The NaNoNovel was finished at 4pm today. After thirty days of spelling out every word (we party like it is nineteen hundred and ninety nine, not like it's 1999), it all died in the arse in the last thousand words. The final sentence went something like, "So she quit her job and nicked off to Russia. The End."

Clocking in at 50,101 words and 145 pages, I couldn't resist clogging up the printer at work to print the whole thing out. And of course, there had to be a paper jam around the steamy scene on page 98. Could have been embarassing. So here it is in all its twelve point Century Schoolbook glory.

The question is, what to do with it now? Does one plug on, rounding out characters, filling in the yawning chasms in the plot? Does one tinker away for another 30,000 words to make it novellish then try to fulfil the lifelong dream of getting published?

Ha! Here are some better ideas:

Put under the christmas tree and give to some poor sucker who you don't really like.

Place on your bookshelf beside the other fine works of literature and hope noone notices the difference.

Stick it in the loo to prevent those agonising moments when you realise it was your turn to buy more loo paper but you just gosh darn forgot.

Give to your dog as part of his daily requirement of complex carbohydrates.

I cried when the spider died in Charlotte's Web. It was 1983, Summer, kindergarten, in one of those long weatherboard classrooms with the ceiling fans groaning overhead. All us kids were scattered over the bright green carpet, lying on stomachs, propped up on elbows, never comfortable in those horrible cotton uniforms. We were watching the animated movie version of the book.

Mum taught Year 2 at the same school, and I tried to avoid her because I was a dorky little teacher's pet as it was, if the kids knew my mum was a teacher too, I'd get thumped in the playground. So when I saw her come into the classroom that day, my heart sank and I looked for a desk to hide under.

She sat down on a chair next to my teacher and they whispered. Then, horror of horrors, I got called over. All those eyes watching me as I picked my way through the little bodies on the floor.

Mum's eyes were all red and puffy. I wondered what was wrong. She pulled me up onto her lap and I squirmed with embarrassment.

Luckily the movie got really good then, I think Wilbur won the prize at the fair, so everyone stopped watching me.

"What's wrong Mum?"

She was all teary again. "Ma died."

Ma was her grandmother, on her father's side. I didn't remember much except her being tall with big brown eyes, and there were scones and red jam for afternoon tea in a big grey house with a bullnose verandah.

I also remembered my mum loved her to bits, and she would always say to me, "You have brown eyes and red hair just like Ma, I always wanted to have a daughter with brown eyes and red hair." Even now when I'm feeling rejected or pathetic or ugly or just not good about me, she'll say with misty eyes that she always wanted a daughter that looked just the way I do. Hurrah, the self-esteem is patched up again!

We just sat there watching the movie. I stayed perched on her lap and I tried to figure out what this whole Ma Died thing meant. I forgot about all the kids on the floor. Mum was crying so I started crying, it seemed the thing to do. I felt sad but didn't quite know why. Then Charlotte A. Cavatica the spider died, and I felt I really had something to feel sad about now, so I cried even harder.

Yesterday local blogging legend Row met the Golden Couple of Canberra bloggers, Monkey and Mattay.

A good time was had by all, but somehow this came out of their encounter: I've Met Someone Who's Met Shauny (IMSWMS). There's a banner and everything!

You crazy kids!

Update: There are now five people who have MSWMS! That's incredible!

The Mother called and asked me to take down the photos of her old school. I was sad, because I worked hard on that page and the captions were funny. But you type the name of the school into Google you got this site. So that's bad.

She also read some of the blog. "What's New Pussycat, eh? What's all that about?"

"Stuff."

"Do you really think you should talk about your neighbours like that? What if they find out?"

"I don't bloody give an address!"

It's funny how she chose to complain about that and not the fifty million things I've written about her. What can I say, she's a character. I think she enjoys being a character. I told her once that if I wrote a book she'd be a character. She got all excited. "Me? A character! Am I character?" Much giggling. Yes, you're a character.

