Soulmate

I would just like to re-assure all of you who were worried about me that I am ok. My life is now complete that I discovered this little gem. It has enabled me to figure out the rest of my life.

I suggest you all try it.

TLOWKHAATM

Good morning. It's not hello pot plants and flowers, it's not happy sunshine and purple people, but it's a good morning.

Well people... good news is I seem to be somewhat over the bluuuuuhuuuuuhuuuuues. Somewhat. Possibly due to getting some dives in on the weekend, and aiming for four more this coming weekend... Also, I think I've settled back into work. I was finding teaching particularly unbearable for the first couple of weeks... which is odd considering how much I was enjoying it before I left! Lots of things change with just a few minutes of holiday...

I think this change of mood is also due to a FABULOUS amount of music I'm totally in love with at the moment... So without further ado or boring you with my moods, here's Tam's List of What's Keeping Her Alive At The Moment*

Silverchair - Straight Lines
I was a fan of Silverchair when i was just a wee little kiddy bopping around in... well.. shorts and tshirts, but lets not get into details. Suffice to say I'm glad they're back, and this song makes me twelve kinds of happy when I hear it seventeen times a day on the radio.

Mika - Grace Kelly
The first time I heard this song I was convinced it was Queen (logistical impossibilities aside), and then I thought it might be Robbie Williams... and then I realised I was totally in love with it and had a big goofy grin on my face.

John Mayer - Waiting on the World to Change
One day this generation's going to control the population - a thought that's both scary and exciting (kind of like me).

Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancing
This song makes me feel like dancing around the room and being boppy. What can I say? I like to do the opposite of what I'm being told to do... tell me not to want to dance and DAMMIT I'll want to...

Hinder - Lips of an Angel
Just like (obviously) everybody else, I'm intrigued by what motivates people to cheat on their partner, and that someone would write a song that makes so much sense... well, it just makes me think.

Ok. I've just realised that I have pretty much named the playlist of Nova... I've been somewhat limited (and therefore teeny-bopper-poppy) in my listening lately... SO SUE ME!**

*that's TLOWKHAATM for those of you who are interested...
** Or don't... i'm not particular flush at the moment, what having just come back from holiday and with all this EXPENSIVE new gear to buy...

Bluuuuuuues

I got the bluuuuuues.

I got the bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuues.

My apologies, but please... indulge my country music-ness for a moment.

bluuuuuhuuuuuhuuuuuuhuuuuuhuuuuuuuuues.

I actually don't have the blues, not seriously anyway. I have the post-holiday blues. Don't get me wrong, there are many fabulous things happening in my life at the moment, I'm just feeling quite blah about the not-so-fabulous things. This blah-ness is out-weighing the fabulous things.

I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW i've just been away on a brilliant holiday, I have a new hobby that i'm ridiculously excited about... What do I have to complain about? Not much really. But I think that's possibly part of the problem. I would rather be ANYWHERE but work. Every now and then I go through stages like this, where my job gets to be so same same same same same same that I feel like slitting my wrists with a very blunt instrument and bleeding all over the floor just for some entertainment. This is one of those stages.

But never fear valiant readers - I've been running and yoga-ing and having a jolly time, and generally everything outside of work is quite literally top-notch, so i'm sure this insipid worky boredom will soon sort itself out.

Until then, there's always google and youtube...

Romance

Good morning shiny happy people.

You're all looking fabulous this morning.

I am too? Why thankyou. Thankyou very much. I am, aren't I? I'm also feeling a little human again which, after flying through the night Sunday and pretty much going straight to work on Monday, I really wasn't.

Well, the last three weeks of my life have been busy, exhausting, exciting and full of adventure and romance.

WHAT?????!!?!?!?!?! ROMANCE I hear you exclaim?

Tammy doesn't have romance in her life.

Ever.

Sadly, this is still true. I'm talking about the new love of my life... diving. Yes, that's right folks, I have a new obsession. First it was skiing, which of course, I still love. But skiing has been somewhat superceded by something MUCH cooler, WAAAAAY more diverse and alot more variable and exciting (also alot less dependent on the weather... which, the way things have been going recently, can only be a good thing!).

