Please look in the mirror before you leave the house.

Wow. That black keyhole-backed dress is fantastic. Tight, short, great opaques, nice boots, very attractive beige bra hanging out the back - HOLY CRAP WOMAN, DID NO-ONE TELL YOU THAT'S UNDERWEAR?

We're in the bar, birthday celebrations (not mine) well underway, when she strolls in with boy and promptly turns her back on me to embrace someone. If the bra was black and lacy, ok. Maybe. But it's a dingy beige that once pretended to be SOMEONE's skin color. Functional rather than attractive (the two have been known to meet in one garment, but not this one).

And the beauty of  this keyhole dress, showcasing several vertebrae, is that it draws the observer's focus - BANG! - right onto the hooks-and-eyes mechanism that allows a bra to carry out it's function (usually lift and separate).

One glass of red drained and another on the go, my fingers are actually, perceptibly ITCHING to unsnap her bra. If I had suddenly found myself possessed of that boyish skill (unhooking with a it's practically single hand) I can't swear I would have abstained.

What would I have done in her position? Honestly, probably gone without. Or found something pretty and show-offy that screamed DER, of COURSE you're meant to see this, why else would I have worn a ruby-red lacy bra... or whatever.

Sigh. I do so dislike stupid people.

We know your cup overfloweth... Do you?

Someone incredibly wise recently said "Women of the world, get your bra professionally fitted. You have nothing to lose but your double breasts."...

Which, let's face it, look ridiculous. For some reason we Australians celebrate those who take the plunge without stopping to consider their bust size and whether their breasts really truly ACTUALLY fit inside that (sequined, eye-catching) excuse for a bra masquerading as evening wear.

Silicon does not get more attractive when you squish it agains your (bony, orange) clavicles and don a garment that fitted your pre-augmentation breasts. Do the math: $8,000 on new breasts? Dude, splash out on a new bra. Seriously. Not just some triangular nipple covers, but something that will support, uplift, even showcase your assets without cutting them in half. After all, we know you already performed asset division with your previous partner.

Wearing a bandeau dress? Strapless bra? Sure. Do it. Again, less of the divide and more of the conquer. Putting a horizontal dent across your frontage gives the slimmest girl the look of a melting candle wrapped in bike tyres.

Just do it. Gird your loins, commit half an hour of your life and buy a bra that fits your breasts. Tomorrow.

Poor old people.

So. The Great Wall of books that's been precariously balanced on our sideboard for approximately three months while friends take all the decent stuff out of it? (Don't get me wrong, we encouraged them to. We even gave them green bags and made recommendations.)

It's gone. I chucked a tantrum last night and renewed my efforts to rid our house of Crap We Don't Need.
Four 50L boxes and four green bags. I didn't count as I packed, but maybe 150 - 200 books? They filled the back of my jeepy little car, and off I set to enrich a charitable foundation.

Thwarted. Just five minutes away are two brotherhood bins, which I've donated stuff to before. They're on a main road and must be serviced often -there's not usually a load of excess stuff lying around them. I pull up, get out, start thinking about the logistics of 'posting' all these fricking books through the maws of doom, and become aware that some old guy has wandered over to tell me off.

Apparently the truck has just been and won't be back for a while, I shouldn't fill up this useful space with BOOKS and just where did all this stuff come from anyway?
The last said while peering intently through the back of my car. Actually, it was "Where did you get all this stuff, anyway?" like I must have stolen it, or was revenging myself upon a librarian ex-boyfriend. God forbid I should be capable of reading an actual book, or even worse, many.

"Ah... my HOUSE?!"
"What, ALL those books?"

Ok, I have a naughty side.
"Well, I've just found out I'm illiterate."

Said, I confess, in much the same way as "I have an inoperable brain tumor," or "My ability to think has just been wished away by a vengeful fairy godmother and I'm going to spend the rest of my life camped in Centrelink."

He wasn't very happy. I blame tv, for burdening impressionable old people with erroneous stereotypes of the young people of today. He probably thought I was serious.

Scarf on, scarf off.

I've just had an earth-shattering epiphany. Ok, it's summer. (It most certainly is not, but bear with me here.) I check the next day's weather compulsively, plan what to wear (rather, what not to wear if I don't want to die of heatstroke), put together an outfit and check the forecast again the next morning before I get dressed just to make sure nothing has changed in the intervening seven hours (this is Melbourne, anyhing could happen).

