Cec and Bug, ranting on

Nostalgia

2009-02-16T16:12:00.000+11:00

Well here I was, chronically bored at uni. I had exhausted all the usual options - facebook, email, ninemsn news, my bank account (no, it did not manage to multiply overnight) - then I thought 'hmm, I wonder if Cec and Bug, ranting on' is still there . . . AND IT IS! Good ol' yet rather disturbing cyberspace, where things just permanently sit there, tracking you for all time (insert creepy Twilight zone music). I got all nostalgic ('sniff-sniff', 'eyewipe') reading about the preparations for my trip away, having a nose-job, dressing up like a French maid (which I think I've now done three times . . or is it four?). I had to laugh to see we've been flagged as having 'objectionable content'. Yeah well, I suppose that's to be expected with a discourse on cock-rings. Although if the person who objected to cockrings tried one out, especially the his and hers dual pleasure one we'd been discussing, perhaps they wouldn't object any more ;)

Ahh, blogger - how could I forsake you for so long?

I'm baa-aaaaack

2007-07-26T12:59:00.000+10:00

Greetings anyone left out there in the blogging world who recalls that yes, this once was an operating, hopefully slightly intestering but at the very least a distraction more interesting than working, blog. I, Cecilia, am returned from the land of leprechauns and cider with blackcurrent syrup, more walls than Berlin ever had that are still being expanded to this very day but with lovely locals, grumpy public transport operators and damn rude sales assistants but fantastic history, lake monsters and steep hills, where the most beautiful people in the world ride bicycles (in suits and/or high heels), arrogant locals and muggings but things you just have to see, best street performers anywhere, where they turn the waterfalls off for the night (no, not really, but some of the girls on my tour believed that when the tour leader told them that) and sheep have bells, gelati is available in the flavours of 'ferrerro rochare' and 'bounty' and you can see an entire city that was preserved under ash for thousands of years, extensive cave systems and the largest percentage of forested land for any country, beautiful clear water that's damn hard to swim in due to awful rocky 'beaches' covered in sea urchins, underground absinthe bars filled with an American college football team, a place of beautiful mountains where I went paragliding (and there was nothing else to do as it was a public holiday), where 'The Hoff' is an icon and parts of the wall still stand, there are shops selling magic mushroom and shops selling pot and my tour of all girls with one boy drank the cruiseboat dry of beer and they had to stop and pick up another barrel, a place with a very troubled history but a beautiful city, somewhere where our tour bus was 'fined' within metres of getting over the border and 'fined' again later on and where there aren't quite as many multicoloured onion-domed churches as travel shows would have you believe, a place that's damn similar in title to the last but a different colour, and somewhere with the best damn potato dish in the Europe.

Good luck to anyone who can actually work out where the hell I've been! I've probably forgotten countries too.

Oooh, diamontes!

2007-03-29T13:38:00.000+10:00

So, I was just looking up beauty therapists in Edinburgh as by the time I make it there I'll have been travelling for a month and in urgent need of some tinting/perming/shaping/waxing before I head off on my European tours. This is what I found:

TIFFANY BIKINI WAX This is a whole hollywood wax with diamontes artistically placed for that special date! Prices on quotation from £40

Anyone who isn't familiar with a hollywood wax, just think: Brittany Spears and the whole no-underwear-with-microdress-whilst-drunk-and-getting-out-of-taxi incident. Well, actually I don't know whether she was sporting the hollywood wax, but if you're going to go out without any knickers on in a microdress and get wasted I would assume you would have any hair removed first.

Now, who would like to debate over how these diamontes could be artistically placed? Standard butterflies or flowers? Perhaps a shooting star? A giant arrow? How about his favourite football team? Would you like to have 'Leeds' emblazoned across your, hm, you know, girls?

I bet those beauty therapists who do this artistic placement have some good stories to tell!

An imminent departure

2007-03-27T14:51:00.000+10:00

Whoo-hoo!! I'm so very very happy!! No, not because I'm leaving for a 3.5 month overseas trip in 10 sleeps but because the little toolbar with my text options has appeared again in blogger! YA-HOO! I can now change my font, the colour of the text, put pics in and the BEST thing, JUSTIFY my text!!! I HATE having text left aligned - it MUST be justified!

I am in two minds about my imminent departure. It has been very very stressful getting everything sorted out and I feel like I need a week lying in a country cabin with some truly magnificent chick-lit and many many mini chocolate easter eggs before I am ready to tackle a collossal always-on-the-go back to back touring trip where I will have to be permanently postive, ready to party and sit most firmly on my oh-so-awful temper. However, I am desperately trying to do uni stuff. I still have to complete data analysis and turn this into a most insightful article ready of acceptance into a scientific journal with a high impact factor and then convert this paper into an attention-grabbing and readily understood giant laminated poster.

To be honest, I have zero excitement. Zilch. Nada. This is most worrying. How can I not be excited? Golly, if I can't muster any enthusiasm before I actually depart then how on earth am I going to manage shepharding my charges around Europe?? Well, maybe that is the problem. I feel like I have been herding most obstinant chickens, not planning a fun-filled trip to Europe with some damn good friends. I have just been so angry with them all, barring Felicity. They all have squillions of dollars squirrelled away and refuse to part with it. We went out for dinner last week to celebrate the March birthdays of Felicity (22), Frieda (23) and Katie (23) and Rose didn't order any food. She ate at the boarding house where she is a boarding mistress and gets free food before we met for dinner. And then, instead of ordering a nice cocktail she orders a port. A PORT! Who the hell orders port instead of food? When I inquired as to why she wasn't having a delectable cocktail, she said that port is much more alcoholic than cocktails and she could have two for the same price as a cocktail and be drunker. Rose has a fulltime job in a government dept where she greedily grasps any overtime, no living expenses, doesn't even have her own car any more as she's driving her parent's old one, and works about 15-20 hours, usually weekend penalty rates with us as a waitress. She has a big share portfolio as she's been channelling all of her fulltime wage into shares this past year, and when she's ready to buy a house her parents will give her $40,000 towards it. But she won't eat out at dinner because she's saving money.

And Katie, don't even get me started! She actually tried to get out of the tour we had all booked and paid for without telling any of us. The travel agent told me. The travel agent Maria told me how awful she felt refusing to give Katie back her money for the tour but it just wasn't possible, and how very distraught Katie was, in tears and all that. I was totally bamboozled and had no idea what Maria was talking about. I thought it might have something to do with Katie's parents coming to Europe once our tour was over. "Don't worry about it, Maria, Katie has arranged to meet her parents the day the tour ends in Paris," I said. "Oh, but I felt awful. If it was my daughter who had committed to a tour and then found that she couldn't afford it and needed her money back I'd want the travel agent to do everything possible to help her out." I was so shocked. Katie is from a very wealthy family, they have a few rental properties, an old almost-mansion in a tree-lined street, and her dad has some high-powered job in Melbourne where he commutes to each week. Plus Katie is a workaholic and we have calculated must have at least $100,000 saved from 6 constant years of work including modelling promotional work and a refusal to spend a dollar. She only ever eats either brucetta or garlic or herb bread for dinner when we go out. She hasn't had her hair cut at a hairdresser for I think 8 years, she cuts it herself. Oh, plus her parents have put together a share portfolio for her. And she tried to get out of our tour, made our travel agent feel awful, and didn't tell any of us. Felicity's theory is that once Katie's parents decided to go to Europe Katie didn't want to go on the tour with us anymore when she could stay with her parents and have them pay for everything. I think that might be right on the money.

So this is perhaps why I'm not excited. Also contributing a little is that I have worked so very hard with bootcamp and the gym and stuff to get as strong and fit as I currently am and now that it all going to disappear and I will be back to baby weights and humiliating beep-test scores in bootcamp. I know, woe is me with huge overseas holiday looming!

Monkey and Dancingfairy, if you want to meet up when I am in jolly old England you can email me on ceciliamaybrown@hotmail.com Let me know soon though please so I can work it into my itinerary. Yes, I have an itinerary. I am pedantic. I know it.

At a bit of a loss

2007-03-03T23:56:00.000+11:00

So once again it's coming up to my birthday... ok, it's two months away, but two months is nothing! The first two months of the year flew past, didn't they?? So it's almost here, really. And I was thinking the other day, "I'm about to be 24, how groovy" until I realised that at 24, my mother had been married for two years and was pregnant with me

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And it's not that I want to be married and pregnant (that's a great big HELL NO on the pregnancy, thank YOU!), but by 24 my mother's life was settled

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Of course, as it turns out, her life wouldn't go exactly to plan: she and Daddy have spent the last 8 years having the world's second most unamicable break-up (Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin... cripes) and the last 2 or 3 coping with my increasingly unwell grossmutter, but since she got engaged at 21 (an age where she was starting to consider herself as having been "left on the shelf") she's essentially known what was up

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But me? Lately (ok, for months now) I've been trying to work out what to do with myself: should I stay where I'm currently working or try for a better paid job (although I asked for a pay rise yesterday and was told by my manager that she'd already put me forward for one, which is nice); should I keep boarding with Daddy, playing the daughter role (infuriating but comfortable) and saving to buy a place of my own; should I treat myself and buy the convertible I've always wanted; should I sell everything I own and travel... the list is endless. And the more I look, the more units I inspect or overseas cities I research or employment agencies I sign up with, the more confused and torn I get

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It's not that I'm exactly a glass-half-empty person, I think I'm more I-wonder-what-the-other-half-tastes-like? But after what's happened in the last year, with Deo and his friends' video and a couple of other things that hit me for six, I've not been able to rest easily with myself. It's not that I'm depressed exactly, it's more that I can't sit comfortably in my own skin now. I've spent a year despising myself for how those guys treated me and almost as long wishing I'd been able to protect someone I love from something terrible that happened to them. Wishing I could've been a stronger person, I suppose

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And with no-one to talk to about it all, everything has built up until I'm quite aware I've been dwelling on things best put down to naïveté and generally shitty human nature, but it's all still there and I feel the need to shake things up, move on from the hesitant, pathetic half-person I've become

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Put simply, I don't know what to do with my life, how to make it - and me - better

‘Boot Camp Update’ or ‘Yes It’s Been Confirmed – I’m Insane’

2007-02-22T12:35:00.001+11:00

My fears were confirmed this morning – I am extremely aerobically unfit. I only managed a 5.2 on the beep test which is absolutely bloody abysmal. I was the first person in my group to opt out (ie collapse outside in a panting, sweating, red-faced heap). Luckily there was another group to run after me, and one girl only got 4.2 (she is very overweight with asthma though, so that would be for her a very good score and even more embarrassing for sickeningly healthy me) and another girl was out at the same time as me. I think that one of them will be my partner. Probably the second girl, because I do go well with strength stuff (except darn sit-ups). I don’t understand how I only managed 5.2 – I go hard at spin cycle multiple times a week and still remain totally and utterly unfit.

