The curse of procrastination

I've had so much blog material over the past couple of weeks and because of my procrastinating, I've forgotten the gist of all of them. Some highlights:

* The Smallest changing her name to HannahBillyAnya. (Don't ask, it's just what she DOES)

* Me having some out of the blue epiphany about the nicest people I know having the most amazing sense of humility.

*Me deciding I would rather go to the kids' school Christmas concerts than that of a flash famous person. (it had nothing to do with being able to merrily sing along to a Wiggles tune)

*Realising just how much I love watching Eating Media Lunch. Jeremy's EML Awards, with categories like "Most innovative use of a Muppet song in an obituary or eulogy", "Christian of the Year" - nominees were Brian Tamaki, Petra Bagust, Graham Capill and Simon Barnett. Okay, so it might offend the christians, but I LIKE Jeremy's humour, it's right on the nail.

Ten days til Christmas - I'm clinging to that in the midst of all the madness at work. We have our Christmas dinner tomorrow and we have a whole pile of Grinches coming out of the woodwork, refusing to wear something Christmassy. Unlike moi, who is picking up her Santa costume tomrrow morning.

There's one at every public computer workstation

We have this little.. well, teenage snot that comes into work to use our public computers. He offers a plethora of reasons to get away with using the computers without paying (for internet use); "he's only using media player and the playlist he wants is only on the internet login" (as opposed to a restricted login), but we all knew damn well he knew how to get around it. I have told him before to stop trying to weasel his way out of paying, just use them properly like everybody else and that I was now watching him like a hawk.

The last straw came today when I had to have ANOTHER word with him today - about the media player again. I just stood my ground while he was hoping I would go away and leave him to it. He heaved this big sigh, narrowed his eyes and muttered "You're a real killjoy, you know that?" Meh, whatever: "I don't make the rules, dude - pay up or off." He offed.

That would have been okay if what happened next didn't happen - as soon as my back was turned, he was back on the computer - using Word to print out multiple copies of "Fuck you" large enough to fill an A4 sheet - which another customer picked up. By the time it had dawned on me what this lad had done, he was out the door before you could say "you little bastard!". I want him trespassed.

On a brighter note - it was the first day of registrations for our annual summer reading programme (remember those, Violet?!) Out of 150 places, we filled 40 in the first day... fantastic!!

I like that there's balance in the world.

Oh...

and my headaches have dramatically subsided. Go figure.

The assholes of the world

I had one living in my house! Although to be fair, I didn't realise this until I found snuggly pictures of him on his computer with a girl that wasn't me - and realised this was the one he'd been MSNing for hours on end each night... as if THAT was put-uppable-with by itself.

Deciding to play The Woman Scorned was quick, not thought out, but in the end, very carthartic. When my marriage ended, I Maintained a Dignified Silence and this time I thought, "What the hell?". So he came to pick up his stuff (with Mummy, no less) on Wednesday just gone and carried home: a computer less 400-odd music files, all the photos of me bar one entitled `One to remind you what you lost', and a beautiful mink blanket with a rather large hole in the middle. This was all carried out after I outed the pair of them online. And left all his stuff out in the rain.

The Nice Girl in me felt rather guilty at wreaking all this distruction, but it was largely overshadowed by the most delicious feeling of... shadenfreud, I think it is called? That wickedly lovely feeling of satisfaction you get over someone else's misery. I'm not normally the sort of woman who would resort to such despicably immature behaviour (honest, I'm not!), but I swear I would not be as far along the road to recovery if I'd just let him off the hook.

So, while donning my Evil Ex hat this time around, I don't think it would be a costume I would want to wear every time. It was nice for once, but I'll be reasonable next time... I promise.

WAHOOOOO!!!!!!

I FIGURED OUT HTML!!

I now have things in my sidebar. ~preen~

My foray into the world of neuro-nasties.

For the last 6 weeks or so, I have been plagued with cluster headaches (like being smacked in the face with a hammer) and "hemiplegic" migraines; the type that, instead of an aura, one gets pins and needles/numbness down one side of the body. They came out of nowhere; in fact the first one I had, I thought was a stroke, as the numbness went into my face and gave me a droop.

