Contrary to what you may be think­ing, I have not for­got­ten this place. Instead I am work­ing late into the night to move it and update it. I have been mean­ing to do this for awhile now, but the idea always over­whelmed me enough to just stash it in the too hard bas­ket. Lately though, you have been quiet, and since I am not much for mono­logues (believe it or not), I have not been feel­ing like writ­ing, and instead of just spin­ning in this cir­cle, I decided to use my energy some­where more productive.

So, the last two nights I have been read­ing about codes, modes, floats and some boats — com­pletely unre­lated mat­ter, but it rhymed — and I am now at the stage where I am try­ing to dig myself through the array of blog pos­si­bil­i­ties and options that I can work with. And that is not an easy task, because I tend to over­es­ti­mate my abil­i­ties often and get myself in deep waters and often have to learn to swim in a hurry. This is also known as: I can get myself into some deep sh*#!

I so wish I could hire some­one to do this. Unfortunately, hir­ing assumes that some money will be chang­ing hands and this is where we get back to my reliance on the only free hand I can get — my own.

I am here, work­ing madly in the back­ground. Imagine me in my robe, the same granny robe that I talked about dur­ing the auto-portraits not long ago. Its past mid­night and a cup of cold cof­fee sits patiently next to my key­board and I am try­ing to fig­ure out how in the world to trans­fer the ideas I have onto the screen in front of me, through codes and modes that I barely under­stand. Boats? Who said boats? Oh, you know nuthin’ either

If this made sense, there is hope that what I am doing might work too.

_

P.S. Btw this is all your fault. Over.Night night. Over.

The author preg­nant with Little B

Who has been the biggest inspi­ra­tion in your life???

How’s those pits coming along??

Asked Bec.

I will start from the end — the pits ques­tions. This is fol­low up on an ear­lier post on the issue .

Bec, the pits are back to where they used to be before my lit­tle exper­i­ment — in need of a wax, but will wait for a bit longer cause its cold and I can­not be both­ered. I did gain some­thing out of the test though. I was able to reach a stage at which the hair didnt bother me so much. I am afraid, though, that com­plete free­dom, such as I can wear it com­fort­ably on a hot sum­mer day in pub­lic, was not achieved. But in the end I have two choices — one is to screw soci­ety and refuse to de-hair, which leads to fac­ing a lot of prej­u­dices and stereo­types stamped on my face.  The sec­ond to get rid of the hair, even though I dis­agree with the rea­sons, and avoid the pit­falls of being alter­na­tive in this par­tic­u­lar area.  In the end I went with the later option. I am not afraid to be dif­fer­ent, to swim against the tide when its impor­tant to me or I think its best for my fam­ily. I will breast­feed my elderly tod­dler in pub­lic with­out being both­ered by dis­ap­prov­ing stares. I will give birth in my house, when just about every­one sees the hos­pi­tal, epidu­rals and surgery as a bet­ter, „more civ­i­lized” option. I will home­school my kids and face the unpleas­ant stereo­types that often go with that. And so on and so on. Those things mat­ter enough that they make it worth­while to me to aban­don the pack. But I am not anti­so­cial. I dont, even for a sec­ond, pre­tend or imply that I am happy to live in iso­la­tion of the world I live in. I care about fit­ting in the soci­ety I have cho­sen to live in, if not fully, at least as much as possible.

In the end, even though the issue of body integrity for women is impor­tant to me and I whole­heart­edly dis­agree with the images we have sur­rounded our­selves with, I am not pre­pared to put myself on the line for it.  I fail to see the real value in curb­ing this trend — for me. No mat­ter how ridicu­lous, hairy women are seen as dirty, dis­gust­ing, unsightly, unso­cial and so on.  Its a price I am not pre­pared to pay, when I fail to see an equally impor­tant gain for me or some­one that I love. True, if enough women start to do that maybe in a few gen­er­a­tions, if the stars align just right, women may be free of this bur­den. Unfortunately, I am not that altru­is­tic. The cost way out­weighs the ben­e­fit — for me.

Maybe one day we will live in a place that will not care about my pits and then I can align my beliefs with my soci­ety. Until then, I will accept that there are some things I can just accept as a price for liv­ing in the place I do.

As far as the inspi­ra­tion per­son in my life…I am not sure I have one. Lots of peo­ple inspire me for var­i­ous rea­sons. Some are cre­ative, oth­ers inven­tive, inspir­ing thinkers or sim­ply mag­nif­i­cent per­son­al­i­ties. I guess its a reflec­tion on my wide spread inter­ests that there is not one per­son that can cap­ture most of the things that stop me in my tracks and make me want to be a bet­ter me.

_________

I am in a bit of a rut lately. Maybe its the cold and unpleas­ant weather. Maybe its time for a change and shake up of the dust around here. I am not sure.

I am not sure.

Last night before hav­ing my shower I decided that I needed some change, so I chopped off my hair and gave myself bangs. Light fluffy bangs. Mr.Blab likes them and says it gives me „rock chick” looks. I dont know about that. But its a change.

