Cubicle chatter

As my colleague and I found ourselves walking in the same direction to the ladies room, I use my usual line “Are you following me?” It’s not as funny the 50th time around I discovered. So, we are talking, talking, standing oh so close to the toilets. At this point I should note that I am BUSTING to go. I am about 3 seconds away from doing that dance where you clench your legs together and start wobbling around like a spinning top. At that point, we decide that the conversation ends there and we continue with our business in private. Which brings me to the ultimate question. When does the chit chat end when you go to a public toilet?

In my effort to make sure that this blog is well researched and representative voice of the Joe Public (or Jane Public), I did a snap poll around the office about toilet etiquette. I had varied answers, not quite all consistent. There seems to be a few ‘types’ when it comes to the bathroom - that is the ‘no talkers’, the ‘low talkers’ and the ‘loud and proud talkers’.

First, the ‘no talkers’. This person will refuse to continue the chit chat beyond the cubicle door; however the conversation may well end at the entrance to the bathroom, you just never know. And that is what makes a ‘no talker’ hard to frequent the bathroom with. What if they leave you hanging? (well, your conversation that is!) Imagine the embarrassment of assuming that Jane Public and you are walking into the toilet at work. However, you don’t know that she is a ‘no talker’ and you, on the other hand, are a ‘loud and proud talker’. The conversation may fall to Jane Public with an innocent question, such as “What is on for the weekend?” Suddenly, all you hear is silence. Have you been snubbed? Have they not heard? Should you repeat yourself? (only to be snubbed again) Or, on the other hand, is the ‘no talker’ obliged to continue the chit chat, even if feeling uncomfortable?

Next, we have the ‘low talker’. The low talker has characteristics similar to the no talker, except that if you know you are venturing to the loo with a low talker, you choose the cubicle next to that person. But then, that brings up a whole other blog topic relating to personal space (another time peeps!)

Then finally, you have the ‘loud and proud talker’. This person has no boundaries when it comes to talking in the loos. The chit chat will continue whatever may be happening – even if you are busy concentrating on your business (so to speak!)

Who would have thought that the public toilet could raise so many social issues?

To the loo, ahoy!

Trainspotting

If you haven’t ever heard me whinge about public transport, more specifically the trains, well you mustn’t listen in close enough. Because to tell you the truth I whinge about it a lot. Its not the trains per se, it’s the other passengers. Firstly, there is the Clockwork Missisa (funny dialect word I picked up – Daniel can’t supply a direct translation, but he tells me this lady on the train is definitely a Missisa!). So Clockwork Missisa, who catches the same train AM and PM and sits in the same seat, doesn’t like sharing that seat. It’s public transport love, the whole ‘public’ concept seems to be lost on her. So one day I dare to sit next to her on the empty seat. She looks at me – cranky eyebrows. Then as I settle in – she pinches me. Yes, pinches! She says “turn your earphones down’. Now, seeing that I could clearly hear her would suggest that my earphones weren’t actually that loud. So when I respond that I don’t think my podcast of First Tuesday Bookclub is what is offending her ears, she quickly stopped pinching me. So now Daniel and I sit near her and talk quite loudly when we see her on the train, just to annoy her. It’s a sick hobby of ours!

So, Missisa aside, we are on the train last Friday, running late for a dinner with close friends. It was Friday night, and like some of the other people on the train, we were also thinking about what we would wear and how we would look (that’s more for the ladies regarding make up). But then, I turn my head to the side, mostly to increase the volume of our conversation towards the Missisa and I spot another lady with a compact mirror in her hands, held up to look at her face. So I start thinking, hmm, good idea, maybe my make up will need a touch up prior to us racing off to dinner. So as she raises the black item to her face, I’m thinking, yep, more eyeliner. Then the black item continues past her eye and moves toward her eyebrows. Hmm, an eyebrow pencil, good luck with that on the train. Um no, it wasn’t an eyebrow pencil either. It was tweezers and she was plucking her eyebrows!! Is this is beyond the acceptability of social niceties?!!

Who’s the Missisa now?!!