After two weeks of this, with no sign of them subsiding, I went to my GP and got a lovely pile of pills. These stopped the cluster headaches straight away, but these nasty hemiplegic jobbies continued. I took the morning off work last week to visit the neurologist, where I spent an hour and a half getting tickled with cotton wool, bopped with reflex hammers and poked with pins. I'm booked in for an MRI scan in about a month.

I am hoping now I won't need it. During this bout of headaches, the in-between times have always had a minor throb in the background, with a general sense of fragility. Well, I haven't had a headache for nearly two weeks and I am feeling very robust. But I'm not going to stop taking the pills.

I'm only just trying to figure out the point of this story now and I've decided it's "headaches suck".

PS - the bears were for a road safety video being filmed here.

When mass-emailing your coworkers doesn't prove helpful

The post I sent out:

"At lunchtime, I got groped by a life-sized teddy bear (who'd have the luck??!!) who was one of 3 coming out from Countdown, THEN saw a Panda bear somewhere else in town.
Does anyone know why there are bears running around the CBD?"


A response:

"Please send us some of your drugs, we could do with some fun."

Gawd - nothing since August

And I'm only putting something in now, cos work have blocked the rest of the internet sites I like to look at.
Found a meme on someone else's blog called "23rd post, 4th sentence"... man, I don't even HAVE a 23rd post!! So I'm going to go with my "4th post, 4th sentence" (artistic licence)...

"nana-knickers that almost doubled as a torsolette." Typical - still obsessed with tits and bum humour.

I've got no-one besides Violet to tag..... waaahhh.

TALK ABOUT too much time on my hands

Usually it's the complete opposite. I love irony, but today I DO have too much time on my hands - of course, it is time that could be spent actually doing some WORK. Which leads me to the disturbing thought that any of the higher-ups at work could read my blog and they might take note of the times of day that I blog and then I could be up some serious shit-creek.

I'm taking the opportunity to tie up a few bloggie loose ends.

I blogged ages ago that I was reading 7: A Novel by Julie Hilden. Well, I finished it and I liked it, although I thought the obsessive-scary-lesbian-stalker part was a tad Hollywood. Loose end number one tied.

Then I blogged a few days ago that a friend of mine was visiting from Auckland. It was the first time I had seen her since her move north nine months previously, so I was looking forward to it immensely. Well, she visited last Friday; once at work, then at my house later on that evening. She has and she hasn't changed; she hasn't, because she was still the same bubbly, vivacious woman she was when she left... and she has changed, because she now has this incredible aura of dignity around her, like she is a lot more sure of her place in the world now. The new things she is learning has, paradoxically, also given her a sense of humility that is totally endearing. I didn't think it was possible for her to become a lovelier human being, but there you go. I am really chuffed that she is so happy. But then she had to go and I missed her all over again.. waahh. Loose end number two tied.

I also started reading "We need to talk about Kevin"... I tried really hard, but I don't think I was in the right headspace to read it, as I was getting more and more pissed off with Kevin's mother and her self-flagellation. So I have passed it over for now - it was on request for someone else, so I had to give it back anyway. I will get back to it as some stage, as I thought the whole notion was quite fascinating. Loose end number three tied.

Yay, it's nearly hometime (and the weekend). Although I think my car is about to die.

Cheese Dreams

I've always known that eating cheese at bedtime gives one alarmingly freaky dreams, but I'm concerned that, even after consciously avoiding the cheese, I am still having very oddball dreams.

The first, on Monday night, involved my visiting a hardware store to buy Blutack (a squishy, putty-like substance which is a temporary alternative to sticking pins in your walls). There was no Blutack, but I DID find a packet of teal-blue, just-add-water-and-mix-your-own powder. It was astronomically expensive at $27.95NZD, but I'm sure it would have lasted a long time. It was called "Oozie" (I KNOW! I even dreamt the name!). This - as far as I'm aware - doesn't exist, so I was quite excited at the notion of becoming an inventor and thus becoming richer than 3M.

