needs to get a life ... sigh... even Google is condemning me...

Vikki needs to take a long trip and come back with a new personality... see, what I mean...

Vikki needs to start acting her age ... considering yesterday at work I said someone was fairly handsome despite being old, only to have everyone laugh at me, as this guy is a ONE year older than me, I think Google may be right...

Vikki needs something translated ... actually I do, someone has left a comment on my blog, in what I think is Spanish... can anyone help me... last comment here?

Vikki needs a hero ... yes, preferably one who looks like this...

Vicki needs some one to teach her about love ... yes, preferably one who looks like this...

Vikki needs to interact with more people ... yes, preferably one who looks like this...

Vikki needs some new glasses for close up work ... ok, sorry, but I have too... yes, preferably with someone who looks like this...

Vicki needs to get some balls ... umm, dare I say it... yes, preferably...

Vikki Needs A Spanking ... oh.. really, well, if you insist...

Vikki needs to dump that fake loser boy ... ok, but only after he's spanked me...

Vikki needs to dump his ass pronto ... alright, already... give me a minute will ya!

Vikki needs to realize that dogs are not little people in furry costumes ... are you sure about that...

Vikki needs to learn about "she bang" magic. As in "she bang" her head against the wall with absolutely no knowledge and no reference books to offer a clue? ... I love this... "she bang" magic, indeed...

Vikki needs to get some sleep ... always...

Vikki needs to shut right up ... even Google thinks I talk too much...

If every word I said could make you laugh, I'd talk forever...

2007-05-25T22:55:00.000+10:00

Rhian tagged me for this meme... only one word responses... a bit like chinese water torture...

Answer all questions using only 1 word :

1. Where is your cell phone? bag
2. Relationship? Please!
3. Your hair? multi-coloured
4. Work? OHS
5. Your sister? Different
6. Your favorite thing? people
7. Your dream last night? erotic
8. Your favorite drink? vodka
9. Your dream car? red
10. The room you’re in? family
11. Your shoes? plentiful
12. Your fears? manageable
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? published
14. Who did you hang out with this weekend? Miss La De Da
15. What you’re not good at? dancing
16. Muffin? Bran
17. One of your wish list items? piano
18. Where you grew up? Melbourne
19. The last thing you did? ate
20. What are you wearing? clothes?
21. What aren’t you wearing? makeup
22. Your pet? cats
23. Your computer? necessary
24. Your life? taking-off
25. Your mood? exhausted
26. Missing? you
27. What are you thinking about right now? sleep
28. Your car? dirty
29. Your kitchen? warm
30. Your summer? gone
31. Your favorite color? red
32. When is the last time you laughed? today
33. Last time you cried? today
34. School? finished
35. Love? Please!

And I tag ... Sheila, Julia and Soozii

May the couch be with you...

2007-05-25T22:32:00.000+10:00

For Indiana and the other Star Wars geeks... happy 30th anniversary

Thursday Thirteen #4...The Wisdom of Pooh and more words from Frou

2007-05-24T21:04:00.000+10:00

Winnie-the-Pooh and the creatures of the 100 acre wood are wonderful creations of whimsy, I was never a fan of the disneyised versions, but can remember loving the original A.A. Milne's stories, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, and Milne's books of children's poetry, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. In the same way I have discovered the adult wisdom in the works of Dr. Suess, Milne had amazing things to say, both silly and profound...

One: “If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.” ...wouldn't this be a lovely thing to say to your true love...

Two: “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"”... short responses rock indeed ...

Three: “You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ... how easy it would be to hide away in my little corner of the Forest...

Four: “Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh," he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."” ... all together now, sigh... I've done this so many times...

Five: “Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” ... this isn't something I struggle with at all, my favourite gaze is of the navel variety...

Six: “People who don't think probably don't have brains; rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.” ... I wonder if you can get a lint remover for brains?... imagining pushing a bottlebrush through one ear and pulling it out the other...

Seven: “If you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms.” ... shall remember this while trying not to make a total arse of myself at Melbourne Millennium Chorus rehearsals... me...singing... in public... in front of thousands... tiddely pom, tiddely pom, tiddely pom, oh crap!

Eight: “When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish.” ... I'm eleven o'clockish daily...

Nine: “Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other was the left, but he never could remember how to begin” ... I couldn't distinguish my left from right until I was a teenager, and even now have to stop and orient myself, though interestingly I also seem to know which way is north!

Ten: "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you think of Things, you sometimes find that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it" ... probably the best description of the contradiction of the inside of my head and my thoughts and feelings and the outside...

