Eucalyptus Country

I’ve decided to apply for another job and I thought I’d share my progress with the application with you all so I took a screenshot of my work on it so far.

Yeah, it’s going really great. Who am I kidding? This is the pits. How hard is it to come up with a 2 page summary of why I’m a good employee and how I could do this job with my hands tied behind my back? I know I can, I even have the solid practical experience for this one so why am I finding it so hard?

I know I can write this….I’ve done them a million times before. But at the moment, my brain just can’t come up with anything to fill this blank page. Fortunately, I’ve had other things to take my mind off it so I’ve at least done some constructive work today. I even managed to rescue some content for my other blog that I had pre-written and stored on my USB stick, which I found to be corrupted last week. So I’ll call today a small win. But I’ll be even happier if I can put at least one paragraph on this blank page before I go to bed tonight.

Perhaps I will pray to Yoda to deliver me from my hellish job application writer’s block…..failing that, there’s always Ceiling Cat.

Way back in May, I was doing my best to not look like a tourist on the boardwalk of Sydney Harbour. While I was sauntering along enjoying the dismal overcast weather (note subtle undertone of sarcasm here) that Sunday morning, I stopped to take a snap of the French Connection UK store front.

I’m not a huge fan of their clothes, in fact I have never once been inside the store. But the immature little kid in me had a snicker at the sign and so thinking I would have a future use for it, that image made its way onto my memory card. And today is that day.

My other half has a dubious record when it comes to DIY projects around the home. He has these great ideas and while they do add value to our house or make our lives easier, I sometimes wonder why he tortures himself by coming up with them in the first place. Generally, the premise is this:

“I was just thinking, it would be great not to have the speaker wires running across the loungeroom floor. So I could just drill a couple of holes, mount the speakers on the wall and feed the speaker wire across the roof….it’ll be easy enough to do.”

We troop off down to Bunnings, get all the gear we need and then set about the process of doing it. Usually at some point there is an issue – like studs not being where we want them, or being in the wrong place or drill bits breaking or the battery on cordless tools running out. Or having to climb up in the roof among the spiders and fibreglass insulation to feed the wire down the sides of the walls. That’s just this afternoon’s DIY project but it really doesn’t make much of a difference which one it is. He hates DIY jobs and it always culminates in a torrent of language that would make Gordon Ramsay proud.

I’m no stranger to the F word and certainly I’ve been known to use it often enough  myself when I get really frustrated or just plain angry. So I sit and smile through the whole process, knowing that when it’s all over and done with, he’ll be back to his mild-mannered self. I guess you can see why I’ve put in the photo of that sign now….and if you can’t, I’m hardly going to spell it out properly for you.

It really hasn’t been a good week for me. It kicked off with a romping headache that hung around for the best part of 24hrs….which I only got relief from when I was able to lie down and have a nap. As soon as I stood up, the world would start spinning and I’d feel like my head was going to explode. My solution to this, after pain killers failed woefully, was to simply continue to sleep the day away. I must have needed it because the following day, the headache was gone and all was well in my little corner of the world.

I blame Channel Ten. For the first half of the year, we’re tormented with Big Brother. Then because it is an Olympic year, we get crappy repeats because they feel they can’t compete with the Olympic coverage by Channel Seven. Then to kick us while we’re down, they bring back Australian Idol to see if they can make our ears bleed for seven nights a week. And if you think you can just change the channel and not watch TV, think again. Chances are your neighbours are Idol addicts and will happily compensate for the lack of noise from your house by turning up their own set.

But I digress. Tonight I faced facts and acknowledged that I really did have to go to the supermarket after putting it off for at least three weeks. I was cranky when I got there because the radio station I was listening to in the car was playing some kind of “so you didn’t make the Idol cut” show and was playing all sorts of woeful singing of people who thought they were really good. Because apparently when you are completely tone deaf, you aren’t capable of realising just how abominable you truly sound. Starting out a huge grocery shop cranky sets the tone for the entire experience really….because it just got worse from there.

The first four shopping trolleys I pulled out had missing wheels (yes, completely missing instead of merely dodgy like the rest of them).

I must have had bad hair or something because all these people kept looking at my head, then ducking their eyes if I made eye contact. I was beginning to think I had a bug in my hair, or maybe a massive streak of lip gloss across my cheek. Of course, that might purely be my own paranoia too.

I seemed to constantly be trying to out trolley a little old lady who was walking slower than 2cm a minute. I would whiz around her in one aisle, only to be mysteriously behind her again in the next aisle.

Someone’s toddler decided that I needed all sorts of weird Asian groceries and other random items from the shelf and I didn’t realise until the end of the aisle.

They didn’t have my favourite brand of hot chocolate….so I had to end up trying another. Being a bit of a creature of habit, I’m a bit dubious about this but hey, I did get a free Napoleon lip gloss.

But the final straw came when I hit the baking aisle and a pack of White Wings Double Choc Babycakes caught my eye. And while I’m not quite as obsessed with cupcakes as Leigh, but I really did have to have them. They do look pretty tempting….especially when you’re a packet cook like I am. There was only one box left and so I grabbed it off the shelf, a few milliseconds before someone else also reached in for the same box. I had it in my hot little hands and went to put it in my trolley but then the other person grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go.

I couldn’t believe I was squabbling with another lady (who looked to be twice my age) over a packet mix of cupcakes. For crying out loud, I can’t cook that well and I need all the help I can get when it comes to making cute little cupcakes. Any other day, I would probably have let it go and then just continued to stalk the offender making comments about how jolly obnoxious certain people are, before getting over it by scoring some other find in the next aisle.

But today, I was not going to relent. I kept a firm grip of that packet like it was a gold brick and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t care less how much the other person wanted them because I knew that I was holding the trump card. After she had said how much she really needed them, I said a few magic words…..

“I have really bad PMT right now.” She let go pretty much instantly – SCORE!

Ever since I saw Missy Higgins in concert, I’ve been almost obsessed with her hair. I really want my hair to look that effortlessly casual. I thought I had it almost looking right until I was shown a recent photo of Billy Ray Cyrus and found my hair style looked more like his than it did hers. Now some will argue that it’s his fault for having such a girly hair do (sorry Billy but you need a new hair stylist), but I really could not cope with the idea that I could photoshop my face into his hair or vice versa and we would look the same. I suppose it could have been worse….I could have had the same style cut as he did in his “Achy Breaky Heart” days but still, it is bad enough!

So a couple of visits to the hairdresser later, I’ve finally shed the Billy Ray look. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Missy Higgins look happening either. Once I’d explained to my hairdresser exactly what I was after and showed her a few photos, it turns out my hair isn’t the kind that will support a Missy type style. I have plenty of hair but it is too fine and whispy to accommodate those kind of finger waves….at least if I want to avoid looking like the “stuck my finger in a powerpoint” look of Albert Einstein.

I’m not a big fan of photos of me on here so this is a close you will get of a shot of my new do. What a Meez of your own?? Then go grab one!

Photo of Missy Higgins courtesy of Sydney Entertainment Centre