Tips for those seeking employment - #1

Sending out a resume stating that your email address is sexc_*your name*@whatever.com probably doesn't support the claim that you're “extremely professional.” Or at the very least it implies that you're a whole other type of 'professional'.

Scent of a Stripper

In a recent post, I asked everyone out there what kind of scent they associate with a stripper. No one came up with the answer I was looking for - luckily though, I only got one answer, so it doesn't disprove the theory in the story I'm about to tell you know.

Recently, we’ve been trying to hire a new admin/reception person to help us out here at work. As you would expect with this kind of role, most of the applicants were females, and our final selection of applicants came down to three or four women who fit the job description. After going through the long and difficult process of sorting resumes and having interviews, we finally hired someone, only to have her call up the day before she was due to start and turn down the job.

The following conversation between KJ, the work Project Manager and myself took place after we received that call.

KJ: I think I‘m going to have to hire the other girl I interviewed.

PM: What, the one who smelt like a stripper?

Me: Uh, what? She smelt like what now?

PM: She smelt like a stripper.

KJ: You’re right! She did!

Me: Uh, and what exactly does a stripper smell like? Or do I not want to know?

PM: Oh, it’s vanilla.

Just as the PM was saying this, another co-worker (James) walked into the office

James: What’s vanilla?

Me: Apparently that’s what strippers smell like.

James: Oh yeah! They DO!

Me: Note to self. Don’t ever buy vanilla perfume.

James: I’ve dated girls who wore vanilla perfume and it never made me think of strippers.

Me: Oh, so all strippers smell like vanilla, but not all vanilla smells like a stripper?

James: Right.

PM: I used to date a stripper. She smelt like vanilla.

James: That must have made things confusing.

Me: Ok, I’m leaving now.

More Mirror Mirror

I’ve mentioned before how there are no mirrors at work. In the three years since I wrote that, there hasn’t been any great upwards shift in the vanity of the (still all male) workers, and thus my workplace remains a mirror-free environment. Today this presents me with a unique dilemma, as tonight I’m leaving straight from work to head off and enjoy my birthday present from KJ – dinner and jazz music aboard the Historic ‘Puffing Billy’ steam train.

The dilemma is that Puffing Billy leaves from the train station in Belgrave. Belgrave is about an hour from my home, and at least an hour and a half from my work. The train leaves at 7:15pm, and I need to be there 20 minutes beforehand. I’m also picking up my sister and her boyfriend on the way. I finish work at 5pm. Do the maths on that and it will tell you that I’m left with just 15 minutes to get ready. 15 minutes to get ready wouldn’t be a problem if only I were at home – but alas there is no time to go home and prepare. Instead I’m here at work with no mirrors and a short 15 minutes to attempt to apply makeup, do hair and get changed.

I suppose the best that I can hope for is that my skill with a makeup brush is above the necessity of a mirror. But given that I’m not one to be heavily made-up day to day, this seems unlikely. So really the actual best I can hope for is that good old Puffing Billy will be so distracting that no one will notice that I look like Marge Simpson after Homer tested out his makeup shotgun on her.

Would you notice this?

Parental Advisory - Explicit Content

**If swearing offends, I suggest not reading this. Or at least not complaining when you read it and become offended**

For the best part of the last two weeks, KJ was on a work trip overseas. While this meant many things, (of which I've tried to write; and failed) one main thing that came about was that it left me at work with no well-mannered influences.

I’ve written before about the fact that I am the only female who works in the company, and the ill-effects of a primarily female-free environment on the general hygiene and behaviour of the men around me. What I probably haven’t mentioned before is that in this building, there are really only three office staff – KJ, the company owner and myself. But KJ and the boss both headed to the USA for this work trip, which left me with just the guys in manufacturing. And the guys in manufacturing are the ones who seem to be most affected by the lack of female influence.

I am fully aware that you shouldn't judge people based on stereotypes; however, in the case of my workplace the stereotype that factory workers tend to be slightly more foul mouthed than their office co-workers is fairly apt.

Now, I’m no angel normally. I have been known to let a profanity or two slip on occasion. Many occasions. Okay, I'm a little foul-mouthed too. But with restraint!