My second dream was a little more alarming; the only part I could remember was standing somewhere in New Zealand staring at three rather enormous tornadoes on the horizon. They were coming toward me at a rate of knots, so I was relieved to either not remember the rest of the dream, or to have woken up.

I checked into a dream dictionary , which told me that to dream of seeing several tornadoes represented "people around you who are prone to violent outbursts and shifting mood swings. It may also symbolize a volatile situation or relationship. " Eeww.

Funnily enough, I couldn't find anything about Blutack OR Oozie.

Fairy Godmother was on acid

We went to Fairyland yesterday for the Smallest's 6th birthday. I'm always apprehensive about trying (and paying for) new birthday ventures, tending instead to go for the safety of McDonald's or Lollipops parties. In this case, rightly so - when we first got there, Fairy Godmother's helper (who looked remarkably like a ordinary old man) asked the girls to take off their shoes. This wasn't so weird, until he asked them to "sing a song, any song and I'll be back in a minute"... and wandered off, leaving seven little girls standing in the foyer with blank looks on their faces. That was the moment I stared thinking "oh god, here we go". He appeared again after a couple of minutes, went through a half-hearted session of Simon Says, then told them to sing ANOTHER song and vanished again.

We eventually got into the Fairy Room... I don't know what kept Fairy Godmother, but it soon became apparent that she was probably using this stalling-time to pop one last tab before she greeted the children, because she was off the planet. Grey hair in pigtails, an affected little laugh and comments like "I can't do all the fairy work darlings, I'll die because I'm old" had us grownups staring at each other in disbelief.

The fairy food was ok, if you didn't take into account what we were paying for this little shindig - lollies, popcorn, chippies, chocolate buttons, mallowpuffs with icing swizzled on top. This all got the little fairies amped up on sugar enough to have a little fairy dance - to the theme of the english-policeman TV show called "Heartbeat".

All the while, my ex-husband (Chief Pixie, according to Fairy Godmother) was grinding his teeth, shooting me hateful glares and whispering "this is YOUR fault". To which I smiled back serenely and told him at least he'd have something interesting to tell his workmates today.

On the plus side - the little girls loved it; Hannah kept staring at Fairy Godmother with a look of adoration one would reserve for a fanatical cult leader and her friends said they loved it. The Fairy Room was amazing - twinkly painted walls, plants with fairy lights strung through them all over the place and a little pond in the corner of the room.

We got the whole thing on video, so if any of our friends consider going to Fairyland, we can show them the footage and save them from the clutches of the Spazzed-out Fairy Godmother.

The cause of the Meh

I got a migraine this afternoon; my mood gets odd beforehand, hence the Meh. I am a walking lurgy, I'm sure of it. I started getting the aura twenty minutes before I was due to read stories for our preschool programme... I suddenly noticed stars and black spots in my vision. A panic to get the appropriate drugs into my system before the pain set in ensued, although Nurofen do bugger all except stop me puking.

It was most inconvenient; the ex-husband and I had the p/t interviews tonight... the upside was that both of our children are little angels at school and are doing really well. I just sat there, feeling really wasted, making the right noises of encouragement... I think I fooled them.

Meh.

A total case of MEH

I'm having one of THOSE weeks - I have a total case of "Meh" at the moment, otherwise known as a case of the "blahs". I can't be bothered doing anything. Anything or anyone that requires my attention and takes away from my Meh is causing a disgruntled sense of resentment. I'm yearning for my dressing gown, the couch and the TV, all at once.

I have Parent/Teacher interviews tonight. For once, I'm not afraid of what The Smallest's teacher is going to say (on account of her being such a deviant... for which, incidentally, I was reprimanded for teaching her to say), as I have had positive comments from her teacher lately that she has been a "good girl", which is a mean feat for her. I have also realised she is a quickfire, photographic speller - on the way to school one day last week, she fired off "Mum, what does m-i-t-s-u-b-i-s-h-i spell?"... "Where did you see that?"... "On that car back there that we just drove past"... I thought it was suitably impressive for a six-year-old.

I am still angsting over pasting HTML (it IS that, right?) stuff into my template to allow for a "blogs I read" link in my sidebar. I have tried it on numerous occasions and it just will not work. Which is aggravating the hell out of me, as I have been reading some great blogs. Yet another something to put into my "Meh" category.

