A Painefull Guide to Looking Less Awkward (while remaining utterly awkward)

On the list of my Greatest Fears (a list that ranges all the way from Uncomfortable Underwear to Robot Led Apocalypse) one of the most highly ranked concerns to plague my mind is my Fear of Showing Up at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.  Its genesis can be found in a teenage incident in which I was dropped off at boarding school a day early.  It’s the reason I get cold sweats when arriving at fancy dress gatherings.  Every now and then something happens to reinforce my Fear – like the charming HR woman a few years back who instructed me (through several clarifying emails and phone calls) that I was to start my new job on the 1^st of January.  In her defence, how was she to know that the entire building was shut down on New Year’s Day?  She was on holiday after all.

The other source of my fear of fancy dress gatherings

In any case I am quite certain that this, my Fear of Showing Up at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time, is one of the major contributing factors to the unparalleled wave of Awkward I bring along with me when attending any type of Function.  Here I use the word ‘Function’ as an umbrella term for those genre-less, mystifyingly dress coded gatherings in which one must make unending small talk with complete strangers while exuding charm, grace and confidence, not to mention managing the Olympian juggling act of sipping, nibbling and having a business card at the ready… all at the same time.  Some people call this Networking.  I call this Dying Slowly.

Through a series of inexplicable events I found myself at two such gatherings recently.  Though I failed (like a movie about a board game involving battleships, which is to say utterly) at the social side of both events, I did pick up some advice on the matter.

And now I feel it is my duty to all similarly awkward individuals (who would rather gnaw off their own hand than ‘work a room’), to share that advice as some sort of emergency kit should they ever get backed into a hall filled with finger food that’s being held by people who smile with ‘good-humoured interest’ while glancing over your shoulder.

Let’s called it The Painefull Guide to Surviving a Networking Situation and Hopefully Only Dying on the Inside.  Catchy, huh?  Who needs 5 words when you can use 15 (asked no one ever)?  Scrap that, let’s just begin by saying this: like Law & Order, there are two schools of thought when it comes to approaching a ‘networking opportunity’, those that wish to blend in, and those that wish to stand out… these are their stories.

TRYING TO BLEND IN

EVENT 1: Let’s call this the McMidney Milm Mestival Launch

Ah yes, the McMidney Milm Mestival Launch… I managed around 10 minutes of gormless smiling while clutching a Launch program (and somehow sweating through said program, applying printers ink to my hands, which I then thoughtfully transferred to my chin half an hour later when I drummed my fingers there while squinting into the middle distance in a failed attempt to appear intelligent and engaged).  Then I enacted my sacred right to text a friend.

Am currently trapped at a function where I know NO ONE.  Any tips on how to look busy, yet casual, yet totally at ease??

I sent this text to Chesty, an old hand on the networking scene.  Chesty replied with a stream of tidbits on how to achieve this.

The Chesty Manifesty on How to Blend In

The only time I am certain I will be able to blend in is during a zombie apocalypse.  I'm still working on robots.

1. “Do as I do and call your mum.”

This is a classic manoeuvre that everyone has used at least once.  The old ‘I’m so important, I’m so connected, my phone is my office, I’m having an animated conversation which surely means I’m awesome’ gambit.  Sadly or me at the Mestival Launch, when I called Mother Painefull she was two short sashays away from having coffee with one of the Carols (my mother knows a lot of Carols – I think it’s a generational thing, because all the Carols I know are her Carols).

2. “Go over to drinks/food/juice table at same time as someone, give big smile to anyone else approaching and then make lame joke about wishing it was late enough to drink or similar, use that to start convo ‘what brings you here?’.” 

As it turns out the Mestival Launch crowd was not the group for me to test out comedy bits.  At all.  They were quite serious about their tea.

3. “Ask someone near the bathroom where the bathroom is.  Go in and wait a few minutes then go out and as you pass them say thanks and then sort of stay nearby and start convo.”

Unfortunately when I did this I was at the end of my networking tether, and thus I looked frantic and sweaty – then I went into a stall and stood, pondering whether they thought my frantic, sweaty appearance might mean something.  Then I realised I had been pondering this scenario for 10 minutes and wondered what they thought my 10 minute bathroom visit was for – this became 20 minutes due to excess pondering.  I then had no choice but to race out of the bathroom avoiding all eye contact with those nearby in case they recognised me from my previous faux bathroom questing interlude.