Then we had 10 minutes (God, was it only 10 minutes???) of running up a slippery (it was drizzling) grassy near perpendicular hill, doing ten jump tucks, coming back down, doing 20 squat jumps then doing it all again. Oh, and as two girls stopped moving we had to do 20 burpees (weird name, ‘instrument of torture’ would be more appropriate. It’s where you squat down, throw your legs back so you’re in push-up position then jump back up and reach for the sky. In one movement. Try doing that 20 times) and as another couple (one of whom was one of the girls who stopped, so she earned us all TWO punishments) were 8 minutes late we had to do 80 push-ups. I’m glad to say they don’t worry me. I felt a little chuffed the girl in the ultimate micro bikeshorts who managed 8.something in the beep test struggled with the push-ups and kept stopping. He he he. I may be totally slow and unfit but at least I have something going for me!

After all of this (I still cannot believe it was only 10 minutes. I think the trainer only says that) we then went up to an oval to do some sit-ups and hovers which was actually a nice break. This proves how hard the other stuff was, as anyone who has had to do hovers would know. We finished the session soaking wet and totally and utterly covered in grass clippings. The oval had been mowed the day before and stuck to us because of the rain. I even had grass in my undies, somehow.

I am now officially dreading Saturday morning. I have an entire hour of what we only did for a supposed 15 minutes. I am very nervous that I just won’t be able to complete it and will stop, therefore causing more pain to my group as they do burpees yelling my name with each one.

'The Camp of the Boot' or 'I must be certifiably insane'

2007-02-20T14:13:00.000+11:00

Oh. My. God.

What Have You Gotten Yourself Into This Time Cecilia???!!

I have joined a boot camp. In case you aren't familiar with the term 'boot camp' or you are like my officemate and I have somehow given you the impression that I belong to army in the time you have known me, boot camp is basically an old-school fitness regime, based on the drills and hell-on-earth army recruits get subjected to.

Today was the 'easy' day with just testing to see how fit we are. And we were 'lucky' in that the instructor's cd of the beep test was broken and we didn't have to do the
tests plus the beep test. I'm sure everyone had to do the beep test at school at some stage. It's where there are two lines a set distance from each other, and by the time a beep sounds you have to have reached the other one or sit out. The catch is the beeps get faster and faster the longer you stay in the test. I think I managed 5.6 back when I was 15 and in the prime of my rowing fitness, so goodness knows how I'm going to go now. My oldest brother, incidently, set a new record for his school with 14.something.

Bootcamp operates in partners, and you get paired with the person closest to you in fitness. I know that there is know way I'm going to be paired with my friend (her idea of a challenge is running a 42 km marathon, and for recreation she runs 20 km a day), but I am very worried that I'm going to be paired with the one 'mature' lady. The class consists of about 30 people, probably half male and half female, 95% of whom look amazingly fit, and for whom this is their second bootcamp, some of whom are competitive athlethes. And then there is one mum. She totally is your typical forty-something mother - short hair with a couple of comfortable rolls about her middle,
not hugely fat, just a bit podgy. You have to admire her for doing the bootcamp with basically people who could be younger than her children.

I am living in fear that I will be paired with the mum. That I have the fitness of a 48 year old woman who has done no exercise since 'before the kids'. I was the worst in the group at situps, even the mum beat me (5 to my 4, which she had to come and
gloat about!!) but I was good at pushups and tricep dips and okay at squat jumps. Maybe me calling myself 'good' at pushups and tricep dips is a bit of a lie - some of the girls got over 100. But I beat my friend the marathon runner (so what if she can run 42 km in Qld heat?) which is something.

So all I have to do now is hold out long enough in the beep test so that I'm not paired with the mum. Oh shit, have just had the worst thought ever - what if I drop out BEFORE the mum???!!!!! Oh, the total and utter
humiliation. I could never face all the girls wearing micro bike shorts again!

I am eating chocolate biscuits. Why am I doing that? What is the POINT CECILIA of going to boot camp if you are going to eat chocolate biscuits at 9.12 am??!

Then I arrive at uni, shower and head up to the office, thinking smugly 'yay, at least here's ONE day I'll be here before my officemate' and then, low and behold, our office door is open and at 8.15 am she is here
typing away. She nearly fainted away at shock at beholding me before 10 am, let alone before the official working day has even begun. She was forced to comment on my earliness to which I replied 'I know, don't get used to it!' which she had a little laugh at and then wanted to know if there was any reason I was so early, to which I had to say "Oh, I'm doing
a boot camp" and then try and explain to her what a boot camp was. I failed miserably at this, as demonstrated by the fact that a minute after our conversation ended she asked me 'so how long have you been in the
army?' Me, the army! Ha! To which I explained hopefully much more clearly that it was run by an aerobics instructor, based on military training. Her rather expressive face demonstrated yet again how very far
we are apart in our way of thinking and our choice of recreational activities, because she looked at me as if to say 'who needs to do that?' which is kind of understandable, given that she rides her bike everywhere and takes multiple day hikes with all equipment strapped to her back through the wilderness for fun.

So I was totally out of breath and actually had a STITCH just from our warm-up today, which was running around a gym. Lots. Just for 'warm-up'. Then we had to see how many push-ups (feet touching the floor, my usual legs crossed and in the air was prohibited), sit-ups (arms behind head, come all the way up and elbows go behind knees), triceps dips (off a damn high bench) and squat-jumps we could do in 2 minutes. So here are my results. I had better post them so I don't doctor them at the end of a month to pretend I'm much fitter than I am. When bootcamp is over in one month I will post my new results and hopefully there will be improvement. At least in my sit-ups! My abysmal sit-ups!

Pushups: 52
Situps: 4 (oh the shame)
Triceps dips: 87
Squat jumps: 60

Now, everyone out there, take on the challenge and see how you do. Make sure you run around your backyard for about 10 minutes FAST first though.

Here is some of the correspondance the bootcamp instructor has sent us, just to demonstrate how deeply over my head I have gotten myself:

1. BE EARLY
For every minute you are late, the whole team does pushups. Saying your name with every pushup. RING me if something terrible has happened and you are going to be late so that I know. This is critical as we have two groups and are running on a very tight time budget

2. KEEP MOVING
If anyone stops moving at any stage once the session has started: 10 burpees. “Keep moving” means jogging on the spot.

3. SHOW UP
Boot Camp works provided you show up. You MUST come. You have committed and I am going to hold you to it. You will be paired with a partner after the beep test; someone as fit as you. If you do not show up, your partner will have no partner. This will make their session of boot camp next to impossible. Don’t let them down. I will not pair you up with someone else if your partner is absent and unaccounted for. Get each other’s mobiles. You’ll feel pretty bad lying in bed being lazy knowing your partner is out there trying to do the drills on their own. You will fill out a form for me with the dates you will be away. If I know you will be away, no worries, I will partner your partner with someone else. If you wake up one morning and you are sick as a dog – and I mean SICK as a dog not just a little bit tired you MUST RING ME BEFORE 6am or 7am for the later group. You must. DO NOT PASS A MESSAGE ON THROUGH YOUR FLAT MATE/GIRLFRIEND/BEST FRIEND: YOU CALL ME. No excuses. You miss a session and I don’t know why, the very next session you will be punished in front of everybody, and I will pick on you the whole session for being unbelievably soft, lazy, uncommitted and uncool while everyone else had the guts to show up.

So think of me, 7-8am Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings for the next month!

Nip/Tuck

2007-02-01T08:49:00.000+11:00

Ok. Melbourne. Well, the first thing you need to know is that Cec is very, very pretty: five foot nothing of chestnutty hair and blue eyes and pale freckly skin and straight white teeth. She’s gorgeous. My male friends LURVE her
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BUT, probably since puberty, Ceci has hated her nose. For someone so little and quite delicately boned, she’s always had a reasonably big nose. In my opinion this isn’t a bad thing (I quite like big noses, I think they’re a strong look) but she has HATED it with a passion for at least the last ten years. AND, since the woman has more money than things to spend it on, we went to Melbourne (translation: FAR away from disapproving parents and friends) so she could get rhinoplasty
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As far as I can tell, the surgeon has thinned the bridge, re-shaped the tip (which has gone from being a hook to a ski-jump) and corrected her deviated septum (which was the only bit of her nose job I could actually understand. It wasn’t horrendous, but it WAS crooked)
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And I wasn’t keen on Ceci having this surgery (more especially as she’s about to flit off to Europe for some time and could have spent the money on buying a Russian husband for me!) as she’s so pretty she didn’t need it and I’m positive she’s the only person who could see the faults she hated so much but her new nose, even still quite swollen as it is, is AWFULLY cute. She looks absolutely great! She’s gone from dreadfully cute to really quite smack-you-in-the-face adorable
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She, of course, will have to tell you more about what went on at the clinic so please beg her for details (I’d like to know it all too!), and maybe to let you be emailed the before and after photos, because they’re groovy (I also have one of her bruised, bandaged and feeling very sorry for herself)
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Honestly, her surgery was so trauma-free (as far as she’s told me! And if you discount the fact that someone died on that operating table last week) that it has me thinking again about getting MY cosmetic surgery done...

Sorry, Cec, sorry!

2007-01-26T21:08:00.000+11:00

I will post about our trip to Melbourne, I promise! But I'll have to do it after the long weekend (being Australia Day today) as I started to write the post at work this week but didn't finish AND didn't send it to my home email to finish (stupid cow that I am). Monday, definitely!
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Oh! And can I please please please put a picture on? The story would be MUCH better if I could put one of those pictures on!