From now on I am going to spend my whole life either sitting on Blue Beach on a boat or in the water far below said boat. NB I'll make sure boat has a computer and a coffee machine, so don't stress, blog will still happen. With this in mind, how does this sound to everyone else? I, for one, think it's a fabulous idea.

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!

Ooh just to update you on the last few days of my ollieday, Singapore has some great shopping (amazingly they even have shoes for giant feet), brilliant karaoke, and awesome teppanyaki, but it is just too damn hot.

My hOliDay. by TamMy. (pt 1)

OH MY GOD i have SO much to tell you.

WHAT a week.

For those of you who don't know, i'm in the Philippines at the moment, and have been here nearly a week. I arrived last Friday (after a fun fun few hours at Singapore airport with Georgie!) and our friend Rob picked me up. We got driven down to Batangas City where we got a boat over to Small Lalaguna Beach where Anna was waiting. Anna and I stayed there until yesterday, we both completed our PADI Open water and Advanced Open water diving courses, and are now fully qualified open water divers. As part of those courses we did a total of 9 dives including a wreck dive, a night dive, and a deep dive, to a depth of 30m. Once I sorted out how to properly empty my BCD (a very straightforward thing that made a HUGENESS of difference to my control of buoyancy!!!) and forced my brain to admit that if my mask is full of water I can still breathe (i had to show that I could take my mask off underwater, put it back on and clear it) we were all cool!!!

The Lalaguna and Sabang beach area is quite touristy, with hundreds of divers constantly filling the resorts there. There is also an abundance of old men with really young Philippina wives/girlfriends/bitches. One of the funniest things we saw was a "bitch bar," which is kinda like a strip club, except that the girls don't take their clothes off. They literally walk in a bikini and high heels in a circle around the stage. I have never seen a bunch of girls looking so bored or disinterested in what they're doing. However, the place was filled with men, both foreigners and Philippinos!

Yesterday we completed our last two dives, then got a public ferry and public bus (quite an experience for me!) up to Manila. We stayed in Manila for the night because it was too soon after diving to fly just yet. We arrived in Manila with no place to stay (anna thought we would play it by ear... had I been to Manila before, i would have insisted we had somewhere to stay!!!!) but an idea in mind of a place that was close to the airport and a hostel type place. We got off the bus, found a taxi driver who hopefully wouldn't murder us for our shoes and found the hostel. No room at the inn. We called a couple of other places which were all also booked out. So then I did what any girl in that situation would do, I called Uncle Rob. He called about 5 more places which were also full, by which point I am totally over it and would have been happy to pay $100 for somewhere nice rather than trying to find somewhere cheap. Eventually Rob found us a room, and after having our cab driver go up and down the same street three times, we finally found the hotel. Now I use the term hotel somewhat loosely here. Basically it was a room with two beds. And by beds, I mean two pieces of foam on bed sized wooden boxes. Anyway, it was a sort of clean and possibly safe place to stay.

We went and had dinner and sorted out printing out our tickets for the flight the following morning (have you ever heard of a PC that DOESN'T have adobe reader on it?) and went to bed pretty early. Then I had possibly THE worst night's sleep of my entire life. Our airconditioner made these MASSIVE crash bang clunk noises about every half hour. The first time it happened we thought someone was trying to get in our door. We set up an elaborate bag/cupboard door alarm on the room door so that if someone tried it again we would know. When I was jolted from my sleep the second time with the hugest fright of my life, I worked out it was the air conditioner. For about the next three hours I swear I was lying awake in my bed thinking things like "oh my god we're going to be murdered and nobody will know" and "oh my god what if there's a fire alarm? there is no way i am going outside in this city in my pyjamas and leaving all my stuff in this room - we're going to die in a burning building and nobody will ever know." Obviously I worked myself into a right panic. Eventually however, I did manage to fall asleep for at least a few hours in a row. If I never go to Manila again it will be too soon. The city is dirty, chaotic, so polluted and so so so poor.