I can't believe it's only Tuesday.

How much I hate The Sickness

I have a raging cold. I HATE colds. The thing I hate most about them is the blocked nose, so I am always diving for the nasal spray, which I invariably end up becoming addicted to (yes, it's addictive!) and have to spend the next two weeks weaning myself off the stuff. I also hate the coughing - the dry, tickly, totally un-productive cough thats sweats you up with the effort required and leaves every muscle in your body feeling like you've been assaulted by a Swedish masseuse. Not to mention it's totally inconvenient... I have too much to do! Although, I made it to work this morning (and am still here!), so I deserve a bloody medal.

The highlight of my week was news from a far-away friend telling me she is visiting next week. I haven't seen her since last year, so I'm looking forward to it immensely.

My fella and I were discussing some finer points of Moving Day, which is looming. I find myself becoming preoccupied with the notion of "forgetting" how to live with someone other than your children - I haven't done it for 3 years, so I'm out of practice. I'm worried I won't be able to `do' it properly anymore and I don't want to offend the other half with my crotchety old ways, especially seeing as it's him making the move and giving up lots.

Meh - I have suddenly lost my train of thought and need to go and snuffle into my tissue.

Kia Ora

I'm boning up on singing "Where is Thumbkin?" in Maori for tomorrow's Under-3's session at work; it's tying in with Maori Language Week. My pronunciation is pretty downpat, but I still get nervous speaking Te Reo out loud in public.

We made pois at this week's Preschool Craft session - I took mine home for the Smallest to play with, but ended up having to confiscate them after she tried to strangle one of the cats with the cords. I never cease to be alarmed at her level of deviancy; I was reading about baby horoscopes on Violet's blog and put it down to that, instead of dysfunctional parenting. Although horrid things like that are balanced with gems like (when speaking to her on the phone at her father's place) "Mum, I just have to block my ears so Shelley can't hear me talk." Nice.

I'm a Page Three girl - I managed to get myself into the local rag again this week, dressed as Professor McGonagal for our reading of the new Harry Potter book over the school holidays. Although I usually feel no shame at these things, it's getting to be a proxy situation now - I feel bad for my kids; the Oldest is doing the Tweenage thing and Mummy donning grey wigs/Cat in the Hat/Clifford/teddy bear costumes is becoming painfully embarrassing for her.

Yearning for surgery

I TRIED to get The Book done for the party, but was totally unsuccessful. In fact, I still haven't finished it, but I explained to my sister that "what I was doing" (without giving it away) was a huge task, so bear with me. The fact that I received my last birthday pressie at least 6 months late did a lot to make me feel better.

The party was fab, we all looked very pretty, although yet again I was left wishing I could afford a neck lift... the curse of maternal genes. I managed to pass off a drunk fall-down-the-steps stagger as a `pretend' one... wasn't my fault; the gorgeous stilletoes my Man picked out were a challenge even for the most sober among us.

Came back to work yesterday. It hurt. I had to be at work ALL DAY. It's going to take a couple of days to get back into the swing of things. Dammit.

A monumental task

I've been trying my hand at scrapbooking for the first time. I'm making up a "30 years of sisterhood" memory book for my sister for her 30th birthday... it's proving to be a most arduous, albeit very enjoyable - task. I'm supposed to give it to her tomorrow at her birthday bash, but so far I've only done the cover of the album and a couple of pages about her wedding. It's very sentimental-looking, but I'm like that and so is my sister, so I think she'll like it.


I am the world's biggest procrastinator, as I haven't started on it again this morning; instead I have whiled away a bit of time watching a pair of blackbirds flirting in the tree outside my window... and blogging.

I have been preoccupied with taking spooky photos of churches at night this week - found a good one in Cambridge on Saturday and a couple of great gothic-looking ones inPalmerston.

Meh - on with the album.

The tiki-tour

Spent the weekend traipsing around the country.. well not really; went to Hamilton with the fella to meet some more whanau. I met the brother, the sister-in-law, the nephew and the daughter. His daughter is a few months older than my oldest - we went shopping (read: I dragged the poor things around the shops on my find-a-skirt-for-my-sister's-party mission). She's really quite sweet.

