Is That What You Look Like?

Getting an ID photo taken was never meant to be thrilling, but remember when you were allowed to look decent? Even if you hadn’t bothered to brush your hair, apply any make-up or put on clothing that didn’t make your mother wince on sight (guilty as charged), you could cover all that with a winning smile and the demand to re-take the shot until you got one to your liking. Those were the days. Now the smile, like useable cutlery on airplanes and the reputation of every single code of football, is gone. All we’re left with is a glorified mug shot, like Nick Nolte on a good day.


My passport photo makes me look like a highly qualified, well sought-after drug courier. Aside from the fact that I hate humidity and direct sunlight, my passport is yet another reason I should never visit Bali – it’s like a first class ticket to their finest jail cell. I’ve made a study of how much longer customs officials in foreign countries take to look at my passport compared to friends, and the official stat is 240% longer. My head shot worries them that much.

With this track record in mind I went to renew my drivers’ license last week. Paperwork and money exchange done, I took my seat at the RTA photo booth (SIDE NOTE: I don’t believe in auras – ever since a psychic told me mine was black – but if I did I’d say the RTA office has a fairly ugly one. The building seethed with resentment and frustration as people waited their turn, clutching a ticket, a child and the remainder of their sanity). The woman instructed me to remove my glasses, scrape my fringe out of my eyes and remain expressionless.

When I hopped up and returned to her desk she seemed puzzled. She stared at her computer, then looked at me, then back to the computer. Finally she mumbled, mostly to herself, utterly mystified:

RTA WOMAN: Is that what you look like?

I replied with the hesitant, somewhat defensive ‘Yes’ that ended on a high note to allow for the possibility that it might not be.

RTA WOMAN: Let’s try again.

I obediently went through the photo taking again and returned to the woman. She seemed unsure and looked at me accusingly, as if I was somehow pulling a trick.

RTA WOMAN: Show me your face. Do your photo face.

I gave her me, expressionless and without glasses or Feature Fringe.

RTA WOMAN: Wow. That’s really what you look like.

To allow me to join in her wonder she pivoted her computer screen to give me a glimpse of what I look like (because, you know, how was I, the owner of the face, to truly know?). As I suspected, I looked like a dead-eyed drug runner. It’s what my face does when it relaxes. It’s why people often approach me and ask me what’s wrong and I have to reply “Nothing, it’s just my face”.

What a relief to know I’ve still got it.

Lucky I chose to renew my license for the longest possible period of time. I’ll have another 5 years to remind myself that that really is what I look like.


Painefull Out

The Painefull Buddhist

So Mother Painefull has declared herself a Buddhist. She does this roughly once a month whenever someone mentions killing bugs, or she needs to talk herself down from committing acts of violence against Z-grade idiots who get in her way. Or if she wants get a bible basher all riled up. Or if she needs an excuse to wear tie-dyed clothing. Or is looking for a natural segue into how she saw the Dalai Lama speak once.


Needless to say, after relaying my Life and Death struggle with the BIGGEST spider I have ever come across (he went by the name Nemesis), she was appalled that the battle ended fatally for the combatant that wasn’t her daughter. I tried to explain, it was a Death Match. Obviously.

But mum pulled her classic “I’m a Buddhist” card and got stuck in about living creatures etc. Nothing seemed to make up for the death of Nemesis (Death. Match.).

Instead I was forced to comfort Mother Painefull with the confirmation that I did indeed give Nemesis a proper burial (Pagan rites) in a shoe box.

The problem is… I lied to Mother Painefull, Nemesis did not receive a 21 gun salute and his final resting place was not quite as glamorous as I implied.

And now I’m positively racked with guilt, not so much for the lie, but for the demise of the GIANT spider. It seems when it comes to a Death Match there really is no such thing as winning.


Thanks for nothing Buddha.


Painefull Out

P.S. Dear Nemesis, missing you already. So sorry about the hiking boot incident.

Painefull vs The Animal Kingdom

If it’s true that animals sense evil, then perhaps I should be more concerned about their aversion to me. It might help explain why a giant, hand-sized spider chased me up the stairs the other night.