At 4.45am we got up and went to Manila domestic airport, another experience in itself. Rob had a friend of his who's a taxi driver pick us up at Cebu airport and take us to his travel agent to pay for our tickets here and back, and we also got a GOOD proper coffee. We could leave our bags in his car while we went and organised things, and his car was clean and nice and he was polite and didn't once ask either of us if we were married! All of these things were a HUGE relief, but also a huge change from EVERY single other Philippino guy we had come across. He took us to the ferry which we caught where Rob picked us up in Ormoc City.

So by now we're up to yesterday afternoon. We got to Rob's, dumped our bags and went out on his funkarama boat, had an amazing afternoon, did a dive to the wreck of a Japanese ship that was bombed in 1944, and drank beers as the sun went down. This was suh a relaxed and fun afternoon, it was easy to forget that we're in this country surrounded by so much poverty. As we were on our way back in we could see all the shanties down the beach from Rob's house that thousands of people actually call home.

We went out for tea last night to a seafood restaurant (anybody who knows me well, this is cue to fall off your chair) where i ate raw marlin (SO yum), and Dorado (amazing) and cucumber salad. I never knew that fish could be so delicious. I have been totally converted to a seafood eater - just make sure it doesn't taste fishy! We drank some wine, went and had another beer under an umbrella in this temporary festival/bar/pub place, came back to Rob's where I had the best sleep i've had in ages.

Today we woke up to an amazing view out over the water and to find that Anna's bathers had been stolen off Rob's washing line. She got a bit shitty, but then remembered that she'd already brought them inside!!! We are just about to have breakfast, and then we're heading out on the boat for the whole day. Our first dive is going to be to 52m, which is a long way past what we've done before, and probably a long way past what we should be doing as inexperienced divers, but ROb is sure that we're both advanced divers, and given that both Anna and I have spent much of our lives in water and teaching other kids to swim, we're pretty confident. Also, Rob's boat has this amazing facility where we can do decompression with pure oxygen at 7 or 8 metres, so this pretty much rules out even the possibility of any problems!

In total we're going to do 3 dives today, sit on the boat, eat chicken for lunch and have a few beers on the way back. Tomorrow morning I have to leave at 5 to head to Tacloban airport to catch a plane to Manila, where i have a 4 hour wait before my plane back to Singapore, where I am meeting Georgie and Ed and then flying to Koh Samui to spend a long weekend there with them. I'm totally hookedo n diving now, and am planning on doing at least a couple of dives in Koh Samui each morning, before sitting by the pool sipping cocktails and shopping for knock-offs with Georgie. I am so excited about seeing them both and getting to spend an extended period of time with them!! I adored just sitting in Singapore airport and talking and talking and talking with Georgie last week, so it will be awesome to have a whole week of that!

ok, i'd best be off. The deep blue awaits, and some Philippino boys to sail the boat.

Love you and miss you (kinda!) all.

Love me.

Off and away...

We're all going on a summer holiday... oh wait. We're not... I AM!!!!
That's right, i'm going. Away. On Holiday. As much as I love you all, and i'll try and keep you updated, i'm sure you'll get over it if i don't.

xoxoxoxox (just to make you feel loved)

Ode to my love

In honour of this oh-so-special-and-not-at-all-cheesy-or-bitterness-inducing day, I thought I would write to you all about my favourite person in the whole world.

Witty and smart,
A lover of life and art,
A little mischevious
But good at heart.

She tries to listen,
Tries to understand.
She will not judge her true friends.
She'll just sit and listen and hold their hand.

She always looks for the best in people

Though she'll be honest when asked her opinion,

See, she's always been very strong on those

Sometimes to her detriment and others' woe.

If she owes you money

She'll most likely forget.

But just borrow it back

she'll forget that too!

Her nearest and dearest are just that:

near and dear to her heart.

Though sometimes she does not remind them enough.

She hopes they know loves them.

I know sometimes she feels a little lonely,

A little different.

Then she remembers that's ok.

Who wants to be the same as everyone else anyway?

This is my ode to my love,

To commemorate this bizarre excuse for a day

Have you worked out yet who she is?

What gave it away?

Immobilate

Imagine you are me. Go on, I know it will be hard to imagine being as cool as me, but for the sake of this story, please at least give it a go.

