The Game

Last night I went out to dinner with two of my male friends. We ate steak and chips (apparently this is what men do) and we played my favourite game (which was only fair, because the men got their steak and chips).

My favourite game does not involve dice or a board, because board games are excruciatingly boring (and besides, I always lose). In my favourite game, absolutely everyone wins, because that is the point of the game, and what makes it so thrilling.

It is The Lottery Game.

You’ve all played The Lottery Game. I’ve played it dozens of times. And yet each time, the game is a little more exciting, and each time, my imagination runs a little more wild.

Last night’s version of The Lottery Game began as it always does. With a question.

 “Do you ever just wonder what life would be like if you won ten million dollars?”

“YES!” I yelled, practically jumping off my chair, and choking on a chip in my zeal.

“Um… okay,” said my friend Rich*, recoiling slightly in his chair. I realised that the question had been posed rhetorically, and I tried to regain my composure.

Naked Woman Depicted Not Actual Blogger

“I have too,” said my friend Buck** happily, and shovelled in another bite of cow.

“What would you do?” I asked.

“I’d play guitar all day.”

Hmmm. I figured I’d just hire someone to play guitar for me with all my money, but perhaps I was missing the point.

“And what about you?” I asked Rich, who was gazing wistfully into the distance.

“I’d get a butler!” he pronounced, and it sounded eminently sensible.

“Which would give me time to spend up to three hours a day in the gym,” he continued, and I decided that my friend was seriously unhinged.

“And I would travel!” he added, which was redeemed him a little. “I would travel through Europe, and backpack through India, and…”

No no no no.

“Why would you backpack through India?” I demanded. “You’d be a multi-millionaire! You could stay at the best hotels! You could hire people to carry your luggage!”

“But I like backpacking,” he said shamefully, and the table fell silent.

“What about you?” Buck asked me finally, and I was very glad he did.

“Well firstly,” I announced, “I would get staff for absolutely EVERYTHING.” My eyes began to glaze over as I warmed to my topic. “I would get a maid, and a chef, and a chauffeur, and a nanny. I don’t want to do ANYTHING that looks like work, EVER again.”

My fantasy began to overwhelm me, and adrenalin surged through my body. “I want to play with my kids, but not have to lift a finger! I want to sleep until noon and then read in the bath! And I want to get a massage every day of my life. A two hour massage. No. A three hour massage! And then another bath!”

I stopped. I realised that I was bouncing in my chair, and clapping my hands with glee. And Buck and Rich were staring at me as if I was totally deranged.

Sometimes, it seems, even The Lottery Game can produce losers.

*not his real name, but this is what he would be if the game was real

**also not his real name, but I assume you knew that

Accidentally Fancypants

So the other day I somehow bought a baby on a whim. (Not a human baby, of course. I wouldn't pay money for one of those. [Though I may occasionally pay someone to take one of mine away.])

No, I bought a furry baby. A little rescue kitten. And I didn't mean to buy her. I truly didn't. I had intended to pick up my son from school and drive him directly home. But my friend Lana had mentioned over breakfast that the vet near my home had some rescue kittens, and a sudden, feline madness took over.

"Can I make a quick stop?" I asked my son impulsively.

"Okay," he said. "Do you need to go to the shops?"

"No, not shops," I said, and parked the car. The kittens were calling to me. They were girls, I just knew it. My Princess Fancypants was inside waiting.

Seriously - could YOU resist this face?

My son looked confused as we walked into the vet. "Mum, what are we..."

"I hear you have rescue kittens?" I asked the receptionist.

"NO," he said. "No! REALLY?" (My son, that is. The receptionist said "Yes!" as I knew she would. Because I could see the kittens beside the door.)

""We have two little girls here at the moment," she said, and I looked over and there I saw my baby.

She was tiny, and cute, with four little white socks. She had huge green eyes, and a Fancypants face.

"Penelope!" I cried, and I still don't know why. I don't like the name Penelope; at least, I didn't before. But she was totally Penelope. It may as well have been written on her collar. (But she didn't have a collar. She was way too small.)

So Princess Penelope Fancypants has come to live with us. And already we know quite a bit about her. She likes tuna, but definitely doesn't like chicken. She likes her bouncy ball, but thinks the toy mouse is lame. She likes her scratching post but refuses to scratch it. And if she wants to sleep under the couch all day then she's damn well going to do it and there's nothing we can do but RESPECT.

We welcome the newest member of our family. We will serve you, Penelope, and you own us already.

But if anyone else ever casually mentions a rescue animal, I'm going to block my ears, hum, and drive on.