TRYING TO STAND OUT

EVENT 2: The Pinscription Polarship Pannouncement

Everyone loves a Pannouncement, am I right?  No.  I’m lying.  If you nodded you’re lying (but you’re also physically reacting to something written by me, so you’re not all bad).  If you’re in any way associated with said Pannouncement, if your name is say… on a short list, that intrinsically means there is a medium to high chance that someone there will try to engage you in conversation about yourself.  If you are inherently awkward, as I am, this is disastrous.  You will make awful quips, you will become clammy-handed, you will be tempted to get drunk.  Lucky for me, at this Pannouncement, Mother Painefull was on hand to show how it’s really done.

The Mother Painefull Broadway Show-stopper On How to Stand Out

That's not a coat, this... is a coat

1. Wear a loud jacket, it’s always a good talking point

Mother Painefull could have been spotted in a pitch black room, so brightly hued was her coat.  I didn’t get the memo.  I wore black.  I was practically a waitress.  In mourning.  Who was about to head to her next gig as a stagehand at a high school production of Fiddler On the Roof (which, FYI, is a challenging role, and not a ‘sympathy gig’ your drama teacher gives you upon discovering 20 seconds into your audition that you cannot sing to save yourself).

2. Conclude a bonding session with a relative stranger by declaring her your new daughter (in front of one of your current daughters)

Thus a new talking point is raised for all involved.  Don’t take this talking point and spin it into an elaborate joke about playing Sibling Survivor and kicking people out of the family.  Not everyone can tell when you’re joking.  Which might have been the problem at the Mestival now that I think about it.

3. Upon the announcement of someone else winning the prize, ask them if they will take you.  Then tell everyone loudly that your daughter (the old one, not the new one) in fact came second – several people will assume that this means there is in fact a second place and she is talking with authority.  Then line up the winner for a photo between the old daughter and some other shortlisted entrant and loudly talk about getting a photo of the podium finish (telling the other shortlisted entrant he came 3^rd – he looks intrigued by this)

To be honest, this one’s hard to replicate when your mother is already doing it.  But I will say, Operation Stand Out… big success.

If the above two approaches to Networking completely fail, if you feel like a fraud, if you need something to make you feel better… I would suggest, why not find someone more awkward, stand near them, and let that comparison play to your strengths?

For me, at the Pannouncement , that relief arrived when I overheard one Nervous Entrant in conversation with Father Painefull.

FATHER PAINEFULL: The hosts said to make ourselves at home…

NERVOUS ENTRANT: Yeah, they’ll never be able to kick us out…

FP: Yes, I was thinking of checking out the bedroom…

NE: I know!  I said to my girlfriend – what if we went and had sex in their bedroom?!

Now imagine giant screeching cicadas.  Father Painefull looked mystified and discomforted in equal measure.  I know my father well enough to know he was joking about going upstairs for a nap (Father Painefull love a nap), and that randomly discussing sex under any circumstances at a social gathering is as off-putting to him as the idea of the two of us settling in to watch an episode of Game of Thrones together would be for me.

At that point I relaxed a touch.  In fact I sighed with relief that I was not the most awkward person in that moment.  Of course I was relieved - I didn’t yet know I was going to have to call Mother Painefull the next day to instruct her to please stop telling people that I came second, because those people have begun to ring me to congratulate me, and they seem to think I have won some sort of runner’s up prize.

This is of course impossible because at the Pannouncement, just as it is in life and Networking, there is no second place whatsoever, just people looking at you with concern, wondering why your eye is twitching.

Painefull Out

Of Mice & Parking Men

There are two things I dislike intensely (because, as Mother Painefull says: we don’t hate, we just dislike intensely).  Actually, there are many things I dislike intensely, the damn list of them seems to grow daily – I harbour a dislike, bordering on intense, for said imagined list itself.  But it is here, at this moment, that I want to stop and point aggressively at two of those things (pointing, I was once told by an army reservist, is rude… but so am I by most standards, so what’s a dog to do but bark?).

