General Indignities

• I accidentally pronounced palate “pa-LAT” in front of my husband and a friend, the cruelest of people. Their joy was unrestrained, as was my humiliation. It wasn’t as bad as the time I pronounced “archive” with the “ch”, though.
• Despite my being of the size and texture of a beached whale due to the Miracle of Life within my uterus (and bum, and chins, and ankles…), my husband’s evening foot massages have become increasingly lacklustre to the point of them almost not being worth it except I don’t want to let him get out of the habit.
• I discovered a latent library fine of dizzying proportions. The books sit on a shelf at home, taunting me with my own ineptitude to grasp the borrowing concept. So far in life there has not been a library/ video shop/ parking opportunity which hasn’t led to me receiving a fine, and then not paying it until it’s horrifically large.
• I included an emoticon in a work email, but it was not reciprocated. What does it mean? Does the recipient now look down on me as a professional, as a colleague? Was it a power play, a rejection of an informal gesture of goodwill? Do they hate emoticons, and by extension, me, and by extension, everything I stand for? Time will tell.

Things I have been duped into purchasing by companies that know I am a fool, a multipart series, part 1

A Passport Holder

In functionality, a specifically-identified passport holder is no different from a large wallet, a pocket in your bag, or the passport holder it literally arrived in whence sent to you from The Government.

The differentiation comes from parting with the financial reward of two hours work for the privilege of owning it, and it coming in attractive pastel hues that look nice poking out your bag in the instagram picture you post from the airport when curating an interesting if fictitious life for yourself.

In reality, a passport holder actually makes using a passport harder, by creating yet another impediment in the search for your passport at the check in counter, having utilised the past 20 minutes in the queue on the more productive task of scrolling through instagram making notes on how to better curate your fabulous, fictitious life.

The situation is further exacerbated if, like me, you’re sweatily fumbling around for your damn passport whilst also trying to conceal the five carry on bags slung about your person in which you’re concealing an extra 10 kilograms or so of luggage.

Halfway through the trip, the passport holder is abandoned altogether and the passport returns to floating around your bag, either sticking halfway out at a jaunty and easily snatchable angle, or collecting debris with the shameful McDonalds receipts and old pen innards at the very back corner.

My hat is tipped to the sadist who saw humans like me, and saw us wanting, and knew we would be sucker enough to purchase.

A week of crushing disappointments

I got a call last week from the Hospital in which a very nice lady called Carol firmly disabused me of my notion that perhaps my baby was just a very big baby, weighing nearly 20 kilograms at 8 months cooking, and therefore my pregnancy weight gain was nothing to worry about.

Disappointing.

I was A Fool, as I so often am, and took the call on speaker with my husband close enough to hear every word. This means I couldn’t even tell him, “no my sweet pudding pie, they told me I should be eating MORE carbs”.

Disappointing.

Now he watches me closely with a general “who will think of the baby” demeanor and constant aggravating pep talks about how almonds are filling (a lie) while secretly purchasing and consuming Allens snakes (he has been caught in the act twice). Worse, he has hidden the Coles 40% chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookies, which are not only the best cookies on earth, especially when stale, but perhaps the only bright light in my otherwise tragic existence.

Disappointing.

For that reason you will observe me starting my day (if you are my neighbour, who I suspect does) by rising at some horrific hour (“7 am”) in order to measure out half a cup of all bran, mix in a few almonds and strawberries, and cover with milk diluted with My Tears. This replaces the fresh-out-of-the-oven croissant from the Bakery I used to eat for breakfast every day, justifying the nutritional content by telling myself “it’s French”.

 

Disappointing.

Very Disappointing.

Well hello there

Yes, it is I, sheepishly returning a year after wandering the wilderness of life and recording none of it upon The Internet.

However, as a Lady User Of The Internet, you will be pleased to know I have continued to Use The Internet, and here are some of the Uses I have had for The Internet, while Using it, as a Lady:

• Buying pretty tops from ASOS. Hating them. Never returning them.
• Hate-reading Mamamia while wondering what exactly Zoe Foster Blake and Bec Judd have over Mia Freedman to justify the endless fawning thinkpieces upon her website derived from each new instagram photo, and whether they operate as a team or individually in the assumed blackmail of Mia Freedman.
• Scrolling through the Instagram feeds of Zoe Foster Blake and Bec Judd and wishing I had nicer hair.
• Keeping silent yet unnervingly close tabs on the twitter feeds of people I know peripherally and don’t like. Dying a thousand deaths the times I’ve clicked ‘like’ while trying to open replies.
• Remembering when the Sydney Morning Herald was a serious newspaper, and not a poorly laid out version of Buzzfeed.
• Opening a clickbait Sydney Morning Herald after the above reflection, comforting myself with the knowledge that I may be a lemming, but I’m a self aware lemming at least.
• Remembering when Buzzfeed was a poorly laid out website of delightful lists, and not an attack on all which is good and innocent.
• Going online shopping, trawling a whole website over the course of an hour and filling my shopping cart with everything my cold dead heart desires. Going through my shopping cart and agonisingly narrowing down the selection so as to fit in with my budget. Leaving the page open for a few days. Closing the page. Repeating after a week.
• Furtively reading fan conspiracies about the new Gilmore Girls, and then having conversations with my friend where she offhandedly starts a sentence with “I read something somewhere about Logan which said” and thus uncovering SHE READ ALL THE FAN CONSPIRACIES TOO and we are as lonely as each other.
• Browsing the twitter feeds of people who became famous on twitter and wondering how it is I myself didn’t become famous on twitter.
• Looking up recipes every time I’m hungry, but still just buying MacDonalds on the way home from work.

So, as you can tell, my sweet dumplings, all in all a productive year.