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.

Sooo Stressed

Have you even tried having a part time job and tried to run a business (which is putting out a huge publication and various websites and brochures) at the same time? If you have, I feel your pain! If you haven’t, seriously, save yourself the heart palpitations and skip it all together. It’s not worth it!

I am having a lot of fun at the moment, but I have absolutely no life! See, I am a worrier, I worry about everything. I am not kidding. I worry that a total stranger might walk up to me see a speck of dirt on my top and judge me as being an incompetent human being. So, this whole ‘so many things to do at once, multiple deadlines, working days and nights and weekends’ thing, it is becoming a little too much for my head and my little heart to deal with.

I think the key is to stop thinking about it, and just DO IT!

Aaaaaah stresssss!!!!

Significantly Slack

I have been significantly neglecting the old blog in the last few weeks, or week, in fact I cannot even remember how long ago I wrote. I do have many, many, many good reasons why, beginning with a constant stream of great visitors (who have been thoroughly distracting in a good way), me starting an new part time design job whilst still managing my own business (where I am currently designing a very in depth publication). So yes, I have been extremely, extremely busy, the last week working days and nights to get on top of the workload.

On the up side, I have really felt like I have settled into Sydney now, and I feel at home in my environment, at home, at work, and in the greater areas that we visit regularly. I am really beginning to feel like we belong here and that we can make great things happen for ourselves here.

We have begun to take a deeper look at property now, as we feel confident that we may actually be able to afford something nice over here, not like the crazy market in Perth, where we were convinced that we would be renters forever. Even though property is expensive here, we feel like we will end up being in front, and better off than if we had decided to buy in Perth.

I have really enjoyed going to an office several days a week, interacting with fellow designers and advert guru’s and contributing to a team that gives you feedback for the work that you do. I am having a great time, and I am so glad that I decided to take that step into part time work, even though it inevitably means that I will be flat out most of the time with work, often during evenings and weekends.

So yeah, all is good and I am not dead, and now that I am settling back into routine I will be a little more reliable with this.

Happy Aussie Day to all, hope you have a great day with family and friends. Party on, and think of us watching the fireworks spectacular at Darling Harbour.

She cracks me up...

Now I know it is a bit slack to link to another person's blog instead of writing an entry yourself. But this girl, she rocks my blog reading world. She is a hilarious writer and never fails to dissapoint. So if you all want to add another blog to your daily reading, choose this one. (She is a designer too!)

See it here. Her last entry is a blast, the last paragraph is my fav, nothing like the love of a realistic man.

Ok, so I know this is my third post for the day but...

Ok, so I know this is my third post for the day but...cool things just keep happening. Actually, let me rephrase that, wierd things keep happening.

Earlier today I went for a walk to the post office and on the way a man passed by me, he was readjusting himself (if you know what I mean). Now I don't have a problem with a little 'readjustment' in certain circumstances, like not when men are talking to me or looking at me, but doing it in a hidden corner with a timing of around .2 of a second. But this guy, well he had his whole hand in the trousers, was heading straight towards me on a busy inner city footpath, and the 'readjustment' lasted about...however long it took him to walk 50 metres. Which is waaaayyyy longer than the previous .2 second time limit. I was horrified!

Just now, actually about ten minutes ago, a woman stood directly under my apartment window and dropped her dacks in the middle of the footpath, on a busy Friday night, in a street filled with people. Then she yelled "I am going to vomit!" All I could think was, 'Please, please, please go away, as I don't think I can take seeing your g-string clad a*se as well as your vomit'.

Now I didn't think I was really prudish, but after being exposed to 2 counts of 'readjustment' by both men and women, one involving naked a*se, I have decided that I am a total prude. Though, I am looking forward to the Madri Gras in March, thought any 'readjustments' there I expect would all be made in jest.

I know this sounds insensitive...

I know that this sounds insensitive...but...God there are some dero's in our area! I mean, seriously we live in a melting pot of dero!

Buds

Sunlight

The Funniest Photo I have ever seen!

This has to be the funniest photo I have ever seen. What a shocker! What do you think he's thinking about? I bet something along the lines of, "Man I look hot in this off the shoulder number, this oughtta bring in the ladies!".

I was searching for images for work and came across this one when I searched for 'Male' 'Portrait'. The picture is called "good guy in Siberia", let's hope the both him and the photographer are frozen before they make any more photographic evidence like this!

Happy New Year!