You know I can totally pull off that entire look

It is here that I would like to note my intense dislike of bullies and cowards.  Said note must come with the admission that I have been both on several occasions.  Haven’t we all?  Most of my retrospective regrets relate to displays in one, or both categories, that I only later recognised for what they were.  The bully uses force to get what they want from another, the coward is often the one standing to the side watching it happen.

I made a series of strange and frantic phone calls last week.  They weren’t emotional, or filled with revelation, I wasn’t trying to track down a missing pet, or asking someone to come and help me move a body.  I didn’t bother with greetings or niceties (one must be intrinsically ‘nice’ to pull of niceties, which I am not, so they invariably turn into an interlude in awkward whenever I give them a try), and each went a little something like this:

“Are you home?  It’s free!  Can you come around right now to visit for a tea?  You don’t need to have a tea – just park and I’ll drive you home.  Or park, and go away, whatever.  We don’t need to see each other.”

My furtive calls could be traced to an incident that happened only a few days earlier.  It was a Wednesday night, and I was arriving home at 11:45pm from a meeting.  After doing a loop of the inevitably packed one-way street parking, and laying my sweet, sweet Yaris to rest curb side on the closest available spot to home (around 20 metres down the road), I alighted from said vehicle as another car approached.

Said car, maroon with envy, had a driver who pulled up beside me in the middle of the street, got out of the car, and asked/demanded that I move my car.

Initially confused, I assured him I wasn't covering a driveway.  He replied that the perfectly legal street park I had taken was right outside his house, and therefore his park.  Apparently he parks there 'every day' so it was 'his'.  I asked him if he was joking.  He accused me of being rude.  So no, he doesn't have an obscure, but ultimately harmless sense of humour... just a sense of entitlement.

Eventually, after an argument of escalating ridiculousness, because I couldn't get him to stop talking to me and get back into his car, and because this guy was over 30 and a little intimidating... and now knew exactly where to find my car if his sense of entitlement turned sour... I actually did move it.  I should mention that a woman, who I assume is this man’s wife, watched the entire exchange passively from within the Parking Douche’s automobile.

It is at this juncture that I should reveal that I have long held the irrational belief I could hold my own in a fight (and am destined to solve crime), so needless to say the sensation of giving into a bully such as this was rather galling.

But I haven't dedicated 2 years of my life to watching Revenge for nothing.

Thusly, after taking several days off to hone my own sense of self-loathing for giving in to such a douche, I decided to alleviate my rage and feeling of disempowerment the only way I knew how.  I sent a photo of the street park in question (filled with his car... because his car owns that spot apparently), and street number to everyone who has ever driven to visit me at home.  The offer I made was simple - I will personally cook dinner for anyone that manages to park in that spot while visiting me at any point this year (photographic proof required), I will also keep a tally should many people manage to do this, and will award a prize in December to whoever does it most often (bonus points if the car holds the park for over 24 hours).

Petty?  Yes.  Soothing?  Definitely.

But, as Emily Thorne also discovered, once you set about enacting karmic vengeance, fresh complications can ensue.  It seems, put out by my presumptuous attempt to usurp his rightful vehicular throne, the Parking Douche has decided to start using his motorbike and his wife’s moped, which neatly combine to take up one spot beside the Maroon Devil Car, to block off anyone else looking to utilize his car’s park should he decide to go for a drive.  Yes, did I mention his hereditary claim apparently covers TWO parking spots for him to use at his own leisure?

When I made those frantic calls to several friends not long after it was because the Parking Douche has momentarily slipped and allowed the space to become free.  Sadly no one was available to take up my kindly offer to ‘park, and go away, whatever’.

But just you wait Parking Douche.  Just.  You.  Wait.  The game of cat and mouse continues.  The grand chess match.  The epic battle of wills.  That he’s totally unaware of.  Yes, I recognise I am currently on the character arc of pretty much every villain from every super hero movie.  I’m okay with that.

The one thing that reassures me about bullies is my blind belief that karma will eventually slap them back into place.  And if karma needs assistance with delivery of said service, who am I not to lend a hand?

