Dr. Ditz, the ‘lala’ G.P.

I’m hypersensitive to penicillin. Who knew? Evidently, not the doctor who prescribed me the pills.

“I felt like I was dying,” I told my G.P.

“Well, technically you were ingesting rather large doses of poison.”

Blink blink. (Note to self: When symptoms of hypersensitivity occur and not on medication, check for unknown life insurance policy(s) taken out in own name.)

“No more Amoxytocin for you,” my doctor said the same way my vegetarian sister-in-law said ‘no more chicken for you,’ to my two year old nephew after he spat a half chewed mouth full of it on to her plate. “Take these instead. They’re not penicillin based.” Handy. “Your remaining side effects should go in the next couple of days. Anything else you need?”

I shook my head.

“Been up to anything interesting?” the ‘G.P.’ on the door apparently stood more for Gal Pal than General Practitioner.

“Nope, just dealing with that chronic infection, whole hypersensitivity, at death’s door thing.” A little melodramatic, I know.

“MMMN, yeah, bummer about that,” he consoled. (I was waiting for him to follow it up with a ‘Sucks to be you, dude.’) “Oh, I should probably make a note of that, shouldn’t I?” (I was close.) He turned to his computer and began typing. I turned to read the certificates on the wall. Odd, I’d been so sure his medical degree would read ‘Dr. Ditz’.

 

I have a dream…

Once-upon-an-adolescence I had a dream. The perfect world would be a house full of sexy, sweaty, tradesmen doing my bidding; me, not having to work, just give orders and watch them strut about the house… with power tools. Alas, I was wrong, so very, very, wrong. It wasn’t a dream. It was a prophetic nightmare. One that lasted seven months, SEVEN long months. Tradesmen do not do your bidding. They do whatever they bloody like. They drink all your coffee (Note: Shower screen Guy can drink all the coffee he likes), track through the house in mud encrusted boots, and generally sweat in a way that is neither sexy nor sanitary (unless you’re Shower screen Guy). It took the threat of a law suit, and a hell of a lot of nagging, but The Boat is finished! Yes, I am guilty of using the girl-pout to get what I wanted on several occasions. Really, though, who cares about my fall from feminist grace?  The repairs are complete, and with them my nightmare. Mum and Dad’s digs are DONE and more importantly I’ve earned my right to free rent until the end of the eon. I never thought I’d be so happy to have the house rid of men, it seems so unnatural to me. Nor did I think I’d be wrapped for joy to be back at my laptop (my true life partner) giving myself carpal tunnel.

As a parting gift Filthy Andersen, who bailed two weeks before The Boat’s completion (BASTARDO!), dropped over his business card. Apparently, after 7 months of him dodging my calls, I didn’t have his number? Less shockingly, he invited himself in for a drink one final time to repeatedly tell me he was “out of the development, but not out of my life,” if I didn’t want him to be. ‘No, no, really, I want you gone from that too. My skin can’t handle steel-wool scrubs much longer.’ I desperately wanted a vino when he asked me if this knowledge brought me comfort. ‘The knowledge that I don’t have to politely suffer your advances for another day of my life? Yes, actually, that brings me great comfort.’

Yesterday, I broke The 5km Barrier and went for lunch… in another suburb! There’s no point in denying it. I’ll freely admit it. I did rather smugly yell ‘FAR KEW’ as I drove (read: tore) out the entrance to the estate (in Mum’s car).

 

I’m How old?

For our entire relationship I accused Norway of being in the midst of a mid-life-crisis. He’d just turned forty, quit his job, separated from his wife and gotten a girlfriend fifteen years younger than him. (Me. And yes, I know, I can really pick ‘em.) The man may as well have tattooed ‘stereotype’ to his forehead. Yet, still he denied it.
“Just because a man of a certain age decides to finally do something about the fact that he’s been miserable for years, does not make it a mid-life-crisis,” he would pout at me.
“Ah, yeah, it does, Old Man,” I would taunt the poor creature.
“I’m not old!”
“Ah, yeah, you are.”
His age obviously made no difference to me being his lover, but when you’re brushing your teeth together and the bathroom mirror reflects back his 8-pack abs and your Bridget Jones-esq “wobbly bits”, a girl needs to use something to level the playing field.

