When Pads Attack!

Funny...standing in the stupidmarket queue on the way home from a long and draining day (starting with a bang, smash and tinkle - thanks for rear-ending me luvvie!), I noticed the couple ahead buying only a large block of chocolate and a packet of sanitary pads. I glanced casually to one side as I laid my own large block of chocolate and packet of pads on the conveyor belt. Beware, the full moon heralds the howl of bitches! Stand no-one in the way of their chocolate!

Fad NO# 11: The THIRD DIMENSION...

Op-shop score of the month... 3D Viewmasters a la the early eighties! Good old Savers, usually a bit self-aware and overpriced for my liking these days, but at four bucks a pop and with a wad of transparency cards, who can complain?! And a His and Hers pair, what's more! Had EXTREEEEM pleasure playing with them, and want to try making my own transparency cards to use in them... stay tuned for Stella 3D storywheels!

Fad NO# 10: STALKING

But it's not really stalking per se, scoping I like to think of it as. So I walked up to my new street with my new house and kinda stood outside for a while fantasising that I was coming home to it. Wandered my new neighbourhood, mentally tagging that cafe for Saturday morning breakfasts, that op shop for weekend rummaging, that organic butcher/post office/supermarket. Timed how long it would take me to get to my old haunts (15 minutes at a brisk walk! Very pleased!) as I am a creature of habit who fears and distrusts radical change. Er, yeah, yeah, I'm joking. I looooove change! I love it in small, measured, reasonable doses, with plenty of lead-time and lots of progress reports. Anyway, I just had to go check out the place again, to make it real, and confirm what I know to be a grand decision.
I am tres excited!

Fad No# 9: SHACKING UP!

Well, it seems my little reverse psychology with the universe has paid off! After telling the world (cos everyone on the planet reads my blog!) that we were going to be house-hunting foreverrrrr, we have a place! And, smugness of smugnesses, it's the best place ever! Ahh, I have become the "we" that I used to love to hate!
Now there's just a few weeks of mad packing and handing over great wads of cash to spotty adolescent estate agents and the like ... wheee!

Stella.....Stellaaaaa.....

Yes, Stella is revolting. She has got her own blog . She doesn't talk much, but she likes to post pictures of herself. Saucy. Not. But cute!

Hunter... or hunted?

Today was the beginning of the hunt. The house-hunt. The smarmy, foundation-caked receptionists handing out wrong keys, the clang of the hammer as each enquiry is met with the answer "It's been let, it's been let, it's been let". The "how do I dress up my income and previous employment and mother's maiden name and five year plan and every other skerrit of personal data they want into something different and desirable" brain-drain of the application form. The emotional rollercoaster of loving a house, then letting it free. Love it, let it free. But, it is after all, only the beginning. There may be many weeks of this turbulance... who knows WHERE I'll be living at the end of it! I have to remind myself that despite wanting to be with my partner, I am in no hurry. Some people are never so lucky as to have a share-house like my current home. It's a place where friendships are born. Germinating over bangers'n'mash, The Office, summer barbies, the gathering of one another's laundry as it begins to rain. Where is this lyrical waxing going? I know not! Where am I going? Abed, afore I asay something really astupid!

Fad No# 8: STUFF

Okay, once again I'm stretching the boundaries of my blog concept, trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. So when I say "Fad of stuff", what I REALLY mean is "Western society's obsession with product consumption". And I judge from within - I'm as guilty as the rest of them/us/you. Walking to work this morning I passed one of those billboard bus-shelters (rather, an undercover advert that also happens to be a handy place to hail a bus), advertising the leading MP3 player (no free advertising from ME, Steve Jobs!). I felt the weight of my own (dormant) iPod (Dang! I did it anyway!) swinging in my jacket pocket, and I suddenly thought, my god, so much stuff! Advertisers are constantly trying to tell us that we "need" the next new thing, but we say, "Oh no, you're not catching me out that easily! Ha ha!"
But then moments later, we find ourselves thinking, "You know, entirely unaffected by that big billboard over there, I have just independantly and of my own volition decided I really want and need one of those new Product X's." Like the classic addict, we could give up annnnny time we want to, we just don't want to. I have phases when I want nothing more than to throw all my worldly goods to the wind, and run away to the trees. Well, I still want to run away to the trees, but there're a few things I'd like to take with me... Just because I might aspire to a mud-brick shack with a pit-toilet, doesn't mean I am over the addiction.
I remember a time when the only people to have mobiles were high flying business men on TV, and they were probably called portable phones, and they were the size of a house-brick. I remember when you felt like a pretty bloody lucky spotty teenager if you had a Walkman to listen to your Top 40 radio mix tapes. I remember when we had to walk twenty miles to school in the snow, even in the middle of summer, with no shoes and through pits of snakes... yeees, times were better in the days before stuff.
So what am I saying here? Better to be time-rich and money-poor (easily said by a child of a safe middle-class upbringing!); things can't give you a hug at night; status anxiety is the new cancer (hmmm. A flippant and ill-considered metaphor. I'm a fan of those!)
And yes, it's ironic (I think... I never did quite get a full grasp on the concept of irony) that if it weren't for certain "stuff", this blog would never have happened (thank you, faithful little puter!)
So, yay for stuuuuff!