After only a couple of minutes home I hear my first siren, and after an hour or so my first domestic dispute since returning from our New Years trip. Aah the serenity. There’s nothing like a nice afternoon filled with sirens, screaming and smashed glass to make you feel right at home again.

Happy New Year to all, hope that you had a hoot of a time and didn’t have to bad a hangover yesterday.

Barking & New Years Eve

Every night at about 10pm a group of people stand in the park across from our apartment for about 2 hours and let their dogs bark at each other. The dogs bark and bark and bark, for TWO HOURS! All I have to say is FFS why don’t you just take them off their leads and let them kill each other! At least then I will be able to sit on my couch in peace and then lay on my bed and sleep in peace!

I love dogs, I am a dog person, I wish I had a dog, but we live in an apartment and that would just not be fair on the poochy. But if I had a dog I would put the d*mn thing through some training so it doesn’t bark for TWO HOURS every night. Another thing! How about not walking the d*mn dog with all your friends and their d*mn dogs at 10PM at night! How bout that?!

Well…now that I have that off my chest, I hope that everyone has an amazing New Years Eve! Just make sure you don’t build it up too much, cause if you do, you will be disappointed, expectations are a fungal rot on a New Years Eve. Instructions are as follows; go with the flow, say yes to everything (except cheating on spouses and drugs), drink and be merry, make sure you kiss someone you love at midnight!

...not very xmassy

"You may not want to go into the bathroom for a while"

"Why's that?"

"All that rich Christmas eating has caught up with me"

"Oh God...can you put the fan on or something"

"Well it's not really pongy, more just looks gross"

"Well, that's what the flush button is for love"

"Oh yeh"

God, He/She

Yesterday, I met with my God mother in the city for a catch up, I had not seen her in about 2 years so it was nice to have a bit of a chat and catch up on what both of us had been doing. She has always taken her position as my spiritual guide and support very seriously, and always asks me how my faith is doing. Well, well, well, that is an interesting question as I recently got married in a garden by a celebrant, with no mention of religion what so ever. So obviously I have not turned out the perfect Roman Catholic that perhaps my parents originally intended. Not that my parents are ridiculously active in the Roman Catholic Church, my mother definitely isn’t and my Dad is more of a fan of the Anglicans.

She is really a lovely woman, my momentary visits from her over the years have always been enjoyable, and I know that despite the fact that we haven’t spent heaps of time together throughout my life, that she loves me. I know that she tries to reserve judgement on me not being an active Christian, and perhaps the reality that I don’t even know that I believe in organised religion. I think I do however deep down inside believe in God, or whatever he/she is, and whatever he/she is supposed to do or mean to our human existence. I don’t believe that he/she created the world though. All that creation in seven days stuff has always seemed a bit to unrealistic to me, even when I was young and impressionable. The thing is, I still celebrate Christmas and Easter, god knows why (pardon the pun) as I don’t believe in Christ/Jesus. Well maybe there was a guy who was a do-gooder who was born and dedicated his life to helping the sick and the poor, like Mother Teresa, though I have a feeling being a nun she was inspired by this guy.

See, the whole concept of faith and belief seems to be so important to us humans, like believing in ourselves, and each other is not enough. That thinking that we can be in charge of our own destiny is not good enough, and dealing with the consequences of our own actions without passing blame to a cause is not possible. This is why I have such a hard time thinking/talking about religion, because it seems to me that people heavily/partially involved in religion seem to be incapable of shaping their own destiny, making decisions on their own, or capable of reigning themselves in when they misbehave, always asking their respective God/s for forgiveness instead of asking for it from the people they have hurt or even from themselves.

I think that young people (well I suppose I can only speak for myself here) are totally terrified by organised religion. After all, what do we see all the time around us? People committing mass atrocities against other people and doing it in the name of their God and religion. Whoever God is I am sure that he/she would not be happy with people enforcing their ideals through violence onto others, unless of course he/she is a nasty b*astard, who knows? So many wars, killing sprees, cultural take-overs, deprivation of civil rights take place everyday in the name of religion, and churches wonder why people are so opposed to religion these days? Just look at the entire of human history, yesterday, today and what horrible things people will do tomorrow in the name of religion.

I have heard many people tell me that Christianity in particular teaches people morals and values, but I don’t know whether that is necessarily true, I think that you learn these things from the people that surround you, and the people who love you, like parents, grandparents, extended family, friends, sisters, brothers, and partners. I have learnt more about life, love, care and support from my family than any church could have taught me. So I suppose I do believe in a sort of religion…the religion of family and friends, and the richness of love and humour that these special people bring to my life.