Snooty toilet paper

OK, so you are all wondering, “What is snooty toilet paper?” Well, let me tell you there is a lot of snootiness associated with toilet paper these days. And I am not just referring to the extensive snobbiness of toilet paper varieties that stare at you in the supermarket aisle. “pick me, pick me” they call “I’m so special that your family will think you love them more because you bought my special toilet paper fanciness.” Does that make sense? Or have been hanging around the supermarket too long?

Not only is there toilet paper snobbery in the supermarket, there is such judgement in the most unbelievable places. Last week, whilst enjoying a ladies afternoon tea at the Observatory Hotel with china teacups, silver teapots and pretentious sandwiches without the crust. Are crusts that offensive? I admit that I blame them for making my hair curly at age 12, I certainly don’t hold it against them.

So amongst the fine china and best manners, I note that the toilet paper in the bathroom has been folded to a point. Actually, on inspection, every stall had the toilet paper folded in this fashion. Is there a reason for this? Does it make it sturdier to tug at? Did the cleaners have nothing to do? Or is it just that ‘so exclusive’ thing to do at hotels? Well I am going to fold my toilet paper so that I, too, appear to be both of the fancy and the schmancy school of thought.

Now to the next debate. Scruncher or folder?

It was devastating...

With all this social networking we all seem to be doing, I was feeling that my family wasn’t (with the exception of my sister-in-law, Michelle, who is far more technologically savvy than myself) using these mediums as much as they could. So, at the dinner table, I ask the question. (Reminiscent of my time as a four year old when I would make ‘family announcements’ at the dinner table, usually about something benign such as my imaginary friend and her 20 kids, or the newest Care Bear out on the market. So let us fast forward 25 years!) I ask the family, “by the way, people have been commenting on my blog. I’ve had good feedback. Who here is reading it regularly?”

Silence. Cicadas. More silence. “Anyone reading it, at all?”. Tumbleweed rolls through the dining room. Bruno clears his throat. I look around at everyone concentrating too hard on eating their pasta. I know that they can all eat pasta with their eyes closed and one hand behind their backs! I am mortified! No one of the flesh or the related blood is reading this blog (other than you Cet – I know). How upset I was! Not only did my sister refuse (until recently) to be my friend of facebook, but they had the indecency of not reading my blog! Huh! The excuses started to flow. “Oh we see you often, why do we need to read about it online?” Retort: I save my best material for the blog! “We don’t have time!” Retort (nose in air at this point) Huh!

Then Mum says “Eee, what’s a block?” I’ll leave it there...

Google me this...

Pre-emptive text is taking over our lives! There - statement made. I have put it out there. Not only is my mobile phone ganging up on my by deciding that my name is actually Smogma. How is Smogma actually a word? Is smogma an air-borne pollutant from an active volcano? If not, I beg to differ with my phone that Smogma should be a word before Romina.

So this brings me to my latest issue with my other favourite piece of technology - the computer! So in one of the 1000 updates that my computer seems to download on a regular basis, it automatically updated my web browser and somehow I have this artificial intelligence Google browser which pre-empts my search questions. I admit, that up until now this alien intelligence has worked a treat. It all fell apart when I wanted to search a podcast which I download religiously and listen to on the train giggling and receiving strange looks from fellow travellers who think I am the strange one – um look in the mirror peeps! So I am searching the podcast ‘Is it just me?’ to see if they have an email address so I can email them and say how much I love the podcast. Unlike my latest plight with Channel 9 which has no such address for receiving ‘constructive criticism’ from their audience over their programming decisions! Huh! How dare they remove ‘Dance you ass off’ after one episode? I committed not just one hour to that show on the Tuesday night, but I was entranced enough to watch it again on the replay that following weekend. I can’t believe it didn’t rate ‘its ass off’!

Ok, sidetracked, back to my Google searching. So I type, in my frenetic typing which usually misspells everything, what I think is ‘Is it just me’ and with the fast pace of my fingers I just press enter and somehow my search from the pre-emptive text gods at Google is ‘is Lady Gaga a man?’ Hmmm???? Where did this go wrong? Look I am the first one to say that I think Lady Gaga needs to wear pants more often, but really? A man? I just didn’t pick it! But then I thought Courtney Act was a good looking woman!