Either the best thing or the stupidest thing I've ever done

2007-01-21T11:01:00.000+11:00

Bug must fill you all in. I am beginning to have doubts that it was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done (my smile is definately much worse than before). I am being charged a simply ridiculous amount at an internet cafe for a few measly minutes, and have requested (no, ORDERED) Bug to break her blogging drought and fill you all in on my stupidity. Or my best thing. I really don't know yet!!! Oh dear!!!

Cock rings and the like

2007-01-12T14:07:00.000+11:00

I hope I successfully grabbed your attention with that title. After all, cock rings and the like would be, I believe, of interest to those mere mortals who have either rather mundane or rather more adventurous lives.

I have returned today from three nights away on the gorgeous west coast of Tasmania. I had to go to do some fieldwork for uni, so I decided to make a bit of a holiday of it as I've never been to the west coast of my own state before (which is pretty atrocious as I've been overseas, but not to a major part of the state I've lived in my entire life), and do some suitably touristy things such as cruising down the Gordon River and visiting Sara Island (once the harshest penal settlement in the British empire), and going on the 100 year old steam train through the wilderness. My friend Sammy came with me to be my companion and volunteer field-assistant. Sammy went to uni with me, but did a combined science/law degree, and is now a very well-dressed lawyer. She is very tall, very thin, and I think very attractive, with long smooth hair. And very well spoken of course, seeing as she went to the most exclusive girls school our fair state has to offer. As well as having all of these positive attributes, she also has the gift of being able to chat easily and graciously to pretty much anyone in her very polished voice.

To look and speak to Sammy you would not think she was a regular visitor to the adult products store. Whilst walking along the lovely Strahan waterfront one evening, we were chatting about a mutual friend of ours, and I was telling Sammy how I was planning on throwing the dirtiest hens night possible for our mutual friend, and how I was counting on Sammy herself for assistance in this endeavour. I also told her how our mutual friend had said how sex with her boyfriend is over quite quickly as he's not very controlled. Sammy, as a very liberated woman in charge of her sexual destiny, was APPALLED that our friend had been putting up with this. She launched into relaying to me how she had purchased a cock ring for her own boyfriend, who had been rather surprised at the gift. But it wasn't just a cock ring, it was a cock ring complete with a small vibrator on the top for Sammy's increased enjoyment. She then went on about how enjoyable it was, and how her boyfriend enjoyed wearing it not just for his own benefit, but also because he liked how much enjoyment she got out of it. She then regaled with tales of the women who own the adult shop, how that adult shop was better than the other adult shop in our town, and the best type of vibrator to purchase for our friend as a gift on her hen's night. When we returned to the hotel room she was reading my cosmo or cleo magazine which had a section on aquatic sexual activies (depicting some highly unlikely positions that involved inflatable water doughnuts and lilos), and then was saying in a very serious voice 'Yes, but the problem with aquatic sex is that it washes away all of the natural lubrication. Of course, you could use lube, but that would be difficult to apply in the water and would wash away too . . ' and deciding which positions were possible. When she got to the bit in the article about purchasing a silicon-based lube for such aquatic adventures, she then talked on about how she'd never seen a silicon-based lube before when she'd been shopping in adult stores.

And to be perfectly honest, while I'm glad Sammy feels that she can be so open with me, I felt a little awkward with all this adult-shop talk, due to my lack of adult-shop experience. And I could definately have done without knowing she bought a cock ring with added vibrator for her boyfriend, who at that stage I'd never met, and how he feels when he's using it. When she introduced me to him today I had the wicked thought of asking him how the cock ring was going, but for the sake of peaceful relations and making a favourable first impression I restrained myself. Although I suppose I could have made a memorable first impression at least!

So, for anyone who wants their intimate antics spiced up a little, why not try the cock ring with vibrator for even more join his and her pleasure, as recommended by Sammy!

I am a 158 cm eating machine

2006-12-27T13:30:00.000+11:00

So, who else has had to surreptitiously release their belt at the dinner table in a futile effort to make their expanding girth more comfortable, as you persevere to eat those last few tantilising mouthfuls of Christmas pudding (which, as you well know, you only get once a year)? Actually, it wasn't even done surreptitiously around our Christmas dinner table. And it hasn't just been on that one day - the entire week-long lead up to Christmas, which began with my birthday, has been a gigantic binge-eating session for me. Which is still continuing today. I have been on, and am still pillaging my way through, a sugar-filled carniverous rampage. I mean, when else but Christmas would I have thick, tender slices of pink pig on toast for breakfast? Followed by leftover succulent turkey, seasoning and roast potato sandwiches for lunch, interspersed with a few rafaellos, ferrerro rochares and belgium seashell chocolates (yay for the practice of giving your primary class teacher, for 27 lucky little souls, my mother, Christmas gifts, usually of the luxury chocolate variety), a standard sized dinner, then followed by my choice of leftover cake - my white chocolate birthday cake, or 'Brethren' chocolate layer cake (my mother had a boy in her class who belongs to the 'Exclusive Brethren' sect - ie no tv or eating with and in front of people not of your sect - who baked her a huge and truly mouth-watering cake) with some home-grown raspberries on the side. Then a nice cup of hot chocolate made with 'luxury' hot chocolate powder, with a few more chocolate seashells for good measure.

And there has been no gym at all for at least two weeks. I mean, could you imagine exercising and shaking around all that food??!!

Oh, and it's not going to end! In fact, it will get worse! I am off to the Falls Festival this Friday for New Years (this will be my first New Years without working in 6 years!) where I will eat absolute rubbish washed down with far too much alcohol!

So may you to be merry, festive and full of good food! Go the Christmas Season!!

The Trip and Katie Update

2006-11-28T11:52:00.000+11:00

I am still somewhat annoyed, but my annoyance has been tempered by the fact that Katie is in India and I can't get my hands around her throat. Not that I could anyway (without a step-stool) - she's almost a foot taller than me.

At the end of the last post I was very frustrated and somewhat at a loss of what to do, given that Katie didn't want to pay her deposit but wanted to wait a month until she got back from India and had a chance to 'look over' everything, with an appointment with the travel agent the next morning who was pretty confident that if we left booking for much longer the five of us wouldn't get on the same trip. I was also on my way to our Monday night trip-planning meeting, where Felicity, Rose and Frieda would be, but no Katie.

At the Monday night meeting, I explained to Frieda and Rose about Katie (Felicity already knew ) and repeated what the travel agent had said about the very real possibility that the five of us wouldn't get on the tour together if we waited, and said to them "I have no idea what to do - tell me what to do."

Led mainly by Rose (who was absolutely flabbergasted when I pointed out that we were leaving in four months, and realised that as she's aiming on leaving in January, that it's only two months until she has to leave) the consensus was "Stuff Katie, book the four of us on tomorrow, and at least we're assured of being together." I did come in for a bit of grief from Felicity and Frieda, who said that they can see Katie's point, that nothing happened for ages (BECAUSE WE WERE WAITING FOR THE DATES PEOPLE) and then I was rushing them (BECAUSE KATIE IS GOING TO FREAKING INDIA UNTIL CHRISTMAS).

Rose rang up Katie (who was having a romantic dinner with her boyfriend) as I had flatly refused to (I was too angry to talk to her), and told her that we were going ahead and booking for the rest of us tomorrow, and that it was fine and she could book when she got back from India, but she'd lose the group booking discount of $100, oh, and she may not be on the same tour as us. Rose said that Katie was a bit short with her, but said 'ok'.

At 10 am the next morning I get a message from Katie, reading something like 'Am I sitll able to book with you today and get the group discount and pay my deposit later? Let me know it's urgent." I phoned her up and informed her that yes, I could still book her on the tour today with the rest of us, but she would have to pay her deposit and show her id within five days, and there was only two days until she left for India, so she'd have to do it tomorrow. Frieda had agreed to drop a brochure over at her house for her to read that day, so she could 'look through' everything before paying her deposit.

So I go to the travel agent and book all five of us on the tour. What a relief. Phone Rose and tell her Katie changed her mind at the last minute. She says "HA! I KNEW losing the group discount would get her!" Katie is notoriously tight with money. I text Katie and tell her she can pay her deposit to anyone at the travel agent, not just the lady I booked with.

Thursday I go to work. Katie has gone to India. At work Felicity tells me that Katie didn't pay her deposit after all. She went in on Wednesday to pay it but Maria, our travel agent, wasn't in, so she didn't pay it after all. "But I told her she could pay it with any travel agent," I tell Felicity. "Well, she wanted to ask Maria some questions before she paid, and she was out of the office." "Why didn't she ask another travel agent then?" I say, highly, highly annoyed. "She said she did but they didn't know, and they wouldn't give her Maria's mobile number so she could phone her and ask so she didn't pay."

So, after all that stress, then relief that we were all booked on, Katie didn't pay after all. I find it hard to believe that the other travel agents couldn't answer her questions though. And why the hell didn't she phone me and ask me these all-important questions? There's a good chance I would have known. And I can't imagine there being a question that wasn't covered by the brochure, if she'd read it properly. It is a very comprehensive, easy to read document.

I am so angry I cannot put it into words with Katie. Not just that she stressed me out big time with her refusal to pay, then her last minute change of mind, then her not-paying after all, but the fact that she didn't have the decency to contact me, the one who has gone to so much trouble for her, let me know she didn't pay after all. She must have realised that because she didn't pay, I'd have the travel agent chasing me for the missing deposit. Which is exactly what happened. Maria the travel agent rang my office on Friday and left a message for me to phone her, and when I did on Monday I was told that Katie hadn't paid her deposit. Which, if Katie hadn't told Felicity, who then told me, would have been news to me.

Felicity suggested to Katie, who jumped at the idea, that 'one of us' go in to the travel agent five days before Katie returns from India and book her on the tour again with us, so that when she gets back she can go straight in and ask Maria her questions, then pay. 'One of us' means me, naturally. I told Felicity that there was no way I was doing it. She got pretty annoyed with me, and said 'why not, I thought it's a good idea'. "Because I've done all I can for Katie, and I'm not involving myself anymore. If Katie wants someone to do that than you can. I'll give you the travel agent's details." Felicity was quite put out at this, and muttered something about how she didn't want to go in, and I should, which I just ignored.

And not one of these girls has thanked me for all I have done, besides Rose. Not that I'm after gushing praise, but a little 'gee, thanks Cec for all you've organised,' wouldn't have gone astray. Instead I get criticised.

A rant, rave and complain post

2006-11-20T16:47:00.000+11:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so frustrated.

