Where am I?

Sydney, of course!

Love Chunks and I decided it was long past time for us to explore our country's capital city (we don't count Canberra) as genuine tourists.

We could easily excuse our open-hearted dagginess by telling our family and friends that "Oh, now that Sapphire's seven, she needs to see Sydney." And so did us oldies. LC and I had only ever been there for a couple of days on work trips and never together. As far as I knew, the place could have been full of rugby playing men with necks fatter than their heads and lost tourists still looking for the Olympic stadium, designed entirely by that taste-challenged artist Ken Done. By the way, his name is pronounced with a long 'Oh' as is stone. Not as in run - although it amuses a mind as simple as mine to think that he might have been teased at school with, "Ken's done a poo in his pants!"

But I digress slightly. We did all the sights - the bridge, the opera house, the AMP tower, Taronga zoo, ferry to Manly, Chinatown, Paddy's markets, aquarium, maritime museum, the rocks, the monorail, Hyde Park barracks and walked many, many kilometres. We were amazed at Sapphire's stamina which only flagged if an icecream/hot chocolate/opportunity to buy souvenirs wasn't dangled in front of her.

Other slightly less tourist-oriented sights included a pub punch-up on our way back from the ferry (no, Russell was home in Woolloomoolloo with his new baby); a woman being hauled by the shoulder through a crowded food-hall for shoplifting and Craig Reucassel from 'The Chaser' trying to harpoon Japanese tourists whilst wearing a dingy around his waist.

What was the highlight? Two, really. The first was catching up with my old mate, Deep Kick Girl (check out her blog: http://deepkickgirldownunder.blogspot.com/) and her fantastic family. She threw us into their people mover and showed us Bondi beach, lunch at Doyles, a sticky beak into the posh side of the harbour that shelters Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, dream homes in the docks and frequent playground stops for passengers seven years and under. We also had some Yum Cha in Paddington on our last day there where we tasted the new delights of a fresh mango and cream spring roll before dodging swan shit in Centennial park. (I mean the birds, not the footy players, although you never know.....)

The second highlight was perhaps a more spiritual one. The Lindt cafe. The only Lindt cafe in the world, and it happened to be in Sydney; a stone's throw away from that Boofhead David Kosh's studio at channel seven. It took us nearly 4km of walking to find it (we first headed towards their Australian offices), but I was determined - nay, driven - towards my own personal chocolate experience.

On the surface it may have seemed like an overpriced coffee shop selling tiny cakes at monthly mortgage payment prices but to me, it was a tiny, warm room full of beautifully wrapped chocolate balls of bliss. Naturally it was imperative that I sample all the balls not available in other stores - raspberry, cookies'n'cream, orange, mocha and peanut butter. Oh and have a slice of the Lindt mud cake of course.

My disappointment? Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I had heard so much about them and noticed how people would buy a box of 24 at the airport to take home to the uninitiated in Adelaide. We had a KK store around the corner from our hotel and I was at that counter quicker than you could say, 'This holiday is going to be about eating sensibly.'
"Two please - a choc whatnot and a glazed", I said, trying not to let my drool drip on the napkins. Blueegh - they were like eating a stale, fried bun with watery icing sugar spilt all over them. Give me a six pack of lurid pink-iced ones from Coles any day. Kacky Kreme was more like it.

Despite this setback, I bravely fought on and lived to eat another day. For Sapphire the highlight was seeing Deep Kick Girl's son, Will, whom she immediately held hands with and skipped off with on both days whilst simultaneously looking for something to spend her pocket money on. "Oh look Mum - how about this?" she asked many times, showing me a plastic model of the opera house spray painted in reflective gold. "Or this" - a koala bear improbably straddling a snowdome of the harbour bridge. "Aw please Mum, I've gotta get something," she pleaded. Sapphire's depiction of the harbour. Poo Bum Bugger Off, Ken Done! I relented, forcing myself to remember what a pleasure it had been for me to find and buy my own treasured souvenirs on family holidays. The collapsible cup from 'The Big Banana', a pink flag with 'Gilltrap's Yesteryear World' emblazoned in yellow; and, it's shameful to admit, a snowdome of Mt Gambier's Blue Lake. Sapphire ended up with a pink t-shirt (OK), a glittery blue plastic 'Sydney aquarium' mug (non-dishwasher, non-microwave, non-scourer safe and not guaranteed to hold liquids safely - not OK) and the boxed shower cap from our hotel (oh well, at least it's practical). As for Love Chunks and myself, it was about just seeing things. Walking around, not trying to pretend that we belonged, but instead not giving a hoot if we looked stupid as we stopped in the middle of the streets and looked up at the architecture or out to the sea. Blithely forgetting about the high prices of transport, food and drink and just feeling relaxed and entertained. Sharing a two-double bed hotel room with Sapphire and being able to watch her sleep and study her beautiful, little face. Without knowing it at the time, it was Sapphire herself who was the most amazing sight of all - when will I ever wake up in the morning and not be dazzled by her?

My one and only dietary rule

.... is this: One good food eaten immediately before or after a bad food will completely eradicate the bad.

Oh don't pretend that you don't understand my logic; we all do it: inhale a king-sized KitKat chunky and follow it with an orange. Ta Da, you've eaten nothing! The vitamins, minerals and overall goodness of the fruit has effectively cancelled out the evil fats, sugars and carbs of the chocolate.

If those poor, award-wage, fifteen year old whopper wallahs at Hungry Fats and Maccas got a cent for every person who ordered a diet coke with their Whopper/Double Quarter Pounder/Large Fries/Triple Fudge/Finger Lickin'/Deep Dish/ Fully- Fried Meal Deal deluxes, they'd be kicking James Packer out for not being wealthy enough.

I know that I'm not the only Foolish Foodie Hypocrite in this world - that diet coke tap isn't on constant drip for my purposes only you know. Last week I was joining my workmates at our uni cafe for morning tea, and Helen ever-so-helpfully pointed out to the others my pick-me-up of choice: a skinny latte accompanied by two melting moments. Yes, those pesky three grams of milk fat were to be avoided like a department store bra fitting if I was to fully appreciate my 50% butter biscuits.