Eau de cucumber

So in my excessive amount of spare time, I feel that I over analyse things even more now. You know, why do we need to buy a fragrance for the water in our irons – who is in there that the stench (may I remind you it’s not a sewer) is totally unbearable. And what was Channel 10 thinking when it created the phrase ‘event bigness’ – bigness?? Maybe the next word can be bignessest??

This brings me to my newest issue with the consumer goods and that is, my friends, new ‘flavours’. Take cherry blossom body wash. When we were in Japan for cherry blossom season, I swear I thrust my nostrils into many a cherry blossom to determine how something so pretty doesn’t actually smell at all. And you know when I think back, I was the only lunatic trying to smell the cherry blossom! Everyone else was posed ridiculously with the cherry blossom trees. Spot the tourist! But if I purchase the cherry blossom body wash at the supermarket now, it smells so lovely - I feel a conspiracy!

So now my life has been turned upside down literally by my CUCUMBER deodorant. How did it take so many years for the R&D departments of these mogul deodorant companies to realise that this was a great idea?! However, somewhere between the ‘let’s turn the bottle upside down’ discussion and the finished product on the shelf, someone entertained the notion that a deodorant which smells like salad is a good idea. So I purchase this new (and improved – so the packaging tells me) fresh scented bottle of reassuring goodness. I try it out the next day, and at first whiff it is quite pleasant. Then throughout the day, I kept thinking I could smell this slightly wrong salad bar following me like the plague. As the day worn on I was beginning to feel a little paranoid that I had salad dressing, or worse still, pieces of salad stuck in my teeth/hair/shoes – who knows – I was irrational with the smell of salad. Only when I got on the train did that gorgeous other half say “Hey Rom – that salad you had for lunch is really lingering...”

I rest my case.

Homo-idiotius

Today on my expeditions around Sydney I encountered a disproportionate number of stupid numberplates on cars on front of me. Usually these cars, with their driver’s elbow hanging out the window and wearing a black chesty bonds singlet (pardon me mate, it’s winter!), were ones which made a disproportionate amount of noise with respect to the lawn mower engine under the bonnet. Don’t deny it, we all know the types of cars we are talking about!

So I am happily travelling down Parramatta Road toward home, resisting the urge to detour via the Pho place (see earlier post about Pho – its all good now. No signs of insects in about 2 months!), when this little car scoots in front of me, swerving like he is test driving for The Fast and The Furious. Don’t delude yourself buddy, you look like a loser and your loud car is attracting attention to that fact. So not long after he swerves in front of me I catch a glimpse of his number plate. URUGLY. No mate, you’re ugly. What’s that about? Is the number plate a message for me? Am I the ugly one? Or is it supposed to be ironic, where the phrase is said back to him? Can someone who clearly demonstrates how the evolution theory works be that smart? It begs the question.

So the next numberplate I saw on my travels not three minutes later (What, do they travel in packs? Safety in numbers?) was GR8BAB. Is that supposed to be ‘Great Babe’? Or a tribute to Barbara Streisand (the original Bab’s – it’s far-fetched I know – especially as it was attached to a hotted up ride-on mower) or something to do with a kebab (as Daniel has suggested??). Whatever it may be, I guess I should now confess that I also have a personalised numberplate, but not the one I wanted. JINXME wasn’t available. He he he...

Is it wrong? The temptation was there...

In my daily housewifery business, there comes a time when I will need to frequent a large shopping centre. And last week on one of my now ‘uni-free’ days I needed to visit one of those said shopping centres. Much to Daniel’s horror, part-time housewifery now comes with free time! And with free time comes SHOPPING! Let’s be frank, I am currently reorganising our place and I needed (stress needed) to visit the shops for some organisational help. I have previously spoken of my love for Hot Dollar, soaked in its mayhem, its everything I’m not. However, another love is also Howard’s Storage World, a Mecca of organisation for the organised. Last week, I had two salespeople following me around the store as I handed them this-and-that new gadget which will ‘transform my life’! Phew – just what I was looking for in a battery storage box, total life revolution!

