It’s like winter

It’s winter today in Sydney. Blustery, windy, with a slight chill on the breeze that is sometimes soft and sometimes buffeting. This city always has a way of making you feel insignificant, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Back in Perth, you can often feel as if you know everything, you know everyone, you can expect that it will be a sunny day the next day. But this city is humbling, it keeps you guessing. There is such a huge and dense population that you often feel dwarfed by the rush of people that come at you when the train doors open, and by the totally unexpected weather that makes you regret your choice of floaty summer tops in February. Then you sit at home in the evening, in jeans and a comfy sweater, you stare out the window at the rain and remember how much you love snuggling on the couch in winter. That’s the power of this city, it keeps showing you the things you don’t expect when you don’t expect to see them.

That distinctive smell…

I love walking around in Sydney. It’s like being at the theatre. Lots of colour, sights, great outfits, cute people, young people, old people, sad people, happy people funny people, and… that smell. Eeewww, what is that smell?! It reminds me of…poo, mixed with body odour, mixed with urine, mixed with vomit, mixed with stale alcohol, mixed with… god knows what else. A very pleasant walk can so quickly turn into nostril burn, gagging, and the need for a paper bag.

Maybe it’s just the inner city suburbs, the ones that suffer the immense influx of people all the time that have (in parts) this unbelievably disturbing smell. There really is no other way to describe it, other than it being totally disturbing. I can’t even really describe it in words, there are simply no words for that smell that so often turns a glorious walk into a rush to the nearest public restroom. Though the rest rooms may be just as bad.

What is happening to the young women of Hollywood?

I tend not to pay too much attention to Hollywood Starlets and other famous people. I don’t mind the odd flick through a Woman’s Weekly at the dentist, or the doctors, most of which tend to be several months old. But this week, it has been a bit hard to avoid the images of a desperate looking Britney Spears. A normal reaction might be to dismiss the news and not give it a second thought, which is probably what I would normally do. But the images of this poor young woman have been really haunting me. I can’t help but feel sorry for this poor girl, it seems as though she is just not coping with the complexities of her life at all.

It seems like she has lived almost a full life in her young years, having a successful career at a young age, being a party animal, getting married, having kids, and getting divorced. All in such a short amount of time, perhaps even a normal person could not cope with this.

Another, Lindsey Lohan, who also seems to be heading further down the road of a breakdown, and the recent exposure of the general oddness that was Anna Nicole Smith’s life. Clown make-up, drugs whilst pregnant? If this is true, I find this extremely scary.

Nicole Ritchie, who seems to be getting skinnier and skinnier at an alarming rate. The Olsen twins, I don’t know which, but one of them seems to not be coping well with the pressures of her life.

It seems that fame and money is not in fact the perfect scenario for these girls. Although the glamour of their lives, the red carpet, the dress ups, the money may have seemed worth it, perhaps these girls are just not able to cope with it all, or maybe it is not even what they really want for their lives. Who knows? Only them I suppose. I just hope that they recover from whatever it is causing them so much pain, and that other young women take note of their mistakes and try not to follow in their footsteps.

Every time I see this young girls, I think, “Thank goodness my life is not like theirs, I am so lucky”. I am not rich, I am not famous, but I am extremely happy, and in the grand scheme of things that is all that matters.

So I have officially returned...

So I have officially returned from the dead. Well maybe not the dead, but the constancy of 16 hours a day of work, all day, almost everyday. I have started my new part time job at a studio (which I am loving) and have been busy, busy, busy putting out several other print jobs for my own clients. Hence, the lack of writing seen here in recent times.

January was a great, but exhausting month and the beginning of February has been the same. I am hoping to be able to settle a bit more now, and have time to actually wash my hair and cut my toe nails. As I am convinced that people around me are beginning to think that I am incapable of personal hygiene. It’s funny how the little things just fly out the window when you get busy, like my anal-ness about the cleanliness of the apartment, the emptying of the over flowing washing baskets, the ironing of the shirts so that my husband has something to wear to work. You are thinking, “Why doesn’t he iron his own d*mn shirts!” The reason is this, when I see him iron a shirt my skin crawls, because he is not doing it properly d*amn-it! There is a system involved in ironing a shirt to perfection and he doesn’t use the system, and I can’t teach him “the system”, because no one can implement “the system” quite like I can! Now you are thinking “That poor guy actually chooses to be married to this crazy lady?!” Yes, yes he does, because he goes to work looking glorious in perfectly ironed shirts.

Now that I have been blabbing about “the system” I can’t even remember where I was heading with this entry. That is how passionate I am about “the system”. So I will move on to the perfection that has been our Saturday morning so far. It has involved; a glorious sleep in; several glorious coffee’s, sitting on the couch watching J-TV, reading Harper’s Bazaar, Notebook, Instyle, and the newspaper; staying in pyjamas till you reach the point of feeling guilty that you are still in them, when during the working week you would be taking your lunch break about now. Aaah, glorious!

Snoop Dog

My husband's response to news of a Snoop Dog concert:

"If I want to hear someone mumble incoherently for an hour, I'll go talk to the people in the park*"

*Note: We have a few choice characters hanging out in our local park.