WTF Is Going On With My Hands?

The other day, rummaging in Places I Probably Shouldn't Rummage, I came across this photo.

I am 16 and wearing pearls.

This picture was taken in 1985, on my school Muck-Up night. I was 16 years old and dreadfully excited. I was also, I now appreciate, dreadfully dressed. Whereas some other 16 might go for a 'Good Girl Goes Bad' look to celebrate their high school graduation, I was geared more towards the 'Medical Receptionist meets Flower Child'. Perhaps it was deeply fashionable in some very niche circles, but I suspect the niche was made up solely of me.

I was terribly fond of my salmon pink shirt and its matching, calf-length white skirt. Sadly, the photograph does not do justice to the brocade-like print, or the high polyester count of the fabric. Happily, though, you can appreciate the string of pearls, so effortlessly (read: carefully) slung around my neck.

As for the smudge on my cheek, no, it was not a hideous birthmark that I have since had removed in a painful but ultimately rewarding surgical procedure. It was a flower, that I had begged my mother to paint on my face. Despite my profoundly conservative attire (and the fact that it was the 80's, and I was a decade too late), I fancied myself as a bit of a hippie. My lovely mother acquiesced, so it is she who is responsible for my completely idiotic appearance.

But all of that pales into significance next to my hands. Because... what the fuck is going on with my hands?

This is not the kind of gesture nice medical receptionists make

I got such a shock looking at this picture. I am making an obscene gesture with my hands! Presumably I wasn't aware of it, but still! I can't believe it! It is like listening to a Taylor Swift album backwards and hearing Satanic messages, or finding your sweet five year child old planning monstrous acts of evil (except that I do find my five year old planning monstrous acts of evil, but you get the idea).

So honestly, people, I have no idea who I am in this picture. A flower child? A medical receptionist? A naughty, naughty girl? Or just a confused 16 year old who paired a salmon shirt with a rude gesture and still passed it off as sweet?

Whoever I am, though, I am glad those days are over. For one thing, I don't wear polyester anymore.

And for another thing, if I'm going to make a rude gesture, I'm going to make damn sure I know I'm doing it.

I Am Anxiety

Watch this video.

If you have ever experienced anxiety, if you have ever thought you have experienced anxiety, if you have anyone in your family or circle of friends who experience anxiety, watch this video.

This. This is what anxiety feels like.

This morning I co-launched this new Anxiety Awareness initiative by Beyond Blue alongside the amazing Garry McDonald*.

I couldn't be prouder to be part of such an incredible campaign.

When I released The Little Book of Anxiety a year ago, my primary aim was to help to lift the stigma associated with being an anxious person, and to show other sufferers that they were not alone.

But there is only so much that one little author can do with one little book. This campaign will do this a thousandfold.

Please watch this two minute film and share it. And please, if it resonates with you, seek help.

There is hope. There is light. There is a life away from anxiety.

Sending love to you all.

*Who later accepted a lift home with my mum and I, which was one of the more surreal moments of my career to date.

You Won't Believe What I Ate Last Night...

Last night I ate a stock cube. Seriously. And not one of those small Maggi ones, either. I ate a giant, squishy Massel chicken stock cube, straight out of the wrapper. It was horrible. I mean, chicken stock is great in soups and casseroles, but pretty gross by itself on a fork. But I couldn't help it. I was craving that stock cube like the deserts crave the rain. (Except that the stock cube also made me crave rain. Or at least water.)

Now, the obvious conclusion to reach is that I am pregnant. And when I am pregnant I do crave strange foods. When I was pregnant with my son I bought so many spinach and feta pastries from the local baker every day (three to four, to be precise) that I became too fat embarrassed to go into the store, and had to learn how to make my own.

However, I am certain I am not pregnant. This is because:

1. My kitchen has been surgically closed;
2. I am not nauseous and dizzy and weeping for no reason at all;
3. See number 1.

No, I am not pregnant. In fact, I am as far as one can get from pregnancy without being menopausal. I am craving weird foods not because I am pregnant, but because I am not.

Yes, once gain PMS rears up its ugly head. It happens all the time. Once a month, actually. Every. Single. Bloody. Month.

I don't need to keep a chart of my menstrual cycle because I know exactly where I am based on the foods I am craving. Early in my cycle I eat my normal, boring diet. When I am ovulating I become quite extraordinarily hungry, and need about seventeen meals a day (at least three of which are based on chocolate). Clearly, my body is preparing for a potential baby by packing in enough energy in three days to last me nine months. Clearly, my body is stupid.