Then tonight I decided to try my new lights and show you my hair­dress­ing abil­i­ties at the same time. Now that I see the results I think I may have to pre­pare myself a bit more next time — maybe brush my hair, maybe put some blush on or some­thing, maybe dress for the occa­sion instead of just plop­ping my robe on the floor and going with what­ever was under it.

And I have not for­got­ten your ques­tions. And since auto­por­traits around here go with the answers, lets not break tradition.

Melanie asked:

Where did the „blab” fam­ily name originate?

On your trip around the coun­try did you meet any­one new that you have stayed in touch with over the months?

Which loca­tion or mem­ory of your trip, when you think about it, puts a smile on your face?

Blab? I wish it was some­thing more inter­est­ing, but the story goes like that — I wrote Mr. and then paused and then wrote Blab. Influenced by the blog of course, it just sounded fun and short and con­nected with this place. And as soon as I wrote it I loved it.

Did you mean on my trip around the world? Cause fun­nily enough, I still havent been around Australia. Unfortunately not. The whole trip was the most won­der­ful one per­son expe­ri­ence I have had. The fact that I only stayed in each place for a short time didnt really allow me to make friends. Maybe next time.

Japan! Loved it, loved it, loved it. As far as a moment…the first funny thing that popped in my head right now was the sign our friend had when he met me at the LA air­port. He was stand­ing there, seri­ous, with a big card that said: „Evil”.

Muahahaha

Today you get deflated belly, since you are not hold­ing up your end of the deal.

This is what a freshly free of baby belly looks like.
Little B was born early in the morn­ing and this is a shot at about lunch time the next day. So if you are pack­ing your clothes for the hos­pi­tal and have thrown in a pair of pants from pre­baby times, think again

The night was going into another miss­ing post fill in pho­to­graph, until a lovely con­ver­sa­tion with Mr.Blab just now.

The set­ting is the stor­age room where we were doing some sort­ing and we chat­ted about a pair of extra­or­di­nary high heels. The con­ver­sa­tion went some­thing like this:

Me: Holy Cow, that is ridicu­lous. How women wear these things…why do they put them­selves through this..

Mr.Blab: Cause they are sexeeeey

Me: Sexy?  But why, what makes women in uncom­fort­able dam­ag­ing shoes sexy?

Mr.Blab: I think its because it makes their legs look longer

Me: Oh, yeah…I dont see men wear padding on their pants and mus­cles to look big­ger and stronger

Mr.Blab: Hey, thats a great idea. They should.

Me: Yeah, yeah…funny…its a fact — women are not accepted  they way they are while men are and its wrong.

Mr.Blab: Dont look at me, I dont defend it. I am not a leg man anyway.

Me — grum­bling something

Me.Blab: I am a butt face man.

And here I bend over and start to laugh and he fol­lows as soon as he real­izes his state­ment. We have this period where no sound is heard and we just laugh so hard its silent.

I live with the  BUTT FACE man. Mr.Blab is dead, long live Mr.Buttface!

I love me a good dose of pee wor­thy laugh.

This was sup­posed to be a quick vent­ing post, but I got into play­ing and now you will be bom­barded with graphs. Sorry about that.

I am a very pleas­ant dri­ver. I am mel­low and relaxed, but can be spiffy and inven­tive when the need arises. You wont see me shout­ing at idi­otic dri­vers and the worst words that could come out of my mouth are „Stupid!” as attested by my kids who have repeated it for me on occasion.

Still, I have this pet peeve that dri­ves me bonkers. I think its a spe­cial dis­abil­ity of Australian dri­vers, because I dont remem­ber such an influx of right/left hand turn­ers any­where else in the world. I think it must be con­ta­gious, because they are everywhere.

Let me set up the scene for you:

The Enemy and I are try­ing to turn right, but the inter­sec­tion requires us to wait for the traf­fic that comes from the other side. So what hap­pens when the light turns green?

Lets see:

Nothing.

And then when the light goes red, The Enemy slowly makes their way to the direc­tion I long for and I am stuck to wait for the next green light. Not cool, Mr. or Ms. or Mrs Driver. NOT cool!

If you are not get­ting what The Enemy did wrong, keep quiet and pre­tend that you know. Nod with an under­stand­ing smile on your face, cause you can see that I am not happy, you can see my dis­mis­sive flick of the hand at the car that is now dri­ving away into the dis­tance. You can see that its not a good time to defend the dark cloud of The Enemy. Right?

Now, lets see if you are stuck behind me at the same inter­sec­tion. How will the events go dif­fer­ently, how will life be bet­ter? Even if you are The Enemy that I was stuck behind yesterday.

The light goes green and… Surprise! There is development:

I move INTO the inter­sec­tion, which usu­ally allows at least another car to enter it, often more and the end­ing when the light turns red is a bet­ter for everyone.

This is at least a result that is twice as suc­cess­ful as the one achieved behind one of the cars of The Enemy.

Twice!

Dear, Driver Ahead of Me

Enter the inter­sec­tion! If you are afraid of it, dont drive, there are many of them around.

Regards

For my friends on the oppo­site side of the rules, the happy end­ing I am pre­sent­ing will look like this:

Two or more cars dri­ving hap­pily into the distance.

An event hardly seen in Australia.