Me? Vindictive? Never!

So I'm driving down the road to work, gently stuck behind an old coot travelling ye olde five kilometers beneath ye speed limit, when a very angry man in a silver car begins to tailgate me. I'd like to tell you the model of the car, but he was far too intent on shoving the bonnet into my dinky little bumper, so I can't.

He wasn't a very happy man. He had a bald head and a big moustache, and some rather large sunglasses. Possibly he was still unhappy about the loss of his Harley (doubtless totalled into the back of some other law-abiding driver), because he felt the need to express his frustration in a myriad of ways.
At first I thought he was trying a game of rearview charades, but extending your middle finger heavenward and jerking it violently doesn't seem very PG. Or sportsmanlike.

Then he seemed to succumb to a violent gravitational force emanating from the centre of his steering wheel. Loudly. I'd like to tell you exactly what kind of car makes a noise like that, but the whole bonnet-bumper situation? Completely tailgated. So I decided it might be time for me to play a game. Like "Chelsea Stops!" It's a great way to test (a) just how lightning quick your reflexes are and (b) the health of your tyres.
Mine are fine, thank you for asking.

At the next set of lights, moron man overtook me on the left and drove in an imaginary lane for about a hundred metres, valiantly straining to overtake the old codger who was the source of all his fury. He failed. Massively. Because I now had the pleasure of staring directly at moron's license plate. Oops.
I'm not a naturally vindictive person, but if you REALLY want to tailgate me, scream abuse, wave your finger about and then very nearly run me off the road, expect retribution.

We have a very nice service called "The Hoon Hotline" - 1800-NO HOON. They liked receiving my telephone call very much. They especially liked the part where moron man cut through an intersection using a service road at twice the legal limit. I liked getting even.

What I did on my Sunday.

Sunday started very early in the morning with a showing of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in honor of Halloween. Then there was some sleeping. And a cooked breakfast, because bacon, egg and hash brown sandwiches are vital to schlepping about at the races before ballet rehearsal. Great idea. The caramel popcorn the night before? Very important part of my never-ending carb/sugar/edible loading. There are just too many pale and shiny leotards in this world for me to cope. Therefore more eating is in order. Where was I? Oh, about ten a.m. on Sunday morning. OK.

We offed to the races in style; me in a 1920s black lace and silk chiffon dress (shoestring straps, fitted, dropped waist, floaty skirt), black headpiece, red sinner lipstick (Poppy King gets some things very, very right), the boy in charcoal pants, black french-cuffed shirt with tie, & snap-brimmed charcoal hat.
If anyone sends me photos I'll add one to this post.

Right now I'd like to send out a fervent thankyou to jp for the tickets. I'm sure a highlight of the whole 'going to the races' experience is queuing for two hours in the dusty carpark, listening to a segment of the population whining "Loz, crack meopen another can, wuldja, me feet are killen me!"
where:
 -  "Loz" is their peroxided cohort with tatts snaking beneath her visible bra strap (NO country race meet is complete without strapless dresses worn with possibly-maternity-bras and DIY oompa-loompa tan)
 - "can" is premixed Bundaberg rum & coke or UDL, served from the esky in the dust and tossed aside when drained
 - "me feet" are encased in unsuitably strappy shoes, which are cast aside shortly after aerating the turf and causing their owner to fall over. Oh, hang on, that's the cans and shoes in cahoots. My mistake.

The other half of the population, being male, are
(a) ogling the girls trying to simultaneously pull their dresses down over their backside and up over their strapless bras (while I wonder just how many seconds will elapse before someone gets that very delicate balancing act VERY wrong)
(b) oscillating between a vantage point and one of the alcohol outlets while making copious use of the word "f%^k" as a noun, verb, and adjective
(c) being tools while dressed as tossers.

I've never seen so much badly applied fake tan in my life, and I've been to a lot of ballet/calesthenics/aerobics events. Really, it was just indomitable proof that there isn't enough love in the world. Because if you really loved your bestie (you know, last-piece-of-chocolate type of love), you wouldn't have driven the Barina out of the driveway. No.

Instead, you would have said "Sweetheart, your legs have funny orange streaks up them and that REALLY clashes with your red undies, which, by the way, you can see straight through that pillowcase masquerading as a dress. And the kilo of clanging brass bracelets is just going to give you a headache by the time you finish that slab of Cruisers in the esky, so why don't you pop back in and trade the indian-feather-headband for a REAL hat, find a dress that covers your nipples and your girly bits AT THE SAME TIME and... those shoes? If you REALLY want to walk on the balls of your feet all day, those shoes are PERFECT. Here's a nail brush so you can get started on all that nice fluorescent dead skin."

Next time I go to the races I'm going to take a belt sander. You have been warned.

Thunder and lightning, very very frightening...pug!

It's stormy weather above our place; really and truly right above us. Hearing strong winds, I panicked and ran out onto our porch to prune the gorgeous yellow rose standard beside our steps. The other one blew over while we were away one weekend and I didn't want to lose this one too. Got absolutely soaked and decided to abandon my frenzied pruning efforts when I realised I was directly below some massive (daylight quality) flashes of lightning holding metal pruning shears. Hm. Yes, they have handles, but is that something I really feel like testing tonight? No. 