Ordinarily, bad language only slips in when I’m really annoyed, or being very vocal about something that has upset me. But without the influence of the other office staff who are very carefully restrained with their language, and now that all my time has been spent with the factory guys, I have found myself swearing like a trooper. And the more time I spent without KJ, the more profane my language seemed to become.

To prove my point, here are three sentences that I spoke last week that I managed to slip a profanity into that really didn't need one - and that ordinarily wouldn't get one. Through these, you can clearly see my gradual decline into the profane over the course of the week.

MONDAY
Factory Guy 1: We're going to get kebabs for lunch, do you want one?
Me: Awesome! I fucking love kebabs!

WEDNESDAY
Factory Guy 2: We have a problem - we just got a delivery of hardware, and there are 5000 dynabolts instead of 500. It looks like recently-fired-projects-guy stuffed up the order.
Me: Oh for fucks sake, is there anything that fucking idiot didn't fuck up?

FRIDAY
Factory Guy 2: Factory Guy 1 is complaining about doing his job again.
Me: For fucks sake, can no one fucking do their fucking job without fucking having a fucking whinge about it?

Now it’s Tuesday, and KJ and the boss are both back. The trouble is the swearing wants to stick around. The vulgar side of my language centre has been released – and it doesn’t want to go back to its carefully kept prison in my brain.

I have to pay incredibly close attention to everything that I’m saying so that I can appear to be the same no-nonsense person that I am without coming off like I hate everyone and everything. And it’s hard! I’m not sure I can go back from here. I’ve been trying very hard to rein myself in, but these little profanities keep slipping their way out. I’m worried this might permanent – and what do I do if it is?

Basically, there’s only one thing I can say about my new found language skills at this stage.

I’m fucked.

To all the men out there

Never, ever underestimate the value of putting the toilet seat down.
I work in a building full of men, and constantly having to put the toilet seat down drives me crazy. it does, however, make me truly appreciate that I married a man who puts it down after use every single time.

So for all you know, putting the toilet seat down could be the difference between a good relationship and a great one.

Just don't underestimate the importance of this small task. That's all i'm saying.

Sleepless Monday

Right now I’m functioning on a total of around one and a half hours of sleep. After a weekend of fitful and restless slumber, it’s left me a lot more weary than I would normally feel on a Monday.

I feel a little like I do when I’m slightly drunk, only not in a fun way. My brain is having trouble forming thoughts as succinctly as it would were I well rested, and I’m experiencing that same odd behaviour as I get when intoxicated which means that all of the simple words have eluded me, and I can only speak to people as though I were first running my thoughts through a thesaurus. A limited and poorly edited thesaurus, that is. But missing is the buzz of good humour and the warm, lovey feeling that envelopes me when alcohol is to blame.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m feeling things more intensely, the way you do when you’re drunk. The trifling little day-to-day nuisances that I usually ignore are grating on me; I’ve laughed a lot harder at any jokes I’ve heard that was really warranted; and for some inexplicable reason, hearing about a friend’s weekend has made me completely and utterly melancholy.

As fate would have it, of course, there is no chance of getting to bed early tonight as the recent resignation of a co-worker has left me with so much work to do that overtime is inevitable.

I see in my future a large quantity of overdue work projects, copious amounts of coffee (and other caffeinated beverages) and ultimately, an imprint of a keyboard on my forehead.

A Bit of Perspective

It really puts your own life into perspective when you find that your co-worker is quitting because right after he was left jobless by a company that went into administration, his father died, and the stepmother he’s been living with is selling the house, so he’s soon to be homeless and he wants to go and stay with his lesbian mother and her long-time lover in Wales because he’s getting divorced, and his soon to be ex-wife has found out about his girlfriend (whose soon to be ex-husband wants to kill him because he blames him for the break-up of their marriage) and things have turned nasty, and now he really needs some time away from everything.

It makes my own problems seem kind of trivial. It’s a good bit of perspective for a Friday.

It doesn’t, however, make me feel any less annoyed about the fact that his quitting has just increased my workload. So I guess when people tell you ‘what you need is a bit of perspective’, you can just tell them to get stuffed. And that is much better advice for a Friday.

