Hooray, hooray!! Just finished my application for the MA in Communications course which is being run at RMIT. Hopefully I’ll make it into the July intake. All the ‘i’s are dotted, the ‘t’s crossed, the signatures signed and the stamps affixed. Wrote a most convincing personal statement (I thought so anyway) as to why they should take me on as a student. I’d take me. Hey, I’m prepared to give them money!! Lots!!
I think that this course will allow me to locate myself better within the communications ‘industry’ and, hopefully, lead to a bigger, brighter, better paid future.
On the weekend I had a scary glimpse of a possible future. Jus and I were walking to a party in downtown ‘scray. Standing on a corner waiting for the lights to change, we see a bus round the corner.
“Is that the ‘magic’ bus?,” I ask Justine. (Before making the move to the west we lived in Elwood and in my pre-driving days, I would often take the magic bus which went almost doorstep to doorstep from our flat to Liz and Dave’s house in Footscray.)
“Yes,” she says.
“Hang on.” says I. “The ‘magic’ bus didn’t go down Barkly Street.”
“Yes, it did,” she says.
“Are you sure?” say I.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know. It looks wrong.”
Bickering ensues: yes, it does; no, it doesn’t; yes, it does…..

Flash to the corner outside the nursing home in 50 years.

“Justine, is that the ‘magic’ bus?”
“What?”
“The ‘magic’ bus. Is that it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But…..”

Sigh. At least now I might have a glamorous communications career to enjoy in the interim between these two sets of conversations!!

Today our house gets two new windows. Last week we had a practise go with a new window in the study. Today the dining room and Justine’s bedroom. Out with the brown aluminium (allegedly one of the “features” of the house when we bought it, according to the previous owner, that is) and in with the lovely cedar sash windows.
Undo that bad ’70s renovation! Revert to the traditional window! Not only are they quite beautiful – and I swear they let in more sunlight – but they smell better too. The smell of cold aluminium has nothing on the fragrance of newly installed cedar.
I’m going home to smell (err…admire) our new windowware.

I spend quite a bit of time thinking up reasons for not getting up at 6.15 am and heading down to the park for a training session on a frosty, dark autumn morning. Clearly my subconscious has also been working away on the problem. This morning I dreamed vividly that I could not attend because of soreness in my ankle. Soreness caused, I might add, by a problem with my artificial leg.
There you go, Adam. Can’t make it today. My artificial leg has packed it in!

Dogs, ya gotta love ’em but sometimes they make it hard work. Take yesterday, for example. The dog gets taken to the park for her early morning constitutional by my housemate and finds … a pair of underpants!!
Tra la la!! I have a new toy!! Mmmmmm, really smelly too, even better!! (Paraphrasing the dog. Hey, they’re not complex creatures – the body language said it all!!)
“Leave it”, commands my housemate in her most authoritative tone. “No,” says Maisie. “It’s mine. I found it. I like it. It’s my new toy.”
Justine, sensibly, it not keen on launching a tug-of-war with the dog over the underpants. They have been abandoned in Footscray Park after all. They must be pretty rank.
So her only recourse is to bellow at the dog. “Leave it!” “Drop it.” Nothing works. The underpants are too enticing. Not even the lure of food is enough to tear her away from “the pants”.
Justine tries running after her. To no avail! Maisie skips ahead, tail wagging, underpants joyfully flung about her head. “What a great game! Justine wants my pants! She’ll never get them!”
In fact the underpants are flung so vigorously, they somehow get caught on her head. In an effort to free herself from her entanglement a front paw gets stuck in the underpants as well. Yet she still continues to skip across the park, now on three legs and blinded by the underpants.
Quite the spectacle.
Eventually she did give up on the underpants. I guess there’s only so much fun you can have with someone else’s laundry.

This morning I woke to the sound of rain on the tin roof. This sound must have been with me all night as I remember listening to the rain last night before I went to sleep. It’s funny how something as simple as a sound can take you completely away from where you are. In my cozy, dozey, waking up phase this morning I was convinced I was at home at my parents’ place in the country. Despite the intrusion of trams, buses and street lights outside my window, the gentle sound of the rain made me feel like I was somewhere else. What a rude shock it was to realise that I had to get up and go to work!