Another method of using this food combining, self-delusional dietary system to your advantage - especially when time is of the essence and your cravings are not to be ignored - is to incorporate both the good and the bad in the same food item.

The berry flan is one such notable item. It is ridiculously easy to order a hefty slice of this delightful dessert, saying something out loud to your friend like, "Ooooh, fresh berries, my favourite! I'll definitely have this one!". Never mind that said fruits are only a stingy layer covering up a brick-thick wedge of creme-laden, full-fat cheesecake which again rests on top of the butter'n'biscuit base. That's just what we all need - the calorific content of the biscuits to be doubled by crushing them up and resticking them together with butter.

But hey, you had at least three mouthfuls of berries, didn't you?

Another personal favourite is the Sunday roast. It all looks and sounds so good in theory: delicately roasted meats (with the fats dripped off onto the rack underneath) and an array of delicately steamed and oven-cooked vegetables. All of which is immediately cancelled out by the salty, oily and delicious gravy that is poured over your plate until no colour is visible except brown. Made entirely from the fats swimming in the bottom of the roasting dish of course. However, you need to remind yourself - you did eat three brussels sprouts and half a parsnip, didn't you?

As I write this, I am using this theory in relation to beverages, alcoholic ones in particular. My gin and (of course) diet tonic is strictly medicinal because the fresh lemon juice in it is helping my current bout of the sniffles. I'm not the only one in our household who likes to cling precariously to this threadbare theory. My darling Love Chunks has frequently argued that the 'a glass of red wine per day' is good for the heart; plus it's chock-full of grape juice. What more could a hard workin' family man ask for. (Apart from a Jennifer Aniston and Angeline Jolie menage-a-trois inside his million dollar marlin fishing yacht of course, but that's another story I'm not about to examine any further.....).

Naturally, as I endure another episode of 'Dancing on Ice', a two-hour tack-fest featuring the cream of channel nine's loosely labelled 'celebrities' live on TV tonight with seven year old Sapphire, I will again be applying my theory to well-intentioned martyrdom - ie, the fat content of the four rows of Cadbury Caramello I will undoubtedly inhale will be nullified by the sheer good will and unselfish parental act of seeing Dermot Brereton in tight orange pants and hair that a transsexual pornstar would envy.

In closing, I address the final, most important issue - does my daring dietary theory actually work? I'd like to think so, at least in my very own MillyMoo Land. In hard, cold reality however, I still seem to have an arse big enough for midgets to shelter under during rainstorms.

That'll be for you

I hate answering telephones. This is a bit of a worry really, seeing as it encompasses a major part of my day job.

Maybe that's why, when the phone rings at home, I do my utmost answering it. It doesn't matter that it's likely to be someone I know, love, like and have been dying to hear from, I hate the bloody phone. That grey, plastic, chirruping machine that insists on interrupting my free time at inopportune moments, requiring me to respond to its summons like a drone.

The overseas marketing call has now reached plague proportions here in Australia and has done a great deal of damage to the already tenuous willingness to answer the phone. You can tell straightaway - a fuzzy sound, several seconds pause, and a strong Indian accent saying, "Helloooo, is that Mrs...?" The only time I ever get called "Mrs" is in the doctor's waiting room or by a telemarketing maggot.

The old cliche of a woman on the phone to her mates for hours and hours seems very outdated to me. My friends are more likely to see the phone as another chore on their never-ever-completed list of things to do around the house - none of us see an hour long chat after 8pm as something fun. A few of us - myself included - have admitted that we sometimes purposely call when we know that the person is not likely to be at home. This enables us to leave a brief but useful message on the phone without the lingering chitchat we'd all desperately like to avoid.

Sapphire, at age seven, is still quite happy to answer the phone and is more than willing to stop what she's doing to run towards the chirruping. Bless her sweet, still-mostly-innocent and helpful little heart. I guess it's only a matter of a few years between the childish exuberance of now to when all of the phone calls will be for her anyway.

The hours between 5:00pm and 8:30pm are when we are at our most frenetic. This is when the after school - bathtime - dog feeding - meal cooking, eating, cleaning up, dishwasher packing - lunch next day making - tidying up - sorting through the mail - putting out the rubbish - watering the plants - jobs are completed - all done in order to spend the rest of our waking hours relatively inert and quiet. Therefore, after the 8:30pm deadline that is Sapphire's bedtime, my desire to be in any way sociable is completely non-existent. I would much rather be on the lounge, watching a DVD or hoping that 'Spicks and Specks' is on; that Love Chunks has filled my glass with a zesty cab sav and we have a plate full of snapped chocolate squares between us. Bliss, sheer bliss and completely deserved.

Of course, that is when the f***ing phone decides to make itself heard. And it is then, that Love Chunks and I end up having a kind of verbal tousle over who has to get up and answer it:
"While you're up...."
"Nah, it's never for me, it'll be your brother...."
"I'm in the middle of something here, can you get that?"
"I answered it last time!"
Thankfully, we both win and lose on relatively equal occasions, but it's still gives me a tiny thrill when it is LC who sighs dramatically, reluctantly puts down his glass and slouches out to the kitchen.

When I've lost the Who Answers the Phone battle, the irony is that, when it's been quickly established that the call is indeed for me and is from someone I like, I am mostly happy to have a chat. But not for an hour. Instead, my conversations tend to run for five to ten minutes, with a "And I'll email you the details, OK? See you on Sunday!" because I'm exhausted.

Baby boomers have written and commented on us Gen X-ers not participating enough in weeknight sports, committees and social groups. Well spotted old-timers, but there's a reason for that - we don't want to. We've worked hard all day, done a few more hours of parental and housework duties and don't want to go out to play volleyball, take the minutes for the school grounds committee annual general meeting or sit in a noisy pub drinking stupidly over-priced drinks and feeling about as fashionable as halitosis.

No - that's why we have comfy couches, surround-sound DVDs, flatscreens, wine, chocolate, warm cuddly dogs and heating systems! We'll work harder and earn more in order to donate dollars to various causes, but be buggered if we're going to give up our precious 8-11pm windows of relaxation time on Tuesday nights to wrap up 600 lucky dip items in newspaper at the school gym in order to raise an extra $20.