Stopped in at his Mum's for dinner last night; was lovely to see her again.. and I was afraid that I would miss an opportunity to see the first episode of Desperate Housewives, but luckily the mother was as intent on watching it as I was.

Thanks to Violet, I have just starting reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. I'm only a little way through, but already I am disturbed by the character's seeming emotional detachment from her son. I don't like her very much at all.

I'm getting brave enough to start wondering if the wider world would want to waste spare time reading my blog... there was a lot of W's in that sentence. I think it's a good thing that I don't yet know how to throw my blog into the consciousness of the Blogger World.

It's only Tuesday, but I'm already starting to dread the end of my week off. I need to loosen up and stop living ahead of time.

Woohoo - last day of real work til next weekend!

About bloody time - I ran around like a headless chicken today, getting everything ready for the rest of the holiday programme next week.. while I am on HOLIDAY!!! Can you tell I'm excited about it?

We had a local poet come in to judge the staff 'favourite poems' display today. A lot of staff members contributed to a display promoting Poetry Day and there were some fabulous-looking entries. Yours truly got quite embarrassed when the judge declared mine the winner (for the poem I posted further down in my blog)... for both originality and artistic merit.. aww shucks.

Off to Palmerston then Hamilton tomorrow, then back to Palmerston on Monday... where I will begin the artistic endeavour of putting together the memory book for my sister's birthday next week. That, along with a stack of books to read, some shopping and tentative coffee plans with friends, makes up the rest of my week... hallelujah!

I had to speak firmly to my ex-husband about picking our girls up (for the week) earlier rather than later tomorrow - was supposed to be 1pm, but he rang, all excited about lunching with an All Black, asking if it could be later. Nope, was my uncompromising reply. It wouldn't have been a problem if I wasn't driving to Hamilton tomorrow. Luckily, we get on better now than when we were married, so it wasn't a problem.

Sigh sigh - I'd best be finishing the washing and packing for tomorrow. It couldn't come fast enough, but first I have to don my Professor McAlison robes for a half-hour reading of the new Harry Potter book at lunchtime tomorrow. The things we do.

I forgot to mention...

... the scabby woman who came in to the Library whilst we were face-painting yesterday afternoon. The mirror we were using to show children their finished faces was sitting on the table right next to me and this woman strolled right up and bent down, as if to examine herself in the mirror (and no - we didn't paint her face). Alas, she was not just looking - she found a pimple to squeeze and was hammering away at it whilst I froze, paintbrush in mid-air, in abject horror.

There's not much to be said for opportunism.

Yay for annual leave

It's the school holidays and I have successfully negotiated the second week off... no work OR sprogs. The anticipation is fast becoming a rabid beast inside me!

I am adding to a smallish collection of books to read during the week (oh, the BLISS of it)... I will be buying a copy of the new Harry Potter book on Saturday and, seeing as I'm spending the entire week at the Fella's house, I will have to find a compromise for both of us to read it, as he will be like a circling vulture just waiting for me to put it down.

One of my lovely co-workers offered a (I think!) tongue-in-cheek grumble about me organising children's holiday programmes, then buggering off and not overseeing them. I couldn't resist reminding her that my job title was "Children's & YA Programme CO-ORDINATOR".... not "co-ordinator AND implementer". She muttered something about me being a smarmy pedant.

Roll on the weekend. 3 days to go!

Jobs I would hate to do - part 1

The parking warden for our Council came over sometime last week and joined the smokers outside for morning tea. She informed us that she had handed in her resignation, saying that "four years of bullshit" was quite enough for her and she was off for a nice, quiet career at Pak n Save. She regaled us with tales of being stalked, threatened, spat on and abused by members of the public incensed with being issued an infringement notice.

So lo and behold, imagine our dismay at being told yesterday that she was off work for a few days after being set upon by two women for giving them a ticket. Said women had been apprehended, arrested and charged with assault.

