In which I complain.

Dear Herald Sun,

You suck.

I realise this isn’t a surprise.

However, you even suck at the things you should be good at. Being a tabloid-y, let’s-gawp-at-celebrities and have-a-lifestyle newspaper, you should at LEAST be good at the lifestyle parts.

Fail.

Massive fail.

Catherine Lambert, you’re not style police. Street smart? Give it a rest. You don’t even reach the bar of looking-moderately-put-together in any way, shape or form. I could have found you fifty people on Friday night in Northcote who looked better (for ANY given value of ‘better’) than Ilesha H. Hell, I could have found fifty people in Frankston who had some kind of ‘look’ pulled together tighter than the ruffly-in-all-the-wrong places red dress on Ms. H.

Stripper shoes might be fun, but not when you match “expensive items with less expensive items” because there is nothing that can be called matching going on here. Sweetheart, your shoes make your (white, fluffy, cropped-sleeve) jacket look like your pimp bought it. A blind pimp with tactile issues and really short arms.

And when you wear your little red dress with your really little white fluffy jacket and your stripper heels with contrasting silver peep-toes AND weird glittery ankle straps (lesson one in elongating legs: ankle straps are FAIL) refrain from bling.

Hang on. Refrain? Oh, that means do it again, right? Wrong. Teaming a clutch hewn out of Priscilla gunmetal-grey sequins with all this is disaster. However, why stop there? When you’ve gone this far, the only sensible option is to load on all the jewellery in your possession. (Possibly so innocent bystanders have time to run and hide.)

I can count (yes, even with one hand awkwardly-on-back-of-hip and partially concealed by the small Samoyed savaging Ms.H’s torso) a watch with a beaded bracelet with another beaded bracelet (big, chunky silver beads) WITH a heart dangling from said beads. Ok. Look, it’s been a confusing season for everyone, but why then mish a gold phoenix necklace to this mash?

If the phoenix was TRULY bringing you “spiritual guidance” it would have set fire to half the contents of your wardrobe (the stripper half) and we’d be left with an attractive brunette. Maybe not SO suitable for publication, since all she’d be wearing was a lovely phoenix necklace, but what a classy necklace.

I think the expert (Sesil Arzadian, of Anton Jewellery) said it best: “Certainly, this look has a lot happening.”

What the expert forgot to say: Catherine Lambert, you’re a knucklehead. Get some new glasses and a subscription to a magazine. Any magazine.

In which I think. Try not to fall over.

I’ve been reading. And thinking (dangerous combination, I know). Book that sparked the thoughts? Lionel Shriver’s So much for that.

If you’ve not read it, I’ll try not to spoil the ending; I started to get the shape of it in my head before it arrived, but it wasn’t so saccharine as it might have been. It has made me question the dollar value that, increasingly, western society places on life. I’d like to believe that life actually unto itself has no value; it is, after all, what we each make of it.

I can’t sell you days of my life for you to have and enjoy, I can’t buy more days for myself, but increasingly this seems to be the perception of our immortality-obsessed culture. Death has become something to be put off, an inconvenient appointment rather than an inevitable endstep in the process of living. All the platitudes of loss (how careless!) and passing (because we really, REALLY don’t like that D-word) and expressions of regret…

Yes. People die. It’s sad. It’s not, actually, a tragedy. It’s not the thing to fight and avoid. Certainly, it’s sometimes not fair, but then what in life is?

Lying on the couch last night, juggling my bony spine across my husband’s knees and picking up the pug so she could trek across us with her usual land-rover determination (hey, two people on a couch are rocky terrain when you have no legs to speak of), I announced, “So, I’m hearing all these ads about organ donation, and I just need you to know that if I’m hit by a car tomorrow and wind up braindead, my organs go places.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about the tournament. Your organs what?”

“If I get hit by a bus,” (obviously he needed a more dramatic picture) “My organs. Go. To other people. You know. They get my bits. Because you’re my husband, so you’d have to make the decision.”

“That’s a bit dangerous. You’re always braindead in the morning. Can I have your bits?”

(I didn’t point out that he’s the one who sinks back into a coma at the first available opportunity, starting awake again with “Wha-?” nine minutes later, while I grumble and threaten to kick him should he do it again.)

“No!”

“What if I need them?”

“You’re not even the same blood type as me. What blood type ARE you?” (Clearly idiotic, in light of what came next)

“Don’t know. What blood type are you?”

“Hm. Don’t know.” (See? I’m BRILLIANT. I should know, but I’ve forgotten.) “So, organs. You?”

“Yep. Other people can have your bits. I guess other people can have mine too. Yeah, take ‘em.”

“Buried or cremated?”

“I don’t care? What do I care? I’m gone! Whatever’s best for the environment.”

“So, you want tea?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Awesome. It’s so nice to know the really tough decisions can be made in about three minutes between Thai takeaway and Earl Gray.

A new chapter begins.

Sunday: my first book club. It was almost accidental; my mother-in-law passed on the book, I read it, she told me when they were discussing it. I invited myself along (basically) and so it went.

The Secret Cure, by Kate?Sue? Woolfe; autism, asperger’s, isolation and hope. Nicely written, a little slow in places, a good blend of historical happenstance (German research papers lying untranslated for twenty years while the same behavioural traits puzzled scientists across the globe), and fly-on-the-wall detail.

Until we can quantify the genetic slip that produces autistic behaviours we will never know how much of these are down to environment rather than genes; as with any child, environmental factors have the ability to shape a personality and stifle abilities just as much as nurture them.

My hypothesis: we are all somewhere on the autistic spectrum. But where on that spectrum do we draw a line and say this is a problem?

We most frequently identify autism from it’s negative affects; little or no speech, headbanging, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and attachment to ritual, sensory sensitivity, an aversion to touch and a multitude of others.

Rarely do we diagnose on the basis of it’s potential strengths; mnemonic and linguistic, high mathematical and/or musical aptitude, the ability to think innovatively and with attention to detail that would bore the average person.

I wonder that if by limiting our children to a narrow ribbon of ‘normality’ we risk losing the potential for brilliance; by selecting behavior on the bell curve we lose the richness of what might be.

On the people side: I hate small talk. There’s nothing quite as bad as enduring pleasantries (when they are just that, formulaic and perfunctory) with a one-of-encounter. The type of person who lives three hours away, works a job, has a family. In short, you or me. (Wow, shying away from social encounters. I must be autistic.)

There is something very refreshing about meeting people for an explicit purpose. We are here to talk about this book. Not what they do for forty hours per week, or how many children they have, or their daughter’s upcoming wedding, but this book.

Of course, our context is apparent from our contributions to the discussion: we can only relate from our own sphere of experience, but somehow this subtle dissemination of information is so much better than the blindingly obvious.

One woman has brought a Wikipedia profile of the author, so we can tease apart her inspiration; another hasn’t finished the book but is fascinated by it’s concepts, promises to finish it before it goes back to the library. The mother of young children muses on the nature versus nurture element, the sensory overstimulation we all receive on a constant basis, and the dietician weighs in with the additive/wheat side of the equation. There is so much knowledge embodied in the three?four? generations around this table.

Good coffee, beautiful food: the discussion never runs dry. The first Sunday morning of the month is hereby reserved for book club. What are you reading? 

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.