Eleven: "They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them" ... wondering if I could use this as part of my health and safety training?

Twelve: “Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon” ... amen...

Thirteen: “A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise” ... double amen...

And just for fun, sing along with Frou...

The more it snows (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
On snowing.
And nobody knows (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
Are growing.

And for my next trick... I'm going to juggle kittens....

2007-05-23T21:41:00.000+10:00

Another semi-sleepless night... I drifted off to sleep about 4.00am, knowing that I needed to be up and out at a reasonable time as I was doing e-time management training this morning.

I woke, at 6.44am suddenly, and realised that somehow in my sleep I had picked up my alarm clock (my reasonably large electric alarm clock) and I slept with it cupped in the palm of my hand, hanging suspended over the bed...

Just as this thought entered my brain, the alarm went off... and I got such a fright that I tossed the alarm up into the air... crash... and two sleepy cats went screeching around the room in terror... sigh... what a gentle, calming way to start my day... not...

I know Savannah posted this on her blog, not so long ago, but I like it and it seems apprpropriate to this post... though I still think it would be fall down funny if you had him and the music and instead of juggling his movements would be some weird form of interpretive dance...reminds me of my attempts at tap... just imagine me dressed as a gold tinselly ~~sausage~~ showgirl.. similar mouth movements and all

Come on baby light my fire...

2007-05-23T07:51:00.000+10:00

A misplaced candle is believed to have started a fire that caused about $100,000
damage to a bondage and discipline parlour in inner Melbourne.

An MFB spokesman said 18 firefighters
"were tied up for some time but disciplined and controlled
firefighting contained the blaze to one room on the second floor".

Full story here

I'm sorry... but someone is having way too much fun with puns...

Not the Monday Poetry Train...

2007-05-23T00:30:00.000+10:00

"We write to taste life twice,

in the moment and in retrospection" – Anais Nin

I have always been an avid reader, reading all of the 1st and 2nd year school readers before the end of first semester, my first year of school, and my teacher suggested to my mother that I join the junior library, something to which I am forever thankful as it opened me up to the world… literally. Even then I loved fiction… the stuff of imagination.

And I have written stuff and nonsense almost since I was first able to form letters and words. Usually, some fantastical story, with a wry twist in the tail that had a character that closely resembled me. There are some examples floating around the house somewhere, I should find them and relook at them. They are probably awful, but I suspect they are not that much different in style to how I write now, even though the subject matter was I hope, very different!

As a young child, I used to make up skits, that I would ~~bully~~ coerce my friends into performing around the neighbourhood, a fledgling Jo March... who I dreamed of growing up to be, sitting in my garret, with ink stained fingers, writing books and plays about her life and the people in it.

I thought about being a journalist in my final years of high school, which I would have been terrible at, I now realise. But it seemed to be a career that would allow me to write. And I started a Professional Writing and Editing course, six years ago, that I quit after completing two subjects, partly because my father became ill, but mostly, as I didn't care for the rules, and being told how and what to write.

There are lots of incomplete stories I’ve started over the years, with a female protagonist, who is an awful lot like me, but with all the rough bits smoothed away. She is prettier, and funnier, and taller… as I told the Nature Boy today, what’s the point of writing fiction, if you can’t embellish on it… but these women, these versions of me, still struggle to be heard, and understood and loved.

I wonder if the reason why these stories are unfinished, is because my own story is… I don’t know what the ending will be yet… so how can I write of endings for them, my better halves.

None of these tales have been shared with anyone… they sit, in notebooks and on loose sheets of paper shoved into drawers that are rarely opened.

"The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say,
but what we are unable to say" – Anais Nin

My friend, Nature Boy, is a constant source of encouragement, by providing a willing, and sometimes not so willing ear and eye for my stuff and nonsense… laughing at my whimsy, and empathising with my woes…he makes me smile, and think and ponder…probably cause he’s so generous with his praise and tells me often how much I make him smile, and think and ponder…

He has an interesting and engaging writing style of his own, though he’d be unlikely to ever admit that he is a writer and storyteller, he has the whole self-effacing, modest shtick down to a fine art, which in itself makes me smile…

We are very different. It’s why I enjoy our written stoushes so much. He, with his neat, tidy but incredibly evocative words that convey such a strong sense of feeling, and place and time, and his total disdain for capital letters, conjunctions and punctuation battling my dense, verbose, fanciful waffling, I’m the girl who uses capital letters, and full punctuation in my text messages.