So back to the conspiracy of the shopping centre. Not only does it entice me to over-purchase items which will create a serenity in my life, it forces me into sticky dilemmas. I am walking through the car park - usually over run with fumes - however on that day it was only me and the pensioners. Who else goes to a shopping centre at 9.15am? So I am walking through the car park and a waft of buttery, hot, salty popcorn wafts my way. I soon find that I am entranced and have been unknowingly walking closer to the origin of the popcorn smell, the cinemas. My nostrils are in overdrive, I want some of that popcorn, NOW!

And so my dilemma starts. Is it poor-form to purchase popcorn outside of the movie arena? I admit, I would have stood out like a sore (but buttery and salty) thumb at the shopping centre if I had purchased the popcorn and window shopped with it in hand. I couldn’t even hide behind the facade that I had just come out of a movie and had some leftover popcorn (as if that ever happens!) as it was too early in the morning. So what do I do? Well, I didn’t buy the popcorn, somewhat because I was a little embarrassed to do so, but mostly because buying popcorn (or anything else) at the movies usually comes with a second mortgage!

Contrary to popular belief – stupid things happen to me...

Well, again I have to apologise for my blogging absence. Life has been so busy lately. Where do the days go? That is the eternal question. It feels like it was yesterday that I was fighting people off for the last bit of Christmas wrapping paper at Hot Dollar (you all know how much I love Hot Dollar – its like a little bit of Shanghai in Sydney!).

Back to my vague topic. I remember thinking this up about 4 weeks ago and sending myself an email reminder about this. However, for the life of me I can’t remember where it was going in the first place. But luckily, as the title suggests, stupid things do always happen to me! I am a walking magnet for the following:

1. Weird people sitting next to me on public transport.
My combat for this is the trusty iPod. Even if the battery has died and I am a listening to nothing, I put those plugs in my ears, because somehow those little white cords hanging down the front of my blouse are a like a repellent!

2. Law of diminishing returns.
At first I thought that this only applied to me in relation to cooking. You know, you have one chorizo, a limp stalk of celery and some cream and somehow 45 minutes later I serve up a meal that Daniel gushes should “go in the pool room”. Then two weeks later I try the impromptu “recipe” again, only to fail miserably. Does this mean that the first time was a genuine fluke or that Daniel was really hungry that night? I wonder? But last night I proved that this law also applies to 10-pin bowling. I was going well in the first game, then suddenly I was rubbish in the second. Just like in the kitchen I blame my tools.

Maybe this post says more about me, rather than me about life?

No more soup for you!

Daniel, Megs (see earlier post about sheep husbandry) and myself have a standing Thursday night date. Uni finishes, that wonderful husband of mine comes to collect us, and we head to our favourite Pho place for (you guessed it) a Pho. Nothing compares to winding down after a long day at work and uni where we eat pho very late into the evening and solve the problems of the world one spoonful at a time. This ritual may end soon (with the end of uni), but I suspect that maybe we’ll still end up at Pho at the same time, but we’ll have a couple of beers under our belts, not a uni lecture about blah blah blah.

So the night begins with the aforementioned Meg’s good parking karma. We have a theory that because Megs is sans-car all of her good parking karma is actually stored up for other people that she is with. There is something in the universe that connects Megs with a great parking spot, exactly when we need one! I have considered asking her to hang around with me during major holidays just to ensure I get a good parking spot – but maybe that is stretching the friendship! Sidetracked again! Back to our pho...as usual I am the last to finish as I have been talking all night. Don’t get me wrong, I was with two chatterboxes, so I really working hard at getting my words in! As I am enjoying the last two spoonfuls of pho, having already spotted my blouse with multiple splashes from the evil rice noodle flopping around trying to escape my spoon, and realising that I put too much chilli in my soup and that I was sphitzing (but then we all know about my addiction to chilli!), the three of us stopped mid sentence to watch the horror unfold.

It was falling as if in slow motion. This thing caught our attention and we watched it fall so gracefully from the ceiling, gliding through the air like an acrobat at the prison camp (oops I mean the Cirque de Soleil). This thing was aiming for my slippery spoon. He wanted that last drop of pho and who was I to stop him? The acrobat landed so gracefully on the spoon as if it were on a ride at Wet’n’Wild and spun like a Russian gymnast contorting for a perfect 10, right into my soup. Splash! There it was, like crunchy manna from heaven – a cockroach had infiltrated our Thursday night date and we were introduced to our newest member, Clem the Cocky. Needless to say – I never got that last sip of my soup and the horror that this happened at our favourite Pho place devastates us, but the rule is three strikes and you’re out, isn’t it?