OK, so you're me. It's 8.40am on a Tuesday and you're running slightly late. It's not a panicked kind of late like "oh shit i'm going to get fired because i'm late for the 29th day in a row." It's more of an "I'm going to be a bit late, but that's ok because i had a fabulously relaxing night sitting on my bed in my pyjamas drinking a slurpee with my airconditioning on watching that fabulous spunk of a British TV show Spooks, and when I woke up to my alarm and someone VACUUMING in my house at 7.30 i rolled over, put my pillow over my head and went back to sleep." THAT kind of running late, you know the kind.

Anyway, this was at 8.40. By 8.45 i was starting to try and hurry a little, but couldn't help noticing when i caught sight of myself in a mirror that i NEEDED a headband today. I went upstairs and got my headband, looked fabulous, and went to the front door. I know this is getting a little long-winded people, but stay with me.

Somewhere in between the bathroom and the front door, I lost my keys. It now being 8.50, I did what any normal person would do: i picked up my spare key from the drawer where all organised people such as myself keep "spare things," decided i didn't need a house key because someone would be home when i got home tonight, and walked out the front door (which, unamusingly, locks itself).

Now, I realised as I was sitting in my car listening to the engine turn over and over and over and over and over (notice the distinct absence of FIRING here), that my car was taking rather an unusually long time to start. In fact, it most definitely Would Not Start. My super-dooper-newish-but-new-and-exciting-to-me-beautiful car was broken. Unimpressed, i did what every girl does when her car breaks down, I called my dad. My dad however, had just got on a plane. So then I called my mum. Then I called the RACV. Then I waited. And waited some more. And WAITED SOME MORE DAMMIT.

5-30 minutes they say. Over an hour says I.

Anyway, at just before 10am, a lovely gentleman from the RACV takes one look at my car and says, "it doesn't recognise ya key, love." Long story short, my spare key doesn't un-immobilise the automatic immobiliser in my car. I CAN'T DRIVE MY CAR WITH MY SPARE KEY. The doors open, the power goes on, Hell, I can sit and drain the battery for an hour with no problems, but I can't go anywhere.

Thanks.A.Whole.Bloody.Lot.

So i waited another 45 minutes for my mum to come home with a house key (geez i'm glad there's a good coffee shop near my house, it was getting HOT by this stage!), so that I could walk in and find my full set of keys on the bathroom bench, right where I had left them.

That is THE last time i decide to wear a headband to work.

Stumble across me shallow world

Last night I was having a look at who looks at my blog. That's right, you oh noble reader. OK so not so much looking at WHO looks (it's not like I have your names and addresses...or DO I?) but more looking at HOW people who visit my blog find it: did you do a google search? Or do you type in the name directly? Do you click on a link on someone else's blog?

Imagine my horror upon realising that rather a large number of people who have stumbled across my blog have done so by typing in the very strange name of a celebrity child into one search engine or another. Once upon a dim dark time, I wrote something in this here blog about the names of celebrity children. Now please understand... this could only have been in the wake of a Shiloh or Suri or some other such wondrous creation.

Now I am going to hang my head in shame and sadness at the fact the vapid and shallow people of this world are not interested in art and creativity. Oh no, they are obsessed by celebrities and glamour and style and odd baby names. Well, if YOU are one of those people BE GONE. There will be none of that here.

PS. Did you hear that supposedly Anna Nicole Smith's death had something to do with plastic surgery...OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

PPS. two posts in less than 24 hours. What is the world coming to?

Stories of short

Argh i have SO much to do. on Thursday night I'm leaving to go to the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore for just over two weeks. This weekend, I had SO many things to do. Yesterday I did pretty much bugger all. Last night I drank ALOT, and thanks to AB and McSlurry for 4am pizza (told you guys i'd mention you!!!!!!!!!!). Today I had to do about 5 weeks worth of uni work, and I didn't even start feeling human again until about 3pm. I still think I did a good job... So while you read my short story, I'm going to go and try and get my life into some sense of order....