Painefull Out

Things You Can Tell Just By Aging Her

It was earlier this year when a new song began to truly haunt me.  It didn’t come with the usual warning signs (like the name ‘Chris Brown’), it wasn’t instantly offensive (like the opening bars of One Direction’s audio assault on Blondie), nor was it distractingly confusing (like the lyrics to Good Charlotte’s… anything).  It was catchy, easy on the ear, and offered a pleasant break from hearing about how the singer was never, ever, ever getting back together (with Tina Fey & Amy Poehler since deciding to take on misogyny one feminist, woman-empowering female comedy duo at a time).

I never really had a problem with Taylor Swift, until she released the single ‘22’.  It was then, about a week of high rotation FM station airplay in, that I realised something awful – for the rest of my life, Swifty is just going to be motoring along, 5 years behind me, writing songs about how awesome the age is that I’ll never be again.  ‘15’ I could handle with its ode to heartbreak (what me worry… I have no heart) but ‘22’?  Come on, that’s just cruel.

Taylor seems set to be my Ghost of Ages Past.  All this I realised around March, when I was 27.  And now, to make matters worse, I’m 28.

Unless I find a carnival fortune telling machine that’s taking requests, I can no longer even remotely sell the idea that I’m in my mid-20’s.  And now, when I hear ‘22’ I’m not just thinking of the age I’ll never be again, I’m thinking things like:

It feels like one of those nights
We ditch the whole scene

[god I hate changing venues]
It feels like one of those nights
We won't be sleeping
[I don’t know, that sounds tiring, and I don’t really want to screw up my sleeping pattern]

It feels like one of those nights
You look like bad news I gotta have you, I gotta have you

[come on Taylor, make good choices - if he’s bad news now, what’s going to make him good news later?]

And following my birthday I’m noticing more and more signs of just how old I am.  I can hear you asking, Imaginary Audience, ‘what signs?’, and so I will provide detail:

That’s Why The Lady’s A Dame

Case in point, recently some friends and I were trying to assign each other actors and characters that we essentially are in real life (because, as we all know, actors, like characters and eskimos, aren’t real).  After much deliberation I was awarded Maggie Smith.  Current Maggie Smith.

Maggie Smith is awesome, but she’s also, like, a whole 10 years older than me.  It probably proved the point when I proceeded to purchase a cane for a dress up party a few weeks back, then use it at all subsequent gatherings as a dance prop.  But Maggie and I have a lot of other stuff in common aside from a walking stick.  That I am not listing them now should in no way be taken as an indication that no examples readily come to mind – plenty do.  Plenty.  For example… she was in Gosford Park, and I love Gosford Park.  It’s uncanny.

Use Your Words!

My two teenage nephew’s Facebook updates are incomprehensible.

Hey Guys, me & Slothy r [acronym] and will [acronym] the best [acronym] that any1 can [acronym].  Bring it!!!!!!!

I’m not completely off the grid, I do know what LOL, FML, FOMO and YOLO mean (and knowing doesn’t make their use any more acceptable… said Maggie Smith… not me, cause I’m cool, why would I think the only thing more mortifying is adults using emoticons?  That’s pure Mags talking), but this is a whole new level.  I find myself wondering whether said acronyms are simply invented keyboard spasms and the aim of the game is to interpret at will and then reply confidently in kind.

My Body Is Not A Wonderland

My body hurts more in general.  I’m just one set of dentures away from being able to predict the weather through the ache in my joints.

Next Thing You’ll Be Telling Me You Haven’t Watched ‘Spice World’…

There’s this entirely discomforting batch of people popping up in workplaces who were all born in the 90’s and therefore cannot complete a Spice Girls lyric if I sing it at them (call and response style)*.  This in turn has made me realise just how often I punctuate conversations with Spice Girls riffs.

Never fear, it’s not all doom and gloom though.  There are still a few fronts on which I’m fighting the youthful fight.  I still fail to see the allure of quince paste, would sleep in till 12 every day if that was remotely acceptable and simply can’t bring myself to listen to people talk on the radio for longer than 30 seconds (it’s for music after all… except when ‘22’ plays again, then it’s for self-pity).