If that sounds harsh, well so be it. It's the truth. Besides, it's a different story on the weekends - that's when are are at school sporting events, taxi-ing kids to birthday parties, hosting play dates, having dinner parties, going for walks/bike rides/picnics and shopping. That's why, when Monday rolls around, we need a break from it all by staying inside and ignoring the phone.

The gauntlet has been thrown ....... ......in response to my recent scathing observations of current Aussie campus fashions, FlauntIT said: "hey! don't pick on us, what did U wear in the 80s?! Or R U still wearing it now..." Never mind the fact that her writing style reveals that SMS is more her modus operandi than typing out words in full, she has a point. What did I wear in the eighties and am I still wearing it now? Firstly, please be kind - I'm bearing my sartorial SOUL here - warts and all, at a time from 12-22; quite simply the most awkward decade of anyone's life. Let's start with 1980. I had only turned 12 in November that year and if you squint you'll see that my school photo reveals my very first zit (on the chin). I was rollerskating around our house with my homemade walkman (a tinny transister radio duct-taped to an old belt), listening to 'Dreamin'' by Cliff Richard; 'You can't stop the music' by the Village People; 'Shandi' by Kiss and 'Super Trouper' by Abba. My album of choice was 'Full Boar', a greatest hits compilation that featured a tasteful cover photograph of a dead pig's head wearing cushion-sized headphones. I was twelve remember and, as you can see, was fully prepared to buy into my country town's fashion at the time - cord Levi's, desert boots (the 'cool' stitched ones, not the plastic soled, tucked in K-Mart Jobs), a v-neck and skivvy. Even in this outfit I managed to snag a boyfriend that year, although I suspect it was mostly due to the very brief running shorts that I used to get around in during PE that did it. And the fact that our 'relationship' was mostly conducted by ignoring each other entirely. In 1983 I was 14-15 and you can see that Princess Diana had a big impact on my hairstyle. I was lucky enough to retain my childish blonde colour and spent at least, oh, two minutes every morning perfecting the flick-fringe. Having a compulsory high school uniform was actually a blessing I'd rather die than admit to - it was only on the last day of term, known as 'Casual Day' than my friends and I would be thrown into a frenzy of indecision as to what to wear - Smile jeans? Nah, too slutty. Corfu baggies? Too 1982. Kiaks? YES. Stupid-looking yes, but everyone was wearing them: that was all that mattered. I watched 'Countdown' every Sunday without fail as it was vital to be able to contribute to the post-show discussions at Monday recess time. Favourite bands/songs were Madness (anything), 'Just got Lucky' - JoBoxers, 'Come said the Boy' - Mondo Rock and Huey Lewis and the News' 'Sports' tape. Yes, tape, that I proudly played on my inbuilt tape and one-speaker mono combo. On a 2 week drama camp for students from each school in South Australia, I met - and fell rather heavily for - Patrick D. We snogged rather awkardly after rehearsals, and, like 1980, studiously ignored each other during the day. A few even more awkward letters were swapped when we were safely back in our home towns, but oh, that special night at the Hindley Street McDonalds!! At the end of 1984, I had reluctantly bought into the Wham-Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, fluoro orange colour combo, but was not prepared to wear a 'Choose Life' t-shirt. I did get my fringe frosted a bit which was incredibly out there for a Goody Goody like me. (How could I not be a Goody Goody - my Dad was a teacher at my town's only high school and I threw up when I finally drew back on a cigarette at 14). Howard Jones, Madness (still), The Police, Billy Idol, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were much played and even last year's Flashdance still got a spin on the turntable in the family room. Panelled denim jeans also arrived and I thought that they were designed just for large-arsed, thunder thighed gals like me - you could have been any shape or size in those parachutes for godssake....! Favourite movies of course included Sixteen Candles, Class and a movie called Risky Business that featured a rather cute little chap...... No boyfriends for me that year - I had got into that 'the boys here at my school are soooo immature' phase and had last year's 'Ghost of Patrick' to pretend I was already taken. In 1985 I was fully committed to perming my hair and preferred to wear accessories that were - *sigh, blush blush* pale pink or blue - a combination that I stuck with for the entire decade. I scored my first real boyfriend (luckily omitted from this picture of our end-of year-12 Senior Ball) and studied for matriculation to the sounds of Midnight Oil, V Spy V Spy, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, The Angels and Oingo Boingo. My mono had been replaced by a double tape Sanyo stereo with equalizer and detachable speakers. Coloured gold baby, gold. It was the possession I was most proud of - at least until I married Love Chunks a decade later. Despite many visits to the hairdresser and much teasing in the bedroom (of the follicular kind, not the sexual kind), my quest for Big Hair was never very successful. However, on reflection the photos show that it was definitely big enough. As for the dress, well, what can I say - it was some kind of bridesmaid cast-off that I thought looked absolutely beautiful at the time, and ensured that my blue mascara and frosted eyeshadow did it justice (I'm not yet strong enough to comment on the hair or the shoes or the tennis tans on my arms) By 1987, my second year at uni, my hair resembled a deep fried packet of Two Minute Noodles, and I'm wearing my very favourite baggy shorts that I used to pine for when they were whirling around in the washing machine. Songs played at this 21st BBQ party were made from my tapes - Nothing too Serious by Icehouse, ROCK in the USA by John Couger Mellencamp; Love Shack - B52s and, sadly, pretty well anything with a tempo that is still flogged to death on adult FM radios. It was fresh then, but now has all the zest and originality of a day-old vegemite sao. This ensemble seemed to attract penniless geology students, flashers in the park ("I want a meal, not a snack" was what my friend was brave enough to say when it happened to her a day later), hard-hearted navy draftsmen and weird dancers - all of which I'd considered quite acceptable!

Here I am, all tarted up in my Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction get-up for the 1988 Lincoln College 'hop' - that year themed as 'The Movies.'

I saw my ex-boyfriend of three years hook up with girl he married a few years later, whilst I fended off some guy who was dressed as the priest from the Exorcist and picked me a bunch of flowers from the sour sobs he found in the park.