Nick glanced at his watch. His client was late, very late. He knew he should have escorted her himself, but she’d insisted on making her own way. She wanted to be inconspicuous. He sighed and shook his head at his own idiocy. He muttered a curse to himself and glanced out of the window at the front of the restaurant. No sign of her yet.
“What if she’s in trouble?” he thought to himself.

He was her bodyguard-to-be after all, and until she arrived, he wouldn’t know how much trouble she was in. Hell, he didn’t even know why she needed a bodyguard. There were, of course, several possibilities circulating his mind. Such possibilities included: she had a crazy ex-boyfriend; she had witnessed a mafia shooting; or she was just really, really paranoid. But until he met her, there was just no way of knowing.

His eyes strayed to his watch again before they wandered aimlessly around the room and come to a halt on a young couple in the far corner. She was angry. He was looking very, very sorry. Nick sympathised. Suddenly the girl picked up her glass of wine and threw it in the man’s face. She got up and stalked out, leaving him open-mouthed, gaping in shock. The rest of the diners stared after her, and quickly got back to their hushed conversations, pretending not to have noticed the scene. Nick groaned, feeling the other man’s embarrassment. For a little while longer he just sat, content with these few precious minutes. There was just so little time these days. Eventually, his gaze wandered across the room again.

His heart leapt in his throat as his eyes fixed on two cars making their way to the parking lot. They had both pulled in at excessive speeds, but were now slowing down. One car stopped and a woman got out, looking harassed and quite shaky. Rachel, he thought. He didn’t know how he knew that this creature was his soon-to-be-client; he just did. Nick looked more closely – she didn’t appear to have great control over the direction in which she was walking.

The other car cruised around the parking lot and started heading back towards where Rachel was stumbling across the road. Slowly seeing future events play out in his mind, Nick suddenly realized what was happening. Jumping up from his table, he knocked the contents over as he dived out the door.
_______________________________

She fumbled with her shirt buttons, her hands shaking. All she had to do was meet this guy and then he could take care of whoever had been stalking her. Simple. He was a professional. He would be able to help her. No big deal. She tried to make herself believe it, but with little success.

After securing the doors and windows of her house, she checked that it was all clear outside and made a run for her car. She leapt from the top step of her house and bounded across the front yard as quickly as possible, not caring how she looked. Before she knew it, she was through the door of her old car, safely locked in.

Inside, she breathed a sigh of relief and turned on the engine. She only lived ten minutes away from the restaurant. What could happen in just ten little minutes?

After driving for what seemed like an eternity, Rachel glanced into the rearview mirror. Her heart sank. She was being followed. Somehow she knew that the car behind her contained the twisted man who had been stalking her.

She pressed her foot harder onto the accelerator and forced her car to speed up. Her eyes widened as she looked into the mirror once more. The car behind had also sped up. She had the sinking feeling that the stranger was getting a thrill out of playing with her mind – if he had wanted to catch her, he surely would have done so by now. Her hands began to quake violently with every further second she drove. Her vision blurred slightly, and she began to lose control of the steering.
“Don’t panic,” her head told her. “You’re nearly there.”
Too late, her heart replied, and there were the headlights of the other car, gradually gaining on her. There was no chance that she could outrun this maniac! Rachel was sure that if she forced her car to go much faster, it would either blow up – she was no expert when it came to motor mechanics – or she would likely be arrested. Unfortunately, it hadn’t registered in her mind that she would actually be safer locked inside a jail cell for a while than she was on a deserted road with a crazy and likely dangerous stalker close behind.

As she began to wipe away the sweat from her face, she realized that in fact there were also tears there. Rachel had never been good at performing under pressure, this was about the most pressurized a situation in which she’d ever found herself. She shook her head and cursed, trying to snap herself out of the panic, but succeeding only in losing control of the car for a few moments. Brushing a sleeve across her forehead, she again looked into the mirror. The car was definitely gaining on her and getting closer by the second. She could just make out the shadowed silhouette of a tall, muscle-bound man. Well, either that or a woman who was very in touch with her masculine side.
“He’s just playing games,” she tried to tell herself. She wasn’t very convincing.

