When you are told by a well meaning & lovely colleague:

“in order to get the job done, you do what you have to do”

…this, after having done 40 straight hours without sleep, slept 6 h, not showered or eaten (breakfast, lunch OR dinner at point of writing THIS), sat straight back down at the computer and kept going….oh yeah after spending the previous 3 days, 2 of which were the weekend helping other colleagues get important work done.  Talk to the HAND…..Enough! Don’t even talk to me about MONDAY!

….after 4 weeks off  sick as a dog basically (well 3 and a week of half days)

Then, you know it really is enough.

As another dear colleague would say;

I am OV-AH – IT

P.S. TEN years of 100 h + and THEN some, weeks would also suggest that I may have perhaps have done what I needed to have done? And knew what had to be done? And that it was important that it got done? And got it done.  More done than anyone else in fact on many many occassions. I think it is enough.  I have had enough. Enough hours, enough work, enough of my life sucked up by meaningless drival as I sit here now coughing (of which I have had enough).  Enough of what is not important. Enough.

For the record

I am done

Enough said

This wondering is driven by what I consider to be the fairly recent development of a shoe fetish.  One that has long been apparent in all of my female friends and indeed more of my male friends than they would even care to admit. 

I always considered the following to be the bare essentials of my shoe cupboard:

• Thongs
• Blundstones
• Sneakers (Asics Gel, are the only ones for me!)
• Ugg boots
• A pair of white heels, black heels for evening and formalish stuff, as well as some black and / or brown boots (all of the above interchangeable for work of course)
• A pair of closed insensible work shoes, not going to die in the ditch about colour – neutral and dark, comfort is key.
• Open formalish, sensible work shoes for summer (see above for rest of details)

As you can see, not overly girly, when all is said and done.

My last pair of black “evening” shoes lasted me, mmmmm close to 8 years and they died about 4 years ago and to the best of my recollection have not as yet been replaced (there was a tragedy at the 2005 Melbourne Cup as you can see).

My “good” silver evening heels died about 2 years ago and again ……..not yet been replaced.  The death of my white heels is imminent to say the least (one might say they really are dead and I have in fact been walking on their corpses for some time now).

It appears that in the last 12 months…..I have found this place called Shoe Mecca.  I don’t technically see it as one place per say, but it is more of a conceptual place that ought to be worshipped at.  And boy………is THAT long overdue.  Holy crap.  It is a whole new world.  To the point….that today I have started giving some serious contemplation to starting an online business for shoes.  I have somewhat offbeat taste in shoes, which has always been a part of my problem in:

a) sourcing what I like

b) sourcing it when I like/need it (e.g. shoe death)

c) seasonality of crap shoes which tends to be 9 out of every 10 years in the world according to Sue

So…..watch this space….it may go nowhere in terms of shoes online as a business……but damn it……..my feet WILL be looking Glam!

There are many ways in which one can express ones self in 2009 on the “intrawebs”. I have expressed myself somewhat through media such as flickr, facebook, twitter etc. Whilst doing so I have also filtered myself even whilst raging spitefully, knowing that it would be “naughty” to do otherwise, given the scenario and unknown future that lays before me.

I have always journalled (unfortunately in the dark ages with pen and paper). Fitfully it might be said. Peaks, troughs. Mostly the troughs – as a way of venting and letting out emotional turmoil, as do many people from what I understand.

As a naturally introverted and not gregarious person by nature I suspect the concept of blogging to a) communicate emotion and b) communicate with others serves a dual purpose for me intrinsically.

But, I digress - back to my insidious position…..now….10 working days (8 physically on site) left in the current job (technically TWO senior jobs) due to Change Management and involuntary redundancy I just SO want to vent my emotions, climb a building and scream at the world. They are so over whelming me at every turn with their power at the moment.

Crappily – a) my cognitive rational brain understands every step – its all logical, and after all CM is about positions not people and doesn’t reflect on my personally
b) tell that to the ego or superego (can’t remember which – psych 101 was like 100 years ago) (of which I thought I was not overly endowed with tbh) which SO sees this as a reflection of everything I stand for as an individual
c) not sure there is anywhere or to anyone where i can tell it like it really is. And THAT frankly SHITs me.