Finally, at decade's close, 1989, the ANZ bank somehow (rather hopefully) decided to employ me as a graduate trainee - obviously thinking that Major English texts and Roman Art & Archaeology majors would come in handy when drawing up home loans.

Huge t-shirts tucked into high-waisted long shorts paired with sockless sneakers were all the rage then, but it wasn't fun pulling off the shoes at the end of an active day. Still, this get up impressed a co-worker (even though he took me to see Rodney Rude at the Norwood Footy Club on our first night out!); an accounting student and another geology guy (you should never meet blokes via one of your female friends).

Dad found me Rodney - born 1971, and considered a good buy at $500 cash eighteen years later. I guess he was - Dad could rest easy knowing that the 'Rod was unable to crank up any faster than 80km an hour, and I had the comfort of knowing that my 'flying turd' would never be lost in the crowd at the supermarket carpark.

The bugs stop here

Do you thirty-somethings out there remember, way back in our primary school days, that if a kid got headlice (nits) then their social life was officially over?

Having NITS at my school was an absolute no-no; only the 'stinkies' of the class got it and were mercilessly teased for this misfortune. It is of course all too easy to look back at those unfair judgements on kids who had no choice about being poor/ill-treated/smelly/abused/nit-infested, but it did seem that only those kind of kids attracted the lice.

These days it's a vastly different story. Sapphire's school is constantly under seige from the little buggers (pun intended) and I've had to hose down her mortified Grandmother a few times and reassure her that the nits of the new millennium are like Paris Hilton - completely unfussy about where - and with whom - they sleep.

At least, I hope so, because my little girl was colonised by the creepies five times last year and three times this year (so far). During each outbreak the same, much-photocopied newsletter gets sent home in the childrens' schoolbags - lines so toner-smudged the hand-drawn diagram of a lice resembles an elephant, but the message is still easily read: Lice are not fussy about clean or dirty hair, nor do they differentiate between hair colours, styles, lengths, thicknesses or parental income categories.

Keeping hair up is recommended, as is spraying in mousse or hairspray as this tends to put off the beasties. (Perhaps they're repelled by their version of acid rain in the forests). All well and good, but Sapphire keeps her hair clean, puts it up into piggy tails and I regularly spray it with 'Hair Lice Prevention Serum'. Perhaps they got the labels wrong, because her little 'ol head seems to draw the nits in like stoners to Woodstock: "Heeey man, we've finally found it - the golden forest maaaan!"

It is with great sadness that I admit to being somewhat of an expert on head lice now. Manys the time Love Chunks' and my hopes have been dashed when Sapphire's unwanted head-guests reappear after being slathered in green, stinking head gunk: this stuff may get rid of the actual lice, but the eggs are welded on to those hairs. No amount of sudsy pino-clean is going to get rid of them, oh no, it's not that easy. Instead, you have to put your child's head under a lamp, and pick through their hair - quite literally - with a fine toothed comb. The eggs are about as big as an ant's arse and being coloured whitish grey they're bloody hard to find in Sapphire's golden blonde hair.

Each egg has to be individually gripped by two fingernails and meticulously dragged off the hair shaft before being flung with digust into a tissue. Try doing this fifty times (after combing out the bodies of twenty five fully hatched lice) and you'll end up with a crying child suffering from neck-ache and a parent who goes to bed with lice dancing insolently before her eyes.

Last night, Sapphire woke up moaning and scratching at midnight. "Mum! M-u-u-um, I'm itchy! I think they're back again!" Put it this way: leaning up tiredly against the bed picking through Sapph's hair at 1am before changing her sheets and pyjamas is not situated too close to 'I'd like to shag John Cusack' on my life's Wish List.

Today, as I sat here at my desk in the orrible orifice, the hair over my ears started to rustle. Then itch.... It quickly spread to the back of my neck and the top of my head and my hands were flaying about like Peter Garrett's - surely I hadn't got them as well? What was I going to do - Love Chunks was away in Melbourne for the week and I was pretty confident that my boss, Queen B, wouldn't be too keen to sift through my head with her red and blue pens.

Luckily - at least for me, not her - my buddy Jill was having her very first day at work in another research team downstairs. As I nervously opened the door to her office, I could see that she was in that First Day of Work Hell mode - perching next to the job-leaver's desk, face aching from smiling and nodding and trying to look as though she understood everything and that it was all incredibly interesting. In addition, she was taking over Debra's role, whilst Debra was on leave. Debra's idea of helpfulness was to feign a migraine, or to put up her hand and shout "That's not my job - go and see blah blah" yet she was always the first at the coffee and cake mornings gabbing on about how incredibly busy she was. As a result, she was about as popular as halitosis - the entire building couldn't wait to see the back of her.
"Um, excuse me Debra, Jill.... Could I see you, Jill outside for a minute? There's something urgent I need to discuss with you. We'll be right back, Debra."

"Help me!" I hissed between my teeth, over-smiling at a boffin passing by. "My head is itching like crazy - I think I've caught Sapphire's nits!"
Bless her sweet, kind heart, she didn't show one hint of being worried about catching them herself or passing them on to her own three children. Instead she ferried me off to the toilets and had me lean over with my hands on my knees for support. No pens even, just her hands - is that true friendship or what?
"Hmmm, let me see..... Yep, there's Mum and Dad! Well, they're now squashed, dead and in the bin..... They've been busy though, laying quite a few eggs.....," and she picked out every single one.

"Thanks Jill, I owe you one. Er, not lice, I mean, a favour." I washed my hands and noticed that she wasn't. "I think you'd better wash your---"
"Nah," she cut in. "Debra's driving me nuts - maybe I should pat her on the head in a gesture of thanks for her superb handover."

There was a tiny bit of karma for Jill unfortunately - one of her kids got worms that night - but thank god they don't have to be individually sought and picked out of their bottoms!

My 'Orrible Orifice

I hate my office. Yes, my office, or 'orifice' as I'm starting to regard it - I hate it!

My lovely boss, Queen B, and I have to share an office that was, up until six months ago, the second floor ladies toilet within the heritage-listed building.