Now forty-two, Norway has finally admitted his life belongs in the self-help manuals of Nigel Marsh; author of Fat, Forty and Fired, and my personal, hilarious, favourite, Overworked and Underlaid. I tried to be supportive of my Once-upon-a-summer-lover and his much awaited epiphany, but instead found myself quip, “So you’ve finally admitted you’re middle-aged?”

Last month my biggest brother turned 31, which means that in a matter of mere weeks I will turn 27. The Little Carpenter Boy has been telling me I’m 27 since Christmas, so I’ve become somewhat accustomed to the idea of broaching ever closer to the big 3 0. My arse is still the same size it was when I was 22, the breastess are sitting only marginally lower than they used to, and these days I have a much more expensive hairdresser and the money to afford her. Generally, I’m feeling pretty good for someone about to give her mid-twenties a big sloppy wet one and a smack on the bum as they walk out the door. The question I find myself asking is ‘if 40 is the new 30, and 30 is the new 20, as psychologists and professional gender translators would have us believe; how old am I?’

“You’re only as old as you’re most recent girlfriend,” the Chocolate Lab once proclaimed, so proud of himself I could see his tail wagging. If that’s true then I’m in serious trouble. The older I get, the older the men in my life become. Unfortunately not in equal proportions, more a 1:3 ratio. In my teens my boy was +5 years. In my early twenties my guy was +12, and a year later my man was +15. (I’ve self imposed the current age gap as my limit, lest I be 30 and begin to cruise the local RSL on a Saturday night. I really can’t see myself utter the phrase, “That wheelchair makes your legs look great,” followed by a flirtatious smile.) When Morgan found out the difference in our ages he reportedly choked on his beer. Norway knocked his down and called for another. Their shock is understandable in some regards. Coming from generations with different letters is a lot for most people to comprehend. I tend to think of it as further evidence men rarely look at your face, when they can stare at your chest.
“You’re 24 next week, so you’re only 23?” Morgan stuttered at me.
“How old did you think I was?” … Crickets… “How old do you think I look?”
“I don’t know. (long pause as he tried to recall what I look like from the neck up) Mid-twenties I guess?”
“Well, Sherlock…”

“You’re and old soul,” Norway randomly proclaimed one rainy afternoon. Three months into our relationship, he was evidently still making his peace with the idea he had his first day at uni the same year I started kindergarten. “If I cut you open you’d have more rings than me.” I sat on the other side of the room until images of him covered in blood, counting markers on my intestines, while humming Macy Gray’s You Are Related To A Pyschopath, faded from my over-active imagination.

Just before my 25th birthday, right on cue, I crashed into a quarter-life-crisis. (Not that I’ll admit that to Norway) I didn’t know it at the time, but from the other side I can see it for what it was. SNAP. I sold everything I could, quit my job, re-homed my dog and moved to Asia. I was 24, but my soul was menopausal. They have a test now which tells you how old your body is. You may only be 19, but smoking like Thomas the Tank Engine and living on meat pies and café latte tends to age one’s body a few decades. So, I devised a test you can take to measure how old your soul is? It’s simple really. Take a look at your life, a good honest think, and ask yourself two questions;
‘Do I like my life?’ (Translated into XY: ‘Do I like my job and have time for beer?’), and ‘Do I like myself?’ (Translated into XY: ‘Am I getting laid enough?’).
If the answer to both those questions is ‘Yes’, then congratulations, your soul is old enough to not care how old it is (Translated into XY: ‘Well done, lad’). Me, I love my job, and I don’t care how old my lover is… he has a rockin’ bod and buys me shoes… I figure I’m half way. Not bad for nearly 27.

 

Why would they connect the storm water pipe all the way to the main, that’d be silly.

I had a front yard.

 

Pass the Mortein – The Tale of Filthy Anderson.