I’m the kind of person who always imagines extreme scenarios and then comes up with legitimate plans on how to deal with them (I have already alerted Isla that her home will become my safe house in the event of a zombie apocalypse, and I keep a hammer in my car in case I accidentally drive off a bridge into a body of water one day… so, you know, just the essential, realistic stuff), but I can honestly say being chased by a spider never occurred to me as something worth preparing for.

I was wandering through the house, minding my own business when, standing at the top of the staircase, I spotted the BIGGEST* spider I have ever seen (in real life) waiting for me at the bottom. I’ve seen Arachnophobia**, I knew how this story could go. I armed myself with bug spray and prepared to scare the beast away enough that I would have time to find something, ANYTHING big enough to finish it off.

My personal Charge of the Light Brigade was even less successful – the spider (let’s call him Nemesis) literally starting running up the stairs after me, sending me back up shrieking in retreat. The neighbours mustn’t have been in because otherwise my volume and sheer terror would have convinced them I was undergoing a home invasion and the cops might have been called (SIDE NOTE: I probably would have handled a home invasion slightly better – I have a plan in place for that).

I threw several books at the thing, but I swear to god they simply bounced off Nemesis, who continued towards me. He was the spider version of Terminator. When I went to reload with more weapons and came back… he had disappeared. You know that moment when you’re swimming at the beach and something brushes against your leg, and suddenly you’re turning about manically, desperately looking for a potential shark? That was me, frantically searching for Nemesis.

While my back had turned he had secretly scaled the banister beside where I was standing. Only the belated discovery of a pair of hiking boots saved me from certain doom. I used my Horror Movie 101 knowledge and really made sure he was dead.

Sitting there in a heap beside the fallen Nemesis, I was clammy-handed and couldn’t shake the feeling I had just cheated death. Then a terrifying thought came – what if Nemesis had children?


They wouldn’t be the first species to take a disliking to me, and I suspect they won’t be the last.


Painefull Out

* = this spider was so big that if I had let it bite me there was actually a chance I'd gain some sort of super powers... so potentially a bit of a missed opportunity.

** = actually I haven’t really seen Arachnophobia, I watched the first 10 minutes, freaked out and hastily exited the boarding school common room claiming I had homework to do.

What’s In A Number?

When re-telling the events of an evening, without fail there’s always one specific, stand-out headline moment. It’s the plot twist that makes sure who ever is listening is paying attention, from ‘then we went back to their hotel… and literally helped them iron their shirts’ to ‘and that’s when it became apparent we were in a bikie bar’, whether it’s ‘a top hat is akin to a man with a baby’, or ‘he emerged from the fray, took one look at us and said “you’re next”, so we ran’.

So it’s a testament to my shocking run with romance that the headline moment from a recent raucous Saturday evening* that most of my friends seem to have taken away is ‘and then I got a guy’s phone number’. I want to be outraged that this shocked people… but truly, it was such a foreign happening it took me a while to recall it occurred at all.


He was lounging in nothing but a towel. I was wearing a top hat (it’s a wardrobe staple), a large novelty bow tie and brandishing a giant candy cane cane. Having lost my conversation cue cards a few beverages earlier, I wasn’t exactly in sparkling form.

Sample dialogue:

Painefull: So what do you do?
Towel Man: I’m a doctor.
Painefull: (EXPLETIVE) off!

There were 3 very good reasons I wasn’t going be calling that number.

1. I had no idea what his name was.

2. I couldn’t be sure through the alcohol haze what he actually looked like.

3. Even if he was attractive, I know I wasn’t, given my rapid decline as the party progressed.

As an unashamed spinster-in-waiting the above 3 points are both infallible and insurmountable to me. Add to this the fact that I pretty much forced my phone into the man’s hands and slurred that he should type his number in – is it really getting someone’s number if it borders on assault? As an extra special bonus reason, I would have given someone in my state the wrong digits, so why wouldn’t he?

Case closed.

Fi, Sammy and my new housemate Layla disagree. Apparently I’m meant to make that awkward, vanity-killing, mortification producing call. Isla, who currently has excess time on her hands, took it a step further. She Miss Marple-d her way through Facebook and has actually emerged with a possible candidate for the mystery Towel Man (largely because, “I just want to see what you’re last name would be if you married him”). Isla’s sustained arguments knew no bounds.