On the plus side, I can still be mistaken for someone younger.  Not due to looks or attitude, but rather clothing.  You see, I've returned to the bottom of the workplace ladder this year to start all over again, and this event has been made less awkward for those giving me their coffee orders by the fact that I still dress (to quote former boss Dame Deadpan) 'like a teenage boy' leading them to assume I'm an oddly wizened 23 year old**.  Which is much closer to, though not actually, so still failing to be, 22.  Damn you Taylor, damn you.

"Who, me?"  Yes, you.

It feels like one of those nights

I’ll bail on work drinks

It feels like one of those nights
I’ll sleep 10 hours

It feels like one of those nights
Katie Holmes in First Daughter, so bad I must watch, so bad I must watch

Painefull Out

* = I feel safe excluding 1990 born J-Law from this group.  Any girl that can quote First Wives Club knows how to Spice Up Your Life (Every boy and every girl!)

** = See Mother Painefull, comfort, unlike crime, does pay!

Cool Woggings

I have long believed that getting fit is just a fancy, more socially acceptable way of injuring yourself.  If someone screws up their knee pulling aeroplane parts across a beach at sunrise while being yelled at by a sadistic drill sergeant (and paying for the pleasure) it’s somehow impressive, but you blow out one slightly important bodily hinge while joyously kicking snow and you know everyone will find you faintly ridiculous for the length of your limping.

This is a really kind-hearted artist's rendering of what I look like after exercising

That’s not an excuse for my complete lack of fitness (as excuses go, I’ve made better), but rather more of a philosophical viewpoint.

Obviously the real reason I’m unfit is because I’m lazy, but for the first 20 years of my life I was lazy in a less obvious way.  I’d always preferred team sports over the individual pursuits, and it was easy to assume this was because I was a naturally social person (an absurd assumption really, when combined with the well-known fact that I don’t like people).

Retrospectively I realise the real reason I so excelled at softball, basketball, hockey, cricket and touch football was because they actually involved a superb amount of standing.  You may think to yourself that basketball, hockey and touch football in particular actually involve a ludicrous amount of running, but you’d be wrong – not the way I played them.  I am an excellent stander (for no longer than 60 minutes).  When a whole team of people are running around madly, it can actually be considered an asset to be the one person who will always be reliably found standing in the same spot.

The only time I’ve managed to become some version of athletic was by complete accident.  I hiked the Machu Picchu trail and I can only assume the lack of the oxygen in the air made me more efficient at breathing or something (because that’s how those things work, surely).

When I went to university I got a bicycle and briefly became determined to be one of those people who rode everywhere (you know, Dutch, but with a point), and promptly failed.  I lacked the necessary balance and grit to ride up hills and inevitably ended up walking my bike most of the way.

That was 8 years ago, which is how long it took for me to recover from the mortification of being overtaken by toddlers on tricycles.

So here I am, in my late 20’s, newly emboldened to try to become fit.  I’m attempting this through running, but you know what they say, you have to wog before you can run.  Where do they say that (Mother Painefull wonders to herself as she engages in her weekly furniture rearranging session)?  Cool places mum, that’s where.

This is a rather sarcastic artist's rendering of what wogging looks like, the kind of clothes I do it in, and what sports bras do to my breasts - thanks Phil, you douche

I’m sure I don’t have to explain what wogging is, but I will.  It’s the pursuit of personal transportation through a combination of both walking and jogging.  And because it’s pretty much a science, I can tell you it can only become such a hybrid once 10% of the journey is done with jogging.  Of course, once the jogging takes up over 50% it becomes jalking (please don’t argue with me over the naming system, I have put a rather sad amount of thought into this – I think ‘brunch’ and ‘liger’ prove that the dominant feature gets leading naming rights, don’t you?).

But as I mentioned, it’s been 8 years since I attempted any meaningful and regular exercise, and 2 new facts have emerged:

1. Wogging is actually incredibly boring

2. Without my glasses I am basically blind

As such I’ve had to invent games to make it more interesting, and fortunately wogging blind provided the very first one.  This game was called ‘Man-Woman?’  Without spectacles I can’t even pick someone’s gender until they’re standing beside me… with that in mind I tend to lose at this game more than I win.