Filthy Anderson, the sleazy-sight-supervisor (who was) doing the dirty office-girl (who must have a Robbin Williams man-fur fetish) has obviously not come to this same conclusion as men far younger and more attractive than him. He’s old. At the grand old age of fifty, there’s nothing grand about a man that doesn’t realize he’s old enough to be your father, and that hitting on you is just Filthy. “Being old is a state of mind” according to Mr Anderson. I beg to differ; being old is a state of grey hair, bad teeth and remembering what things were like during ‘Nam’. In the months since moving into Far Kew and the beginning of The Boat saga, Filthy has done just about all he can to, as the kids say these days, ‘have a crack’. I made the error of believing it was better to be nice to the men fixing their own inferior workmanship on The Boat than to yell at them for screwing it up in the first place. The Norwegian had warned me against being nice to men over 25, but I ignored it. Just because he is a perve that thinks everyone wants to sleep with him (Segway-they so do, but shhhh!) doesn’t mean every other man is that vain or self-deluded. The old saying, ‘You attract more flies with honey…’ surely had to be true, and I wanted my parents’ house fixed so I could get back to work. Unfortunately, it is Oh So true. In this case I attracted a massive blow fly, Filthy Anderson. And I gotta tell ya, Loui ain’t got nothin’ on him.

It all began with chats at the front door that ran longer than The Never Ending Story. I was Atreyu stuck in a mud; the more I struggled to get away, the deeper I would sink into the muck. An annoying insect, Filthy would intrude on the peace of the household, inviting himself for cups of coffee, and staying far longer than was tolerable when he’d only been let in to deliver materials. “Drop off some screws, stay for a screw,” The Little Carpenter Boy would mock.

When Filthy Anderson would drool over the women on the cover of my Vanity Fair each month, I just ignored it. That is, until he began breaking them down for me to what it was he found most sexy about them, and relating such traits back to me. It didn’t take long for me to hide any new issues in my desk drawer. And when he began showing me the dirty jokes his friends would text one another I told him I thought they were disgusting (truth be told, piss funny) and walked away. All in all, he’s not so bad, right? He is a builder and one expects a certain lack of refinement. I’m not that sensitive of a girl that I can’t cut a guy a little slack and ignore a few undesired attempts at flirtation or the grot I heard him saying about me when he thought the door offered any trace of soundproofing. No harm, no foul, right? Water off a ducks back… until one Friday evening when he dropped by the house and a rather surprised me answered the door, red wine in hand. Frankly, by now I really should have known better. Of course Filthy took one look at the glass in hand and invited himself in for a drink. Mentally I was Dobby in a Harry Potter moment smashing my head against various hard surfaces. “STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID!! BAD KAT!!!” Smack, smack, smash, crack!

Filthy finished the bottle (I had just opened) and was vocally disappointed when I lied through my twenty-six year-old teeth, ”Sorry, that was the last bottle and my brothers must have finished all the beer last weekend,” and SUBTLEY showed him the way out.

I was standing at the threshold of grossed out and needing an iodine bath (AKA, my front door) when Filthy turned to me, his shirt slightly unbuttoned making visible the thick blooms of grey fur that wrapped around the cheap, gold, chain hanging from his neck, and gave me The Look. All girls, and I’m sure some boys too, know the look I mean. The expression suitors have on their faces at the end of a date. The look that tells you they’re debating exactly when and how to go in for the awkward ‘first date kiss’.

How on Earth do was I meant to deal with that?

I needed this man to finish the work on the Boat; water was literally pouring into the ceiling, the floor needed replacing and the down-pipes had to be fixed and and and the entire house had to be rebuilt in one form or another, and all the work orders required Filthy’s signature. His badly stained teeth flashed before me as did the years of therapy that would be required to get past this moment. ‘Think Dobby, think think!’ Drawing inspiration from the Bible (read: Sex And The City) I punched him in the shoulder and said “So, tiler on Monday?”

An hour later I sat on my couch making my way through a bottle of Victorian Shiraz, trying to repress the memory of The Look and generally feeling proud of how skillfully I’d quashed that whole silliness. I was happily sipping away when I got a call from the Little Carpenter Boy. “Filthy thinks you want him and when the Far Kew job is over he thinks he’s going to Far Kew.”

The wall now needs repainting. I spat red-wine all over it and they obviously did not use the Wash and Wear paint they were contractually required to.

