I Am So Adult Right Now

In my youthful folly, my ambition was always to become an enigmatic, self-contained bohemian. It seemed to me a noble, if slightly irrational, goal. Over the years I gradually let the ambition drift off my To Do list, and, just as gradually, another life goal replaced it. This was to become adult.

For some reason, it was much harder than I thought. I didn’t feel adult when I was 18 and legally able to drink. That sort of loses its novelty factor when you have grandparents who try to force vodka down your throat from the age of 12 at family lunches.

I didn’t feel adult when I left home for the first time and lived overseas on my own. Maybe because I mostly indulged in very teenage ambitions, like eating chocolate and fried chicken every day. Or maybe it was because I travelled with a friend so I spent the first few months sharing a bedroom, and it was like being 11 again. We even squabbled.

I didn’t feel adult when I learnt to drive, but that was probably because I kept crashing other people’s vehicles. I could never afford a car of my own because I spent so much money paying off other people’s dented doors and smashed windscreens. When I finally got a car of my own I called it Humbug so that I could swear at it and call it by name at the same time when it backfired or wouldn’t start. It saved a lot of time.

However, now that I am finally old enough to be too embarrassed to tell anyone how old I am, I think I am finally an adult. I have done some very adult things recently. I signed a lease all on my own for the first time ever. Several hours after that, I became a landlady for the first time. (Guess who my tenant is? Bilingual Jane!) But the most adult thing of all happened next, and it was the total clincher: I preheated the oven. Let’s just pause and review here: I preheated the oven. Not only did I plan to cook something in an oven for goodness sake (which seems so much more grown up than a mere stovetop), I got into the kitchen*, assembled my ingredients, and decided the first thing to do was preheat the oven. Sometimes I astound myself.

*let’s call it a ‘conceptual kitchen’ because all that changes to divide up the space is the floor surface

A Tribute to Henrick Ibsen

I went to mass for Easter. There was a sign above the alter that read "HE IS ISEN" which I thought was beautiful. I mean obviously, there was a letter missing and it should have read "HE IS IBSEN" but it was still a lovely sentiment.

But what I would really like to talk about today is doughnuts. There were more Krispy Kreme doughnuts than there were people on my flight down to Adelaide the other day.

Unlike the American corporate uniformity of Kripsy Kreme doughnuts are those make by my mother's local bakery. She describes them as "the Les Patterson of Donoughts"



Trying to explain Les Patterson to a Japanese Homestay student is an interesting undertaking. That is why I love my mum. Also, she died her hair bright blue once.

Actor Boy and the Elevator

One day at the former-place-of-employ, Actor Boy had been pricing books in the basement store room, and loaded them all on to a large flat trolley. He pushed the trolley into the service lift, and as he negotiated the little bump where the doors close, 2 or 3 books fell off the trolley and down the shaft. "Mother fucker!" he yelled at the tumbling books as he uselessly flailed in an attempt to catch them. Normally, this would not cause much comment, but as this was happening, a man was walking towards the lift and interpreted Actor Boy's expletive as directed at him. The doors then closed in his face, presumably adding to the impression that Actor Boy did not much like him.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the man reached the lift and pressed the button just in time for the doors to open again, and for him and Actor Boy to share a very uncomfortable ride in the lift together, in intimate and embarrassed silence.

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more of Actor Boy's way with words, then go to the little search bar at the top of this page and type in "actor boy". I could do one of those fancy blue self-link thingys but I can't really be arsed.

Zosia's Guide To The Modern World #1: The Slobbosexual

I found this in my drafts from about 6 months ago and have no idea why I never published it then...

What is a Slobbosexual? A slobbosexual is a man who is, first and foremost, a lazy pig. He doesn't shave, he doesn't care about women's feelings, he has no feelings of his own, he smells of stale hair and sweat. A slobbosexual's idea of dressing up is wearing covered shoes and a ripped flannie to a pub that has a "No shirt, no service" dress code.

In the social evolutionary stakes, the slobbosexual is currently at his peak, having been (chronologically) proceeded by the SNAG, the metrosexual and the retrosexual.

An example of a slobbosexual would be someone who comes up with great one liners and funny stories, that he takes care to feed to someone who has a blog so that he doesn't have to bother fashioning them into blog posts of his own. Not that I know anyone like that. (Is this ringing faint bells CC???)

The Best of Both Worlds

I know the title of this post sounds a little like a 1980s sitcom about a kid whose parents are divorced and while the mum is all about being a no rules hippy who lets her kids stay up as late as they like but makes them eat scrambled tofu for breakfast, the dad is very rich and lives in a mansion full of wide screen TVs and remote control gadgets but is very strict about homework and bedtimes.

I’m sure you’re all completely flabbergasted to discover that that is not, in fact, what the title of this post is referring to. I have another story about Dullard Cheese Girl, but I didn’t have to suffer through beigeville myself to obtain it, because I heard it from someone else. So here we go: Apparently it is more boring to catch a bus with her than to watch the bread go stale through a shop window. Poor AB got stuck with her last night and it seems DCG’s idea of sparkling co-worker public transport conversation is to relay the exact address and distance from home of every fast food outlet in the suburb where she used to live.

This litany was made all the more excruciating by the fact that DCG doesn’t make eye contact when she talks, and doesn’t talk very loudly either, so AB was forced to lean in and make an effort to hear a whole lot of crap that she didn’t actually want to hear in the first place. Maybe overt and direct rudeness has more of a place in the world than our parents have led us to believe. AB, I would like to suggest that next time you just stick your headphones on and pretend to be socially unaware but I know from experience that this is easier said than done. Somehow, it’s like DCG is a big 4wd, her boringness is the 2 huge headlights at the front, and you are the poor little rabbit stunned into mute and compliant inertia. I'm sure we've all been there at some time or another.