Health vs fitness - the dilemma!

I hate when you think you might be getting sick. Apart from the whole "this means I am now going to be sick" thing, there is the interruption to the flow of life in that vague am-I-aren't-I? phase, when everyone tells you you shouldn't do exercise because it makes the cold, in this case, worse and take longer to go. I wanted to go to the gym because I'm feeling a bit winter-porky, but now I'm instead sitting with a belly full of soup and a plan to go to bed by 9. Though I AM knackered, and the thought of my bed and book is so very nice! Ah, fuck it! What's a bit of winter chub?! I'll be glad of it if society crumbles into anarchy tomorrow (and it might... the weather forecast DID say light rebellion with a chance of anarchy.)!
On that utterly pointless and self-indulgent note... time for a cup of tea and a biscuit!

(WARNING: Schmaltzy content may offend some readers) Love is a four-letter word.

So is fear. And fall.
I never knew until now what it was to love someone this much, to actually feel for the first time ever that all the potential futures I barely dared to imagine can become reality. I never thought I'd look at someone and think "I don't ever want to be apart from you" or "I don't care what happens as long as we're together" (that is a dangerous sentiment... one should be careful what one wishes for...let it be known, Universe, that I am NOT daring you to present me with horrors on the proviso that I am with my loved one when they happen. I'd like no horrors, thanks!) (It sounds so corny, doesn't it? I'd have made spewing motions and retching noises a year ago!) But what amazes me is that in the midst of feeling happier than I ever have before, I find myself at my less rational times of the month, when reason is nowhere to be seen and raw emotion batters me in spasmodic waves, to be indulging in dystopian fantasies of betrayal, disinterest, heartbreak and loss. The higher you are, the farther you fall. And so, here I am, with my life at its very best, and consequently, so much to fear losing. I think I must be testing myself, saying, "okay, you're afraid of the worst thing happening? Well here it is! How does it feel? What about this version?! And this one?! Wham! Pow! Bam!"
It's a mad world, being a chick sometimes (or being THIS chick, anyways). You can step outside yourself and make an objective assessment, but ultimately you inhabit a place too messy and knotty to allow a clear view the bulk of the time.
I am trying to teach myself a new mantra though, a happier and more hopeful one;
Love is a four-letter word. So is home. And safe.

Fad No #7: TRIVIA NIGHTS (or, I'm not wearing my underpants on the outside tonight)

There was a period last year when I was VERY into the Trivia Night. A small core group of us used to go down to (insert generic local inner Melbourne pub here) for a weekly Triv night. There were a lot of other 20/30-somethings in little knots of light beer drinking Wednesday night cameraderie, whooping, whispering, covertly texting housemates and friends, battling it out for the free jug of beer and the peer kudos of being champions for the night. Our team consistently had (despite its variable team composition of friend of friend ring-ins) the name I'm Not Wearing My Underpants On The Outside Tonight, in response to another team by the name of The Caped Crusaders. We thought we were rather clever, and it pained the poor rent-a-quiz-master lady to announce our name each week, which gave us a flash of collective childish glee! I have mostly lost touch with that group now, but I miss the regular meet-up and the playfulness of the event, and the feeling that despite being a bit of an old lady party-pooper, I was still 'going out'. Oh, and the brain-flexing and thinky stuff. Me like thinky stuff real good.