 

Far Kew

I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long. It was far from my intention when I moved back to Oz to spend less time at my keyboard than ever before. The opposite surely. Alas, as my Dad once told me ‘life is what happens while we’re busy making plans’, at least I hope it was my Dad given the sage words came from a male voice in the bathroom with Mum. These days I have no life and very little plans. I’ve become one of those strange people that operate within a 5km radius of their house. It could be considered cool to live such an existence I suppose, expect unlike Paris or even Manhattan, my neighbourhood isn’t… how should I put this… it just isn’t. It is simply Kew, or as I prefer to call it ‘Far Kew’.
In Far Kew there is as much bad coffee and good cake as you can glut yourself on (yep, still trying to lose those five kgs), a rather average Chinese restaurant, a KFC (make that 6.5kgs) a supermarket, a gym (laugh, I do), pharmacy, a bar, a pub (with a pool table) and The Boat (aka, the new house) where one can find me and need only look to the roof, or under the house, or between the walls, or (as of yesterday) to the front yard, to find large bodies of water. Since taking possession of The Boat back in November nary a day’s gone by that I’ve been able to go more than five kms from home. There’s always a dirty, sweaty man of some varying height and weight (whatever floats your boat really-ha!) coming to fix, or not fix and say they did, something. Thus I have learned, mastered even, the art of straying close to home.
We’re now in our fifth month of repairs to the Boat. My friendship with one of the builders as grown so strong he’s now dating one of my oldest friends. I know the plasterer is on his second marriage and recently lost his brother to cancer, the plumber has a new girlfriend though he’s worried she’s not smart enough to last long term, and the 26 year old development office girl is sleeping with the 50 year old site-supervisor according to the Far Kew grape vine. So why, you ask, is today any different? How is it that I’m finding the opportunity to sit down and long enough to concentrate on writing a blog entry? To put it plainly, I’m waiting. That’s right, going on our fifth month of repairs to the Boat and I am waiting. You see, whoever installed the storm water drainage to the boat decided that after laying enough pipe to get them a metre or so away from the house that they’d gone far enough; going that extra five metres and attaching the pipe to the main it seems was just a little too much to ask. And, after a weekend of rain, Monday morning the front yard began to cave in. (seriously) So today, I actually get to do some work, because today I’m waiting for an excavator to come; an excavator that will dig a trench the full length of the front yard so my plumber (the one with the dumb girlfriend) can connect the house drainage to the storm water for the street.
For two days I have been waiting. I hate waiting. So, this afternoon I called the sleazy site-supervisor doing the development girl and asked what the hold-up was. “We’re just waiting for the excavator to be organised, that’s just a term we use for the really big digging machines,” he said. Just a term we use for the really big digging machines? Just a term we use for the really big digging machines! Just a term we use for the really big digging machines!! “Yes, I know what an excavator is. I’m writing a book about them. Remember, I’m the girl with the Hitachi catalogue postered to her wall?… and we’re not using one of the three in the back lot because?”
FAR KEW.

 

Death of Wonder Woman.

Christmas is over, the parental units have gone back to their primary residence and I finally have a chance to unpack the boxes that time forgot. Hidden underneath my grade five report card, my swimming certificate and various bizarre elements of my past (best fisherman trophy. Go figure) I found my diary, as in datebook, from the last year of my life on the gold coast. Curious as to ‘what was I doing this time two years ago?’ I flicked open the pages, removed the random art show postcards and whacky Coke Zero adverts that I used to pretty up the pages, and found Jan 15. One thing was instantly apparent as I starred at the pages. Other than being able to draw the cats from Strange Emily like nobody’s business, I was Wonder Woman. I used to think it was crap that Superman always managed to be on the scene of disaster and Louis Lane’s latest PMS mishap, changed clothes several times a day, and yet still made deadline at the Daily Planet. It came down to his super speed right? That had to be the only way he could get it all done? Nope, the boy just had kick-arse time management skills, as did I.

 

Okay, so I didn’t have a whip (sorry fellas), but I did have brass wrist cuffs and could manage time better than The President’s secretary. (Segway, could you imagine a more irritating job? “Well, you can tell the leader of the communist world he can call back, because the President is booked until three… I’ll tell him where he can put his sub if he’s messes with this calendar again”) I don’t exaggerate when I say my day started at 6am and finished around 9.30pm, when I got to watch TV for an hour, brushing my teeth and readying for bed in the ad breaks so that I could be lights-out at 10.35. I took care of my dog, my house, my car. I studied full time, worked part time and had an internship. In there somewhere I even managed to have a best friend and fall in love with a beautiful, if conveniently absent, man. I was so organised I would even play chauffeur to transport challenged friends. I was a well scheduled, well oiled, (social life vacuum) machine. These days life is much, much, different. I have all the time in the world available to me to finish my book and yet I get NOTHING done.