Ergo, this all means, I feel I cannot vent truely in a way that is cathartic and lets it out. I cannot gnash my teeth truely virtually, even though I have made a vague chomping noise here and there of late.

I have to get one jibe in…just one…as veiled as I can make it.

Post-graduate qualifications. Necessary for the job. Yet the organisation is fundamentally about potential, and reaching it – alternate pathways. Not having the post-grad qualification or the associated robust as long as your arm research portfolio (by extension of said qual), doesn’t this automatically conflict with the precept of reaching ones potential if it is a limiting agent to entry?

Bottom line….. I am a cranky crabby bitch atm – my back is in the corner….don’t mess with me

Our @hwakelam is running off to Melbourne with her family in tow. A big adventure for the Wakelams.  We had farewell drinks last night in East Perth. Met lots of new peeps, some of whom I have “known” on Twitter for a while. It’s always weird and nice to meet the real peeps behind the tweets.

Harry and I WILL be doing a rematch in Melbourne on my next visit for our

“I-can-drink-you-under-the-table-with-beer-and-not-drinking-water-or-eating-coz-thats -cheating-last-woman-standing-wins-challenge”

Good luck Harry – gonna miss the grizzles and gossiping over lunch and daiquiris!

Frogs

I got home from dropping off Harriet and there was a frog at my front door.

A large one.

Made of plastic.

And….its really kind of well, ugly.

From my 80 year old neighbour from a verge-side collection for my garden . I named him Sid after the neighbour… wondering if I can hide it deep in the garden where it will get overgrown? Ugh how the hell do I get out of THIS?

Fears

There is not much that really phases me in life, in terms of the normal kinds of things that others are phobic about.

• I have swum with Great White Sharks on 3 occasions that I am know about and once was with no cage (it wasn’t actually intentional let me assure you).
• I have worked in the muddy, monsoonal rivers off Cairns and far North Queensland.  When I say worked in, I mean literally – up to my armpits…….with BIG saltwater crocs.
• Redback in my knickers the other week. I have removed huntsmen spiders off my giant mate who is a hard core trucker with the beard and everything. He was screaming like a baby. Pfft.
• In my last place of employment I had to catch and kill a mouse because the entire office was screaming and (i am not joking here) standing on tables and chairs…..and there were about 15 people in that office…..only 3 of which were women…I got my “Lara Croft” nickname that day.

Spiders, rats, mice, snakes, lizards, sharks, crocs……..not a problem.

2 things I don’t do…..EVER:

1) heights

2) cockroaches

The only dissection in my entire university career I never was able to complete was the cockroach.

I almost froth at the mouth with panic just thinking about them.

My traditional methods of killing roaches are thus:

a) using half a can of insect killer….literally…I spray them until they are about 3 inches high in foam.

b) a yellow pages from a great height - gravity, mass & acceleration ARE your friends!

c) get someone else to do it

Disposal of the corpse……….is always done by someone else. I remember one sat dead on the floor bang in the middle of the lounge, under a yellow pages for 2 weeks once. Ugh

A cockroach once bit me on the webbing of my foot between my big toe and my second toe. It was in my ugg boot when I was camping. Never knew they bite. Let me just say – it hurt like a freaking dog for a week! It felt like my foot was on fire the entire time!

So…the point of all this roach stuff?

I got home last night from Harriets farewell to Perth drinks……..guess what I saw in the spare room (this set of villas drives me nuts. If one person has a roach prob, we ALL get them. Shits me to tears really)?

A roach the size of a miniature freaking miniature pony!

I ran screaming (not something I am in the habit of) from the room and hid in the bathroom shaking for about 15 mins.

Given the spare room is a bit smallish and the spare bed fills most of the space, any attempt to find and inflict a roach exorcism was nigh on impossible, not to mention the inevitable foaming mouth.