After tripping over several hoses, 2 branches, a crack in the pavement, and an orange safety cone I started wearing my glasses while wogging, which meant coming up with a new game.  This one is called ‘Engage!’.  When playing this game you get a point for every time you get someone to respond to your greeting while you wog.  This has the added bonus of alleviating some of the concern of people who look at me as if I’m dying as I heave past them, gasping for air.

You lose a point for every fail, and get bonus points if both members of a couple respond to your engagement, or if you can somehow get someone to spontaneously high five you as you go past (it’s only happened once, and it was a wonderful day).

I wouldn’t say I’m getting fit, so much as I’m getting moderately less unfit.  And the public nature of the whole thing is helping with my innate laziness.  The ease with which I get mortified in front of strangers, combined with the amount of construction workers sitting around listening to talkback radio in my suburb, means I spend much more time jogging, and trying to look nonchalant while doing it, than my body really wants to allow.  For some reason I’m really determined that these predominantly overweight men think I’m running the whole way (in reality I doubt they notice, but it’s somehow important to me to think they do… like it’s important to me not to make eye contact with the cashier while buying tampons).

Painefull Out

Do Voters Make Passes At Prime Ministers Who Wear Glasses?

It’s been a big week in politics, and under such circumstances it’s important to focus on the truly vital components of our ever lively national debate.  And what could be more vital than our Prime Minister’s bold decision to announce the longest election campaign in the history of Australia while wearing glasses?  Of course, I don’t have to tell you that the key word there is ‘glasses’.

If The Great Michelle Obama Haircut Inauguration of 2013 has taught us anything (aside from “Ask not what your fringe can do for you – ask what you can do for your fringe”) it’s accessorizing is the contribution women were born to make.  It’s like how Twitter is the medium Shane Warne was born to speak through, and maniacal laughter was the sound Christopher Pyne was born to let out (it’s sad to watch him fight it, day after day).

But of course a pair of glasses can’t just be a pair of glasses, there has to be a vaster plot behind such a truly audacious manoeuvre.  I know this because Julia Gillard is clearly smart (she wears glasses now you see) and crafty (because she’s a woman, and by ‘crafty’ I mean ‘manipulative’, and by ‘manipulative’ I mean… ‘female’).

After much research, and whole minutes of painstaking thought, I’ve managed to narrow down the conspiracy theories surrounding Spectacle-Gate to the most likely candidates.

Rose Tinted Glasses

You can’t tell from this side, but looking out through those glasses everything’s coming up roses for Julia.  It’s all puppies frolicking through meadows and flowers made of fairy floss where she’s sitting.  Look how she smiles now when Kevin Rudd walks past – that’s because she can’t see him (and there ain’t nothing he can do about that for the next 8 months).  She’s the only one who won’t be suffering the next time Tony Abbott emerges from the surf in nothing but a modesty cloth – to her he’ll appear full clothed.

The theory goes that she attained this technology on a vision quest back in 1993 and she’s been moving forward ever since.  The only other pair of these glasses in the world was given to Anthony Mundine, and no one knows why.

Ron Burgundy’s Glass Case of Emotion

This one’s really a Reverse Rose Tint – there’s some speculation the glasses are in fact aimed at hiding the wearers actual response to what’s going on around them.  Apparently they were rushed into production mere days ago.  According to packaging found at a top secret dump site (also the location of several well documented Yeti sightings) they’re specially suited for hiding the First Bloke-inducing winces that come when middle aged white men stumble into jokes that feature prostate exams and small Asian women.

Reportedly impenetrable, a small tag tucked behind the Prime Minister’s ear states ‘Only to be broken in cases of emergency or misogyny’.  According to anonymous, but highly creditable sources on conspiracy site TheDogAteMyHomework.com, the Ron Burgundy specials were designed to withstand extreme rage and despair, having been purpose bought for when Oprah inevitably scores the Craig Thomson interview (“Welcome Craaaiiigg Thomsoooooooon!  You’re getting a Health Services Union credit card, you’re getting a Health Services Union credit card, everyone’s getting a Health Services Union credit card!”).