Recommendations for a successful start to the week

•  Don’t bring a milk drink to work, then drink it ‘shortly after arriving’, only to realise once you’re done that it’s actually been sitting on your desk for 3 and a half hours.
   
• Don’t follow this milk drink with a spicy Sri-Lankan curry for lunch.
   
• No matter how tight your budget may be, never consider single ply toilet paper a valuable money saving idea.

You want a what now?

I’ve posted before about the ridiculous things that one finds themselves typing daily when you deal with playground equipment.; Mis-spelling things to make them sound more ‘kiddy’, my dyslexic fingers turning regular words like ‘sun’ into ‘sin’ – conversations with customers about squeezing balls (of the kind that you put in a ball pit, that is).


But there is another thing that I find myself typing numerous times per day that you would never expect someone at a playground company to be typing. Something that seems to be more the kind of thing an employee at an erotic publisher would type.

‘Cock’.

I type it at least 20 times a day. Hundreds of times each week. Cock, cock, cock. And why? Why on earth would someone dealing with playgrounds be typing ‘cock’ all the time?

Streamlining.

When designing playgrounds, often you want to put in a ‘cockpit’. And when you’re doing this multiple times a day, typing the word ‘cockpit’ becomes time consuming. So you streamline. You chop the end off of the word, until you find yourself typing the word ‘cock’ more frequently than an a cybersex junkie.

I often thing that if ever a phone tap was placed on my work phone, an unwitting listener might easily think they’d tapped into a phone sex line, what with all the ‘cock’, conversations about ‘balls’ and today’s lengthy discussion with a customer about fixing his 'knob'.

Whinge Week: Work

After two days of not being at work, I feel as though I should be more relaxed. But I’m not. Instead I spent all weekend feeling like a hermit because I had no plans and did nothing. And while doing nothing, I had no internet access. So I wasn’t even like a good, internet social hermit. I was just a lonely, sad person with no one to talk to and nothing to do but drink.

Then, after a weekend of wretchedness, Sunday night was spent thinking over and over “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.” My car ride in to work this morning was spent thinking “Why do I have to go to work today? Why do I have to go to work today?”. When I arrived and sat at my desk it became “Why do I have to be here? Why oh why do I have to be here?”

By the time I had read my morning emails I was so agitated that I had to avoid everyone. I need a holiday damn it!!

I may have mentioned before (repeatedly) that one of the things I hate most about my job is the fact that I am the only female employee. At the best of times this is nothing – it can even be mildly amusing. But when your workload becomes so great that you begin to lost control, working with men is a nightmare. They’re disorganised and stupid and they spend most of the time patting themselves on the back for how well they’re doing, when really they’ve just dumped all of their work on me.

On Friday afternoon, right before work finished, the boss called a meeting. He then proceeded to crack the shits at us for not having done some obscure task that was set a few months ago which had to be put aside because we’ve been so busy and so understaffed. As I am at my wits-end with all the bullshit; and since in the best mood I am strictly no-nonsense; I just yelled right on back at him. And while this is not such an unusual thing, because this is the dynamic we have, it always makes me feel like shit afterwards.

In the last two months I have been yelled at, bitched to, back-stabbed and harassed at work and I am so well and truly done with it all that I just don’t want to be here anymore. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve given as good as I’ve gotten. I’ve yelled at a co-worker or two, whinged about them and left work in a rage. But men and women feel differently about this stuff. And men never seem to see the vast workload which leads to this point. They just gloss over that and put down any bad mood to ‘female troubles’. Well, here is news for you men: my real female trouble is YOU. You’re lazy and ignorant. You’re incapable of multi-tasking and you can’t seem to ever talk about anything except cars. You forget that I’m a woman and joke about how annoying your wives or girlfriends are and some of you take to backstabbing when my work shows up how your work isn’t being done properly.

You suck, male work colleagues. You SUCK.

Jargon

One of the funniest things about working in the play industry is the terminology. In fact, you often overhear parts of conversation that could easily be mis-understood should your mind be dirty enough to make the connection (and alas, mine is).

Just this morning I overheard this little snippet of conversation between one of our sales guys and a customer:

Sales Guy: Did you check out David’s balls while you were down there?

Customer: Yeah, I had a feel of them, and they’re quite different to mine.

Sales Guy: Oh really?