No, not sexually, any dirty-minded people.

I am frustrated with trip-planning.

It is getting a bit ridiculous. We are leaving in four months. We have no tour booked, no airfares, no accommodation, no definate tour-route plans, no dates.

I like to plan. I am a planner. This is possibly why I am a relatively organised (re: pedantic) person. Why I am doing my PhD, where you must plan 3 years ahead.

We have been waiting on the release of the new tour brochure, which has the dates. Last week after hassling both Topdeck (the tour company) directly and then the travel agent, I got definate dates, prices and then, wah-lah! a brochure. Three brochures, in fact, so we could pass them around and look. According to the travel agent, these tours fill up very quickly, given that it's not like contiki where one leaves pretty much every day. Only four leave a month, and we are going on the most popular tour. So, last Tuesday I made an appointment to meet with the travel agent and book all five of us in on this tour next Tuesday (as it was then. It is now tomorrow). We get an extra $100 discount each, as there's so many of us going.

Last Tuesday night, all of us had to work. We discussed the trip, worked out times to have a trip-planning meeting. I showed Katie and Rose the brochures whilst we were on break. Offered to let them take them home to look at, which they did not do. The tour is however on the Topdeck Tour website, where it has been all year. I told everyone that we had to be organised by next Tuesday, when I have this meeting. Everyone knew that that was why it was imperitive that we have a meeting over the weekend. I have to listen to Katie telling me how much she wants to get everything booked and how stupid she's felt telling people from uni that she's going overseas next year when they ask what she's doing, and when they say "well have you booked yet" she says, "Um, no" and they look all knowing like she's not really going and she feels stupid and pathetic.

Many meeting dates were put forward and then declined. Finally we settled on Sunday at 1pm. Then Katie got a ticket to go to this free concert (free, but you still needed to get a ticket to enter), so the meeting was changed to 5pm Sunday. I tell everyone that to book us on the trip I need a photocopy of their passport or license as id, plus $200 deposit so please bring it with them. 5pm Sunday I arrive at Rose's and discover that it is only the two of us plus Felicity at the meeting. Katie and Frieda can't make it. Frieda has a cold and is too sick to make it(despite the fact she managed to make it out for dinner with us and then out to a pub the night before) and Katie's concert doesn't finish until 8 pm.

Annoyed, but the three of us carry on and just chat away about possible plans and dates and just usual excited stuff like Rose asking: "Can you catch a train to Loch Ness?" and "How did you get across that massive river in Edinburgh?" and Felicity commenting: "Yeah, I've heard of Stonehenge". Felicity decides that as we can't set anything definate without the other two then we need to have a meeting Monday night with them there. Plus I still need photocopies of their licenses and their deposits.

Katie contacts Felicity and says she can't make the meeting as she's going to Launceston with her boyfriend for his birthday (city two hours away) on Monday. I message her and say "I need a copy of your licence plus your deposit before 11am Tuesday, you'll have to find a way to get it to me."

I have no reply.

Today, after driving for 6 hours and wandering around the bush (just because I happened to be doing this for my research, this is in no way connected to our trip), I get a message from Felicity. It says "Hey just spoke to Katie and don't think she's happy giving a deposit before she's had a chance to look over everything. She gets back from India on Dec 14".

Yes, Katie is going to India this weekend. All expenses-paid trip with her parents and brother. She actually doesn't want to go. Honestly, rich people piss me off. She didn't want to go on the cruise around the Phillipines either. It's not like she dosn't get on with her brother, either. He's only a couple of years younger than her and they're quite good friends.

So, despite the fact that we've known we were going to do this particular tour for oh, about five months, despite the fact that Katie has been desperate to book airfares/tour so she doesn't feel stupid in front of her law-degree friends, to the point of saying "well if we don't make dates soon I'm going to book without you," she feels like she can't pay the $200 deposit and book with us tomorrow because she hasn't looked everything over properly.

I am furious.

I spoke to Felicity on the phone after receiving her message and Katie had rung her and said "I'd prefer it that Cecilia is mad with me in the short-term rather than I pay out money and get overseas and not like it and be mad with Cecilia in the long-term". She also said that she didn't want to pay out so much money when she doesn't know what she's getting.

We have planned to do this tour for months. She has known all week that I have the new brochures, she even glanced at them herself, and that we were doing the booking this Tuesday. I am also pissed off that she couldn't call me or message me and let me know herself.

Aren't you being just a teensy bit unreasonable Cecilia? I hear you ask. Well, honestly, I don't think I am. If we wait until after Katie gets back from India, has a chance to 'look over' everything, and then book in to the travel agent and make our tour booking, there is a very real chance that we would have missed out on the date we want to leave on, if not all three of the dates it leaves in the month of May.

I have done everything for the girl. I have gotten brochures, quotes for car hire, hassled Topdeck about when are they finally releasing the brochure so we can book, hassled the travel agent, gotten the best deal possible with her for the tour, and then, with one week's notice, let everyone know that we need to pay the deposit and give me id photocopies for Tuesday. And now, THE F*****G DAY BEFORE Katie feels that she hasn't 'looked everything' over. She could have gotten a brochure off me to 'look over' on the two-hour drive to Launnie with her boyfriend.

I have no idea what to do now. Cancel my appointment tomorrow, I guess. What I really want to do is book the other four of us in and let Katie take her chances for when she gets back from India. The others are more charitable than I am, however, and won't do that. But then, they haven't been the one doing all the organising.

The Night of the Maid

2006-11-06T16:45:00.000+11:00

Seeing as dancingfairy was wondering what happened the night I went out dressed as a maid, I think I'd better finally oblige and fill her (and anyone else who was wondering) in.

I think I look good in that particular maid's outfit. Bug, what do you think? You just can't go wrong with micronet tights and lace, in my opinion. If only I looked so good in my usual uniform of servitude I might get a few more tips at work. We had a very enjoyable punch/dinner party at Rose's abode. I went easy on the punch given what has happened on previous punch parties. This could have been a mistake as I then had to go 'out' dressed as a maid still in full control of my senses. We went to a nightclub, with only Rose, Zoe, another girl called Heidi and I still in costume. The rest had gotten changed, the wusses. Rose was dressed as a girl guide. However, this girl guide uniform had belonged to her friend pre-puberty and Rose just wore the sleeveless tunic (no shirt underneath), sheer stockings and high heels. Zoe (another friend from work I don't think I've mentioned) was wearing my denim cut-off shorts that I last wore when I was 13 (because that was the last time I could fit into them) and a shirt tied up at the waist - she was a builder. Heidi was a surgeon in scrubs. I made sure I stuck close to at least one of these three so it was obvious I'd been to a costume party, I just hadn't decided to put on a maid's outfit to go out.

Once at the club I downed three tequila shots in quick succession and suddenly I didn't care at all that I was out dressed rather oddly. The feather duster did appear, I am sad to relate. Rose bent over and I dusted her bottom on the dancefloor. I have no idea why. Maybe to entertain the boys watching us.

The reason I haven't posted about this night out is that I was rather miffed after it. My pride took a severe denting. After we'd been at the club a couple of hours this tall, good-looking guy approached me on the dancefloor and asked if he could buy me a drink. I told him no, I was dancing. "Please?" he says again. "No." I replied again. I got occupied saying goodbye to Zoe, and whilst I was doing this potential drink-buyer had cornered Rose and was telling her that I was gorgeous, and did I have a boyfriend? Rose decided that he was nice, and promptly threw me into him. Literally shoved me into him, telling me that he was nice and hot and go and dance! So I did (it was her birthday, after all). And he WAS very nice and tall and appeared to be rather hot. I was wary of wearing the punch and tequila goggles but all the other girls have assured me that he was hot. So we did the whole dance-and-pash thing, which is something I never thought I'd do in plain view of the work girls (damn tequila, and chatted by yelling into each others ears. I actually couldn't hear him say his name so he took out his license and showed me it so I could read his name. And then we were typing messages into our mobile phones and giving it to the other to read (whilst dancing, that is). And he was showering me with compliments, which I was rather wary of. And the feather duster may have appeared, I must admit.

We went to sit down and had a proper chat filled with all the usual stuff, where he assured me he hadn't been attracted by the uniform, but drawn to my face (I was highly suspicious of this), and could tell on the dancefloor that I wasn't just gorgeous but intelligent too (I have no idea why and I think this was just a line, given what I was wearing. Unless wearing cute costumes is a sign of intelligence). And then he asked me out for dinner next week, and wanted me to set a date. I wouldn't set a date (couldn't remember when i was working plus didn't want to see him again in a lengthy dinner situation in case there was nothing to discuss whilst waiting for the food), so he was asking whether I'm free on weekends, or would a weekday be better, etc, and then could he please have my number. So I gave it to him, then said goodbye and that I'd better go back to my friends given that it was Rose's birthday, and he disappeared. I think he left immediately. His friends had already gone home to their girlfriends, he'd told me. The work girls were all very excited on my behalf and said how nice and hot he was.

AND THEN HE NEVER CALLED!!!!

Men are bastards. Now I know why I didn't bother with them for so long.

But I must say I was rubbing my hands together in glee that I'd 'picked up' (ew what an awful term) and Heidi hadn't. Heidi (friend of Frieda's who seems a bit psychotic in that she has been stalking her ex boyfriend and is now always desperate to 'pick up') had been DESPERATE to 'pick up' that night, as had been Rose. They had been prowling around the club all night. When she didn't succeed after two hours, Heidi wanted to move clubs. And Rose is so much prettier than I am. But they didn't succeed. Whereas I, who wasn't trying and wasn't out for that reason, did. He he he.

A spot of dusting

2006-10-10T16:04:00.000+11:00

I am going out this saturday night dressed as a french maid who speaks italian (as I don't speak french). I am debating whether or not to take my feather duster out on the town (pluses, I could go up to hot guys and say 'ahh, you are verry verrry dirty. Let me clean you, you dirrrty dirrrty boy). Will probably depend on how drunk I get at the dinner party. Which is a 'uniform' costume party. I am not randomly dressing up as a french italian-speaking maid for my Saturday night.

Rose is having this uniform dinner party for her 24th birthday. The other girls and I were discussing what to wear and Katie says "I have no idea what to wear. Who the hell has a uniform costume in their wardrobe?" While the others were agreeing with her I piped up in a small voice saying 'Umm, I do. I have a French maid costume.' This of course prompted 'Cecilia, that's a bit kinky. Is there something you're not telling us?'