There’s a failsafe button being held in a bunker at the Lodge – if there are any glitches it will simply render her mute.  It’ll be like watching Andrew Murray lose the Australian open and wondering why he keeps mouthing the word ‘Duck!’

Alien Invasion

This is the most obvious and concerning theory.  Julia Gillard has been taken over by alien life forms.  Who owns one of the most famous pairs of glasses in the world?  Clark Kent.  What was he trying to hide?  He was from another planet.  Boom!  I rest my case.

Need more?  One off-shoot of the theory suggest the glasses themselves are the sentient being controlling our PM – why else would they have their own Twitter account?

Clearly this means an invasion is imminent.  You know what they say about Extra-terrestrial life forms?  Total queue jumpers.

Painefull Out

Summertime Painefull

My feelings precisely

I’ve received several genetic gifts from my Dad – thin hair, ear wax and awful eyesight amongst them.  I know, what a catch?  I’m selling Father Painefull short with that list, he really is quite a handsome man (for the record, that’s another gift he’s given me, the opportunity to be mistaken for a handsome man, and if I wasn’t a woman that would be lovely*).  But chief among those blessings is a strict and overwhelming dislike of hot weather.

It’s an aversion matched only by Lance Armstrong’s disinclination for clean victories and Tina Fey & Amy Poehler’s inability to be anything but funny**.  That and my natural instinct to sleep all day and party all night (if you exchange the word ‘party’ with the phrase ‘re-watch the West Wing’) have led many to reach the only sensible conclusion available – I am a vampire.

There’s certainly a lot of hay to be made with that suspicion.  I’m so pale I practically glow in the dark, my personal ‘style’ can give the appearance that mirrors don’t allow me to see my own reflection on the way out the door, and I only ever play baseball during lightning storms (yep, that baseball thing is all I remember from my entire Twilight viewing experience).

On stunning 41 degree days such as was experienced in ye olde Sydney town (and by extension my own un-air-conditioned, shoddily carpeted rental crib at the Cliff) last week I almost wish I was a vampire.  If I was, the sensation I was about to burst into flames would have made slightly more sense.

How much do I hate the heat?  Let me count the ways.  Here are but some of the signs I am not made to live in such warmth:

I am a vampire
The jury remains out on this one.  This holiday period I managed to score a new personal best when I achieved sunburn at 7pm at night.

My standard life uniform involves jeans for every occasion
Even I must admit I’m pushing the boat out by sticking to them when it gets hot.  It’s heat, and not Mother Painefull’s traumatized sideways glance at my outfit choice, that brings me closest to wanting to own a rack full of dresses.

No one in my family owns a pool
Oh the inhumanity.  Each summer someone promises they’ll be in possession of a cool body of water the following festive season.  They lie.  My standards aren’t even particularly high when the mercury starts to rise - bug-infested, stagnant bodies of water start to look inviting pretty quickly.

It makes me question my commitment to tea drinking
If something shakes my addiction to English Breakfast, then you know it’s not quite right.

Like the American government on an annual basis, I enter total shutdown
Most of my conversations on hot days begin and end with “Don’t talk to me, I’m busy lying still.”  I can’t function.  A majority of my friends have a  photo somewhere from the first time they discovered me spread-eagled on the lounge room floor and refusing to speak in complete sentences for fear of breaking into a fresh sweat.  If I’m sweating and not getting fitter in the process then the world is officially an unfair place***.

One of said friends' photos of me

But never fear fair weather friends (mum, when you read this in a month you’ll see I’m referring to you in the plural now, because it makes me feel more special… so I’m counting you, and the portrait of you that hangs on the wall behind you in your office when you peruse this… that painting is just the gift that keeps on giving), some mild relief is at hand.  One of my besties, Fi, has just moved into an apartment block with a pool.  Which I now refer to as My Pool.  I’m officially like the French royal family pre cake eating fiasco – I have a summer palace.  Now the plan of attack is to simply wait this ‘thing’ (‘thing’ being Painefull for ‘season’) out from the confines of My Pool, emerging only to dowse myself in sunscreen once every hour.  It’s fool proof.