Abruptly, the restaurant came into view. She wondered if she would, having made it as far as the car park, even make it into the restaurant before the psycho caught her once and for all. She panicked and sped around the corner with little care for who or what scuttled out of the way. The restaurant was so close that some part of her just knew she would make it; yet, so far that it seemed miles away and impossible to reach before her time ran out.

She chided herself for being so dramatic and pulled into the restaurant parking lot, praying that the other car would continue on its way and pass her, that she was imagining the whole situation. It kept following close behind. She jumped out of the car, intending to make a run for it, but found she had little control of her actions. She turned to assess the other car’s progress, and froze. The other car was cruising lazily down to the other end of the car park, and was now turning back towards her. As it sped up, she desperately tried to get out of the way, but her body failed her. Rachel screamed momentarily before she was winded as she was knocked to the ground. A tall, slim, but heavy body of a man covered her completely.

“Good to finally meet you, Miss Smyth,” said a deep voice, presumably belonging to the man who was currently crushing her. How did he know who she was?
“Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Nick James, your new bodyguard.”
____________________________________

I watched her. For months, I watched her. She stole my life. She stole my job. She used me. Nobody does that to me. But she did. So she left me with no choice – I had to take away her life, her loved ones. That’s why I did it. That’s why people had to die. It was because of her. All because of her. It’s all her fault.

I tried to be nice to her. I tried to be a good neighbour. I thought she loved me – she’d never actually said it but then, women can be like that. Everybody knows that women say one thing and mean another. She’s just like all the rest of them. I knew that she was just being coy, that she would eventually admit her feelings. Didn’t she realize I gave up everything for her? I lost my job because they claimed that I was never there. Of course I wasn’t there - I had to look after her, to protect her. So I took a few days off now and then. She pretended she didn’t notice me following her on those days, but I know she did. I know she appreciated my level of interest and concern with her life. I wouldn’t have cared about the job, but then I saw her with a man, my brother. She cheated on me. She couldn’t deal with the depth of our relationship, and she didn’t know how to tell me. She should have talked it through with me. I could have made her understand that it was ok. She didn’t have to cheat on me, when she knew I was watching. She should have told me. I would have been ok with it, I’m sure. I’m a reasonable man. She made me end my own brother’s life. She forced my hand, and now she has to understand that I don’t like that. I am the master of my destiny, and I will not be manipulated.

I watched her coming home from work tonight. I watched as she locked all her doors and windows, as if she really though that a few locks would stop me. I’m sure she was just making a show of it, she knows I can get at her if I want to. She’s been rather jumpy lately. Mind you, finding your cat dead in your bed can have that effect on some people.

I’m following her now, in my car. Stupid bat hasn’t even noticed. I’ve been right behind her for almost five minutes so far, but she looks perfectly at ease. She isn’t even sorry! She should be dripping with guilt at the way she treated me – the things she forced me to do.

Her car is beginning to speed up. Her posture is stiff. Oh good – I hope she knows that she’s going to die, that dying is her punishment for being so heartless and stupid. She can’t outrun me; her car is far too slow. I can catch her in a heartbeat, but I won’t. Not yet. I want her to fear. I want her to be scared of me and of her short time ahead. She will never feel calm or happiness again. She toyed with me, and now I am going to have my fun, to seek my revenge. The irony is, that I’m doing this to teach her a lesson, but it will be her final lesson. There is no more learning to be done once this lesson is over.

I’m watching her car pull slowly into a parking lot and admiring the length of those legs! She is stumbles from the driver’s seat and starts towards the restaurant. She didn’t even close the door. Realisation of what’s happening must have hit her. She knows now that little things like that don’t matter. All that matters is being true, true to me. I notice the uncontrollable quaking of her whole body. It’s working. She is terrified of me, but not nearly as terrified as she could be. SHOULD be. Not nearly as terrified as she will be.

Slowly work my way around the other side of the car park. Turning towards her, I rev the engine. Has she realized yet? Aiming towards her, I plant my foot on the accelerator. Utter terror spreads across that pretty little face of hers. She doesn’t even try to run. She knows she deserves this.