Customer: Yeah, they were a lot firmer. I would prefer if mine were like that too.

The knowledge that you have to keep a straight face during a conversation like this somehow makes things like toilet humour so much more hilarious than they would otherwise be. And things seem to have a dirtier undertone to them once it becomes inappropriate to laugh. For example, it’s not appropriate to laugh at ball jokes while talking about kids’ playgrounds, yet somehow that only serves to make it funnier.

For the record, it was actually a conversation about a playground ball pit.

Me vs. The Universe

As my lack of posts lately can attest, I have been incredibly busy at work. I have been so busy, in fact, that this weekend I found myself working on Saturday.

I had the building all to myself for most of the day and I had gotten huge amounts of work completed by the time one of my co-workers showed up around 4pm to pick up some stuff he had forgotten on Friday.

He seemed shocked to see me there on a weekend, and when I confessed that I was indeed working, he just shook his head.
You’re crazy! He told me, incredulously .

I’m not crazy, I told him. ‘I’m just a machine. A well-oiled playground designing machine.’

He just shook his head again and walked away. But I was on a roll; even his absence couldn’t still my rant.

‘Nothing can stop me!’ I trumpeted. ‘I’m slowed only by sickness, stopped only by death!’ I declared into the Universe.

The Universe didn’t like this.

‘Right’ it said, ‘I’ll show you.’

And it began to plot.


The universe hatched its dastardly plan early on Sunday afternoon as I headed outside to wash my car. My nose began to tickle a little. I put this down to the vast amounts of pollen in the air and got on with things.
I finished up and headed inside. I sat myself down on the couch and was immediately punched smack bang in the face by a cold. Bam! One moment I was fine, the next I was a wheezy, watery mess. There was no lead up. No feeling of an oncoming illness. One moment I was fine, the next I was like a character out of a cold and flu medication advert.

So now, courtesy of the Universe, I finally find myself with the time to post something. And while having a cold is incredibly annoying, I can only thank God that the universe chose the ‘slowed by sickness’ part of my statement to refute and not the other half. Because I imagine that blogging from the hereafter is probably a hell of a lot harder than blogging while sick.

Post Office Lady

Post Office Lady has a stern, disapproving
look brought on by years of thinking people
don't talk clearly enough.

Post offices are notorious for their long lines. If you’ve ever had to post a parcel or buy some stamps during the day, you’re guaranteed to have waited in a line that weaves out of the door of the shop, down the street, through the park around the corner and past the post office in the next suburb.


The wait is long and tedious enough as it is, but at the local post office here at work, you spend your entire half hour wait hoping that you don’t end up being served by one particular woman. Why, you ask? Because she is as deaf as a door nail. As a post. As a stone. She is as deaf as a magician locked in a box, nailed into a crate then wrapped in a bag and buried six feet underground.

What I’m getting at here is – she can’t hear very well.


Something as simple as purchasing a sheet of stamps from her is a major ordeal, because that little interaction usually goes something like this:

Her: YES?

Me: Can I have a sheet of 20 five cent stamps please.

Her: WHAT?

Me: Errr, a sheet of 20 five cents stamps please?

Her: WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?!

Me: (beginning to draw strange looks from the waiting customers) Some five cent stamps please?

Her: STAMPS?!?

Me: YES! SOME FIVE CENT STAMPS!

Her: Yes, fine, five cents stamps; you should have said so to start with.


As a result, people (me included) can often be seen leaving the post office looking abashed, head hung low, clutching their stamps or whatever random item they’ve been sold in lieu of the item that the deaf post office lady was too hard of hearing to understand.

Dark Day

Today is a dark day. A dark, bleak, soul crushing day.

It started out like any other Tuesday. The uneventful drive to work. The slow grind of the Tuesday work day. The routine of computer, factory, computer.

It happened at 11:23am. I remember the time well, because I had just seen the postman deliver the mail, and I checked the clock to see what time he had arrived. I headed downstairs, and out through the factory to grab the mail.

There was a large parcel, and the return address told me it was from a government agency, so as I wandered back inside, I was looking at the envelope, and not at where I was going, as I should have been.