Here in Australia, anything that is 'heritage listed' is to be treated with reverence because, apart from some Aboriginal cave paintings that are 60,000 years old, we don't have anything older than 150 years in these parts. Hell, even my 10 year old station wagon is considered vintage. As such, the building I work in looks absolutely beautiful from the outside... but is a shocking mess on the inside - weird floor levels, poky servants' rooms, unnecessarily high ceilings, a widows' walk that's sealed up, kitchen only a doorway wide etc.

All this 19thC frippery-that-must-be-retained means that sensible things like decent office rooms, clean toilets, functioning kitchens and windows are not possible. Because our office was recently the girls 'Drops and Plops' room, the windows are five feet from the floor, thus preventing us from looking outside when we're sitting at our desks trying to remember our inter-library log ons.

Despite the lack of view, we do get regular sightings of Dean, the builder, who is regularly sanding, painting, blasting, washing or setting up scaffolding right outside Queen B's window. We get a hint that he's about to appear when we see a diet coke on the sill, followed by a fragrant puff of cigarette smoke and a burp. "Darren! Dazz, where the f**k are the rivets? No, not those you meat head, those ones, down there!" It's a darned shame he's not a looker because we are regularly treated to close-up views of his beer gut squished up against the glass when he's wrestling with the 'stupid f**ken gutters'.

The mens' toilet, however, is still on our floor and right next door. The room is tiled from floor to ceiling with only one cubicle and a wall-length metal trough/urinal. This means that it is perfectly equipped to provide the best acoustics: good enough to break through our walls and treat us to the sounds of, ahem, ablutions, grunts, farting and tuneless whistling. Just the stuff for accompanying our thorough proof-reading and editing efforts!

To make matters even more annoying, the heater conked out on Monday. This may not sound too dramatic for a climate as temperate as South Oz, but with record -1C overnight temperatures and only 10C daytime maximums, it was freezing. The entire building was out and we all spent the day walking up and down the stairs with our shoulders up around our ears, trying not to shiver uncontrollably. My hands were too numb to use the keyboard properly, so a lot of my emails that day started with: hoafduar hwoerue qoeirndx..... Probably made a bit more sense, and may explain the increase in xxx-rated spam I've been getting.

And yesterday, there was another nail in the coffin that is this 'orrible orifice' - an unidentified smell. No, it wasn't Dogadoo's now dried-up puddle from last week's visit, but it's a sort of lingering, dead-rat-under-the-stairs kind of smell that's probably been mercifully toned down a bit by the lack of heating. However, just five minutes ago I had some visitors up here, who, judging by their wrinkled noses and quizzical looks at me, could also smell it. Concern for my own reputation for acceptable hygiene overtook my professional maturity and I immediately blurted out with, "It's not me, I didn't pop off - it's starting ponging like this since yesterday - this office is haunted!" I'm not sure that they believed me, but the phrase 'orifice' is starting to become more and more appropriate.

I'd send an online request (as per their instructions) to campus maintenance to investigate the problem, but of course I can't. Why because our server is down, and the printer connections to our building have decided to take a flex day and leave for sunnier shores. Not being able to email, surf or print has unfortunately provided me with more time to fixate on the increasing odour and develop a strong urge to open Queen B's window and push Dean off the ladder.

Luckily for me (and Dean), I've just been summonsed to a morning tea - with chocolate cakes!

Clothing or Comedy?


These photos (courtesy of Melbourne's 'The Age' newspaper) were recently taken at some fashion shows in Milan. I'm departing from my normal 'Take Cheap Shots at the Famous' fashion-wearers and am instead now flinging poo-pats at the fashion designers.

Firstly, how old is this kid - ten, eleven? How is this Milly-Molly-Mandy going to convince me to buy a tacky tanktop and white overalls? What buyer is the designer aiming for - paedophile puppeteers?














Ah, I see, it's irony: instead of revealing black roots ala Pamela Anderson, let's put an obvious Pepe Le Peuw white stripe down the model's head!

The see-through, sheer t-shirt may be just (squeezing fingers) this side of acceptable in Fashion Victim Valley, but I just can't see myself strolling through university to greet a visiting professor wearing this ensemble any time soon.

Besides, if I went braless from her age (let's be generous and say she's fourteen), I'd now be able to fling 'em back over my shoulder like scarf ends.










In this photo, it is the model and not the clothes that first attract (pitying) attention. The headband is clearly too tight for her noggin, making her not only cross eyed but only serving to cruelly pull her nipples up towards her collarbones.

Weird breasts aside, this macrame over a g-string outfit is something a porn star with burst implants would wear on holiday, not a normal person who still elects to have eyes that are fully operational and is able to stare straight ahead instead of being permanently focussed brow-wards in a futile attempt to find living grey matter behind the bone......

Thank you, fashion designer, for coming up with something I'd be so proud to wear in front of my parents.





I know I blogged only a few days ago that I've taken to enjoying a session of knitting or three, but a bathing suit....?!

Bless her sweet heart though, she must have insisted on using 100% Australian wool and has therefore saved costs by using a child's pattern.

This just screams "I'm a micro-biology professor, please take me seriously" doesn't it?





Designed clearly for Bad Hair Day sufferers, the intention behind this - unfortunately titled - Pearl Face Necklace - is to draw attention away from said follicular tragedy and towards the bigger tragedy that is the victim's willingness to wear it.

The fake orange rose buds perched on top of the head also help to add that extra 'something' to its overall stupidity. Still, I could be laughing on the other side of my face (what does that mean, anyway) if all the other mums at my daughter's school are wearing this on Sports Day.

The strapless thingy is, well, marginally better than the pearls - at least Grandma's old deckchair cushions have found a new home.

Never work with a dog....

....and I'm not even considering working with children.

It has been a very quiet couple of weeks at me for me, staff-wise. Everyone's been flying away to conferences, seminars, workshops, focus groups, keynote speeches or report launches in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra and I was stuck in my horrible little office, alone.

Busy, but alone. One day I noticed an elderly lady lecturer - and possessor of the grandest office in our heritage listed building - hobble in with her dog, a fluffy white thing with only it's tongue distinguishable from its fur. "Oh yeah," Karen noted as she walked by, "Prof D brings her in all the time. The dog just sits at her feet until he gets a walk around the campus."