A movement to my right has just caught my peripheral vision. A man is running for her – he looks slightly panicked. I seem to be having this effect on a lot of people lately. I glare at him as he pushes her out of my path and lands on top of her on the ground. I begin to berate him out loud. Getting angrier by the second. I look in the rearvision mirror: She’s still alive. Moving. She has learnt nothing. She is probably in shock.

I will get her.
I will get her.
It was with this thought running through my head, that I re-focused my eyes on where I was heading and saw the solid brick wall looming. My last moments should have been hers, and now it’s too late. She caused me to kill, and then, ultimately, she killed me.

EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Oh how I do love to write, but there seems to be too little time to do it these days. I've been pondering alot lately what my course of action in life is going to be. Do i want to be a writer?

I've decided no. Mainly because, when i HAVE to write on a certain topic, a certain amount of words, by a certain time, it tends to lose all it's fun.

One of my friends is sure that she's a dancer in a lawyers body, but i reckon that if she'd taken up dancing for a career, it wouldn't bring her as much joy as it does now as a release from her legal high flyer world.

Writing is going to be an extra, and i'm ok with that.

iSSues

Please see below for explanation of my permanent relationship iSSues... they obviously started early!

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY
(1) You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like
sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the
chips and dip coming.
- Alan, age 10
(2) No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to
marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who
you're stuck with.
- Kristen, age 10

WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
(1) Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
- Camille, age 10
(2) No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married.
- Freddie, age 6 (very wise for his age)

HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
(1) You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling
at the same kids.
- Derrick, age 8

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
(1) Both don't want any more kids.
- Lori, age 8

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
(1) Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know
each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure)
(2) On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually
gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
- Martin, age 10 (Who said boys don't have brains)

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
(1) I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the
newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
-Craig, age 9

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
(1) When they're rich.
- Pam, age 7 (I could not have said it better myself)
(2) The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess
with that.
- Curt, age 7 (Good Point)
(3 ) The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should
marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.
- Howard, age 8 (Who made that rule?)

IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
(1 ) I don't know which is better, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm
never going to have s@x with my wife. I don't want to be all grossed
out.
- Theodore, age 8 (Too much detail for his age)
(2 ) It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need
someone to clean up after them.
- Anita, age 9 (bless you child)

HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
(1 ) There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there?
- Kelvin, age 8

And the #1 Favourite is........

HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
(1 ) Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a
truck.
- Ricky, age 10 (The boy already understands)

Thwack.....thwack.

There is something satisfying about the resounding thwack of a tennis ball being hit skillfully in the right direction by a tennis racquet. I'm not sure what it is, but I know it's something I never, ever hear on the rare occasion that I've played tennis.

Now, in general, i'm a pretty physically skillful person. I'm not being arrogant, i'm being honest. I'm pretty good at many things, especially sports. However, tennis, and in fact most ball sports, remain somewhat of an enigma to me. The whole hand eye co-ordination thing just doesn't come naturally: I can co-ordinate the hands, and I can co-ordinate the eyes but when it comes to getting them both happening at once, i just cannot get that shit together.

I had tennis lessons in grade 6: it lasted exactly one term. I'm not sure if my tennis teacher or my parents thought that was enough, but it was decided I should stick to what I was good at, staying far away from anything remotely round that flew at great speeds in my direction. Apart from waterpolo (the ball is big, and yellow, and rarely flies at any speed), this is a rule of thumb I have pretty much stuck to ever since. I would love to be one of those people who eventually plays social tennis. Sure, the social part I have downpat, the tennis, no.

I think this is possibly why I enjoy watching the tennis so much. Oddly, it doesn't in any way make me feel inferior. Instead, I sit transfixed in front of the telly each night and all weekend, staring in awe at this immense skill these athletes have, which I for some reason cannot even remotely begin to master. It is quite convenient that the Australian Open falls at this time of year, because it means when I finish work I can go straight home and plonk myself in front of the tv or in bed and stay there for the whole night. I think anybody watching me watching the tennis would probably laugh: I ooh, I aaah, i shout and cheer at the screen. I jump around when I get excited by a close game, and I give much needed and highly valuable tips to whoever happens to be doing the wrong thing at the time: my arm-chair coaching skills are second to none.