So, to dust or not to dust, this is the question.

Ellaborating on the 'quick' update

2006-10-03T14:41:00.000+11:00

As going to a gym class (couldn't go to the 30 minute spin as all the bikes were booked so went to the hour long step class at the uni gym for the first time where I had to do stupid things like 'dancey move' and 'shoulder shimmy' instead of the more hardcore things the gym instructor at the YMCA where I usually go make you do and I wasn't even absolutely bloody exhausted the way I usually am) has made me so very hungry I am just finishing off a very delicious, slightly mushy snickers bar (mmmm, just the right squishiness), mushy because it's such a gorgeous warm spring day here, beaming sun and blue sky with a few token fluffy white clouds. Do you perhaps see WHY I need to go to the gym quite so often? I'm just using the gym-has-made-me-hungry as justification. If it wasn't that excuse, I would have probably used need-brain-energy-for-session-with-supervisor-at-3pm.

Bug was feeling sick yesterday (I couldn't have infected her with my germs as I hadn't seen her in at least 10 days before I started vomiting) so I hope she's feeling better by tomorrow - it's supposed to be 26 degrees and she luuuuuurrrrrves hot weather.

Back to the night of the law ball - I am beginning to realise how much living and growing up in the Northern Suburbs, working at the local fruit market where the other girls used to ask me when I was going to have a baby (as 22 is pretty old not to have started, to them), and going to the local Catholic school (it wasn't a state-run school, it's a private school in that my parents had to pay a couple of thousand a year for me to go there, but it still attracted a hell-bogan crowd in high school where they didn't just take mainly Catholic kids the way they used to in primary school, they take anyone) has influenced my behaviour and the way I think. I like to think that I'm not a bogan. No, I KNOW I'm not. Quite well-spoken (now I don't work at the fruitmarket, where I used to adopt the local accent on purpose to fit in), don't swear badly except when under extreme provocation, think that everyone should stay at school until they're 18 unless they get an actual job, and that these bogans need to stop living off the dole and child welfare payments and stop having so many damn kids so damn young.

But I do things and think that they are perfectly acceptable that the work girls don't. Except Felicity, who went to a state school. For example, when that undercover police car almost crashed into the side of us last month I was the only one whose automatic reaction was to give them 'the finger'. Because that to me is the only/best reaction to show your extreme displeasure at a very reckless driver who has almost caused a serious accident.

And when we left the fancy hotel where the law ball was held, there were no taxis. My friends and I had raced out, and as there were no taxis I called for one on my mobile. In the meantime, other people had come out and stood waiting as well. One taxi arrived and instead of driving right up to the entrance, it stopped by the first group of people it saw who had come out another entrance and were waiting 20 metres away, and these people got in and drove off. That to me is very bad manners. We had all been at the same function, and those people knew that they hadn't been waiting first. I was quite annoyed. I called the taxi company again and told them to send lots of taxis. It had now started to rain, and it was quite windy. A group of people who'd come out the front just after us walked down to the roadside and waited for a taxi down there, one arrived and it took them. That was okay, they'd only been out the front about 10 seconds after us. Then my friends and I went and stood at the end of the covered walkway that leads up to the hotel, by the roadside. Another taxi approached, and a group of people came running down to the road and waved it down and got in it about 30 metres up the road from us. I was furious. As they started to get in I ran up to the taxi, screeching like a mad woman about how rude they were and lacking in manners, and how I would've expected more from law students, and god I have no idea what else and I dread to think. We got the next taxi. I most fortitiously had packed my umbrella in my handbag (so don't ask) and planted myself on the footpath in the rain and wind, with my bright yellow umbrella while my friends huddled under the covered walkway, and we got the next one. But noone else had hurled abuse directly into taxi windows. It was me, the girl from the northern suburbs.

Then we were waiting in a very long line in the rain in our little evening dressers at the new nightclub. Again everyone was very thankful I had packed the umbrella as five of us managed to huddle under it. Carmen and two of her other friends we had attended the ball with were standing in the line at least 35 people ahead of us, having got into a taxi before the function actually ended (in order to be sure of getting one). After waiting 20 minutes with very little progress, Carmen came running (as well as you can in high heels in the rain on a slope) down to the rest of us, saying 'Nova was just punched in the face. This girl just turned around and punched her in the face. For no reason. She's got a fat lip.' Carmen went back up to Nova and her other friend Sam, and in a few minutes they all came back to us, Nova smiling bravely with a tearstained face and waterey eyes, and a fat lip. Some bogan girl had turned around and punched her in the face and then run off down the road. She still doesn't know why. We all left the club in disgust. The bouncers hadn't even let Nova into the club, offered her an icepack, or a drink of water. In fact they hadn't given a stuff. I don't care if they are the hot new club in town, a little bit of customer care would be nice.

I was relaying this story to my eldest brother (he's 16) and a couple of his friends and his first reaction was 'did you smack her one?' (the girl who smacked Nova, that is) and when I said 'no', he wanted to know why and thought it was pretty poor that I hadn't. When I explained that it was all over and done with before I even knew about it, the bogan Nova-basher gone, he still thought it was a weak excuse for not sticking up for my friend. This got me thinking. If I had been there, what would my first reaction have been? And I know without a doubt that I would have taken a swing back at the girl, pushed her into the wall, anything really. It's an automatic reaction drilled into me due to my upbringing. You stick up for your friends and yourself physically if you have to. My dad has taught us this well. To the point of my younger brother (he's 15, was 14 when this happened) breaking his hand and having to have surgery on it earlier this year for wading into a fight with some totally random bogans who started attacking his friend. Of course, my automatic 'bash the crap out of the other girl' may not be the wisest move, being that I'm only 5'2 and was on the night wearing damn high heels. But I would have expected every other girl there with me to wade into the fight, and as there was 8 of us, I'm pretty sure we would have bested the other girl, and whoever the else she was with. But then, out of the 8 of us, I think only Felicity would be there with me, pulling hair and bitch-slapping.

I am actually shocked that Carmen (at least 5'9, size 14) let some girl smack her very good friend Nova in the face and stood by and did nothing. And her friend Sam, who is a damn tall, not fat in the least but a sporty, powerful looking girl, did bugger all either. Am I totally betraying my humble northern-suburbs outlook on life here, or is anyone else shocked that Carmen and Sam stood by and did nothing? Is that the right thing to do? What 'nice, well-bought-up girls do? Nothing? Am I in actual fact a total and utter bogan in disguise?

A quick life update

2006-10-03T12:06:00.000+11:00

I should probably change that title right now! Since when have I ever managed to do a 'quick' or a 'short' post?

Since my last post my big life issues have been:

- my car being broken into, smashed window, stolen CD player (with new Lily Allen CD in it!), stolen speakers and STOLEN PARCEL SHELF (the speakers were mounted on this) and broken rear windowwiper cover (they attempted to steal the rear window windscreen wiper motor, why, I have no idea) - while I was asleep in my comfy bed about 1 and a half metres from my car (obviously, bed is inside house, the car is parked right up under our house, the living room upstairs is over it, and my bedroom is beside my car)

- dressing up and going to the law student society ball at Hobart's other fancy hotel (I work at the other one) and then a girl I was with being punched in the mouth in the line for a new nightclub.

- being constantly sick with a cold (which I think I've passed onto Mia, as she hasn't been in the office for two days, and there's a big used hanky on her desk) and then the sickest I've ever been in my life with stomach flu (lost 6 kilos and am down to 51 kilos though but I suspect I'll have them all back on by the end of the week) and then there's the not-to-be-talked-about but I will anyway ever present thrush which I am unable to totally get rid of. It just settles down to a faint itch and then WHAM is back to itchy as all hell. And no, it's not in my mouth if you catch my drift. I have been researching thrush and apparantly some women can never get rid of it and some have even committed suicide due to it! That would be so typical, I never get it once in 23 years and then am unable to get rid of it forever.

I have to go I am going down to a half-hour spin cycle class in the uni gym. I am quite nervous because this is my first gym class since I've been really sick and have lost all my strength, plus I find spin cycle awful anyway. But I am inspired by the commencement last night of the American Biggest Loser - if they can spin cycle I damn well can!

Be wary when awarding 'the finger'!

2006-09-11T16:34:00.000+10:00

So, back onto a totally frivolous line of thought that is more typical to me than musing over theology versus evolution: my brush with undercover police now two weekends ago.

I went to the Eskimo Joe concert two Fridays ago with the work girls Rose, Frieda, Felicity, Katie and Carmen, plus Julian, the ridiculously rich South African who I also work with, who is dating Frieda. Carmen had a little get-together at her house first, as it was her birthday, and made us and her other friends all cosmopolitans (she’s a huge sex in the city fan). Katie, Rose and Felicity were all not drinking, and had brought their cars. Carmen was going to the concert with one of her other, non-work friends, and after some discussion Katie, Rose and Felicity decided that only Rose would drive, as there was no point taking three cars when there probably wouldn’t be much parking. The only problem was that there was five of us, plus the driver, and only four passenger seats in the cars. I was the only one who thought this was a problem. I know, I am totally conservative! But this concert was in my home suburb and I was pretty confident that it would be crawling with police. My concerns were brushed aside, and in we piled to Rose’s old ford. There were three of us in the back, Julian sitting in the passenger seat, with Frieda sitting between his legs on the floor.

We made it to the concert with no problems, and after the concert we zipped around to my house so we could all go to the loo (there was a distinct lack of toilet facilities at the concert, at least, toilet facilities that were not awash with urine and I hate to think what else). We then went to a takeaway shop for a few potato cakes, and then were backtracking back to Carmen’s house so that Felicity could pick up her car and take us into a new nightclub, as Rose had had enough and wanted to go home. Frieda had tired of sitting between Julian’s legs, and had piled into the back with Katie, Felicity and I. I was the one without a seat, though, being swashed on the edge of the backseat behind Rose, the driver. I was supposed to be lying down hiding the tell-tale fourth head in the backseat, but I had to keep popping up to give Rose directions as I was the only one from the Northern Suburbs in the car and therefore the only one with any idea of where she was going. Rose missed three potential turn-offs to Carmen’s house, and ended up having to do a u-turn and go back. As we were driving up Carmen’s street, a car up ahead of us went straight ahead through an upcoming roundabout. As we started to go through the roundabout, another car came charging up on our left side and started to go through, then saw us and braked, leaving their bonnet protruding all the way over the give-way line. Luckily, Rose wasn’t driving very fast, so she was able to narrowly avoid crashing into the front of this car who had failed to give way. We were all going ‘Oh My God!’ and I (betraying my Northern Suburbs origins horribly) did the natural thing and gave this car that had so narrowly missed ploughing into us ‘the finger’.

