A Luce Affiliation

I have not posted for a couple of weeks but I have not been idle. Jason and I got engaged and we bought a flat! The flat is in a corner of Collingwood I like to call 'Ghetto Collingwood', near the Tote and the Commission flats. Perhaps the commish put the other bidders off, or perhaps it was the bums who came to enjoy the auction, but we were the only bidders and pretty soon we were pasting up our very own 'SOLD' sticker. Amazing! Last week I felt so overwhelmed and stressed that I thought I was developing an adjustment disorder. In other news: I saw Taxi Driver for the first time at Nova I went to Warrnambool to work I bought a Matthew Sarecen tshirt for running! I read 'The Shaking Woman; or a history of my nerves by Siri Hustvedt, and 'Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris' by her sister Asti Hustvedt. I've started watching the Danish TV series 'The Killing'.

When I woke up this morning I said to Jason, "I want to be clear on one thing, Jason: our children will LOVE reading." I do enjoy making absurd proclamations as if in response to an argument Jason never started in the first place. This also speaks to my concern that our children will only want to play and watch football and thus render me a prisoner in my own home for most of their childhoods. But mostly, I would be so sad if my child didn't like to read! How would they find out about the world or have fantastic adventures from their own bedroom?!? Clearly, they could end up having any number of disabilities that would mean that could not read, but imagine if they simply didn't like reading? Anyway, I am on my much anticipated first-ever resort holiday deep in the Daintree rainforest. I am currently sitting in an armchair on a balcony overlooking the rainforest and the Mosman river, dappled sunlight on my legs. Ahhh. Although I'm not sure I'm completel...

Here's the thing ladies: when you come into ED, I don't really care if you've shaved your legs or not. In fact, working as a doctor for this long* has pretty much wiped clean any expectations of flawless, hairless legs that the media have tried to instill in me via their stealth campaign of women's magazines and late night television advertisements. I KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE, MEDIA, I SEE REAL LEGS!! In fact, sometimes if you come into ED looking too nice, I become skeptical. "Hmm, unsmudged eye-makeup and shaved legs under stockings?? Perhaps this isn't an *emergency* after all??" So to the next lady who says to me, "Oh, sorry I haven't shaved my legs," when I attempt to examine whether they have a DVT or a rash or fluid around the ankles or some other sign of *actual illness*...well, just don't. *okay not long but LONG ENOUGH. Long enough to say 'several years' when the nosier among you ask.

I am the crappiest, happiest runner around. I run around the Carlton gardens twice and then back home. This is not very far, but I love it!! I run past the museum and think about how I would like to go there to visit the little bower bird who has his blue-things nest in the forest. Today I ran over all the autumn leaves. Here's what I listened to today: 'This Charming Man'- The Smiths (warm-up, walking) 'Lose Yourself'- Eminem (running now) 'Harlem River Blues'- Justin Townes Earl 'Every little thing she does is magic'- The Police 'Let Her Dance' Bobby Fuller Four (walking break) 'She plays yo-yo with my mind' Sonny and the Sunsets. 'Don't think twice'- Bob Dylan 'The New Workout Plan'- Kanye West and for the grand finale (running home) 'I got you babe'- Sonny and Cher I try to pick tracks that either naturally match my running pace ('Lose yourself'; also 'Survivor' by Destiny's Child...

This week I am: 1. Bereft. I have finished Friday Night Lights, and no amount of listening to The National's 'Boxer' on repeat is going to bring it back. The sun-drenched Texan football fields!! People who struggle!! The music of Explosions in the Sky!! 2. Anxious, after reading Tina Fey's memoir 'Bossypants'. I love Liz Lemon because she is a plausibly imperfect high-achiever. She has a great job but she has lettuce on her sweater and a room full of unopened Ikea furniture boxes. She doesn't have it all!!! But it seems that the real Tina Fey *does* have it all. And apparently you get it all by working all night whilst your toddler sleeps in the next room, and then making your toddler breakfast in the morning before going off to work again. 3. Relieved. Our book club met on Sunday, and this means that I don't have to try to read 'Wol...

In an awesome development, a new girl is renting Ghita's room whilst she's overseas. HER NAME IS LAURA PALMER.

In 2005 I lived with Pen and Stu in a house next to Rose Chong's costume shop in Fitzroy. My room was at the very front of the house and I was plagued by snatches of conversations of people walking past my window. Worst were the suburban tourists making their way to Ladro's for a fancy pizza meal: "It's so hard to find a park! It's all permit parking!" "That's because the people around here don't have garages!!" That's right, we had no garage. But we had a lovely courtyard and a sunny kitchen. Pen: well, clearly I'd lived with her before. And to be honest it was a relief to move in with someone who had the same cleaniness standards as me. (which i would classify as 'moderate'. Moderately clean and occasionally very clean). Pen's most notable habit was her penchant for running around the house naked. She liked to clean the kitchen and bathroom in her undies and a large pair of rubber gloves. She was always running t...