6.30 am. 4 degrees. Footscray Park.
Three girls, two dogs and a trainer.
Into the first third of my final sprint to end the session.
My mind had clearly already completed the sprint. It was on the mat doing the stretching – some minutes ahead of my body which was still gearing up to reach a (quite pathetic) top speed.
Out of nowhere bounds a dog (my dog, as it happens). In a thought process only a canine could understand, she decides to leap on me to remind me that she is still there.
My mindless body detects the dog missile at the last minute and, in a bizarre attempt at self preservation, instinctively tries to avoid a collision by leaping over the dog.
(In slow motion, or so it seemed…) Out and up goes my left leg, out and up goes my right leg. Oh No! One foot slips on the frosty grass. The trajectory changes dramatically from up, up and over to down, down and well, just down. Like a sumersault gone wrong. A graceless thud and a face full of mud.
At least the dog had the good grace to look a bit abashed.

After a hiatus of several days as my workplace collectively packed itself up and returned to its freshly renovated, revamped, sparkling Smith Street office space, I am now back online. Repacking and unpacking into a smaller – but better designed – office space has effected much actual as well as mental cobweb clearing. As I play with my lovely, gleaming new workspace, I’m even contemplating instituting a whole new filing system! Unheard-of enthusiasm! And if I can ever fully understand the workings of my new telephone with its flashing lights, digital display, voicemail facility and ability to cope with menus (features sadly lacking in our old defuncted system) I’ll be well on my way to TAKING OVER THE WORLD!!! Haaa Haaa HA HA HA HAAAAA!!!!!!! (My evil genius, taking over the world laugh!)
Actually it is so clever it may even have some thoughts on what my footy tips should be this weekend – I’m having a bit of trouble on my own. They’re tricky. Quite like residing at the top of the footy tipping competition so must continue to tip well. Oh! the pressure.

Do you think you can pre-emptively miss someone?
Someone who you think you might meet one day but haven’t as yet?
Someone who might be really busy and proactive right now, instead of moodily staring at the moniter thinking up semi plausible excuses for not going to the family reunion on the last long weekend in the foreseeable future but which have promised parents will attend, like the good child that am.
Someone who wouldn’t complain about breaking up a perfectly good long weekend to travel to the backblocks to assist in the inevitable family assessment process.
Someone who would be kind and sweet and whose fabulous presence would help validate my life choices.
Someone who would endeavour to have a really good time regardless and then be happy to deconstruct the day – senselessly mocking those who needed to be senselessly mocked.
I don’t usually need hand-holding at these occasions. Am usually perfectly capable of fending off questions about apparent lack of boyfriend/career/general prosects/etc.
Just sometimes, though, I feel like I need someone to provide a little bit of back up in the face of the family en masse.
So I miss that someone today. I’m sure tomorrow will be fine. But just for today, I miss you.

Another particularly gruelling session in the park this morning.
With Adam, the personal trainer.
It rained again. Some comment was passed that the rain had only begun since my entrance into the land of personal trainerdom. (Yeah, right! I LIKE to exercise in the rain!)
Someone asked me recently how I could stand these sessions. Well, its partly because I spend a lot of my time there lying incoherent and unmoving on the turf (no standing required), but its mostly because I share the time with three other smart, funny, fitter than me, women and our collective (three) dogs (the comic relief!) Today I think we all suffered a little bit.
When I eventually arrived at work I decided I’d make myself (and my office mate, Trish) a soothing cup of tea. My legs were really hurting but I was sure a cup of tea would help.
I boiled the kettle. I poured the water. …And the teacup began to sing!! (Or at least emit a high pitched whiney noise – quite a lot like bad singing, in fact.) Enthralled by this curiosity, I showed it to everyone in close proximity and made them listen carefully. They all agreed it did sound like it was singing – except for one person who made supercilious remarks about the porous nature of the cup and the effects of hot water and a cooler general temperature.
Nevertheless, I believe the teacup sang – a just reward for an early morning of exercise.

I took two of my favourite pairs of shoes down to the shoe guy in the street where I work. Every now and then they need a little attention to look their best – I’ve a habit of drastically grinding down the heels (although never evenly, always from the inner heel to the outer, consequently giving me the appearance of knock knee’edness on occasion.)
My shoe guy meticulously filled in a docket for me which I assumed I’d need for easy retrieval of said shoes. But, no! No docket required. “I’ll know you again by your shoes,” says he.
Really? What will he know? What could he learn from a thorough inspection of my footwear? I want to know.
Still, in the past, information has been proffered with considerably less grounding in knowledge of me or my personal habits. I once saw a psychic who, after a few minutes (and most of these minutes spent with her eyes closed) declared that I had been a prostitute in my former life.
How did she know this? Was she peeking? And why not courtesan?
So, will he really know me again by my shoes – or – should I keep my docket handy?