God bless late night servos. 

Roach baits. I bought 2 boxes and threw the baits in the room and slammed the door shut with a towel on the floor against the crack.  I might go in there in a week and see if it’s dead yet.

here it is

Days 22 and 23 of the Twitter365 and 365Days challenges respectively.

The deal? 1 self-portrait, every day for 365 straight days. To be shot that day and loaded to flickr that day.

I loathe having my pic taken. Getting mildly more comfy with it……but omg it is SO narcissistic or is it just me thinking that? 

I am more comfy with self-portraits like this:

(i had just touched a 5.4m female great white shark on the snout! you can imagine why i was excited!)

So to offset this narcissism, I REALLY need to start writing my posts on the stubbie holder collection and posting to flickr. /sigh. Too many things, so little time.

Lucky girl made it to Explore on Flickr.

@Lu_Lu’s daily pic created quite the bit of havoc amongst the geek gang of cyberspace and a “Doing the Richard Giles” Flickr group was promptly set up.

Some quite remarkable innovation and tomfoolery was immediately spawned.  I am going to need to give some serious consideration to upping the creativity factor with what was posted today.

I must say, Doing the Richard Giles proved to be significantly more of a challenge than I would have thought prior.

To cut a long story short, my final image involved alcohol (I had to sample the product), and an eventual morphing into my Twitter avatar.

So, the entire point of this dribble was the posting of this single image (read from the bottom up for all you non-flickrer’s out there):

WTF IS it?

Look, I may be insane, but when @kerryank tweeted that – I couldn’t stop laughing.  I think it was the “IT” bit that slayed me……………Thinking the insomnia is getting to me!

But I might change the avatar……..if I do get some sleep – “IT” might give me nightmares!

I was happily folding my washing the other evening on the lounge room floor and up to the underwear. As I was folding a pair of knickers, a giant redback shot out, and across the floor back into the pile of washing.

What ensued was a lot of screaming, kitchen gloves and about 20 mins of a heightened heart rate. I didn’t find her that night, but I did find her the following day. She has since gone to that giant cobweb in the sky.

The redback is a native Australian spider, found across the country. They particularly like urban areas to establish there webs. The Redback is actually a close relative of the famous American Black Widow Spider, but the female has a redback on her (instead), other than that is very similar in appearance.

The Redback Spider favours proximity to human habitation, with webs being built in dry, sheltered sites, such as among rocks, in logs, shrubs, junk-piles, sheds, or toilets.   *Note the toilet

Here is the fun part. There are frequent Redback bites in Australia, approximately 250 reported cases (who knows how many unreported cases).  My poor mum was bitten by one of these at work a number of years ago and spent 2 days in bed sick as a dog.

Symptoms of a Redback Bite

Early symptoms of a Redback bite include:

• pain (which can be severe)
• sweating
• muscular weakness
• nausea
• vomiting
• swelling of the lymph nodes
• abdominal or chest pain
• headache
• coma
• seizure
• pulmonary edema
• respiratory failure

Redback bites have been known to cause death, however since antivenom was introduced there have been no recorded deaths.

Interesting Fact

ITt is one of the few animals that display sexual cannibalism while mating (the female eats the male).  Remind me not to be reincarnated as a Redback – or a praying mantis while we are at it.

The Toilet

Australia is famous for its outback dunnies (outside toilets). These were traditionally famous for being ideal cool dark places for a Redback to build her nest.  A famous song by Ralph Ernest ‘Slim’ Newton was written after being bitten on the nether regions after a late night visit to the dunny.

There was a red-back on the toilet seat
When I was there last night,
I didn’t see him in the dark,
But boy! I felt his bite!
I jumped high up into the air,
And when I hit the ground,
That crafty red-back spider
Wasn’t nowhere to be found.

There was a red-back on the toilet seat
When I was there last night,
I didn’t see him in the dark,
But boy! I felt his bite!
And now I’m ere in hospital,
A sad and sorry plight,
And I curse the red-back spider
On the toilet seat last night.

