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.

THAT? BREAD? Don't make me laugh.

Hi. I'm Chelsea. I have a substance abuse problem.
It's the bread.

It's not like I'm a connisseur of those crazy light rye-sourdough-pastadura only slice on Wednesday loaves, or that I only eat homebaked bread. I like seedy bread. Soy and linseed, or four grain. Wholemeal's fine too. So long as it comes in a square (or has three squared sides) and will fit in the toaster/sandwich press, it's all good.

Which is why hub's purchase of some junky airy fricking CRUSTY white crap (which says a loud, clear HELLO concrete crusts post-toasting) which I can't cut into slices with structural integrity (read, it has AIR BUBBLES) has serious implications for my sanity. As in, goodbye sanity, have a nice vacation, I'll see you in a few months.

Of course, when the MAN handles the bread knife, he manages really nice, un-holey slices (because I already cut up the holey bit) .... until.

Butter.
Now, being something of a condiments nazi (ever tried spreading butter straight from the fridge? On room-temperature bread? No? Well, have a try and let me know how you get on.) I have my own butter. Pantry butter. Which, being pantry butter, is actually spreadable.

Not on this bread. Don't even mention the peanut butter. Having crunchy bits, that slice is tragic. The other sandwich (Promite, kind of like Vegemite but waaaaaay superior) is marginally better. And all the while I'm thinking Why can't you have just bought normal bread? You know, the kind we buy every other time we go to the supermarket? And if you thought "Hey, let's try this out!" then buy ONE loaf of this stuff and one of backup? You know? So if it just happened to be a load of airy white crusty crap it wouldn't be the end of the world?


I know what you're all thinking. Wow. She is so lucky. If that's all she has to worry about....
Actually, I feel the reverse is true. The one thing I might POSSIBLY be able to control about tomorrow is what goes in my mouth. The rest is really incredibly random. Which is why I like lunch to be a small pleasure in my day. I love nothing more than opening up the sandwich press on a small, golden, toasted piece of happiness. Knowing that my lunch will be good, will be under my control regardless of all the other random... well. The world could end tomorrow in an explosion of crumbs. You've been warned.

Sundays in the park...

"How you liking it?"
"Oh yeah, it'd be great if I could see anything,"
says the woman spilling over the edges of her seat
behind my (rather tall, it must be admitted) beloved.
I endure a few more of her snipy, pointed (and loud) comments before casually glancing over my shoulder to put a face to the snark.

(Retrospectively, I should have taken one of the vacant seats to her left post-interval. Then I could have made loud complaints about the crushing claustrophobia her bulk imposed on me. And no, I realise there are plenty of fat people who are not that way by choice. Trust me, he doesn't always love towering over people either. If you would like him to only purchase end-of-row or back-row seats in the future, maybe you should consider seating only dead centre of the row and taking your seat before everyone else so you don't crush them as you attempt to tippy-toe past.) Ahem. Sorry.

Aside from the ranting of the bitter twisted moron behind us who could easily have moved to sit in the vacant seats behind me (much more average stature), Jersey Boys was brilliant. Utterly awesome and great. I don't even like musicals.

The evening of wonderful continued into dinner. "That pho place on Swanston? Chinatown?"
Beloved smiles, considers. "Blue train? Because then I can order anything, like pizza or steak, or..."
"Sure."
I like blue train. Over on Southbank, it's been our favorite after-theatre place for years. So we walk on over. Of course, it's packed. We wait for twenty minutes for a table, we scan the menu and wait for our orders to go through.

"Wouldn't it be funny if we walked all the way over here and waited and I wound up ordering the Singapore noodles?"
He's grinning goofily, hamming it up. He's serious.
"Not so much, no. I'm going to have the tandoori chicken."
He performs another finger scan down the menu.
"Yeah, uh... I think I'll have the steak."
See? Simple. The waitress arrives and I triumphantly order my tandoori. His turn.
"I'll have... The Singapore noodles. And some flatbreads to start."

Argg.

Ode to the haircutter.

In reply to a paragon of English grooming, I feel the need to point out an often-overlooked but crucial difference lurking in the heart of our society. Hairdressers vs. haircutters, people.

You might think it's a meaningless semantic difference, but let me assure you it ain't so.
Hair cutters are a whole different breed to their effeminate cousins, the hairdressers.

Let us all gather to bemoan the hairstyle that fleetingly appeared in the oddly lit salon mirror, coaxed forth with copious blowdrying, straightening and litres of product applied in baffling combination.

Let us bewail the glamor hair that will never, ever appear again, despite your best efforts at home. I blame celebrity culture.

Glossy mags provoke us all to say "OOh, I want the pob!" "Victoria Beckham, you have much to answer for. Not quite as much as Jennifer Aniston, (Friends circa 1995 - who didn't have the haircut? Come on, admit it) but a whole generation of women embraced helmet hair all over again despite the natural desires of their very own keratin.

Enter the haircutter. Be warned, you have to have the strength to utter much harder words than "I want THIS one!" while banging on the celeb of your choice (ooh, poor choice of words).

"Fix it."
And they will. There may not be obvious veins of color, but they aren't above highlights and multi-tonal effects. There may not be the latest, most dramatic Rihanna razored fringe or Ruby Rose blunt, but there will be hair which makes you look like a million dollars. That's right, you. Park your butt in the chair and let the professionals do their job, and your hair will look like the right thing every day. Or maybe I just have a genius, brilliant, worth-his-weight in gold haircutter.