Isla: Please call him, please! He could be my husband, did you think of that?

These pleas were thankfully easy to resist. I’m sorry phantom Towel Man, it’s just not mean to be. In fact if either of us were actually capable of recognizing each other on the street I’d eat my top hat.


Painefull Out

* = An evening in which people were thrown into a pool, I injured myself while dancing with a giant cane and one poor cab driver wishes to forget entirely.

‘Goodbye’ Seems To Be An Equally Challenging Word

I’ve always struggled with saying ‘goodbye’. I pretend to be blasé about farewelling people, but I find something about it particularly confronting.


It’s been that way forever. When I was young I had an elaborate, superstition fuelled system of dealing with it – whenever I went to bed, after all the ‘goodnights’ the last thing my parents and I were each allowed to say was ‘see you in the morning’. I was very insistent on this, terrified in fact that if someone didn’t say it there was the clear and present danger that we may not see each other again. I’d get very upset when Mother and Father Painefull refused to play along. After a while Mum used to rebut my demands:

Young Painefull: You have to say ‘see you in the morning’.
Mother Painefull: But what if I don’t see you in the morning.
Young Painefull: I’ll see you in the morning mum.
Mother Painefull: Maybe you will.
Young Painefull: Muuuuuuum!
Mother Painefull: Well you might not. I might not see you. I might die in my sleep.

It was a chilling, but retrospectively hilarious response, probably intended to knock some of the OCD tendencies out of a fixation-prone 9 year old. As Mother Painefull now knows definitively, you can take the girl out of the paranoia, but you can’t take the paranoia out of the girl.

Since then I’ve attempted to become a grown up/manage my various goodbye-based tics so they are invisible to the naked eye. In fact it’d been years since anyone noticed how unconsciously systematic I’ve become with farewells when, several weeks ago, my colleague LJ pointed out that I always exited the office in exactly the same way. I start and finish work earlier than most of the others, and it’s become apparent that as I walk out I hit some invisible line in the ground at which I pivot and back away, so I still face everyone I’m leaving behind. As I do this I also apparently deliver a stream of last minute thoughts of the day, as if parting has turned me into some philosopher of the non sequitur. Having had this habit pointed out to me I am, of course, trying to breaking it. It’s proving a difficult nut (much like myself) to crack.

Since then I’ve started to re-notice how much time I spend lingering in doorways great and small as I attempt to walk out of them, and how shamefully difficult I make it for people to sign off on the phone. Whenever I sign off after an epic email exchange with Livinia (who currently resides with her Lover in Germany) it’s with the one word subject line ‘Goodnight!’… and then I’m ashamed to say I sit patiently for 5 minutes by my antique laptop to make sure she replies with her own variation on the term (usually with some showy German language touch) before switching off and actually heading to bed.

Clearly I still have issues with Goodbye.

My workplace went on hiatus yesterday. It’s strange to think I won’t be back in the office with those people for 5 weeks, stranger still to realise I’ll never see some of those people in that office again. I feel the old twinges again, the returned realization that things rarely make sense, are hardly ever entirely fair, and are almost completely out of my control (mixed in with a weird hint of survivor’s guilt).

Of course television is one of the cruelest mediums when it comes to sending people packing. It’s also the industry where you will always run back in to the people you know somewhere around the bend.

So, until then, au revoir, aufidersen, adios, sayonara, goodbye.


Painefull Out

Dawson’s Creek Revisited

Teen-dom is a well trodden path of bad fashion, hormone driven miss-judgments and awkward hair. It’s been that way for eons – these are the kind of mistakes that people have never stopped making. The Roman empire is about what happens when you wear togas (you look stupid), Romeo & Juliet is a giant warning on what occurs if you ignore your parents (Cliffs Note: you die), and the 80’s suggests what to expect when you insist on a perm (people pretend you didn’t happen at all).

My ill-communicated point is there are some universal experiences and lessons we all take away from the haze of miss-spent youth. There’s also one universal teacher each of us fell back on at one point or another. Television. And to each generation a program is born that comes to define what we expect from our school days.

For my older sisters it was 90210. To those that came after me it was The O.C. Currently I believe the young things are all about that Girl… who Gossips…

For me it was that bastion of ridiculous self-awareness and over-sized sweaters, Dawson’s Creek.