Although I am guilty for muttering "bitch" under my breath on a couple of occasions - when I hadn't managed to outwit her with my sneaky 'change car parks every 2 hours' trick - I was more brassed off at getting caught than I was with getting the actual ticket. So the moralist in me was quite angry at the NERVE of these people, abusing someone for doing their job when it was THEY who were in the wrong in the first place!

I wouldn't have the temperament for her job - I would have half of my day taken up with tickings off from higher-ups for yelling obscenities back at the public if they chose to question my parking authority (muahaha!).

So maybe it's a good thing that today's children probably know more swear-words than me.

Today is a good day.

Salary review time... I just got a 3.5k payrise.

Why can't they roll around more than once a year??

Playing the Grim Reaper

I was the scourge of pet rat society yesterday.

Being a rattie enthusiast and having gone a few years without having had any in the house, it's understandable that it was an exciting day when Kath & Kim came to live with us three weeks ago. They are an adorable pair of caramel coloured sisters and are a total joy - very tame, very snuggly.

With one small hitch - I realised last week, to my dismay, that Kath was pregnant. I was very firm about only wanting TWO rats. I had nowhere to raise babies until weaning day, nor the inclination, as much as I love them.

Kath gave birth to ten or eleven wriggling little thumbs on Monday afternoon and I found myself in a moral dilemma about whether to keep them or send them to rattie heaven. I choose the latter and disposed of them yesterday - very quick, very unmessy.

Then I realised I would make a totally hopeless serial killer, as the remorse I felt afterwards was unimaginable. It was as if I'd killed a CHILD... I felt terrible. The practical side of me was telling the bleeding heart to shut up; it was painless and had to be done.

However - I discovered that I am a fantastic liar: "I took them to the petshop in Petone, darling... yes yes, they have full nursing facilities until they're old enough to be weaned."

15 minutes of fame

I feel a bit famous. I saw my blog name on somebody else's "Blogs I read lots" links.

These are The Days of Our Lives.

I should really get my act together and post on this more regularly.. I must admit to becoming a bit of a voyeuristic blog-fiend of late; I really enjoy reading everyone else's and get a case of the envies when I see how great they are.

Something I have noticed about my literary endeavours: I use the words "just" and "really" over-enthusiastically.

I've been a bit busy over the past couple of weeks, supporting a depressed friend. It's very interesting being on the other side of the fence, as it's usually me busy being the tortured soul. Along with the usual feelings of worry and concern, I have been plagued (and alarmed) by envy, frustration and selfishness. I'm too ashamed to go into detail about these feelings right now, or to put them into context, but take my word that I'm not a bad person.

My friend's mother (which I am becoming increasingly incensed about) seems to have detached herself from any motherly responsibilities - by that, I mean providing emotional support to my friend. The family shows up at the hospital at intermittent occasions and put on a great show of being a Happy Family, but that's about as far as it goes, as far as I can see.

Funny that this went largely unnoticed until this situation developed - I was one who thought their family was awesome - parents were still together, great kids, Mum was one of the superwomen who worked, baked incredible stuff, kept an immaculate house and looked gorgeous. Then, when this situation came to a head, these quite large cracks started appearing. Maybe I'm not one to judge or get all self-righteous, but as far as I'm concerned, a mother's primary obligation to her children is to BE THERE when they need them, in whatever way, shape or form.

Intimacy and powerlessness

Being a librarian, we read the occasional book. Working in a library is an endless torment for me, because I see all these wonderful books coming in and I can't help but feel a niggling resentment toward the patrons who get to read them before I do.

So I am reading a book. It's called 3, by Julie Hilden. Although only up to page 61, it is proving to be both bleak and insidiously addictive. The blurb says and I quote, "A compelling chronicle of obsession and power, 3 brings new immediacy to a timeless question; What is the greatest sacrifice you would make for love?" Sound cheesy? Hell yes. Is it? Hell NO. The premise is that Maya discovers her husband's chronic infidelities on the eve of their wedding. She decides not to leave him, but instead issues him with a condition - she is always present during his... interludes. Which of course leads to her participation. It might sound like another porno novel, but it is actually quite good. Stylishly written and quite broody so far, it touches on the concept of intimacy vs power/lessness and inevitably leads one to ponder such things as "does sexual surrender equal powerlessness, or is the power in the choice to surrender?" Maya is quite a dark wee thing, who has the ability (sometimes) to emotionally remove herself from the situation and look at it with remarkable clarity.