As I reached the edge of the stairs, I suddenly felt my feet catch on something. It took me half a second to realise I was falling and in that insignificant moment, I thought I could right my balance.
Within the next half second, I knew it. I was going down. Envelopes flew from my hands and rained down around me as my palms and knees slammed into cold, hard concrete. I let loose with a string of obscenities that startled the guys in the factory.

As quickly as the pain could start, the embarrassment overtook it. Five faces peered at me, looking torn between amusement and concern. I thought quickly of my Mum, and her own recent fall. It’s a rare thing, falling down when you’re an adult, yet here I was; face down on the concrete floor of the factory.

I stood up as quickly as I could, and began to brush myself off. And that’s when I saw it. That’s when my heart dropped out of my chest and hit the floor.


I had torn a hole in my favourite pair of jeans.

Oh, my poor jeans! There are no other jeans like these jeans. They’re comfortable and slimming and they make my ass look perfectly rounded. They can be casual, or they can be slightly dressy. But most of all, they’re long enough to drag on the floor, despite my height. And at 5’10, that’s a hard thing for me to find. And now they’re ruined. RUINED!

Oh, my poor poor jeans….


Today is a dark day. A dark, bleak, soul crushing day. For now begins the quest to replace the most perfect pair of jeans that have ever graced this body. Yes, today is a dark, dark day.

Also, my knee hurts.

Junior

We have a new junior salesman that started work with us a week or two ago.
When I say Junior, I mean junior. He’s 19 years old, although to be fair he looks a bit older than that. He could pass for 23 – if only he didn’t open his mouth and speak.

When he speaks, it’s like he’s spewing youthful ignorance out into the world. I’m sure that at 19 I wasn’t like this. I mean, we all come off sounding younger than we realise, but he sounds so young. And the thing is, he talks ALL THE TIME. Non-stop. He is so chatty that it makes me want to tear my ears off just to get some peace and quiet.
I don’t talk much at work. In fact, the less talking I can do, the better as far as I’m concerned. But here I find myself with a junior employee who is constantly asking questions, or giving me a running commentary on what he’s doing.


For the past few days he’s been sharing my office while I teach him how we do the design work here. I often listen to music while I work, and so we got onto the topic of music and bands.

I was feeling a bit sleepy, so I put on The Beatles ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. Listening to The Beatles always perks me up. ‘The Fool on the Hill’ started playing. Then, as expected, Junior Salesman started talking:

Him: Is this ABBA?
Me: (jaw drops onto the floor) You’re kidding right?
Him: Nah, it’s ABBA, right?
Me: Ok, I’m going to pretend you’re kidding.
Him: So what kind of music do you listen to? Hey do you like that song by Rihanna? You know, the one with Eminem?
Me: Never heard it.
Him: It’s on the radio all the time.
Me: Yeah, never heard it sorry. Not really my thing
Him: So what music do you like?
Me: Well, my favourite band is probably CAKE…
Him: Who?
Me: CAKE
Him: I don’t know them.
Me: Stop talking please.

I suddenly feel very, very old. I know it’s rare to find someone who likes all the same music as you. KJ and I don’t even really like the same music. But at least KJ has heard of the bands that I like listening to – at least the ones who have been around forever, like The Beatles and like CAKE. So it’s begun. I relate better to old people than young people. This must be what it feels like to start getting old. How appropriate that it should happen just days before I celebrate my final birthday in my 20's.

VINDICATED! (and a bit about multi-tasking)

VINDICATED! That's how I feel!
I struggled to define it in my last post, because it's not a feeling that you get to experience all that often, but with the demise of a company that treated me so badly, I finally feel vindicated. Now I may move on with my life.


And that leaves me to go back to trying to answer the really big, important questions in life - Like why is it that men can't multi-task?

At work, I can hold a conversation, design a playground and work out mathematical sums in my head all at the same time. But with KJ, when presented with the simple task of having a conversation while also working on his PC, he comes completely undone.It's like every sense or ability in the male mind is inexorably linked to one another, rendering every man incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.

I also blame this inability to multi task for a lot of other odd male behavior - like the inability to find things that are right in front of their faces. How can you properly look for something that is missing if you are otherwise occupied whinging about not being able to find it? That's multi-tasking! How can you look at your PC screen and listen to someone talking to you all at once?! Madness!