Painefull Out

* = Coming up… The Painefull Guide to Being Mistaken for a Dude

** = And soon… Why one of my closest friendships has been entirely defined over who’s the Tina, and who’s the Amy

*** = But after the break… Ridiculous statements by first world brats regarding what constitutes an unfair world

Paranormal Possum Activity

I think I’m being haunted.  By a possum.  And it’s really pissed off.

Looks angry, doesn't he?

Let me begin by saying I am not a natural animal person.  I scored that trait from my father, who, through years of family dogs, has avoided using their names, instead titling each canine with descriptors like ‘New Dog’ and ‘Little Dog’.  Until recently it had taken an outrageously cool or unusual animal – like a cat called Mouse, a Schnauzer that urinated in everyone's bedroom but mine, or a Staffy that only ever ran away to local brothels – to garner my affection.  But lately I’ve developed what can only be described as some sort of… dog cluckiness.  It’s appalling, and it’s begun to spread out through animal genres – I found myself admiring a ferret the other day.

Despite my varying degrees of interest in animals, I’ve always been particularly careful of them on the roads.  That stems from a formative incident almost a decade old…

(Cue time warp transition, over-saturated tones, Black Eyed Peas singing ‘Where Is the Love’, and me standing in a University dorm looking exactly the same because, much to Mother Painefull’s chagrin, my wardrobe really hasn’t changed much.)*

I was but a fresh-faced youth in my first year of university, blessed with the twin inadequacies of being 17 and unlicensed.  While the first left me banned from Uni Bar, the second curse was what had me begging lifts off dorm mates when it came time to visit the Parents Painefull in The Dor.  I scored that very first lift from a fellow student, a country lass.  Now I thought this would be an easy fit – after all I went to boarding school with several such lass’s, and thus, unwillingly, speak fluent Garth Brooks.  I was not to know this one young woman happened to be Deliverance on Wheels.  Not even her reinforced, bull bar toting ute made me doubt my travelling companion.  Only when she sped up on the road 30 minutes later and collected an innocent magpie, before declaring “It’s kill, or be killed!” did I realise I may have been out of my depth.  That was the first animal road fatality I had ever witnessed.  Needless to say, I spent the next 3 years of my life valiantly avoiding this person.

(Back to present day.  Yes mum, I’m wearing the same pair of jeans.)

So the other week, on a dark, traffic-filled night, when I accidentally clipped a possum stranded in the middle of the road before leaving it to its oncoming green-light-cued fated, I was reminded I was a truly terrible person.  The dry retching I did on the side of the road 3 blocks later did nothing to assuage my guilt.

Then, over the weekend a strange sound began emanating through the street.  At first I thought it was a woman screaming (Fun Fact: It’s not), then I thought it was a bird.  Now, I realise, it’s clearly the possum… haunting me.  While I speak Garth Brooks, and some Whale, I don’t speak Possum, so I’m not entirely sure what it’s saying.  Admittedly this could be cabin fever talking, or a brain tumor, or in fact a bird, but really, isn’t a creepy, vengeance-fuelled ghost possum a much more likely answer?

Not since my duel to the death with a spider on the staircase have I been so concerned about animal retribution.  Worse still, this grudge might have gone interspecies.  The white rabbit that roams free in the yard down the street has been giving me a much more glaring, beady-eyed look of late when I stop to admire him**.

Now they're all looking at me... and they know where I live

I can only hope this is simply the beginning of some Dickens-style scenario, in which case The Ghost of Possums Past should be done soon (probably to make way for The Ghost of Unemployment Present).

Painefull Out

* = Anyone a Cold Case fan?  You’re not, are you mum.  Cold Case is a show filled with flashbacks and era bound music.  They solve cases… that have gone cold.  They have a name for those cases that are cold… but is escapes me at the moment.

** = That might also be due to another incident, in which I pulled up in my car beside said yard and screamed “The rabbit’s there” at my traveling companion, only to realise he had his passenger window down and I had essentially screamed at house itself… which happened to be open for inspection… thus I screamed at two innocent families… who stared at me while I reacted instinctively by both ducking and looking around as if seeking out the source of such strange yelling.  Both of those tactics are hard to pull off when you’re sitting in a car in the middle of a quiet street.