No more soup for me...

They are conspiring against me!

It has been a while….

I didn’t imagine that after only 4 posts I would have slightly lost the momentum to continue. Don’t stress, that’s not the case. I have just been swamped with life, uni and work. Over the next four weeks, yes the last four weeks of my Master degree (yay! fingers crossed) I will be trying to keep myself motivated to make it to the end. My best intensions are there, its just not working out in practice.

Which brings me to my biggest distraction, no its not shoe shopping (I am sure some of you are shocked to hear that), no its not the shopping channel (but I am close to buying a Tobi steam iron), but its daytime TV! I know, I know, I too, am shocked at this realisation! How hard was it to admit it to myself, but that’s the first step to curbing the addiction. Yes, my name is Romina and I am addicted to daytime television. A chorus of accepting and non-judgemental voices now says “Welcome Romina”.

So it starts with a quick sit-down in front of Ellen with my lunch, then it continues to a quick lie down (I was up early making Daniel’s breakky and lunch – don’t judge me J) during The View. Then suddenly the afternoon has past and I realise that M*A*S*H is on and that I should have started dinner. Where did my afternoon go? There used to be a slump in ‘quality’ programming between about 2pm and 5.30pm. This, I thought, was to make sure that all the mum’s remember to pick their kids up from school and to start dinner. But now the TV channels are conspiring against us, if it’s not continuous CSI Miami with that Ginge on every channel, it’s some stupid cooking show trying to tell me that lamb and garlic go well together... don’t you tell me what to do!

Better get back to...repeats of Ellen!

I fell into the washing machine...so what?

For all those reading this blog of who know me personally (which I assume are the only people reading this blog, because I have been shamelessly plugging my blog to anyone who’ll listen!) you’ll know that I am short. No, no, I can hear you all now with the common clichés: good things come in small packages; you’re not short, you’re just vertically challenged; why have you been standing in a hole all your life. Its endless...

So in my everyday duties of washing our clothes, and trust me we seem to go through a lot of clothes each week, I have my encounters with the torturous washing machine. Let’s be honest, the laundry is not a serene place in general and I admit I may have my way in the kitchen, but the laundry has always been to me how Yoko was to the Beatles. Take socks for example, they must be terrified when they are pulled out of their happy, smelly, moist home (like a mushroom) and thrown unceremoniously onto the floor for sorting. They are then scooped up and I can hear them screaming as I walk those few steps into the laundry where they have no assurance of their fate. They know that their friends, Terry the T’shirt and Hank the Hanky will survive, they’re big and strong (but in Hank’s case, no one wants to go near him!), but those in the sock genus (including close relations like invisible sockettes and knee-hi stockings) have no guarantee that they’ll return from the trip to sudsville and back! How many socks have been lost in battle, do they ever return? How many of us have one lonely dark blue sock, waiting for its life-partner to return to the draw, only to realise that they will never be reunited when they too are faced with the inevitable...the Salvo’s bag!

So back to me and my antics in the laundry, I am going about my business taking the wet washing out of the machine and quite often I have to lean into the machine to get Ursula the Undie from the bottom of the barrel. When this time, my little arms aren’t quite getting a grip on Ursula and suddenly I fall into the machine. In the process I have accidently pressed some buttons and the machine pipes up with its little song saying ‘I’m ready to fill, tell me the load size or I’ll tell you’. So not only are my legs upright in the air and my head in the barrel of the washing machine I am facing the possibility of having my head and hair soaked! (oh the humanity!). Needless to say after I was rescued by that dashing husband of mine, we had a great laugh – nearly as good as when the bucket fell on my head in the laundry no less (I knew that room has dark forces!)!

Till next time peeps...

Was that English? Actually it wasn’t!