A recent example of the Short Response King took me immediately to every grungy laundrette that I’ve ever been in, which is why I praised him in my comments on Rhian’s Monday Poetry Train yesterday.

"laundrette…washing clothes…old mags… last weeks Herald Sun… disgruntled student… a hair in the washing machine… not mine... cute blond traveller… what am I doing here…(Nature Boy, 2007)

And in asking permission to include the above on my blog his email response below had me spitting coffee out all over the keyboard.

all good
short responses rock
look out gore vidal
I rock
look out Tolstoy
you rock (Nature Boy, 2007)

What a goof! Everyone knows if they’re going to compare me to anyone it should be (fill in the blanks)…though that might be a less than subtle crack about my verbal diarrhoea…

It is because of him, that I started this blog in the first place, and in the short time I have been writing here, I’ve hit the publish button 69 times.

Some of those times I’ve published meme’s, silly quizzes and more recently my unconscious mutterings and Thursday Thirteen, but the majority of times I’ve hit that button I’ve been sharing some aspect of my life.

In my first blog, I talked about taking baby steps into sharing my thoughts with the wider world, and I’ve certainly done that, to the ~~shock/horror~~ amazement of some of my other friends in RL.

And it is through this process that I have realised that I too have a voice, and a style, that is uniquely my own… that I am a writer, a storyteller…and always have been…it is just that now the planets seem to be aligned, and for any number of reasons I am gaining confidence in speaking and sharing my voice with others.

Well… a little bit… the reason I started to write this post is despite a yearning to do so, and cajoling and pleading from Rhian, I have found endless excuses to prevent me from posting something for her Monday Poetry Train.

I’ve enjoyed reading all of the other contributions, trying to get my mind to grapple with the subtle and not so subtle imagery conveyed with their poems and prose… but I have yet to be able to post something of my own… and I’m left wondering why.

Is it because my stories, my fiction, really is not so much fiction at all… but is about me, my dreams, my thoughts, my wants and needs. And while I can share some of this, as I blog away contentedly on my own, I’m not yet ready to put these out there. To deliberately post something, with a flourish, of here it is, read me, hate me, enjoy me, condemn me, love me…

Though I’m tempted…sigh…

"I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic -- in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself." Anais Nin

The Tyranny of Distance...

2007-05-21T18:49:00.000+10:00

Back in the days when I was actively looking to meet men, I advertised in the personals in the newspaper, once in 1999 and again in 2004.

This was in the day that you would run an ad over 2 weeks, and record a brief message which guys would hear when they rang the code provided, and then they could leave a message for you with their contact details. Both times I received about 100 responses, not unusual, I'm told, there are always more men doing the personals things then there are women!

So, in the month or so after each ad ran I made a lot of phone calls! Usually saying Hi, you responded to my personals ad and I'm just calling you back. Both times, I never asked any specific questions, usually asking something along the lines of "So, tell me about you?" or "Is there anything you'd like to know about me?".

Invariably, either the first or second question asked of me was "Where do you live?". And then when I replied, the response would often be "Oh, that's not too far!" It got to be so common that I started saying "Really? Just out of interest, how far is too far?"

The responses were varied, but covered the basic premise which one guy happily elaborated on "She would have to be pretty special to travel for more than 45 minutes on a weeknight to see".

This would often then lead into a whole other lot of questions from me. "Why do you need to travel to see her - why can't you meet her halfway?" "Why can't she travel to see you?"

Usually they'd fluff around a bit... remember, we haven't met each other, so they were behaving reasonably well at that point, so I'd get umm's and aah's and vague responses... sometimes I'd leave it at that... sometimes, I'd push a bit further, if the guy was forthcoming and we were already into the banter thing.

Finally, one night a guy said - "I don't care where she lives if we're going out to dinner, but I'm only going out to dinner to meet someone to have sex with, and if she lives too far away, having sex regularly is too hard. Meeting half way's pointless, unless you're going to have sex in the car (little did he know I have a sex/car fetish) and I don't want her coming to my place, at least at first, cause I don't want her to stay. So, you find out where they live first off, and if it's too far away, you might meet her, but she's already got a mark against her". As stated before, men tell me the most amazing things, and then they wonder sometimes why I don't want to go out with them!

I used to think it was really funny and a bit sad... that men would be so practical about this... how many wonderful women did they exclude simply because of geography.