Winter: wake up, get dressed. There will be jeans. There will be layers. There will be a hell of a lot of black. And herein lies the answer to Melbourne's famously monochromatic fashion. Over the course of a typical 'chilly' day there may be any and indeed all of the following: blue skies, sleet, cutting wind, patches of sunshine, hail, rain and overheated shops/stuffy trams/congested pavements.

All of which require layering up, shedding down, reassembling and stashing and hastily wrapping in futile attempts to stay temperate. I'm not sure I'm qualified to stay dressed. The answer? My car. Never tidy at the best of times, it's a wardrobe on wheels. I counted five cardis on the passenger seat: dark grey hooded, loose black, tight black, grey cropped and black cape-y thing. Explains why I can never find any inside, but resembling homeless person starting to get a little ridiculous.
Save me.

I wasn't a zombie the last time I looked...

... so why am I suddenly falling apart?
"Pop."
It was a quiet, innocuous kind of sound, except for it's location.

My left hip. Yeah, INSIDE my body. Bones still in their original shape (i.e. not broken) and still inside a meat case are not meant to make those disturbing kinds of sounds. Nor, am I sure, are they meant to feel like that. Argh.

It just slipped casually out of joint, as you might expect if doing something particularly strenuous, like walking down the street. Grind, grind, grind... and twenty-four hours later I'm realising just how damn inconvenient this is. Ballet? Yeah, oodles of fun. Touching my toes is painful, walking no bucket of joy, so let's not discuss attempting a developpe, or casually throwing one leg back into arabesque.

I suppose I'm a lot luckier than the parent currently on crutches for six weeks. She tore hip cartilage - sitting down. Yep. Ordinary is when we hurt ourselves. Ordinary is when we realise just how much we take for granted.

Ordinary is this damn chunk of my body throbbing (in a nasty way) as I sit on the couch bemoaning the stupid of my hip joints to the vast internets.

And if you tell me that this is the universe actioning my slow-down then I'll hunt you down and smack you. Hard. I may even club you round the head with

Whoosh

Another term, another concert... Another magic release and tournament among friends. Another mothers' day and handing back a friend's dog (we babysat while they honeymooned).

Wait. Their honeymoon's over already? We just went to their wedding... Three weeks ago.
What do you mean it's nearly (ballet) exam time?

That means I have to start thinking about (ballet) concert music. And the next violin concert? A paltry five weeks away, and then it's caberet night, and another (violin) concert...

I'm not sure I can continue at this pace. Don't get me wrong, I make time to sit down and drink coffee. I even read. But between all the little markers of my year, the months are blurring past at a frightening velocity.

I find myself talking about the end of the year, even entertaining the idea of my hypothetical existence in 2011. How do I return to my blissfully ignorant state of week-by-week? Hell, month-by-month would be quite fine.

I am sickeningly certain those days of elysian unawareness may be correlated with a state of no financial obligations. And that since I like having a car and a place to live far more than any reasonable person should, I shall have to stay in the driver's seat.

No smartass remarks about being a passenger, thanks, it doesn't marry well with my control issues.

Everybody loves a good furore

I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know there have been no more bread-related incidents at our place; I have reclaimed my role as buyer of the fluffy wheaten stuff...

Just in time for our winter to arrive and me to promptly convert my breakfast to porridge. I know. The irony is too fantastic.

In other news, the local broadsheet newspaper has just fired a columnist for tweeting. I know, I thought part of her job description would be to raise her profile and that of the paper she writes for, but apparently controversy is not a paper-selling theme (having said that, the Age has now entered the arena of sticky brown stuff.

Amid the who said what about whom (let's face it: 140 characters leaves not a lot of room for contet or subtle textual nuance) we seem to have missed the substance of the matter.

I find it damn offensive that the majority are happy to see an eleven-year-old child paraded about in very adult styling - it's not Catherine Deveny with the problem, it's the society who accepts, even lauds and celebrates this presentation.

The sickos who offer beauty parties for eight-year-olds? There's a big fat difference between these kids playing dressups with mommy's stuff and going to a salon where an ideal is foisted on them.

Two years ago I had to sit a class of ballet students down and give them the body image talk.

You're all nodding, right? Because they're ballet kids. Surely they all idolize the hyper-thin... Yeah. In five years they might. Eight-to-eleven year-olds. Mouthing the "My mother says some girls are too fat to do ballet."

Too fat for the Australian Ballet, yes. Too fat for one forty-five minute class each week? Please.
Don't even get me going on the six-year-olds who sing (unprompted) ALL THE WORDS to Pussycat dolls songs... While shaking their miniature prepubescent rump in a manner to warm the ...lap
of the most repressed pedophile.

The problem's not what she tweeted, it's that the subject material was there.