I’m not ashamed to say that show gave me almost all of my unrealistic expectations of teenage life – I assumed men would duel for my affection, I suspected (and my mother hoped) my tomboy ways were just a disguise for my ‘hidden beauty’, and could only dream that at 16 I to could suffer from an existential crisis. Of course, like all good teen soaps, its incestuous plot lines and the fact that they all had to leave school eventually, meant the show pretty much became a shadow of it’s former self before bowing out in a blaze of flash-forwarding glory.

But we few, we lucky few, we band of easily moved girls, still swoon at the concept of Dawson, Joey, Pacey and the gang.

A week ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I dove back in to the Creek. In one scene (season 4) 17 year old Dawson (with the 5 o’clock shadow of a man in his late 20’s) talks to his seasonal love interest, Pacey’s sister (this was when they started inventing new, thus far unseen relatives for the characters to expand the plotlines) and says:

At the risk of sounding trite, it’s good to see you.

I paused then and there and tried to figure out if I’d EVER used the word ‘trite’ in a conversation before. I had not. This came after Pacey, supposedly the dullest crayon in the casting box, delivered this piece of dialogue:

Just what would we be missing from the land of poorly scripted melodramas, huh? Recycled plot lines, tiresome self-realizations. You throw in the occasional downward spiral of a dear friend, and maybe a baby here and a death there and all you've really got is a recipe for some soul sucking, mind numbing ennui, and I for one could skip it.

Hilarious post-modern wink to the audience aside, I can honestly say I would actively avoid verbalizing the word ‘ennui’ simply out of fear I would miss-use it.

But aside from vocabulary intimidation, the belated realization that James Van Der Beek has a generously sized forehead, and the retrospective knowledge that Katie Holmes was cruising for a career highlight via marriage, I found myself sucked right back in to all things Dawsonian – it was like I never left.

I thought I should hide the dvd rental case from visitors, but upon seeing it all Sammy had to say was “You don’t need to rent it. I have the box set at home, just let me know what you need.”

It’s good to know I’m not the only one that just can’t seem to fully quit that show. How could you ever hate a program that allows a character in the 1st season finale to say:

Cliffhanger? Come on, Dawson. You of all people should know that a cliffhanger is merely a manipulative TV standard designed to improve ratings.

It can’t be denied, there is still wisdom to be found in such a show.


Painefull Out

Splitting the Jean

I, like all people, have particular talents. I’m skilled in the art of putting things off, I’ve become a black belt at sleeping in, and consider the craft of stomaching the same pasta dish for 4 days straight well mastered. And now I can add a new and very particular ability to my beige resume of defects, it’s one I’ve had all along and have only just recognized.

I will rip a hole in my pants at the single, most inopportune time available.


These are not stylish, mid-90’s ‘fashionable’ rips, and I swear, I can and will do it anywhere. To take you through some of my greatest hits:

School Camp 1997
I was the girl who, perhaps through becoming a touch over-committed to a game of handball, tore my shorts asunder mid-match before the eyes of numerous peers. Joyous occasion – it’s a moment every 12 year old craves.

London Train 2007
Having set out for the day to explore the city via an initial lengthy train trip I finally managed to snag a seat in the packed public transport… which it turns out was unfortunate. Who can create a seam line perforation along the length of the inner thigh of a pair of jeans? I can.

2011 alone has been a banner year...

Walking to Class
Nothing makes you concentrate harder on how you’re seated in class quite like tearing your jeans while attacking a staircase on your way to the tutorial room.

At Work
Just a few weeks ago, a mere hour and a half into my working day, I was rushing about the office and upon returning to my chair the sound of denim ripping (definitely louder than the sound of one hand clapping) filled the air. I can tell you with authority, it is a challenge to figure out how much of you is now visible through the new vent in your pants while remaining seated at a desk.

For the Sake of Unplanned Illustration
While then telling this tale to a pair of disbelieving friends, I then hopped into a car with them and promptly tore the shorts I was wearing.

I’m like the black widow of garments. If I was a male stripper ripping my pants off would be considered something of a selling point. As it is I guess I’ll have to settle with doing my bit for the denim economy.


Painefull Out