3 promises to lead me into a mystery involving a third character and a situation which "ultimately threatens Maya's life". So I'll keep you posted.

Televangelists and The Hair

If it is harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle, then how in the name of Jesus do these women cope? These coiffy little creations are surely a gift from the Maker, cos I'm pretty sure there's not a stylist alive who would create these WILLINGLY. It's not just one either - I've done some research.

It all started with this one - I was whiling away a bit of spare time watching TBN (that's Trinity Broadcasting Network for those not in the know)... the Lord's Message was pretty much lost on me as I spent the entire time sitting agog at her HAIR. Father, have mercy... surely.

We can't forget Tammy Faye - she's a legend and provided me with a lot of material, here and here.

It got me thinking that perhaps there IS a message we're missing - if you're one of the In Crew, Jesus will bless you with unique Hair Style. Which speaks volumes about the daily struggle I have with my hair straighteners. Forget eternal salvation, forget the riches of Heaven - if you have Jesus in your heart, it's all about The Hair.

The Creator doesn't do this washy-washy gender-specific crap either; the boys get a go too... and even in New Zealand, the style-wise Father has blessed his kiwi sons.

I have decided that humanism is the way to go thanks... unless it's really Bad Hair Day and I have to grab the hijab.

A day in the life of a children's librarian...

...sure takes many guises.

Today, it was that of social worker/lost-child-rescuer. I was on the main enquiries desk for the most part of the afternoon, trying to resist the urge to poke myself with pins to stay awake. I had noticed this loud child earlier (and wondered, even as a mother, how his lungs could have been so DEVELOPED) wandering around looking for his mother who was esconced in a book about tattoo designs and kept waving him away, but this time, he was extremely distressed and wailing for Mummy. I knew who his mother was, so I didn't relish the task of chasing her down over the entire library.

Armed with tissues (because the candlesticks were starting to defy gravity), I briskly walked up and took his hand. I had just been working on a song sheet for the next day's Baby session, so I had "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" in my head. I thought everybody knew the song, so I wondered why he looked at me sideways.

Anyway, it took his mind off his deserted-child status long enough to walk around the library with me looking for his mother. She wasn't there. By this stage, my self-righteous indignation was starting to kick in. Library procedure lead me to take said child across the road to the local police station. This excited T. no end and prompted a bout of verbal diarrhoea about how the police had been to his house before (no surprises there). To his credit, he was able to give the on-duty police officer his full name, address, phone number and his mother's name - at four years old, this is no mean feat.

While we were waiting in an interview room (reading about suspect interrogation technique gave me inspiration for my own offspring), Mummy turned up. Apparently T had decided to take himself off to the local Macca's... HOW he managed to get there and back without being bowled reinforced my belief in angels. Mummy was full of blustering apologies, but I was back on my self-righteous high horse and had to resist the urge to give her a phone number for the local Parents Centre, along with one of our video hire vouchers, so she would know which way to go to avoid looking and acting more like an extra on Deliverance.

It leads me to ask the age-old question - if we have to register our dogs, why not parents for their children? I'm going off to look on Google for some kind of Parental Aptitude test.

On a totally shallow note - at least the policeman was HOT.

Undie revolution?

An answer to the VPL and the thong line, apparently. I had reservations about those things too... I could never figure what was the lesser of two evils; g strings that tortured you with a perpetual wedgie, or nana-knickers that almost doubled as a torsolette. But now there is a NEW evil.... "backless lingerie"

I must say I am not the most visionary when it comes to new things - I thought boil-in-the-bag rice was cheating. But the mere thought of feeling my knicker STRAPS clutching my upper thighs broke me out in a sweat. Although, women would at least be able to not-so-surreptitiously adjust their knicker line without anyone knowing what they were doing.

I am feeling a little ambivalent about this wondrous invention. Ask me again after I've bought some to try them out... although I doubt they will be able to top No-Undie Mondays.