Many people I've spoken to in the last couple of weeks have made noises along the lines of "Tennis, oh how boring." To those people: I challenge you to find another game in which almost every game is nail-bitingly exciting, and involves such a high level of skill, over such a long period of time. Each of the grand slams is like a marathon... in fact, longer than a marathon! Many of the 5 set games the guys play go for 3 or 4 hours, and I don't think you'd find many marathon runners doing 4 or 5 or 6 marathons in a two week period... much less doing that four times a year at 18, 20 or 22 years old.

I will forever remain a fan of tennis. In my imagination I am a tennis star, unfortunately for me though, I have a feeling this is where my skill will remain!

Memories of a black line

This morning I visited a very familiar but also very distant place from my past.

Ok, so I'm probably being a little dramatic....I mean, it's not like it's a place from 20 years ago, or even 10 (actually it started about 11 years ago...) and it's not even as though I haven't been there since i stopped going there, if that makes ANY sense (it makes sense in my mind and that's what counts!).

This place is somewhere I know really well, somewhere I spent alot of time until I was about 18, and somewhere I had some of my favourite and most precious memories, for a variety of reasons.

Hands up who's worked out where I'm talking about?





heh heh you were sitting at your own computer with your hand up in the air, weren't you? Ok, so since you endured looking so silly for me, i'm going to tell you what the hell I'm on about.

This morning I got up early (for me) and I went to a pool. I joined a club. I went swimming. With a squad. With a coach and everything. In fact, the pool was MSAC - my old training pool. The club was Vicentre - my old club. The squad was the Swim Advantage squad (basically for triathletes and old people)- NOT my old squad! They train three times a week, and I have decided that for something I used to love so so so so so much, I really don't swim very much any more, and I missed it. So instead of doing what i've done for the last year or so, and going to the pool once or twice a week by myself and doing an easy km or two, that I would put some structure into it. I am now officially going to be "training" (I use this term quite liberally) three times a week, and doing about 3kms at a time...to start with at least!

Today, even though by the end i was embarrassingly wrecked, i absolutely loved every single second of the session. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I loved my first dive in, I loved the fact that I still can't, no matter how tired I am or fast I want to go, leave early in any set. I loved the fact that I still push off every wall in a perfect torpedo, I still don't breathe on the first stroke up or the last stroke into a turn. I love that I still thought about doing perfect turns, and I still counted my strokes when I was doing breaststroke. I still thought about not doing a big dolphin kick at the end of my split stroke, and not letting my feet sink at the end of my breaststroke kick. I love that I made the times for each set, and that I still counted each lap and repeat exactly the same way in my head. I still got annoyed at having to pass people who seem not to notice someone's trying to pass them(!!!!) and I still got annoyed at people who crowd at the end and wouldn't let me finish at the wall on every lap.

No no no, i'm not a perfectionist!

To most of you reading this, almost none of that will make any sense, but that's ok. To those of you who feel the same rush of excitement and enjoyment when you look back on those days, those who so loved that time, and who now appreciate and cherish every little thing it taught you, who remember every second of every race, every medal on the podium, every record, those people might have some idea how I feel right now. I know not everybody loved the sport like did, but that part of my life is, and will remain, one of the most fun-filled, educating, exhausting and exhilarating times of my life.

Remember the time in your life, before it all fell apart, before you got all confused, before you decided to change everything, before you got lazy, and before you stopped caring. Remember when you knew who you were, and everybody else did too. Remember the time when you were doing exactly what you wanted to do, and you were brilliant at it.

About 5 years ago I made what i now think was one of the stupidest decisions of my life. Actually, I made a few of them, all within a few months. They were decisions I had to make, just as the last 5 years was a journey I had to take, but it is only really in the last year or so that I've been able to start to get my head back together and my life back into order. This morning, this feeling, represents a very large piece of that.

Not my choice BUT....

Hmm. probably not my first choice for wedding attire... but each to their own!

Doesn't the warmth and love radiating from this bunch just warms the cockels of your heart?

(thanks Wilbur)