I once had a male friend listen in on a conversation I was having with a girlfriend, and he interrupted us halfway through and said "Hey, do you realize that you're both talking at the same time?"
I didn't understand what he was talking about then, but it struck me later that the ability to talk and listen at the same time is a strictly female trait. It's a necessary skill that we have been given, which allows us pre-childbirth to ring up a friend and chat while ordering clothes online and making a cup of coffee. Post-childbirth, it's a necessary skill that allows women to raise children successfully, while men go to work and make sales calls and use their PC or lift heavy things - but not all at the same time.

For me specifically, it's a handy skill that I use to great effect to work, play scrabble, blog, drink coffee, bank cheques and order things onnline all in the course of a regular working day. Right now, in fact, i'm using this skill to blog, play scrabble, watch TV and drink beer while contemplating what to cook for dinner all at the same time.

I wouldn't trade this skill for anything in the world, and if I ever met a man who could multi-task, I think i would feel obliged to marry him on the spot. But realistically I might as well say that if I met God I would marry him on the spot, because the likelihood of either scenario happening is around about the same.

Big Day

I’ve not really had anything much to write about lately, because not much has happened lately. But something big happened today. It was a very big day.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that a couple of years ago, I changed jobs, leaving the place that I had worked for around six years. It was a small business when I started there, and I was a loyal employee in a family-like business. But things became more about the money than the work for the Directors of the company, and after a while I decided I needed to get out of there.
After handing in my resignation, my boss treated me like dirt. She was rude, bitchy and outright mean in a very personal kind of way. And after working my guts out for them for 6 years, I was booted out with nothing but a legal letter about confidentiality to show for it. Not even so much as a goodbye.

At the time, I was devastated. I have a highly over-developed conscience, and that results in me feeling guilty for anything and everything that happens in my life, whether it’s my fault or not. So as you can imagine, being treated like that wasn’t something that I handled very well. I’m ok if someone hates me for a good reason, and I know what it is, but to be suddenly treated so horribly for no other reason than moving on to another job – it was beyond my comprehension. To this very day I still get upset when I think about the way I was treated when I left.

When something like that happens, a million people tell you that Karma will come around to get the bastards who did this horrible thing to you. But to be honest, in this case I felt as though their selfish, cash-hungry mentality would go forever unpunished. I was convinced that Karma had overlooked them, and they would go on with their lives forever buying themselves expensive cars and houses while paying their employees minimum wage.

Then today, completely out of the blue, the company went into voluntary administration. They spent so much cash with so little regard for the results that it put them out of business. This is huge news for me. HUGE! For the last two and a half years, I’ve wished constantly for them to go out of business, for them to finally get what’s coming to them after the horrible way they’ve treated not just me – but dozens of employees like me. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, it happens. Like clicking your fingers – one minute they’re the greedy capitalists who made your life miserable, and the next they’re broke.

So I feel…..I don’t know. I thought I would be completely joyous and filled with this amazing feeling of contentment that they finally got what they deserved. But I feel – well, I feel strange. Sad, almost. Maybe it’s because I know that with their own greed and stupidity, they’ve taken down another 20 or so employees like me. And that’s nothing to celebrate. Maybe it’s because it’s such a quiet end to what was such a big moment in my life.
I don’t really know why I feel this way. It’s kind of like a sad, wistful sort of relief. Relief that something that has been beyond my comprehension for so long has finally resolved itself into something I can understand. Relief that all those days of thinking ‘it’s not fair’ are over and that right vs wrong has re-balanced itself.

Maybe what it comes down to, now that I think about it, is that I’m not like them. With my over-developed conscience and my guilt complexes, I just can’t revel in someone else’s downfall. I just don’t have it in me. And while I get that that makes me a better person, it doesn’t help me feel any better about the whole situation. Maybe I'll never feel better about it all.

Error #2,760,129

In case you thought I was exaggerating in this post about the poor dressing habits of the people around here, today I was in line at the supermarket behind a woman wearing a thin black sun-dress. She kept bending over to pick up and put down her basket as the line moved forwards, and every time she did I found myself looking straight through her dress at her naked butt and her tiny black g-string.

Classy.