The car then turned behind us and flicked on these little blue and red lights that were in the front grill. “Shit! They’re police!” I yelled over everyone’s continued chat and laughter over our near miss. “What?!” “They just flicked on their lights!!!”

Rose pulled over, later relaying that all that was going through her head was ‘here goes my license, here goes my license.’ I laid down on Felicity’s lap, but no attempt was made to cover me as Rose had said ‘they know, don’t attempt to hide it.’ Given that I had been sitting up the entire time through the whole near miss, I had then proceeded to give ‘the finger’ and I was even the one to be looking out the rear window and see that they were undercover cops this seemed a fair assumption. I was pretending to be unconscious however, as we had planned at the start of our journey that if caught I was to be unconsciously drunk and Rose simply had to get me home.

Rose gets out of the car, positions herself over the back window effectively screening me from the policeman, and then does an award-winning acting performance. Honestly, the girl should be on the big screen. Or work for the secret service.
“You scared me so much!” she says to this young male plain-clothes police officer. The female driver stayed in the car.
“Sorry about that, but we were chasing a car.”
They chat a bit more, but I can’t hear what’s going on as Felicity has now covered my head with my jacket. I know he’s checking Rose’s license. Everyone still in the car suddenly realises that as well has having an extra person in the car, not one of them is wearing a seatbelt, and put these on as surreptitiously as possible.
Then Rose opens up the back door, leaving my backside poking out for all to see. I was kind of crouched down behind Rose’s seat, turning to my left lying most uncomfortably on Felicity’s knees, which were also crammed in behind Rose’s seat. Rose puts her hand on my back and kind of leans over me, hiding my huge bum, saying loudly ‘Everyone give me your ids. He wants to check your ids.’ And then hissing quietly ‘he doesn’t know you’re there Cec, cover her up, throw jackets, bags, anything on her.’
Rose gets out holding the ids, slams the door and positions herself back over the window. “My friends think you’re hot.” she announces, “they want to know if you’re single.” Honestly, the girl is a bloody marvel. “Just tell them I’m taken,” the cop says. Meanwhile, there’s a massive flurry in the car to cover me with anything they can find, and throw a handbag on top. I am crouched down, doubled over behind the car seat in an even smaller amount of space than I had previously, my head pressed up against Felicity’s knees, as Frieda, Katie and Felicity have shuffled over on the back seat to make it look more normal. “Oh no!” Katie exclaims. “He’s going to find out that I have a court summons!” Katie was caught driving with an expired license.
Rose gets back in the car, and starts up the car. “Get smaller Cecilia,” ‘He’ll look through the window when he brings the ids back,” she mutters. Regretting eating that potato cake, I am scrunched into the most uncomfortable position of my life, one ankle doubled back underneath me causing an amazing amount of pain. “Why did he want the ids?” someone asks. “He said it’s to see who’s ‘out and about’ on a Friday night, and the info will be destroyed at the end of the night.”
He comes back and passes the ids through the window Rose, and saying ‘thanks, have a good night.’ Rose drives off, with no idea where she’s going, as I’m unable to give her directions. She just drives, and drives with everyone laughing from sheer relief, except me, who has three coats and a couple of handbags on my head, and is slowly suffocating/passing out with pain from my ankle. I had to yell so loudly ‘CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE THESE COATS OFF MY HEAD??!!’ before Felicity remembered me, and did so.

So, that was our brush with possibly the stupidest undercover cop ever. There we were, no seatbelts, extra person in the car, and he didn’t even look in the window. He didn’t even check for open alcohol, the way cops always do if they see a car full of young people. And I had given them ‘the finger.’ He had no idea that we were doing anything wrong. And then I got extremely annoyed, because he had had the audacity to almost crash into the side of our car, then pull US over and check the ids of everyone in the car (sorry, the ids of everyone visible in the car).

Thank goodness, as Katie and Frieda joked, we hadn’t given him five ids when Rose had come in to get them!

* * * *

Quick update on the Jess situation: she’s contacted me since, in tears because she can’t do a job application for a teacher’s aide position. And I mean REALLY in tears. Damn that dratted depression. I was most hard-hearted, and refused to do it for her, the way I’ve been doing all of her other job applications for the past three years, and re-doing her resume at least twice a year. I even did a job app and resume for her mum earlier this year. Despite her sobbing about how stupid she is, and what a bad mother she is, not spending ‘quality time’ with Maddy, and how she just can’t do it I maintained that she had to have a go at it herself first, then I would check it over and ‘fix’ it (i.e. rewrite the entire thing). I hate to admit it, but I was influenced by how annoyed and disturbed I am still about her whole ‘earth is only 60,000 years old’ bizzo, and I think that by insisting that she have a go at doing this job app herself, it’s the beginning of me beginning to cut the ties between us. I offered to print out the previous job applications that I’ve done for her, for her to use as a guide (she’s lost them all plus her resume), but I refused to take them to her house like she wanted me to, saying most firmly ‘I’ll leave them sitting here for you, and you can drop by any time you like to pick them up as it’s school holidays so everyone is at home barring me.’

But, realistically, I’m not going to be in Hobart forever. I have two more years at uni and then 2009 will most likely see me employed on ‘mainland’ Australia, due to a total lack of fulltime permanent jobs in my area down here. It’s better that she learns to do these things for herself now, while I’m still here to ‘check’ them.

Losing to God

2006-09-03T22:53:00.000+10:00

I've just been upstairs having a jolly good old cry to my parents, mum in particular. I'm just so upset and disturbed. Still crying now, actually. I've just lost a best friend to God. Not Buggy darling, but my other very dear, very close friend. I've probably referred to her in the past, goodness knows by what name, so lets just call her Jess. I have stood by Jess since we first met in year 7, when we were 12, and she by me. After being under her 'spell' for the first year of our friendship, I got sick of her calling the shots and from then on told her when she was acting like a bitch, or I didn't agree with her actions, and I didn't hang about with her at school any more, but we were still very best friends, maybe because I was one of the few people who didn't pander to her. And remained very best friends, until this very evening. I stayed by her through her pregnancy, my family pretty much adopted her as another daughter, and I've supported her through her severe depression, that last year had me at my wits end as she rang me up endlessly crying because she wanted to kill herself and didn't want to live anymore.

Last year she found God. She joined a Christian church, and became a born again Christian, bible-study groups and all. She was even baptised there this year. I went along, and I cried because I was just so happy for her and I saw it as a whole new phase of her life, with her overcoming her depression (to some degree) and being happy again. God now speaks to her directly sometimes in church, and they have 'healing' sessions when they get people up on stage individually and pray for them and heal them, oh, and sometimes people faint because they are filled with the holy spirit, and some talk in tongues.

Absolutely fine with me. No worries. Anything that makes her happy and gives her life some direction and meaning, although I did get a bit annoyed with her constantly referring to 'Catholics' as being bad and following the wrong path and 'Christians' being right, and constantly told her that 'Catholics ARE Christians, it's just all Christians aren't Catholics! Catholisism is just one way of following Christianity!' Being a Catholic, nominally at least, I got sick of being told I wasn't a Christian.

I am a woman of science (very grandiose statement, that one!). Do I believe that God created all the animals and people in one arvo? No. Sorry, but the fossil evidence and the geological record provides evidence that it's just not possible. Darwin's theory of evolution, folks. Did God create life though? Well, very possibly. I'm quite happy to believe that he did create those single-celled organisms in the primordial swamp that started to produce nitrogen and then change the atmosphere to be favourable to other forms of life, and that he has something to do with our souls and personalities.

Tonight on the telephone after a fantastic hour and a half conversation with Jess where she told me everything that's been happening in her life and we reminisced and joked (I'd found this story I'd written in year 11 about year 10 with all of these things that happened we'd totally forgotten about) I concluded with:

'So, did Maddy (her 4 year old daughter) watch the dinosaur show tonight?'

'Oh, she watched it last week', Jess replied. 'But it's so hard, because they kept saying things like "millions of years ago when the dinosaurs were alive, and they weren't."

'What?' I said.

'Well, the earth is only 60,000 years old, so the dinosaurs can't have been alive millions of years ago.'

'The earth only 60,000 years old?' I repied in bewilderment. 'It's millions of millions of years old.' 3.4 billion, to be more exact, if I can remember correctly from first year uni, but I didn't say that.

"But the bible tells us that it's only 60,000 years old, and that's what I believe because I believe in God."

'What?' I said, still totally dumbfounded.

"The earth is only 60,000 years old. There's evidence to support that. This man found this rock from a volcano that all the experts said had taken thousands of years to form and he said it had been formed in one afternoon and eventually he was proved right. One day everyone will realise that they're wrong and the bible is right."

"But some rocks are only formed in one afternoon following volcanic eruptions." I said most logically, I thought (having studied university Geology for a year I do know the basics about rocks).

"Yes but everyone said this man was wrong and he was proved right. The chapter in the bible that says 'and Moses lived 900 years and his son lived 600 years . .' is just in there to allow us to calculate the age of the earth. People have worked out from that that the earth is between 60,000 to 65,000 years old. It's going to be so hard when Maddy goes to school, because she's going to be learning things that are against the bible and I'm going to have to tell her that what she's learning is wrong and what we believe is right."

"But there's scientific evidence from the fossil record to support the age of the earth, and rock formation."

"And it's wrong. It's okay, I accept that you have different beliefs to me and that's okay. Have a pleasant night's sleep."

Our conversation ended rather abruptly at that point, with me saying goodnight very chillingly.