Hilariously, the same pug which was skittering across the floorboards barking in a panicky fashion not ten minutes ago has now passed out in her bed, sweetly oblivious to the world and subsequent rumblings of thunder in the heavens above. The rain is pattering on our roof but there are warnings of hail up to 2cm in diameter; no doubt there'll be human interest stories of families with their roofs blown off and clutching golf-sized hail preserved in the freezer for our intrepid reporters over at the HeraldSun.

Dammit. Spoke too soon. She's squeaking again.
Hubs is lecturing me just a little on the pool of cards we saw in tonight's Magic draft. Then apologising for speaking so much while I'm attempting to type coherent sentences. Then pointing out that he had in fact done said apologising. Ok, it's a mobius loop, enough already.

I now have three sore toes.
I carved a chunk out of my right foot's second toe when I put a large plastic tub on - well, I thought it was the floor. It wasn't. So my left biggie is sore, by right biggie is throbbing, and I may die from the blood loss incurred from my second toe. That I probably won't is an irrelevance and shall not be mentioned in the interests of garnering sympathy. And it's ridiculously humid.

Hm. Is there anything else I can currently think of to complain about? Oh yeah, it's Halloween tomorrow. Which, in Australia, doesn't mean a great deal. When all your friends are arty people it means a little more. I suspect dressing up may be in the air. This is totally my own fault for bemoaning the lack of frocking up in my life. Universe, if you are listening, this is not what I meant.

Shoot on sight:

Peroxide blonde gyrating furiously to sound of over-amplified band.

A little elaboration: the venue is TINY. About four square metres of dancing space tiny. The band, apparently attempting to rebel against or deny this unarguable fact, are growing larger every week. I kid you not, every fourteen days when they deafen us with their presence there is a new band member. And a new speaker. Possibly two new speakers. Now, given the size of the venue, they could feasibly play an ACOUSTIC gig and still be horribly, nastily, agonisingly loud. Tonight not only my toes (that's another story, see below) but my eardrums are bloodied.

Yes. So. The blonde. I have nothing against forty-something women having a good time. I would like to be one of them in twenty years. However, I hope my friends will tell me that (a) my dress does not stop my sagging cleavage from pogo-ing when I "dance" and (b) stepping from side to side swinging my hair, arms, spiky-ended fingers and the aforementioned cleavage does not qualify as "dancing".

It's particularly annoying when the rest of the floor not occupied by crazy inebriated woman is peopled by beer-swilling statues unwilling to concede their centre-of-the-floor space for, oh, gee, a comfortable chair?
Or that space over by the wall?
You know, where you'll still be able to see up my skirt when I turn but no-one will bump into you and the general quality of the dancing (your entertainment) will be better because the people dancing WON'T HAVE TO DANCE AROUND YOU ALL THE TIME, YOU MORONS!

Sorry. There are really only so many hours in the day I can be gracious and goodwill personified (hhhmmmm.... about 0.0001 realistically). Dammit.

Even my lovely hubs attempting to point out "But really it's a pub. I mean, people stand around drinking because it's a PUB" will not mollify me. Yes, it's a pub. But to stand in the way of the speedy trajectory of 150 kilos?
Well, how stupid are you currently feeling? And if you're not used to this whole people whirling around dancing business? ALL THE MORE REASON TO SIT DOWN, PEOPLE!!!
I'm sorry. Only avocado on toast can make this better. I have to go now.

I'm a little bit excited...

I am trying to recruit another violin teacher to work at the primary school with me. She's Suzuki-trained, but no teaching experience yet... the possibilities look good but I'm a little nervous.

I'm trying to extend the olive branch of "Of course, you're welcome to teach from my studio space" but I really only want her to do that if she's going to teach Suzuki philosophy, and her students would be welcome to join onto my concerts and group lessons...but that really only works if they're learning Suzuki repertoire.. and I only want them doing that if there's Suzuki philosophy behind it!
Oh, fraught, dangerous and dipping toes in the lion's lair, I know.
But it could be so good!

I guess I'll just hold my breath and wait for an email reply.

In other news: I am not a swan, I'm an ugly duckling. Or an ugly swanling, since I guess I'm technically too old to be a cygnet anymore. Last night if asked I would have made a sworn testimony that BOTH my feet were not only left, but attached to my hips by planks of wood upholstered with jelly. Isn't that a delightful image? I know, I'm so brilliant with words.
My brain was clearly a lump of aforementioned jelly sloshing about in jug of my skull, because I left home without
:Jazz sneakers (aka keep the skin on the sole of my foot where it belongs)
:Pointe shoes (aka flay the skin from the tops of my toes; who needs skin there anyhow?)
:Pointe shoes no.2 (aka who needs to break pointes shoes in? That's SO for wusses)

I hope you've all enjoyed that belly laugh at my expense and that your computer monitors are still coffee/tea/hot beverage of your choice free. Now go back to work. After you tell me the best thing you've ever forgotten.