Rushed in to the missus,
Told her just where I’d been bit,
She grabbed the cut-throat razor blade,
And I nearly took a fit.
I said “Just forget what’s on your mind,
And call a doctor please,
‘Cause I’ve got a feeling that your cure
Is worse than the disease.”

There was a red-back on the toilet seat
When I was there last night,
I didn’t see him in the dark,
But boy! I felt his bite!
And now I’m ere in hospital,
A sad and sorry plight,
And I curse the red-back spider
On the toilet seat last night.

I can’t lay down, I can’t sit up,
And I don’t know what to do,
And all the nurses think it’s funny,
But that’s not my point of view.
I tell you it’s embarrassing,
(And that’s to say the least)
That I’m too sick to eat a bite,
While that spider had a feast!

There was a red-back on the toilet seat
When I was there last night,
I didn’t see him in the dark,
But boy! I felt his bite!
And now I’m ere in hospital,
A sad and sorry plight,
And I curse the red-back spider
On the toilet seat last night.

And when I get back home again,
I tell you what I’ll do,
I’ll make that red-back suffer
For the pain I’m going through.
I’ve had so many needles
That I’m looking like a sieve,
And I promise you that spider
Hasn’t very long to live!

There was a red-back on the toilet seat
When I was there last night,
I didn’t see him in the dark,
But boy! I felt his bite!
And now I’m ere in hospital,
A sad and sorry plight,
And I curse the red-back spider
On the toilet seat last night.

Its all just  so………Australian

References

http://www.austmus.gov.au/factSheets/redback.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redback_spider

http://alldownunder.com/oz-u/songs/red-back-on-the-toilet-seat-27.htm

You get sunburnt….in a lot of places.

Just for the record – the image isn’t me…but it IS a damned good approximation

So, in an attempt to deal with the binge of some 30+ Ferrero Rochers on Xmas Day, an ever increasing backside & waistline I decided last Sunday that a bit of exercise was in order (and on a more regular basis).

With that in mind, I conned / cojoled a friend around the corner into going for a gentle stroll at Jacob’s Ladder on Monday Morning.

What is Jacob’s Ladder anyway?

Now there are a few things you should know about Jacob’s Ladder before we get into this:

1. It is situated in Cliff Street, at the top of King’s Park in Perth on the side of Mt Eliza.
2. It has 242 steps
3. Over 100 years old
4. Routinely used by sadistic personal trainers to flog the last ounce of will  to live from paying clients. Also used in pre-season by professional athletes such as footy and cricket players, as well as your average sports nut.
5. It is used as a part of the Pain-athlon circuit
6. Not designed for the faint of heart.

For some crazy reason, I decided that not only would I attempt Jacob’s for my first time, that I would also endeavour to record this experience for posterity.

The Experience

The Heatstroke

Well, that headache and all that sweat? Heatstroke. I ended up in bed all day in a dark room with cold flannels and sarongs, drinking drinking drinking. I drank 4L (and this is the gross bit) and didn’t pee til the day after. The headache was omg bad,  no amt of pain killers could touch it, and there was continual non-stop nausea. Wasn’t fun.

It took almost a week to start feeling “normal” again.

Who says exercise is good for you anyway?

The Hints & Tips for Jacob’s Ladder

1. Take your water bottle
2. Wear a hat & sunscreen
3. Don’t look up at men walking down with short shorts – avert your gaze
4. Stay left or you will get over it
5. You are a freak if you run this
6. If you are a man don’t do this in a pair of bike shorts and nothing else…it’s not attractive for the reset of us – unless you are Brad Pitt of course – but even that is a stretch
7. Have breakfast that is a bit healthier than clinkers and coca-cola
8. Don’t stop half-way, it’s hard to get started again
9. Don’t do it on a stinking hot day (you would think that was obvious wouldn’t you)
10. Maybe take your ipod to distract you from the pain (not record the experience like this!)
11. Don’t lug giant camera equipment with you. Carry as little as possible

7 Days Later

Today is the first day I am not sore from this! Phenomenal.