I was, and am, just so shocked. What's so bad about taking the bible so literally, I have no idea, but I'm just so disturbed by it all. She is now totally and utterly immune to reason (oh, she's already told me previously that I'm a sinner, and I wasn't really worried by that, because I personally believe that God doesn't mind if I get drunk, go out dancing, kiss boys, or even girls if I am that way inclined, because he loves everyone and I'm sure he was young once too). And I'm just so DISTURBED by the fact that she is teaching her 4 year old that the bible is utterly and totally the truth, and science is basically a pack of lies thought up by sinners. What's going to happen to Maddy? And as I am a woman of science, where the hell does that leave me? Wasting my entire life? How can she reasonably reject fossil evidence? The bible says nothing at all about dinosaurs roaming the earth at the time of Abraham, or even Moses, and they weren't mentioned in Genesis "and Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and thrown to the dinosaurs", so did they therefore never exist? Man wasn't around at the time of dinosaurs, and they weren't around from the time of Adam and Eve, so HOW THE HELL DO YOU EXPLAIN DINOSAURS YOU BRAINWASHING CHRISTIAN CULT???!!!

I was so upset that I went upstairs sobbing to my parents. They were quite shocked by her too, and said that she's been brainwashed, and there's no reasoning with people like that. Mum said that she's a very vulnerable person and she's just clung onto this. Yeah, I knew and accepted that that was what she was doing with this church, and I was happy that it has given her life meaning again and she's no longer suicidal. I'm still thankful that she's now not suicidal, and I hate to say it, that she's not so reliant on me now. But I'm just soooooooo upset by it all. I have lost a very good friend to God. And her God is not my nice, loving, forgiving god who accepts dogs and cats into heaven so they can be with their humans forever, her God is one who gave directions for the bible and the bible is right and that's it. How can she raise her daughter that the dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago?

And still my tears keep on a-rollin! What a sook I've become!

Drunken Recollections

2006-08-29T17:00:00.000+10:00

These are the messages I sent Bug in the early hours of Sunday morning, while I was at the 'ball' (read: drunken party in marquee with haybails and pre-mixed spirits and soft-drink in huge plastic containers with those little taps attached) for one of the residential colleges here at uni, complete with spelling mistakes. I however didn't feel that the mixed vodka and lift was strong enough so I headed out to Rose's car where I had left some tequila, salt and sliced lemon (I think I was a boy-scout leader in a previous life) and proceeded to do shots with another couple of girls (who were gone by 3.30, the weaklings!).

SO DRUNK CANT WALK BAD GEY? 3.41 am

I need u 2 mind me, these others used 2 me being straipht one & im so drunk 3.44 am

I luu u bug & lets b friends 4 eva cos i luv u & luv u & h cant walk 3.48 am

& wheres agg? I wamjed 2 dance with her. Teqila bad girl 3.54 am

(Agg is Bug's younger sister, whose name is not agg.)

Eyelashes and London ... continued!

2006-08-24T22:29:00.000+10:00

Rightio, so where was I? I honestly can't remember. Oh, the eyelashes look simply fabo though, thanks for asking. Definately worth the $55! Oh. My. God. I just spent $55 on my eyelashes! $40 perm and $15 tint. Plus there was that extra $34 for the eyelash conditioner (which has no expiry date and will last me so long 'they'll bury it with you, darl', according to my beautician) which was totally necessary if I didn't want my now-brittle eyelashes to crumple up and snap off. That's 4.7 hours at work. Oh well, it's only money! And I do have truly magnifique eyelashes now!

Okay, so the trip planning. So, moving on from when we want to go, we then had to decide how to get around. Again, I found myself on the outer, speaking against buying a van and driving ourselves around Europe. It sounds great, in theory, and they were all so excited. They seemed to think it would be like driving around Hobart. This massive adventure, with the six of us in an old combi, driving ourselves where ever we fancied going. And it does sound marvellous, on the surface. If you haven't been to Rome, or Paris and seen for yourselves how crazy the streets are. I had never even heard of 'bump parking' until I saw it in action. And if you don't think about what happens if the van breaks down, gets stolen, who's name it's going to be in, who will be insured to drive it, how the hell do you get car insurance for Aussies who have no fixed address in London, and then can you even get insurance just for a couple of months, what about registering it and changing over all the papers . . . then there's the stress and hassle of working out every single day where you're going and how to get there, where can you park, what about cheap accommodation (will you need to book ahead), and oh yeah, what the hell was there to see here again anyway?

So again I came off as the massive bitch as I firmly said "I don't think it's a good idea to drive around all of Europe" and after I'd stuck my neck out Rose, the only other one to have been to Europe before, then supported me and said she refused to drive on mainland Europe too. So we compromised and now we're driving around the UK for about 20 days. But they still want to buy a van. For 20 days. Instead of hiring. Hiring a van is damn expensive, I'll admit it. It'll cost us each about $800 for 20 days, not counting petrol, because we have to pay an extra surcharge for being under 25, and then registering more than one driver. Oh hang on, I didn't count Carmen when I did my calculations, because I didn't know she'd be coming. $670 each then, plus petrol. But I still don't think that Carmen will be able to come, realistically, if she's only just started her full-time goverment deparment job. That equals 1,613 pounds. Can you buy a good quality late 1990s van that seats 6 adults plus a huge amount of luggage for 1,613 pounds in London, English readers? Because these other girls think that we'll be able to, but I'm somehow doubting it greatly. Please, direct me to London used-car pages (do you have a standard newspaper that has a second-hand car-buying guide in it that I can look up online?) so I can prove to them that it is still better to hire rather than buy, even if hiring is just throwing money away.

So now we have established that we're leaving somewhere between February-April, we're hiring/buying a van to tour the UK, and then it was onto travelling around Europe after only 1 and a half hours of meeting. Italy, France and Switzerland were on the top of all lists except mine and Rose's, because we've already been to the 'normal' first-time-to-Europe places. I don't mind going there again, though, because I only spent one or two days in each place and like you can do Paris or Rome in just that short space of time. Top of my things to see list is Prague, and I'd love to go back to Berlin. Rose and I want to go to Eastern Europe, though, because it's cheaper and has some really gorgeous places. I think it's a bit safer and more touristy now than it has been (or is that my imagination?), and I'm dying to see Dubrovnik, Croatia. The others all had to leave then, leaving Rose, Katie and I. Rose (who I think could see how very little we had accomplished in this meeting) typed up what we had discussed and what we needed to discuss ("otherwise we'll spend all our time gossiping like normal"). I had tentatively floated the idea of doing a Topdeck tour (just go to www.topdecktours.co.uk and it's the one called the Grand European- I tried to put in the link but for some reason it won't work) of Europe - 28 days, all accommodation, transport, breakfasts, and 16 lunches and dinners for $3500 (1,410 pounds). No hassles or stresses, it includes all the places the others want to go, plus some Eastern Europe for Rose and I, and Prague for me and been shouted down earlier in the evening. Too expensive (I seriously think we'd be pushed to do Europe for a month for cheaper than that, and see everything everyone wants to see in the time frame), I don't want to be on a bus for so long (Felicity, who obviously has no idea that if we're on our own charted coach taking us directly where we want to go, it would actually be quicker than when we're catching buses around Europe ourselves that stop to pick up and drop of people at cities along the way), and 'what if we don't like it?' (Frieda, who wasn't placated when I suggested that you would have to be a pretty damn miserable person to not enjoy a whirlwind tour of Europe). When I broached the topic again to Rose and Katie, they were much more receptive. Rose in particular, once she saw the price, what it incorporated, and did her sums. She's very money savvy. Must be that commerce degree with four majors. And as Katie said "if this tour goes everywhere we want to go, it would be a good idea to do it". Finally. Voices of reason in the madness. Now all I have to do is pray that they stick by their tour desires (Katie especially is indecisive and non-commital about such small things like meeting up for lunch), and convince Felicity (that's going to be damn hard), who thinks that doing a tour will be like when we were dragged about on school excusions and we will be stuck on a bus permanently, Frieda, who has extremely limited funds and is worried that we'll pay all the money and hate it, and Carmen (who is probably the most anti-tour but what is the f****** point when she obviously isn't going to be able to go!!!!).

So that is where my life is at right now. Planning this trip is exciting, yet it is so totally exasperating, time-consuming, worrying and stressful already, and we've only just begun. I'm sure I've annoyed everyone already in just the one two hour meeting, by arguing against everything everyone else wanted to do. It doesn't bode well for two months of travelling!

I'M GETTING MY EYELASHES PERMED!!! Oh, and I'm coming to London!!!

2006-08-24T13:40:00.000+10:00

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!! I'm getting my eyelashes permed in one hour. So very, very excited. In actual fact, I may be a little bit too excited for the activity, even though I have never had my eyelashes permed before so it's naturally an exciting occasion. It could have something to do with the fact that it was confirmed beyond all doubt last night that next London spring will see me there for a little overseas jaunt.

So, I'm sure you want to hear all about it. Well, I didn't really know anything about eyelash perming until my friend Rose showed up at work with it done, and it looked great, so then I asked my own beautician . . oh, hang on, the COMING TO LONDON is actually far more interesting and exciting in fact, so anyway:

The travelling companions: all girls from work

Rose: worked with me for a couple of years, went off to be a flight attendant for some middle-eastern airline, then came back to us last year.

Frieda: nicest girl in the entire world, raised by her grandparents, cruely treated by ex-boyfriend and now with former south-african (been in Australia 4 years) law student/waiter with ridiculously rich family who worships the ground she walks on. Terrible at making decisions.

Felicity: fun but very much a 'group' person, young for her 21 years, also bad with the decision making.

Katie: tightest person with money I have EVER met - has a $90,000 inheritance, plus works two jobs and lives at home whilst studying, and unlike me who also did this for years, never spends any money. She hasn't had a haircut in like, 8 years, never visits the beautician, buys clothes once a year when she goes to Melbourne before Christmas to spend the money her mum gives her to buy her own pressies, and (this is the one that REALLY shits me) always eats BEFORE she goes out to dinner so all she'll have is some garlic bread, or bruchetta. Felicity and I have calculated that she simply must have at least $200,000, with her inheritance and 5 years of working nonstop and doing/buying nothing significant, not even a car). But essentially nice, just very, very tight with money.

Carmen: nice too, but one of those glass-half-empty people.