“It must be great having the freedom to set your own pace,” said Princess M when I related my latest self-pitying neurosis.

“You would think, but no. If Wonder Woman had all day to save ‘whatever his name was’ from the bad guys, thus robbing him of his masculinity one more time, do you think she’d run off and do it straight away, or would she have a nice sleep in and eat lunch over Oprah so that before she knew it the day was gone and she’d have to get to it tomorrow?”

Did Superman only save the world from Lex Luther because he knew he had an article due at five and needed time to pump up Louis’s ego before four, so LL would have to be thwarted and back at the drawing board by two? To me, he always seemed like a last minute kind of guy. I mean really, he couldn’t have stopped things in Superman IV before the rocket that could “strip the paint of your house and give your family a permanent orange afro” (thank you Dan Akroyd) was launched? Cutting it kind of close there weren’t we big guy?

I’m a firm believer in the idea that things only get done because people are too busy to put them off until tomorrow. A friend once told me that there are no heroes, just ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I think they’re just ordinary people with extraordinary calendar considerations. Nothing gets done unless you do it yourself, and you’ll only do it if you have absolutely nothing better to do, or nowhere else you need to be.

 

So the question is, when the world is safe, and ‘whatever his name was’ manages to mind his own business, how does Wonder Woman motivate herself to get up on time? After all, the vacuuming will be there tomorrow… As long as Superman doesn’t run late next time.

 

I hate the virtual world

I spent years learning how to be Miss Independence. I studied hard so I could have my own brain. I work hard so I have my own money. I manage my own banking, and can check my own oil (not that I ever do) and pump my own petrol. Occasionally I catch something other than seaweed when I go fishing with my brothers, and they make me do all the ukky stuff (like put a hook through the eye of a frozen bait fish-GROSS) myself. I can even fix the three different leaks in the shower of my brother’s guest bathroom without any help from him. I can do all this and still walk in six inch heels. So why is it then, that when a virus invades my computer all I want to do is cry and/or call every man in my contact list?

 

Yesterday, I’m still not sure how, I was virtually attacked, or rather, attacked in the virtual word. Some nasty little societal parasite gave me a virus that made my laptop lose the virtual plot and me the literal one. Spyware alarms went off every where, Internet Explorer had a stroke and the program I downloaded to play penicillin to this rampart infection was a twisted mind’s wicked attempt to crush what healthy spirit I had left-it was a secondary stage of the virus disguised to make you think it will help, but in fact will just make you sicker; the fine line between medicine and poison.

There are forty-zillion (accurate count) tradesmen outside my window, together they can build towns, but scream “Does anyone know how to bypass an XP Protection spyware virus?” and they will simply give you a look of ‘does not compute’. At least the extremely pissed off look on my face firewalled any sad antibiotic jokes.

 

I hate to admit anything that resembles co-dependency, but my laptop and I are beyond linked. If I could marry my laptop I would, and Blackberry would be our love child. We have a complicated relationship. She can be moody and often doesn’t feel like doing what she’s been asked until after she’s slept on the idea. Her battery doesn’t last as long as some, but she’s never lost any of my files and loyally puts up with me working late nights. So, when she’s sick, my world just doesn’t seem right. Even if I wasn’t planning on seeing her much that night, knowing all isn’t right in her world, that something is INVADING her inner most software, is enough to bring me to violence against the virtual world. I called my mum for help and got little love, one brother was sympathetic and nothing more, the other offered to play doctor if I took her to see him later in the week. None of this was helpful, my baby was sick, and I kept visualizing the virus eating away at her circuitry with every passing moment. I needed help, now. I scrolled through my phone contacts, searching for anyone that might have half a hope of curing my laptop. There it was, the number for my little Maltese warrior. I called and within moments he was on to the company’s top IT guy, getting real solutions for my cyber-infection.

 

My laptop will live to see another day, but only after a full format is done. For now, she’s well enough to get through the day relatively effectively. It’s sort of like finishing the full course of anti-biotics despite feeling well again. Still I can’t help but ask, ‘weren’t the problems of this world enough for a girl to deal with, weren’t we just getting the hang of this one, why did we feel the need to invent another one?’ I get the feeling it was a devious plan by men everywhere for us to need them again, and not just to keep them around to do the things that our laptops can’t… like lift heavy things onto the high shelf.