(Mind you, wasn't as bad as the time I caught a bus, a train, a tram and WALKED to Melbourne Uni to discover that after two hours of travelling I'd left my #*!&^@#)(*!&^@)*!@&#^ assignment at home. This time I just rang my husband and explained how having shoes at class would make my world an infinitely happier place.  Nearly as happier as if someone put the swan I'm meant to be out of it's misery with a garotte. Oh, wait, garotte's just another name for the WHITE lycra leotard I have to shimmy myself into come Sunday. Universe, this is not funny any more.)

I miss frocking up.

In a discussion about class times for next year, I pointed out that finishing class at 8.45 on a Friday night really wasn't all that grand for me. I work 9-5 on Saturday, so do the math on that and let me know how my social life is going to fare. My mother pointed out (not unreasonably) that she'd done it for plenty of years.

Hm.

Yes.

Hang on. Me too, because when YOU started teaching Friday nights my class was the last class on Friday night... so I would sit at the desk and deal with the griping and the moaning and the rude parents and the snotty teenagers and do my classes... and go home and go to work for a 9.00-5.00 day at ballet dealing with the griping and the moaning and the rude parents and the snotty teenagers and do my classes...
I actually think I have it easier being the teacher than the desk slave.

BUT, my point is that I have been doing this for years too. Yeah. Take that. And I don't think it's going to suck any less this time around.  Today is one of those days where I think I could quite enjoy living in a cave. With wireless, and meals delivered on a tray. I've devolved to my ground-base state of jeans and top, although I'm incongruously typing this wearing black pointe shoes. Well, they needed some kind of breaking in, and I figured that we have floorboards for a reason. Plus, it's funny watching the pug go into high alert every time the box knocks against the floor.
OOH! Post!
If there's one thing I like more than toast (although maybe not as much as caramel popcorn) it's getting stuff in the mail. This is why online retailers are simultaneously my greatest joy and very, very dangerous.

[one letterbox expedition later...]

Wow. Now my new across-the-road neighbors think I'm certifiable too. Let me set the scene:

It's a beautiful sunny day. A council truck idles on the side of the road. The yellow rose bush beside the house is in full, glorious bloom. A girl comes out of the house with a pug under her arm. She is wearing a grey top, jeans, and carelessly-painted-black pointe shoes. She tiptoes across the driveway and then walks on pointe up the sidewalk to the letterbox. 


At this point she realises that the discussion between a couple of burly council workers and her neighbor has ceased. She looks around curiously. They're looking at her in a very puzzled way. She waves and nearly drops the pug, recovers, stomps up to the letterbox and finds it empty. She's tempted for a moment to put the pug inside the letterbox, just to really give them something to look at, but that's probably not a nice thing to do. Besides, the pug's a little too rotund.  Frick. 


Oh, and that's before I get started on the next-door neighbor, who has a WEIRD obsession with his nature strip. What are your neighbors like?

Musing upon the human condition...

That makes it sound so much more deep and philosophical than it actually is... I was actually applying eyeshadow and thinking sadly of the (now empty) bowl of caramel popcorn on the bench, and deciding that this is clearly why I cannot live in any other country, or indeed any other SUBURB to the amazing Suzukisinger, who not only popped the popcorn and coated it delicately in AMAZING caramel, but then amicably broke into my house (well, she has keys) and left a large bowl of it on the bench for my delectation. The note may have been addressed to Hubs AND I, but I choose to believe that the popcorn was clearly all for me. Oh, ok, I gave him some.

Yes. So I will clearly have to stalk her when she one day does decide to trade suburbs, because that caramel popcorn... well. Remember when I said a sister will give you her last piece of chocolate? I may have to amend that statement to include popcorn.

What was I blathering about?

OH! YES! Ok, so having decided that the optimal amount of caramel popcorn for me = quite a lot = happiness but ALSO = morbid obesity, I have stumbled across a new way to combat American obesity. I realise it won't catch on here, as we are an apathetically unpatriotic lot (although, if I could link it to football may do well, as football is basically our religion and people who hate it tend to be somewhat anarchic, paranoid and prone to eating disorders fast metabolisms).

Obesity is unpatriotic. Think of the incredible financial damage you are doing to your country by requiring all that extra healthcare. About the billions of dollars malls will be forced to spend importing JAPANESE technology like wider sliding doors and travelators that travel through the entire complex because the fatties can't walk through anymore.

Employ the boy next door as your personal trainer! Take out a megamart gym membership and drive your oil-guzzling hummer around more... because you'll be able to get through the door again! And when you're fit, you'll be able to participate in the most patriotic behaviour of all; dressing up for Halloween and going trick-or-treating. Oh, sorry. I meant, hooray! You'll be able to enlist in the army and fight for your country. Uncle Sam needs you... to lose weight.

Australians: you have it much simpler:

Girls: Fat chicks don't marry footy players. They're just booty calls for cricketeers.

Boys: You're never going to be a footy/cricket player weighing that much. There's a damn good reason they don't make microshorts in that size.