Until I met P through rsvp, who lived about an hour away by car. It wasn't just the distance that made things difficult, he had sole custody of 5 kids, and worked nights... he was getting up around the time I went to bed... so there were lots of late night phone calls as I was drifting off to sleep, and early morning (like 4.00am) phone calls when he got home from work. As I'm told I give great "phone" I don't think the fact that we rarely saw each other worried him as much as it worried me, and the combination of our clash in work time, his family commitments and the distance made things difficult and ultimately impossible... and I started to realise that maybe it's not such a stupid idea to stick closer to home.

So, the next time I did a search on rsvp I deliberately focused on men who lived within a 15klm radius... and discovered one of the guys I talked to actually lived at the other end of my street...and the policeman I met through my brief experiment with aff lived 5 minutes away(that's a whole other story, and yes, Virginia, men's bits do come in different shapes and sizes, as the photos in those profiles proved - never saw many faces but gee I saw an awful lot of peni...)

Sorry, 5 minutes away is way too close! In the same way that I don't want my Mother to be able to drive by on a daily basis to see if I'm home, or if I've got mail delivered, I don't really want to date someone who lives within walking distance.

So... is it so very wrong of me, to say I want to meet someone whose prepared to travel whatever distance is required to be with me... Literally, looking for someone who will make "500 miles" his theme song... not that I want him to be 500 miles away, but someone prepared to say:

But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles
To fall down at your door

On that note, a bit of stuff and nonsense from The Family Guy:

Unconscious Mutterings #4 ... I saw and you think...?

2007-05-20T14:44:00.000+10:00

Coastguard :: Blues

Buddies :: Bosom

Nap :: Nanna

Groan :: Moan

Sitcom :: Laugh track

Reader :: My First

Heroes :: Ordinary

Amazing :: Grace

Woman :: I am

Don’t! :: Stop

Meditative Musings #2... The High Priestess...

2007-05-20T10:04:00.000+10:00

I've been reading back through my Meditation/ Tarot Group journal, looking at some of the meditations and the themes underlying them. Some weeks my journal simply records my observations of the card, and other notes on how successfully I meditated. In other instances there are characters that I'd like to try to tie together into some form of narrative, as it seems they are the same people, being represented at different stages. I'm going to try to flesh some of this out here over time, not in any linear fashion, just picking things at random...

The Lady of the Lake (Arthurian Tarot)... The High Priestess in the Tarot can represent knowledge (particularly esoteric), enlightenment, inspiration, wisdom, learning, counsel, physic healing. She is the virgin goddess, the moon daughter...she can be an enlightened but chaste woman or a mysterious woman, a femme fatale...she can also represent the need for solitude, seclusion and meditation.

I've always been drawn to this card, and strongly identify with her even though I also strongly identify with the other feminine Archetype, the Empress at times. My inner conflict between Aphrodite and Persephone...

My Meditation Journal - June 16th 2005... In the card itself, the trees stood out initially ... I've been having regular meditations and dreams about trees...the trees in this card are very similar to the trees in my dreams.

I have been having weird and strange dreams for quite sometime now, but I do not have a clear recollection of the dreams contents, just a sense of unease and feeling unfulfilled on waking. Most involve some element of searching for something. I have slept a lot lately, needing to escape into dreams and I feel like I am often in a half awake/ half asleep state.

Other things that drew me to this particular card... the soft blue/ greys, the sense of roundness in the oval arch and curve created by the canopy of trees.

While I noticed the sword, it wasn't as important to me as the open book... always the High Priestess prompts me to think about study, studiousness, contemplation and looking inner.

In my life at present there is a recurring theme of connections, circles looping back over each other. A sense of repetitiveness but also one of newness.

There are constant reminders of my father. Echoes of my relationship with him with others. TV, movies, music and books are all reminding me of him and my relationship with him, both the good and bad.

I'm feeling a bit old - that there are experiences that I haven't had that have passed me by.

I'm very tired and it's almost like I feel defenseless. That it would be easy to be overtaken by other people's wants and needs. Possibly that's why I've been spending so much time on my own - as if I can't cope with the noise of others.

I'm veiling my feelings in some ways by withdrawing. But at the same time instead of putting on a happy face and allowing others to impose their will...I'm walking away.

Some would say I'm being passive about my needs but it's more that I'm unclear about what my needs are. Instead of putting others first I'm asserting myself but in a passive way.

I'm almost obsessively craving privacy... I have been for most of the year... I want to be alone!

I have a strong sense that I have led a solitary existence before,
this being alone is not the first time for me, nor will it be the last.

Now... well, my first impressions would be that nothing much has changed... though I don't think that is really true. I have certainly been spending significant periods of time on my own... through choice... I think those around me are starting to realise how necessary it is for me to be alone.