After my coffee date with my godmother I went to the Art gallery and then wandered back through a park towards home. Some gothy teenage boys were hanging under a huge fig tree in the park, and they yelled at me “Merry Christmas” then following that “I hate Christ”. I didn’t really feel anything after I heard that, no need to defend this Christ, whoever he was. How do we know he even existed anyway, but through stories that were written in a book by a collection of human beings. This is all we know of any God, through collections of historical material, all created by men and women. So how do we know it was true at all? Can science tell us? Can the believers convince us? Maybe it’s all to do with the human need to have faith in something, anything, a being that oversees and protects, and an institution that delivers the so called message from that being to the lowly parishioner. I wonder what would happen if we stopped believing in churches, religion, in a god, and started believing in ourselves, and our fellow man?

Well, for what it’s worth, Merry Christmas. Even if your not a believer, like me, perhaps we can just set this time of year aside for quality time with the ones we love.

The biggest of the smalls

I was going to leave this rant until after Xmas so as to not spoil the spirit of this time of year. But the other day I went to buy some tights at Supre and that just tipped me over the edge. I don’t know if any of you have noticed but over the past few years the sizing of women’s clothing has gone through some serious tweaking. By tweaking I mean that what used to be a size 8 or 10 is now no longer a size 8 or 10, it’s more like a 10 or 12 respectively. Now I know I shouldn’t b*tch about being a size 8/10, but when this first started happening all I could think was that I was on a slippery slope from eating too many carbs. I have never been self conscious about my body until now.

At Supre I was trying to buy a pair of brown tights, and on the pile on tights there were the following sizes; s, xs, xxs, xxxs. Seriously XXXS! That size should not exist! That size only fits stick insects and pre-pubescent 14 years old girls! What is the fashion world coming too, when a skinny girl feels bad about going shopping for clothes? Maybe I am being a drama queen, but all I can think about is how horrible must it feel to go shopping when you are a beautiful size 12, or 14? Why does the fashion world deem it necessary to make beautiful women with realistic body shapes feel bad about themselves, after all aren’t these the majority of the buyer market? The cannot seriously be that many stick insects in this world that require an entire fashion market to cater to them.

What is the fashion world coming to? Why are they alienating the majority of their market? Doesn’t seem like smart marketing to me.

P.S Happy Birthday Mamma.

A Hug

When I watched this I got tingles all over. If only we would all open ourselves up to this idea a little more. In this crazy, uptight, scary world we all tend to walk past each other as if the other doesn't exist, or the other person is going to molest us. How did we all get so terrified of each other? I am a prime example of this, I walk down the street clutching my purse, glancing suspiciously at every passerby like they are all out to get me. I am sure they all stare back at me with the same suspicion, especially when I am wearing one of my crazy outfits.

I think that this was filmed in Sydney, so next time I go into the city I will have to look out for this guy, and give him a hug.

Check it out here.

Reflective

I have been feeling very reflective in the last few of days, to allow my brain to catch up with our new life, and all of its new challenges. My poor old brain and heart have taken a beating over the last year really, not necessarily a beating in a bad way, perhaps a description would be ‘a workout’. Yes, ‘a workout’ is definitely what I have experience in the heart and the head department in the past year.

This time a year ago I was working for a design studio, and since then I have:

• Left my job
• Dealt with various family crisis (sad face)
• Started my own business from scratch
• Got married (happy face)
• Moved into a shared office, where I learnt heaps and had heaps of fun.
• Moved out of a shared office (sad face)
• Moved across country, which resulted in losing all physical contact with my best friends, family and newly discovered design guru’s.
• Realised that perhaps I wasn’t as profitable in my business as I wished (fair go though, it’s only been 9 months since I started it)
• Realised that without work face-to-face contact and separation from loved ones, I have in fact become…a loner…oh yes.

Mmm, yes. I know what you are thinking, “poor little brain, poor little heart”. I know that I have my husband here with me in this new town, and believe me he really is my best friend in the whole world. But…each of us need other things/people in our lives other than each other. Unfortunately we have long ago left behind that completely amateur idea/reality of a relationship where all you want to do, is spend time with your partner 24/7. I know, and he knows that this is not healthy for a person’s brain, and heart. We can support and look after each other without being permanently attached at the hip.

So…do I have a plan. Oh yes! I have a plan! I am setting the wheels in motion…perhaps when the time is right I will share the details.