Visitor

There is a strange New Zealand man in my house. He is in my living spaces with his odd accent and his putting the word 'ay' after every sentence, and his calling his shoes 'Jandals' instead of 'Thongs'.

He's not here uninvited, though - he's staying with us for the next two weeks. He's a friend of the bosses who has taken a job with the company, and while he waits for his permanent accommodation to be ready, he's staying with us.

It's strange to be sharing a house with someone that you don't really know. My best friend lived with us for a couple of months once, but this is different. This is a stranger - a friendly stranger, but still a stranger. And Mrs Martin spent a long time back in grade one teaching us about stranger danger.


I always knew that i didn't want to share my space with a random stranger, and that's why I never lived in a shared house. I never had any desire at all to.
I'm a quiet-ish person in my down time and I like the place i spend my time to be quiet too. And I guess that's pretty easy if your roommate is quiet too. But the thing with sharing a house with someone is that sometimes you want to break the silence, and you can't just do it - you have to be reserved about it. And to be honest, there are some things that really shouldn't be done quietly (and which I very much struggle to do quietly) in order to get maximum enjoyment out of them.

So here I find myself trying to live my regular day to day life in my house and trying to ignore the innate desire to play hostess non-stop (an inborn urge that I'm pretty sure comes from my mother's side of the family). And I'm a little vague on the rules about sharing living space with someone. Do I have to treat him differently than I would if it was just a friend staying for a week while they were in Melbourne? Do I insist that he buys all his own food and drink and basic household requirements like he would if he was a renter? Do I have to do loud things quietly so that he feels more comfortable, even if it makes me less comfortable? And just how many times can I ask him to say 'six' and 'flip a car in a ditch' before he gets annoyed at me giggling at his accent?

An Error in Attire

The suburb in which I work is kind of a haven for people with no dress sense or else who have very confused ideas of what makes a person appear presentable. It’s a suburb where a tracksuit is appropriate for all occasions, and on those rare, special occasions that may arise, you simply substitute the tracksuit pants for jeans.


The woman I saw today was another shining example of this.

As I stood in line to buy my lunch, I spent a good deal of time staring at the back of a woman who was had the strangest shaped body I’ve ever seen. The top of her body was that of a regular (if slightly chubby) person, but where her waist spread out to her hips it just kept on going and going. It was as though she had been formed out of a very large eyedropper – slim at the top and rounded by the force of gravity at the bottom.

As is the norm around here, she was stuffed into skin tight black leggings and a black singlet, like a sausage shoved haphazardly into an ill-fitting skin. I suppose because ‘black is slimming’.

The thing that really confused me though, was the anklet around her very generously sized ankle. I will never, for the life of me, understand why a person with a body like that would want to draw attention to their ankles! We all have parts of our body that we’re not overly happy with. For me it’s my nose (family curse) and as such there is no way I would ever draw attention to it by getting my nose pierced and wearing a bright, glittery jewel in it. So I will never understand what these women are thinking by putting something shiny and sparkly on their ankles so that your attention can be drawn to it as the light reflects off it, winking at you as it alternately reflects, is swallowed by a roll of fat, reflects again.


We all make the mistake at one time or another of getting dressed to go out, looking in the mirror and giving ourselves the nod of approval - only to catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror later that night and find that your beautiful outfit is actually making you look like you got dressed in the dark.

For me it’s occasionally the curse of the dreaded muffin top – I squeeze myself into a pair of jeans that make my legs look fabulous and then find that later in the night, when everything has shifted and settled itself to a comfortable position, I’ve got the embarrassing above-belt bulge.

Men will never point this out to you, and KJ in particular is useless when it comes to this, because until quite recently he thought a muffin-top was an actual piece of clothing of some kind – like a mid-riff halter top or something.


I think the point I’m trying to make here (if there actually is one) is that at some point on those occasions, you realise you’ve made an error in attire, and you make sure it doesn’t happen again. Here, in the suburb where I work, it seems to be a rule that you can’t go outside unless you’re sporting a muffin-top, a pair of tracksuit pants, or if you’re obese - a figure hugging lycra garment of some kind. Which is nice for me, because in my work shirt and jeans, and wearing shoes instead of slippers, I spend most days feeling practically over-dressed. In this suburb, I am a well dressed woman.