In the almost two years since I had wrote the above, I have grown and have learnt a great deal about myself and the boundaries I place around myself. While I am a very outgoing and social creature, I am still very much a loner... so the High Priestess/ Empress conflict still exists, but I find myself more comfortable with myself in that regard. It does not have to be an either/or, I can be, and am both those archetypes... and need both elements of the feminine to be happy.

Now, if I could only find myself a man who is a combination Magician/Hermit who will understand the duality of my character, I'd be content... of course, to find him, means I probably should get out of the house more...

Thursday Thirteen #3...13 Aussie Songbirds

2007-05-17T00:01:00.000+10:00

In last week's Thursday Thirteen, Rhian posted about 13+ Georgia bands/musicians, about the same time I was thinking about doing a TT on Australian music, and then decided to do one on some of my favourite Aussie musical chicks...I realise for my overseas bloggy pals, you won't have heard of some of these, so have linked to sites like YouTube where you'll get a bit of an idea.

One... Divinyls (Chrissie Amphlett) Boys in Town, 1981 - ...I think they're pretty phoney, you're not like the rest, you've heard of matrimony, they've all flunked that test... released on the Monkey Grip soundtrack, based on the Helen Garner novel, the band also featured in the film... great movie, great music.

Two... Pat Wilson - Bop Girl, 1983 - our own answer to Cyndi Lauper! Check out the clip and you'll see a very young, frizzy haired Nicole Kidman...

Three... Eurogliders (Grace Knight) Heaven ( must be there), 1984 - I loved Grace Knight bopping around... she also sings cool 40's torch songs...

Four... Do Re Mi (Deborah Conway) Man Overboard, 1985 ...your pubic hairs are on my pillow, your stubble raids the sink...you talk about penis envy, your friends applaud, what am I expected to do - shout Man Overboard... great lyrics that saw the song banned from some radio playlists at the time.

Five... Kate Ceberano - Bedroom Eyes, 1988 - aarh, Katie is all woman, she started performing at 15 and has covered the gamut of musical genres.

Six... Kylie Minogue - Better the Devil You Know, 1990 - our own Singing Budgie... will admit, I like Kylie... simply, infectious dance songs... why not?

Seven... Frente (Angie Hart) - Bizarre Love Triangle, 1995 - from Marvin the Album. This great, little girl voice...

Eight... Bachelor Girl (Tania Doko) - Buses and Trains, 1998 - ... So I walked under a bus, I got hit by a train, Keep falling in love, Which is kinda the same... 'nuff said...

Nine... Christine Anu - My Island Home, 2000 - I love this song, not a great sound, recorded at the Sydney Olympic Games

Ten... Killing Heidi (Ella Hooper) Weir, 2001 ... for one so young Ella has an amazing musical knowledge, this song was off the band's first album

Eleven... Kasey Chambers - I Not Pretty Enough, 2002 ... am I not pretty enough? is my heart too broken? do I cry too much? Am I too outspoken? Don't I make you laugh? Should I try it harder? Why do you see right through me?... this song has had a huge number of parody songs written about it... at the time it was released I was dealing with the fact that the person I loved was choosing to marry someone else, despite telling me that he loved me... so it got played a lot... recently The Choir of Hard Knocks sang it at their gala concert, and this wonderful group of homeless and disadvantaged people who sing like angels added another layer to the song for me.

Twelve... Amiel - Lovesong, 2003 - ... Thanks you've been fuel for thought, Now I'm more lonely than before, But, thats okay, I've just 'ready made another f**king love song... censored to I've just 'ready made another stupid love song... have to add Addicted to Bass to this list... we used to tap dance to this... it was bloody hard, but fun

Thirteen... Katie Noonan - Time To Begin, 2007 - Katie Noonan sings like an angel... this is her first solo single, previously she was lead singer with the band, George.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Excuse me while I melt into a puddle of lust....

2007-05-16T19:28:00.000+10:00

Will confess, I have always had a bit of a thing for Eric Balfour, since the early days of Six Feet Under, when he played Claire Fisher's boyfriend Gabriel Dimas, he of the toe-sucking fetish, in the first series.

Yes, I know... he's only 30... but if I was ever going to make a movie of my strange and twisty relationship with Boomerang Boy, he'd be perfectly cast as Boomerang Boy, who was 23 to my 36 when we first met. And then I'd just have to convince everyone that I was a good enough actress to play me.... oohhh....