So anyway, Rose, Frieda and I had been talking about going over to Europe together 'next year' all year, but it was kind of all just talk, like, nothing definate, just nice daydreams as we set tables, took skirting off tables, that kind of thing. Felicity was planning on going to London this year for a few weeks by herself to visit a friend. As she can only stay with this friend for one week, and would then have to go live in a hostel, she heard us talking about our totally hypothetical trip and then decided that if we're going next year, then she'll wait for us to go because she doesn't want to stay in a hostel alone. Katie has always been going to go and live in London for a year, and work, and she's now decided that she'll go when we go, tour about with us then get a job, and Carmen is planning on having a full-time job in London for all of next year (she's already applied for a job at a place linked with her current place of work).

Last week Frieda said to me "when are we having a meeting to plan our trip? We'll have to start planning soon." I stared at her in astonishment and happiness. I had thought that all our talk would come to nothing, like so many of our talks had before. We decided to meet last night. I actually had no idea Carmen was going to come until she showed up at the meeting last night. I don't understand how she can get a fulltime job in this London department, work for three months and then nick off on tour for two months, then go back to work, but that's what she seems to be planning on doing.

We got hardly anything established last night, yet our 'hardly anything' was much more than I thought we would, given that there is SIX of us all with differing ideas and wants, and they are collectively the most indecisive group of people (barring Rose, she's a do-er like me), especially Felicity and Frieda. Planning going out for a casual dinner is usually a major undertaking for us.

We all want to go at different times. Rose in January, Katie in February/March, Felicity in March, Frieda doesn't know but whenever will be fine, and me in April. In vain, did I point out to them how miserably cold and dark it is in the UK during winter. Given that I have actually been there for winter before, and it was miserable enough in December when I was there at the beginnig of winter, you would think my words would have some weight, but apparantly not. I can't leave uni until March is over, so I just can't go any earlier. And it's not like they have to be in London in a specific month. They have just decided that April is too long to wait to go. I am rather annoyed because how much difference would it really make to them to leave three weeks later at the start of April rather than a week into March?

So we didn't resolve the issue of when to go. They all said 'well, we can go and you can catch up to us wherever we are,' which rather annoyed me because they think I'm just being obstinant and selfish about not going in March, and they can't see that I'm just not going to get permission to nick off to Europe during Summer, my fieldwork season when my buttongrass isn't underwater.

TO BE CONTINUED . . I'M GOING TO GET MY EYELASHES PERMED!!!

The Naturopath strikes and Mia strikes again!

2006-08-17T13:20:00.000+10:00

Greetings world. I am currently sitting at my desk enjoying a chocolate-coated teddy (this would be a very tasty biscuit, I am not attempting to shag a teddy with fur the colour of chocolate) with the heater on and the window open. I know, I know, for an environmentalist I have a) a very crap diet, and b) absolutely no regard for energy conservation. There is a reason for my disregard of the energy budget, and that is because my office smells very strongly like rotting apples. My officemate Mia has been away (yay, yay, yay) all month (alas, she is set to return today I think) in America. I only know this because I saw a flight itinerary on her desk when I deposited the cupcakes on it and with total disregard for her privacy and the unwritten laws of office-sharing I read it. You would think, wouldn't you, that something as big in your life as a trip to America where I guess she is presenting at a conference, because her conference posters have been removed from the walls of our office, would merit an excited mention to your officemate, but no, apparantly not. Anyway, enough bitching, the point of the story is that Mia has gone and left two dried out apple cores on her desk, and a wrinkly apple (there are also many prune pips, put there after she removed them from her mouth). Given that we have a little airless box of an office, the apple has been filling the air with apple-fumes which are quite strong when you first enter the room. They're quite bearable once you've been sitting in the office with it for a while (especially to someone such as myself who used to deal regularly for seven years with apples in such extreme states of decay they had actually liquified), but just in case I have any visitors I though I'd better open the window and air the place out a little. But it is cold so I have to have the heater on to compensate for the cold wind. Why not just remove the offending apple, I hear you ask. Well, that too would be a serious breech of the officemate's code, one from which I don't think we'd ever return, given our very tenuous forced pleasantries each day.

At the suggestion of my mother, who has a very srong belief in the healing powers of herbs (she swears by an infusion of thyme rinsed through the hair three times each week to stop grey hairs, and as she only has a few and she's 48 she might be right), I visited a naturopath yesterday in an attempt to find some natural remedy to rid myself of my continual ill-health which is seriously cramping my usually most full and entertaining life. My ill health began with pharengytis about 6 weeks ago, then some lovely thrush bought about by the antibiotics that cured the pharengytis, then some seriously painfull constant headaches and really bad pains in my neck and behind my ears, especially when I angled my head down in any way (sinuses maybe?). A visit to the doctor then confirmed I had the flu (flu vaccination therefore a total waste of time). Two days later another trip to the doctor confirmed flu, an ear infection, pharengytis and 'fluid buildup in my sinuses' or something to that effect. I then retired to bed for an entire week, and now almost a week after emerging I still have severe headaches and a runny nose, and now I'm beginning to get pains in my neck/behind my ears again when I tilt my head forward and am rather dreading this whole flu-thing beginning all over again. So, anyway, I took my catalogue of illnesses to the naturopath, who was a lovely woman probably not much older than me. She provided me with some vitamin C powder (side-effect is diahorrea, oh goody) and a personalised liquid herbal mixture, with many interesting things in it, including the stock-standard eccinatia and to my surprise oregano.

This herbal mixture has to be taken twice a day. It's a browny-greeny sludgy colour with an unpleasant smell, and you mix it in about 5 cm of water and down it goes. THEORETICALLY. Unfortunately, it tastes so absolutely terrible that I actually gag as I drink it. It takes all my courage to continue on after the first swallow, given that I have to drink it at the sink as I retch over the sink, coming extremely close to actually vomiting, streaming eyes and all. I have only taken it twice, and I don't know how I'm going to continue to take it for two weeks. I know, I know, I don't HAVE to take it. But I'm not getting any better and I'm sick of beig sick, and I can't afford any more time off uni, plus (priorities, priorities) I have a 13 hour party to attend next saturday night after working a really demanding function (11 pm - 12 noon, 3 bands, 2 DJs, $1 spirits and formal attire, what more could a girl want?) AND this concoction of satan cost me $33! So by God, I'm going to drink it! Although I am very, very scared and not sure I will physically be able to down it sometimes!

Wish me luck on my quest to vanquish the evil germs and overcome the noxious potion!

Cec :)

Don't you just love Dads?

2006-07-27T15:48:00.000+10:00

Bit of a mixed-bag post this time around. I'm heading off to try and buy the newly-released album by Lily Allen which has the most marvellous songs on it. That girl truly does rock. It's a little weird, too, to think that this London girl who has her own MySpace site www.myspace.com/lilymusic managed to get her song 'LDN' picked up by Triple J, the national Australian kind of 'alternative' radio station (alternative in that they do NOT play pop music, instead they play lots of Australian bands, and bands like Wolfmother, The Streets, Youth Group, get the picture now?) when the only place it was available was her myspace site (I think), and now her album which has only just been released, like, last Saturday (or maybe it's this saturday coming) is 'feature album' on Triple J and receiving heaps of airplay.

I attempted to build bridges with my officemate Mia this week. We still don't talk all day long, beyond, 'morning, how are you?' Then, on Monday morning, when I asked Mia how she was she said 'Oh, okay.' 'Only okay?' I inquire. 'You're usually good!'. 'Oh, I broke up with Dave last week.' 'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,' I responded, then we sat in silence for the rest of the day.

I know, what a pathetic response I gave her! But I honestly didn't know what to say! I don't know her very well at all, despite the fact that we sit in a room probably 4 x 4 m² together every day, and have done all year. We just don't talk. It was like we took an instant dislike to each other. I blame our past lives. We must have been bitter enemies. And what could I say, in the obvious face of her heartbreak, given that I have no idea who did the breaking up, and that they seemed to be absolutely devoted to each other and almost too soppily in love. They would talk on the office phone at least once a day, always concluding with declarations of how much they loved each other, they lived together and spent all their free time together, oh, and they had a pash-fest here in the office once with me sitting at my desk (walked out in disgust during that one). And he must have loved her heaps, because she doesn't shave under her arms (I have such great logic).

So, Monday night I sacrificed Desperate Housewives, Greys Anatomy and my sleep and whipped up two batches of cupcakes, one plain and one chocolate, and iced them in many different lurid shades topped up with coloured sprinkles, got up Tuesday and drove them into uni at 7.30am, left them on her desk with a note saying 'Nothing cheers a girl up like cupcakes, especially with lurid sprinkles) then drove the 30 mins back to my home suburb, dropped my car at the mechanics and walked home. Wednesday I arrived in our office and Mia thanked me and said how nice it was and how thoughful. And . . . then we went back to our same old sitting in silence. I guess some people just aren't meant to be friends.

Yesterday I had to drop my dad in at the hospital in Hobart. I hate driving with dad anywhere because he a) always criticises my driving - even if he doesn't say anything I can see him thinking bad things, and b) I have to talk to him. He has me captured, unable to escape. Good old Dad sparked up with telling me about some happenings at my old school, which my younger brothers still attend, which have resulted in my youngest brother and other members of his class having to give police statements (God, it was bad enough when I was there, but it's deteriorated so much since then - nothing like a good ol' private Catholic school). He then moved onto something which I had previously banned him from talking about, after one evening when we had a massive fight over it with lots of yelling and tears (on my behalf). Obviously he forgot about the ban. He opens with "I'm glad you started doing all this gym stuff. You were getting a bit lumpy."
Great. My own father tells me I was 'getting a bit lumpy'. I just adore being described as 'lumpy'.
'You've toned up around the hips and bum. You may have gained weight, but you've toned up. Can you notice?'
I have bemoaned on numerous occasions that since doing gym classes all year I've gained 5 kilos and weigh the most I've ever weighed in my life. I know that muscle weighs more than fat but having to admit to 60 kilos is darn difficult for me to do (I'm only 160 cm, just under 5'2).
'Great. Thanks dad. Just don't say anymore.'
'What? I'm paying you a compliment. Oh, you were never fat, none of you have ever been fat (referring to me and my brothers) or had any problem with your weight.'
'You just said I was lumpy!'
'Yeah, but you aren't anymore.'

And Dad still seriously thinks he was just 'pumping my tyres', as he puts it. Paying me a compliment about looking good and inspiring me to continue on at the gym. He relayed this conversation to mum, as he couldn't see why I was annoyed. She said it's a 'backhanded compliment'. But he's been banned again from commenting on my weight and my figure.