What a lovely idea, I thought. Whilst my boss - and fellow office-sharer, Queen B, was away, why not bring my gorgeous Dogadoo in for the day? I mean look at her - the corgi mix ensures that she's well behaved, gentle and fond of long naps in the beanbag. The jack russell side is kept for 6km runs, ridding our garden of birds and chasing any balloons that Sapphire chooses to inflate. What could go wrong - she'd love it!

I checked my diary for the following day - only two meetings, both with people I knew well and could be trusted with my little furry secret. It felt so naughty and so thrilling - a sensible 37 year old mum sneaking her pet dog into her workplace!

At 8:30am, the wee beastie and I walked across the campus. Dogadoo was most impressed with the creek running through and the smells at the base of each beautiful gum tree. She even got a few friendly pats from students as we passed. Inside, we snuck up the rickety stairs whilst I prayed that her jingling collar wouldn't arouse the suspicions of any egg-heads already inside. As I shut the door to my tiny space, I giggled like a mischievous school girl. "Alrighty then - I'll just lay your blanket on the eames chair (yes, that's right, EAMES) and you can curl up beside me, OK?"

Apparently not. Unlike home, which has been thoroughly investigated with the result of every single nook and cranny being catalogued for smell, taste, touch and sight, the office (roughly the size of a female toilet, which it was up until six months ago) desperately needed to be investigated. The two rubbish bins, pot plants, kettle, filing boxes, bookshelves and the moth-eaten rug were very carefully sniffed. "No Dogadoo, don't chew the mat - sit DOWN!" She gave her melodramatic yawn and reluctantly sat in the chair, sulking.

Not too long after, one of the boy boffins needed to use the male loos that are right next door. "OOF! OOF!" Dogadoo barked, looking pleased at her gatekeeping abililties.
"Sssssshhhhh...!!!" As if me with bugged-out eyes and a finger to my lips would make any impression on her walnut-sized brain.

Who could blame her. Queen B and I had heard every male drop and plop since we'd moved in, and considering that Dogadoo's nasal and aural talents are in the region of 20 times greater than ours, the two minute twinkle happening beyond the wall was impossible to ignore. "OOF OOF!" I braced myself for the door to be flung open with an accusatory "What the hell....?" but it never eventuated.

Dogadoo settled down, let out a fragrant fart to remind me of her presence and all was well for a few minutes. Then Nik arrived - Knock Knock!
"OOF OOF OOF!" He slid the door open in surprise and in a nano-second had his swanky black suit covered from the knees down in dog lick and orange hairs. "Oh god, I hate dogs, please Milly Moo, I just can't---" he beat a retreat down the stairs.
"Wait Nick! Sorry, just wait there! I leave her inside and we can have a chat downstairs if you like."
He nodded, looking very shocked and pale. "It's just that I didn't expect it, and I was once bitten and...."
Great. Despite this hiccup, we had our meeting and I ventured back up the stairs - Dogadoo was standing in the middle of the room with a reproachful 'Why did you lock me in' expression on her face that was only betrayed by her wildly wagging tail.
"Hey there," I crooned, "Want to go outside for a little scamper?"

We got back upstairs in time for my meeting with Jo but with no time to disguise the clearly canine footprints on the carpet. Now, I knew that Jo is a huge dog fanatic because her screen saver has over 150 photos of Cooper the Rhodesian Ridgeback. Her fiance, Gavin, features in just two of those photos, on the side. As soon as she saw Dogadoo her budget files were dropped near the chair and she was on the floor, cuddling Milly like a teddy bear: "Ooooh hello there, you are sooooo cute!"

Somehow, we got our end-of-financial-year budget queries sorted out, with Dogadoo sitting herself right in the middle of us, looking upwards and taking it in turns to lick each of us. "Oh it's been so lovely to meet you, Dogadoo," Jo purred, scratching D's ears. "Oooo I wish I could borrow you for the rest of the day." In a way she already had - her once-immaculate black cashmere jacket and matching pants were now orange with Dogadoo hairs in a rather good imitation of a human lamington. It's doubtful that Jo either noticed or cared though.

Oh dear, as Jo left I saw it - the wet patch right by Queen B's desk. "Oh Dogadoo - you went half an hour ago, why did you have to do that??"
Jo nearly fell down the stairs. "MillyMoo, I've had a lot of different meetings but this is the first one where someone has whizzed in the corner."
"Ah, if only I could say the same thing."

After cleaning it up, I decided to drive Dogadoo home at lunchtime. Hopefully it will dry out by Monday when Queen B returns and we when move to our new offices a week after that, I'll put the wastepaper basket on top of it.

Ummmmm Mum? Mum? I really need to go outside now, unless you want some brown nuggets to go with the puddle here? Mum?

Knit for brains

Have you ever sat at a kitchen table or bench and absent mindedly started typing out something invisible with your fingers? This tends to happen to me when I'm on holiday and away from the trusty laptop: my hands yearn to get at a keyboard and write.

Sadly, my digits are aching for another activity that is far less commonplace in our techno-geek world. They want to knit. All the time. Even now, as I'm typing, my two pointer fingers are still both tingling from the woolly work-out they got at lunchtime. Yet those sixty minutes of needle-clacking bliss is not enough to satisfy them.

I blame my daughter, Sapphire, for introducing me to this world of annoying addiction. Her class recently made their own sets of wooden knitting needles and the inevitable newsletter was put out to parents to donate some wool for their learning efforts. This I was happy to do - I just threw a dozen balls of brightly-coloured wool into my basket when I was last at K-Mart (buying shoes, but that's too shameful to write about right now).

A week or two later, she brought hers home to show Love Chunks and myself. It wasn't bad for a seven year old and I innocently asked: "Sapph, I remember my mum teaching me how to knit when I was ten or so, but I've completely forgotten how to now. Would you mind showing me?" What fateful words they turned out to be. I sat there, enthralled, as she showed me how to start - something I'd never learned, my mum always had to kickstart my woolly creations - and it felt like getting back on that proverbial malvern star (bike to non-Aussies).