While Mr Balfour is a lot more exotic, and a lot more ummm shall we say buff... the shape of him, the long lean length of him, his nose, his eyes, and definitely his smile remind me very much of BB.

The footage in this montage comes from a movie Lie With Me, which I tracked down having seen some clips on YouTube... Eric and Lauren Lee Smith star in what is described as a romantic drama with explicit unsimulated sex scenes and full frontal nudity.... I decided after I'd watched the movie oh... two or three times... in a row.... that it's not the greatest film... actually the clips on YouTube are more romantic... but heah... who cares... I have five words for you... Eric Balfour full frontal nudity!

EDIT: Sorry, I confused a few people - no full frontal nudity in the clip here... this is just very PG snippets from the movie and photo shoots of the hunky one. The full frontal nudity is in the DVD that I'm wearing a groove in at home...

When the Moon is in the seventh house...

2007-05-15T22:14:00.000+10:00

Sigh.... I'm saying 'nuffin!

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Snapshots of childhood...

2007-05-14T20:41:00.000+10:00

Today, would have been my Dad's 71st birthday, if he was still with us. I have been thinking a lot of trying to put down on paper my father's story. But I realise, I never really knew him. I knew the stories he told, but it's sometimes difficult to determine what was fact or fiction. But I have memories, mental snapshots, and I wonder whether it is his story or my own that I need to write about...

Sitting outside of the old mansion in St Kilda, converted into apartments, that was home. My brother, Dad and I sitting on the front verandah watching the world go by, Dad telling funny stories about the people passing. And my yelling "there's Father Christmas, Daddy, there's Father Christmas" and wondering why he tried to shush me, as a heavily bearded man, in a black suit and a big hat walked down the street. It's only now looking back I realise why he was so embarrassed, the man was an Orthodox Jew walking to the synagogue and here was I calling him Santa!

Dad yelling at us, cause we'd brought home a kitten found in a derelict house, that we wanted to keep. "There will be no animals in this house" he roared, and then we found the kitten asleep on his lap that night. He cried when he buried Dirty Dora in the backyard years later. And for every animal we had, we'd hear the same roar, and then he'd love them and they him.

Driving in the furniture truck with Mum and my baby sister, with my brother and Dad on the back to the new house in Thomastown, only to arrive and find the house has no walls or windows, and the builder's done a bunk with our money and we are homeless.

Curled up on his lap, watching Little Women, and the two of us sobbing, as Beth dies.

Telling me to shut up or I'd be sorry, while I sobbed quietly lying on the top bunk of the room I shared with my sister, not understanding why I'd been sent to bed in the middle of the afternoon in punishment for some unknown misdemeanor. And then crying even more, as he closed the door and said to my brother and sister, who wants an icecream?

Sitting on his shoulders at a grown up fancy dress party, when I'd sneaked out of bed to see every one's costumes, and him insisting I be allowed to stay up, much to my mother's disgust. He was dressed up as Herman Munster, and he kept losing the bolt of his neck so he araldited it to his head, and it took weeks before it fell off.

Hiding under the covers, with my hands pressed to my ears, as he crawled drunkenly along the hallway, crying for his mother, after an alcoholic binge that lasted days.

Screaming through the hallways and alleyways around the apartments we lived in on a hot summers night, while Dad and the other grown ups threw buckets of water at us, as we raced around in our summer pj's.

Being bundled into my parents bed in the wee small hours of the night by a neighbour, and seeing the flash of the ambulance lights against the windows, while we were told that Daddy's had an accident, and has cut himself shaving... and my brother whispering to me, I saw him, why would Dad be shaving his wrists?

Watching a neverending stream of boys pile in or out of his Volkswagen Beetle as he drove them to football practice... the only father on the block with a car. He was also the defacto ambulance when we had an emergency, when Brian upstairs fell and broke his arm, or my friend Karen set her skirt alight while jumping over a bonfire.

Dancing around in his underwear, singing I'm So Pretty, oh so Pretty... and hamming it up for the camera.

Sitting at the kitchen table the night of my sister's wedding, and reaching out to pinch me at every opportunity, until a friend asked him why he was being so mean, and him saying "Cause I hate her"

Walking up to wait for me to finish work at the local gift shop on a Friday night, and sweeping up and helping out while he waited, and then holding my hand all the way home and telling me how proud he was and how much he loved me.

Terrorising the teachers, and amusing all my classmates at every parent/teacher night he ever went to. One of the boys said "You're Dad is so cool, you are so lucky" and I said "You can have him if you like!"