So in my life as a part time housewife, I like to take a stroll up the road to collect the mail, wave to the old fellas in the post office, buy a trashy magazine (to add to the mountain of magazines we get each week. Maybe that is another blog post, Daniel and I are being guilted into our reading habits by the shiny magazines laying in a pile on the desk, screaming ‘read me, for God’s sake read me!’). Anyways, I then visit the deli for our weekly stockpile of pork products and don’t ask me what is in the salami, actually I don’t want to know!

So, the Signora at the deli thinks that I am fluent in Italian, sadly no. Usually she sprinkles each sentence with enough English that I can understand the gist and can reply, however today without my cheat sheet (Daniel) and that liberal sprinkling of English, I was totally lost! She said something to me about it being cold and that I was in there early, I replied with a yes, its cold and I wasn’t dressed for it this morning. Phew...survived that one. Then I order some prosciutto. Nothing too interesting in that, I admit. She say’s something in Italian ...blah, blah, blah...about the prosciutto, I agree and go about my weekly review of all the products on the shelf. This usually takes a long time, because she slices those smallgoods with German precision! Then suddenly she is tallying up my smallgoods (and the other items I have peeled off the shelf) including a terribly expensive, elitist pasta; a tiny, tiny jar of olive tapenade (which I’ll have to hide from the pantry monster - aka Daniel); and some more ‘fancy visitor-only biscuits’ I decided to buy (hang on, maybe the small good German precision is not related to the pride in her work, I think it may be a ploy to get me to buy the pasta, and the tapenade and the fancy-schmancy biscuits. Ah-ha – I’m onto it now) and I am getting a $20 dollar note out of my wallet to pay and suddenly I hear those words: ‘that will be $38.65 Signora’.

What?! Huh?! Where did I accumulate $38.65? I have some ham and some prosciutto and a few groceries that she practically made me buy and suddenly I need a second mortgage to make lunches this week... She sees my eyebrows raise above my forehead in astonishment and gives me the receipt with my change (I was so bewildered I didn’t remember giving her the money) and she shows me that the prosciutto was about $100/kg. So that explains my bill and that 'blah blah blah' from the Signora when I ordered.

That had better be the best prosciutto in the world...

Is sheep husbandry related to housewifery?

This is a question I pondered yesterday over rice crackers and lite hummous (which I adore). Meg (a uni friend) and I were studying for an upcoming assignment, when we somehow got off topic and started talking about my new blog. (Please note the sarcasm - because it takes Megs and I about .03 seconds to get off topic at any given time! Sometimes we are knee-deep in communication theory and Habermas' public sphere blah blah blah, then suddenly we are talking about something random like washing bras while on holidays. I digress, again!). So, back to the rice crackers and hummous, where I raise the topic of my blog and state that I want to discuss all things 'housewifery'. We have a quick debate relating to the fact that I don't know if this is actually a word and that I may be making it up (see earlier post) or is this the type of activity that is related to sheep husbandry?!

This brings me to the here and now. I have just googled sheep husbandry (it’s surprising that google have it as the first option after the word ‘sheep’. Wouldn’t you think it would be something a little less obscure, or further up the alphabet such as sheep breeds or sheep for sale? I don’t know, I’m a city girl!) Anyway back to googling sheep husbandry, it is essentially the raising and breeding of sheep. Isn't that what a housewife essentially does? Well, when they have children they do. I mean they need to herd children into the bath (sheep get dipped), coerce them into the car (sheep need to go into a holding yard), driving them to school (sheep are transported to new pastures - not always greener I suspect!). The similarities are endless!

So have I successfully drawn the conclusion that the two are related? You tell me...

The maiden voyage...

So this is my first blog. I feel a little bit of performance pressure for this maiden blogging voyage. My dreams for my blog include such elements as world domination and a movie script, however more realistically I am hoping that my blog proves an interesting way for friends to keep up with mine and Daniel's life and what's keeping me interested at the moment.

I hope to focus on what's been happening in my life, who I get to catch up with and (hopefully) some helpful housewifery tips. Is housewifery a word? I think throughout this blog we'll hear some of the words I make up or hear about the traps and continue with my endeavour to infiltrate into everyday conversation...ie chillax and coolies.

Quick thank you to Nelsie for bullying me into this...

Happy reading everyone. Drop me a line or a comment.