Mmmm.... DINNER

And then I hit PMS, and I head down to the salt mines. Oh yes. Salt salt salt salt. I eat stock cubes and drink cup-a-soup and eat Vegemite with a spoon. I chomp on Feta and swallow olives and ask for extra anchovies in my salad. And I get fluid retention and grumpy as hell and turn to alcohol to ease the pain.

You'd be in pain too if you'd been eating stock cubes.

So next time you are grumpy with PMS and cursing your hormonal surges, spare a thought for me. I am sitting at my kitchen bench eating stock cubes washed down with gin and tonic. It ain't pretty.

What does PMS look like for you?

The Frightening Attack of the KnickerMoths

Yesterday I had to concede defeat and accept that my home had been colonised by weevils. Tiny, bizarrely gravity-defying weevils who leave the sanctuary of the cereal box and crawl across my ceiling.

Clearly, these weevils aren't particularly rational, because Blind Freddy can see that there are no cornflakes on the roof, but plenty of world leaders have been irrational. And the weevils are my leaders now. They have invaded my home, thwarted every effort on my part* to remove them, and have partied on my ceiling (literally, not metaphorically as the Lionel Ritchie song would suggest) until I am forced to accept their victory.

I turned to social media to bemoan my fate, because if one's life has been destroyed by vermin, the care and support of people you don't know can really help to lift your spirits. But social media is a strange beast - not quite as strange as cornflake-hunting ceiling-dwelling worms, but still - and somehow the conversation turned to moths. Hardly surprising, really, as they are closely related to weevils (in a chicken-and-egg sort of way, which I shall not attempt to deconstruct now.)

"You should write about your fight with the pantry moths," said Lisa. "Just don't forget the 'r'". And I couldn't have forgotten the 'r'. Until the 'r' was forcibly removed, and I could think of nothing else.

"Panties" (ugh) shown not Blogger's Own

Panty moths. Panty moths. Moths in my panties.

Years ago, when I was at school, a teacher referred to a passage from the Bible in which God sent a fly into a man's ear to send him crazy**. Since then, I have had a morbid fear of insects entering my bodily cavities, whether they make me crazy, or just give me unpleasant flutters. And aside from neurotic fantasies, I HATE the word panties.

"Can we call them knickermoths?" I asked. Knickermoths do have a nice ring to them, reminiscent of nineteenth century undergarments that have been in a dank cellar for too long.

"G-Moths?" my friend Annie suggested, and that was probably as good as it was going to get.

And it was good. Because later that night, when my Weevil Master commanded me to Google Panty Moths, I got a huge surprise.

They do exist. And you can buy them right here.

Not that I would recommend them. No-one wants moths in their panties, or in the panties of anyone else. If you know what I mean.

But what the Weevil Master commands, I do. I am beyond saving.

I just hope that it's not too late for you.

*and the part of my friend Jodie, to whom I was deeply grateful, until I realised she FAILED. **I give no guarantee that such a passage exist. Many of my teachers were a little unhinged.

This. This Is What Friendship Is.

Last night I dreamed about my best friend from school. We were in a holiday house, sitting on the bed. My friend told me an enormous secret, and I accepted it without question. And then I realised some doors were open in the house and I went around closing them, to make us both safe.

And then I woke up.

In the scheme of dreams, it was pretty tame. I mean, I have dreams about sex and death and cars flying off cliffs and houses floating in the sky. A dream about a secret and some doors is pretty mild by comparison.

But having been awake for an hour now, I'm starting to see more in the dream than met the unconscious eye. 

Because to me, that dream encapsulated friendship. It represented everything my close friends give to me, in one scene.

I have a fairly sizable circle of friends, and a massive circle of acquaintances. I have friends with whom I'm laughed, with whom I've cried, with whom I've had conversations which lasted for hours, and with whom I have stayed up late exchanging texts and message which have had me weeping with hilarity.

I have friends who have brought me food in a crisis, driven me here, and accompanied me there, and exchanged advice on everything from child rearing to anxiety to which bras will provide the greatest uplift and support.

But there is one quality that elevates true friends above everyone else, that goes beyond the chatter and the fun.

Unconditional acceptance.

It's when your friends know all your shit and they love you anyway. It's when you can tell them absolutely anything and they won't judge you or stop loving you, they'll just hold out their arms to catch you if you fall. It's when you know they may not agree with everything you say or do, but they will always be there, no matter what.

It's when their unquestioning acceptance helps you to go around your metaphorical house, shutting the doors and keeping yourself safe. 

To everyone who has this type of friend in their life, I hope you appreciate how blessed you are.

And to my beautiful friends, who know who they are, thank you.