Perhaps my nimbleness can be attributed to years of keyboarding and associated dexterity, but for some reason my hands took to knitting like starlet to a boob job. Even Love Chunks commented about it: "Quite the handy little knitter, aren't we?" as I sat next to him, needles clacking during the Crows vs St Kilda. Ignoring his sarcasm, I actually said these words in response: "It's nice to keep my hands occupied in front of the telly." What have I become, seventy five years old with an arthritic poodle and matching chin hairs?

Sadly, my actual product resembles something that a seven year old would do, no offence intended to Sapphire and her class. Like my efforts in 1978, I still tend to lose a stitch or two if not fully concentrating, so I remain in awe of all the nannas and hemp-wearing yarn-spinners out there who can knit without looking down. Consequently, my 'scarf' (for want of any other reason to make anything not requiring any purl, casting off or knowledge of patterns) mostly looks as though it's been crocheted. Perhaps it's an opportunity for to me to claim that it's a deliberate attempt to make it neo-punk-post-grunge design, but even Sapphire is looking less and less enthusiastic at the idea that the 'scarf' might be destined for her.

After our freezing camping weekend recently (http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2006/06/no-sex-please-were-camping-its-been.html) I'm even thinking about knitting squares that can be sewn together for a warm blanket. Love Chunks is likely to mutter: "Why don't you just go out and buy a blanket", but where's the fun in that, where's the wool-workin' fine-motor-finger action? Sure they might look a bit wonky and have a few holes here and there, but I'm sure we'll be pretty grateful for them on the next occasion our boogers freeze in our noses in the Flinders Ranges.

It's either that or Love Chunks will end up with a scarf that he'll be forced to wear out in public....

Ah, to be eighteen and a frozen fashion victim again

It's very entertaining working at a university campus, especially an arty-farty one that specialises in film, media, journalism and creative writing. These students tend to favour the 'I Am An Individual' approach to dressing which means that they all end up looking the same.

As a profoundly daggy thirty seven year old, I feel like the bloke who said, "I'm not" in Monty Python's Life of Brian. My mid-high waisted trousers and jeans, topped with long line jackets and t-shirts with low heeled boots mean that I stand out like a wrinkle in a magazine ad. That's right, because I'm dressed for comfort and practicality, not hippitudinosity or to attract one of the very few straight guys on campus.

It is sad to see that Ugg boots as outdoor wear are still digging their soft, spongy heels into the shag pile carpet that is student fashion. They look particularly ridiculous paired with microminis, but with the legs of skinny jeans tucked into them they even look more pathetic. Gals on student budgets tend to favour the $19.99 K-Mart ones that have about as much sole and street cred as my nanna's jiffies. Still it's good to see that they value having warm feet - even if the rest of their legs are left to shrivel in the crisp air.

The jeans continue to amaze me, as they pretty much have done so for the past decade. Why any woman would want to spend an entire winter allowing the breezes to freely blow down her arse crack is beyond me, let alone the fear-factor of revealing your map-o-Tassie if you accidentally have to throw your arms up higher than your waist. Paired with these jeans are the too-short tops that rarely venture below the navel. How practical, exposing your kidney area to the elements even if they are buffered by several rolls of stretch-marked, goose-pimpled muffin-top rolls.

These tiny, thin - and usually black and red striped - tops provide the witless wearer with about as much warmth as a wet rice noodle, yet for some reason a jumper or jacket with any hint of practicality in it is completely shunned. Instead the chicky babes artfully drape a very long and thin scarf around their necks which unfortunately reminds me of Spud the scarecrow from the creme de la creme of childrens' shows, Bob the Builder.

The leather and studded hip belts - worn with the buckle on one hip, serving to make them look twice as wide and scraping other innocent students on the legs as they pass by - look doubly stupid when worn with those skinny jeans. I feel like shouting out to them: "Look, they even look crap on Kate Moss - on you they just tell me that you bought a pair of jeans three sizes too small and couldn't pull them up farther than the first dimple on your butt cheek!" I mean jeans pockets are supposed to sit on your arse, not just above your knee for heavens' sake!

Boys don't escape my eye either. Punk has clearly made a comeback (in clothing, if not in music), yet most of these whipper snappers were born ten years after it had burned and died. They probably think The Damned are the stoner greenies who refuse to believe that the Franklin got saved.... A bit of eye liner ala Green Day is appearing too, but not noticeably amongst the hetero contingent.

And what is with those t-shirt (normally worn over the top of longer sleeved t-shirts) with designs reminiscent of bargain-basement Target in the 80s? Pathetic paint splatters, nonsensical words and overall scribble - why not just rub yourself up against a dirty brick wall? It's effective and a lot cheaper.

Perhaps I shoudn't just focus on the young and the clueless. The mature age student is also a very visible breed out here, particularly the women. They too adhere to a tried-and-true uniform that has been the characteristic of the female mature student for decades. Sensible shoes - fair enough, no-one wants to sink permanently into the grass whilst on their way to a lecture; sensible jeans - roomy not groovy; an Oxfam International shirt worn over a polo neck; greying long hair either cut boy-short or worn long iwth tortoiseshell combs; rimless glasses; and long, dangly earrings. More often with a moustache than not and often jingling with brass bangles and copper ringlets.

Very few men are found with this group and, for those that are brave enough to venture into this learned lesbian stronghold, they are the tiny, skinny, silent kind. The vegan sticks of sinew who lean towards the sun to photosynthesise on their way to philosophy tutes, who gently walk around beetles on the footpath and bring their own thermos so as to not pollute the environment with more paper cups.

Bless them all - the place is alive with them and it's a bloody great place to work.

Silly names

No, I'm not talking about Dweezil, Moon Unit, Apple, Pilot Inspektor or Moses, but the names we can choose for ourselves. I got this little game from Daffy at http://gossipmonger.info/ and thought I'd give it a try as well.

Porn Star Name - (name of first pet and the place where you were born)
Soxy Bridge
Sox the tabby and Murray Bridge.

Movie Star Name – (grandma or granddad’s first name and favourite city/country)
Wally London
Wally after my Grandpa, and the inimitable London - two exciting years spent there as an Aussie backpacker/worker/drinker/traveller/drinker/historian/socialiser/drinker

Fashion Designer Name – (favourite jewel and favourite restaurant)
Sapphire Dhaba Spice Kitchen !!!?
Doesn't have quite the same cachet as Oscar De La Renta, does it? - unless that means "Oscar can't pay his rent"...?