I hate the virtual world.

 

Paradise Lost

I’ve bitten the bullet. I looked my deadline right in the face (cringed) and knew it was time to settle in one place long enough to actually earn the pay cheques I’ve been living on for the past year of my gypsy life. Thus, I find myself squarely planted and caged in Melbourne, Australia. My tropical paradise is lost. I’ll be here until April and hopefully the completion of one non-fiction book on mining equipment manufacturers. The convenience of my parents’ house being completed and therefore free rent for moi as ‘house-sitter’ only slightly sweetened the idea of returning to Oz, which otherwise is enough to make any grown vagabond cry. Saying ‘good-bye’ to warm humid days and warmer, slightly less humid nights and ‘hello’ to southerly winds ripping their way up from Antarctica and hailing down on little-old-tropical-me, is a not very appealing concept in of its self. After a mere month here I find myself extremely dedicated to finishing this project before Autumn comes into full swing, and with any luck I’ll be sunning myself in Paris by the time my southern hemisphere abode plummets into single degree winter fun.

 

There are some advantages to my current situation, which are almost enough to get me over the ten fold increase in my cost of living, and the severe coffee wasteland that is my country of origin…almost.

The first must be the freedom of movement. If I want to go out for the afternoon I no longer need to reserve the driver 24 hours in advance, spend all morning in traffic getting to the mall and all afternoon getting home again. Weather permitting, I simply grab my handbag, make sure I’m wearing shoes (yep, forgotten them before), and walk out the front door. Within ten minutes I can be surrounded by cafes, clothing stores, or be at one of the best cinemas in the country. Or, if I really feel like going on an expedition, I can be in town in 20 minutes, where the world of galleries, Italian bistros, and scary men that pee in alleyways is laid out before me. It’s not much, but it’s familiar and I guess that makes it home.

 

The second advantage to locking myself away in Melbourne has a more basic instinct. The new house (which matches all the other houses, painted prettily in institutional white) is smack bang in the middle of a brand new development. That’s right ladies, there are tradesmen of all shapes, sizes, colours and fragrances, everywhere. I’m like a kid in a candy store, a sailor at a bar, or a teenage boy at Sexpo. True, they do have the annoying habit of starting power tools at ungodly a.m. but they make up for it by strutting about the complex in the tradesman trademark, ‘wife-beater’ blue, singlet; shoulders bulging, biceps flexing and the muscled cords of manual-labour-forearms displaying more peaks and ravines than The Himalayas. Most are good from far and far from good, but they do make the view of my kitchen window, and even more so from the deck… well, it’s like living inside a Diet Coke add really, and it’s always 11.30.

 

I may no longer have the ability to skip off to Bali when I’m bored on the weekend, or sling over to Singapore when my wardrobe needs another shoe addition. Alas, that island paradise has disappeared into the Pacific for now. I think however, as far as perfect office environments go, my kitchen bench may be Paradise found. Between the white houses and blue singlets, if I turn my head really fast it almost seems like Santorini…almost.

 

Six months in Sixty Seconds

I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long. I quite literally went around the world three times, got a not-so-extreme make-over, rediscovered some people (a.k.a. my family), made-up and broke-up with Norway, got offered a regular job (paying the local rate = volunteering with cab fare), managed not to laugh when rejecting said job, got Burberry in Vegas and Dior in Singapore, and basically ran a muck with Mum. And now, while lamenting the loss of the toenail I left on a mountain in Stavanger (summer sandals may have to wait awhile yet) I find myself in Melbourne, good old OZ, wondering “what does a newly single and homeless girl wear to an ‘I dare you to wear…’ costume party?”.

The front runner at the moment is an “I (heart) Myself” t-shirt.

I have no house, I have no car, I have no man (I really have no man), I have no toenail, for three days I’ve had no voice, and most unacceptably I have had to divide my shoe collection between two countries. I do however have ME, and though Norway may not, I (heart) myself.

 

I also (heart) Shiraz, throat lozenges, and rebound affairs. Let’s hope in this case a+b=c.