Socialite Name – (silliest childhood nickname and place where you first partied)
Ready LeRox - seventeen, just started uni and went there with my boyfriend Sean and his infinitely more sophisticated 19 y.o. sister, Michelle. My flat pink diana ferrari courts worn with a matching neckerchief and with white baggy jeans actually cut the mustard. Maybe it was the spiral perm and white swatch watch that clinched it.

or was it - Ready High School Year 12 Senior Ball (to be more specific/truthful) - my kiss with Sean, the guy I'd been worshipping from afar all year during Australian History. He brought along his mum's bottle of bacardi from their drinks cabinet and my night was rockin!

Flygirl/guy Name – (first initial and first 3 letters of your last name) - K-Loc. Er, as a sheltered South Australian girl who's interest in music and culture ended when Vanilla Ice shagged Madonna, what exactly *is* a fly girl? Surely not someone with their jeans left permanently undone, or smelly enough to attract a bunch of blowies?

Detective Name – (favourite animal and name of high school) - Dog Murray. Hmm, that's not too bad. If I was a bloke that is.

Soap Opera Name – (favourite choccy and favourite comedian) - Lindt Ball Gervais. No prizes for guessing I'd be playing the long lost fat retarded half-sister who's out to wreak vengeance on her more beautiful, clever and talented sister, Linda Belle Guevara.

Opposite Sex Name – (first boy/girl friend and cell phone company) - Patrick Telstra. Golly gee whiz, it sounds as though he works for the tax office, speaks entirely in Klingon after log-off and recycles belly button lint.

Star Wars Name – (first 3 letters of last name + first 3 letters of mothers middle name together with first 3 letters of pets name and first 3 letters of town where you live) - LocFlo Milade. That's it. I'm going to change my driver's licence!

I run and I am fat

As Fifibelle (http://zombiefinger.blogspot.com/) has pointed out to us, there are a lot of runners' blogs out there. Huge chunks of diarised running schedules, times, distances, training suggestions, races to aim for. The one thing that most of these earnest blogs have in common is that they lack a sense of humour.

Agreed, running is hard. It is difficult to keep going when your legs, lungs, heart, puffing mouth and mind are all screaming at you to STOP before you've even started. It is hard to stop your brain from entertaining itself by replaying 'Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side' over and over and over for the next hour, and even harder to convince yourself that all of the effort is worth it.

However - and there is always a however - there are runners out there who are not whippet thin little munchkins who run 200km a week nor whom are training for their 17th marathon and hope to do it in less time than sitting through the Fellowship of the Ring. People like me for instance. Slightly chubby, definitely daggy but somehow dogged little beings who stick at it.

Why do I run? To combat a serious disease - fatness. You see, I love chocolate. Not just a little bit, a lot. If I could inhale it for breakfast, lunch and dinner I would. In fact I have. Throw in a few rows of Cadbury's, Nestle or Lindt for morning smoko, afternoon tea and supper and I'd be a very contented girl. Sadly, also a very fat one. The kind who would end up hitting the low point when the truss holding up my body in front of the chocolate would eventually snap under the strain and I'd feature in the news 'humour piece' after the weather when the zany reported stands outside filming the crane and hydraulic lift working overtime to get me out of my house and into a fat farm for fools..........

As such, in 2001 I made a new years resolution to start jogging. All I could manage was three laps around the school oval in a passable imitation of an arthritic crab with a socially unacceptable flatulence problem. This shame was actually enough to keep me going so that eventually I could do fifteen laps, or 6km.

A few months later I ran 12km in the City to Bay fun-run. It was then that I knew I was getting hooked because I was upset with my time and prepared to work harder to run it in under an hour next time. Which I did. The 12km runs then became part of my regular running schedule, then 15km, 17km, 20km and 22km. I managed to survive a half-marathon at a time when the stress levels at work were at an ulcerating, irritable bowel-shaking, migraine-messing high. It was then I decided to stick to the slow and steady pace of 6km runs with the dog three or four times a week.

Unbelievably, I started to look forward to falling out of bed at 6.00am and going for a run. On the days that I didn't (illness, away, lazy, whatever) I would feel sluggish, guilty and dreadful. It gave me some time on my own (unless you count an enthusiastic corgi/jack russell scooting in and around me) and valuable thinking time.

Running also means not looking very pretty. In addition to the Just-got-out-of-bed messy hair, dragon breath, eye boogers and folded-up face, there's sweat patches, red cheeks (that last for hours afterwards) and farting to deal with. Yes, farting. Try jogging your body up and down for a minute or two and you'll end up sounding like the percussionist for the Baked Beans Band. There aint nothin' you can do about either - it is just not possible to push it back up like you can do at work - I've frightened little old ladies out to pick up the paper on their front lawns, power walkers and tradesmen with my bum blasts as I've jogged by. I'm not proud of it, but I sure as hell can't help it.

The lack of prettiness also extends to the feet. Mine are size nine which is kind of largeish for a female, but hey, at least I've got good balance. Running long distances when training for the half marathon meant that my toes were banging rather too regularly against the end of my shoes. This led to two huge, blackened big toenails that eventually (and rather colourfully, I might add) fell off entirely. Not a good look these past few summers when wearing open toed sandals and slides; nor the peeling flaps of skin draping from the blisters on my heels.

This seems like a fair bit of exercise and commitment, doesn't it? Yet I am ashamed to reveal that I have gained weight. Five kilograms to be precise and they were after I'd showered, cut my toenails, cleaned out my ears, filled up several tissues and been to the toilet. Definitely not good and I suspected that Running Australia weren't likely to be chasing me to be the Beginner Runner Poster Girl any time in the future.
It's a quandary - reduce the chocolate or increase the running? Reduce the chocolate and increase the running? No chocolate and no running - I can't believe I just wrote that last one!

I'm saving up my money to buy a portable, high-powered treadmill. I'll simply hop on it as soon as I unpeel a block of chocolate, and stay on it until I've consumed every single morsel. Easy!