Mum, if you're reading this again, please... don't. It's just too weird. Toddle off and watch an episode of Touched By An Angel or something. You know I love you, but please. Bugger off :)

In other news, my "novel" is a sprawling mess. It's funny how some characters are a breeze, you can imagine them up so easily. Then some you just can't get to know at all. Like the Lurve Interest, I know nothing about him at all, except that he's got brown eyes and a Magic Tongue.

What about his personality? What floats his boat? What music is he into? Is he funny or serious or a complete bastard? Does he speak in eloquent thoughtful sentences or is he one of those one word at a time grunty types? Does he have good hygiene?

It all boils down to the fact that I just bloody forget what men are like. The dialogue I'm writing sounds so false and stilted. No matter how many times I write and re-write it doesn't sound authentic. I forget what you say and how you act and what the stupid things you do that make me want to love and punch you in the nose all at the same time. I forget how it goes.

Very sad and pathetic. The nunnery is calling me.

Here are some things I like. The summery smell of cucumber and watermelon. My flatmate poking and tickling me when we're watching TV. My shoes. When you wash the sheets and when you reach up to peg them on the clothesline, you can feel the wet cotton against your skin and it's all cool like slipping into a swimming pool.

Here are some things I don't like. Scooping Harry poop from the back lawn. Misuse of apostrophe's. Abrupt emails. Abrupt phone calls. Abrupt goodbyes. Abrupt anything, really. And let me reiterate that the poop scooping really sucks.

This blog thing is getting harder every day, or rather every time I find out someone I know is reading this. It's getting harder to say how I really feel so I will have to start writing obscure, wanky paragraphs and make you read between the lines.

Hey Mum, I told you to stop reading!

Just one of those days when odd little things happen to make you laugh.

First I went to the Asian grocer to get some Pocky, and lo and behold they have a new line called FRAN! Fran are much like pocky except more curvy and chocolatey. I had to buy a box and take a photo just to show the real live Fran.

Then we toddled out of the supermarket with our groceries to find something bizarre. Two easter eggs were sitting side by side on the bonnet of my car. They were Humpty Dumpty ones with chocolate beans inside. Easter eggs in November? Was it a gift from a kind stranger? Chocolate anthrax? Either way it was bloody weird.

Finally on the way home we saw a shopping trolley (cart, for you bloody americans) perched on top of a stop sign.

Hmmm.

More NaNoWriMo out of context crap. There are huge errors and things that DO NOT MAKE ANY SENSE but it's a draft so please pretend they are not there otherwise I will cry.

The waiting room was deserted except for a young mother and her two sons. One looked about four and was lying limply in his mothers' arms, all feverish and cranky. The other kid was about seven and flitted around the room, bouncing on the chairs.

"Adam! Sit down and be quiet!"

"But Muuuu-um. When do we get to home?"

"As soon as we get Patrick's x-ray back from the doctor."

"What's an x-ray?"

"It where the doctor takes a special picture of Patrick's bones to see if there's an infection in his chest, making him sick."

"Will we get to see his guts?"

"No, Adam."

"Bor-ring."

He hopped around from one foot to the other, then spied a big wallchart with a picture of a skeleton on it. It had been there for years, I remember the doctor pointing out the relevant bone on the very same chart when I fell out of the cubbyhouse and broke my arm all those years ago.

"Loooook, Patrick!" The kid made his voice all low and spooky. "It's your bones! Ya bonnnnnnnes!"

The little one could barely lift his head but watched his brother intently with glassy brown eyes.

"And here's ya arms. And here's ya legs," Adam went on in a chirpier tone, pointing to each spot like a weatherman. "And ya knees and ya elbows!"

Then his voice dropped, as deep and Vincent Price-ish as a seven-year-old can muster. "And here... is... your skuuuuull."

His mother rolled her eyes and looked up at the clock, "When's that bloody doctor coming?"

Adam had discovered a cupboard full of crutches. He selected a tiny one and hobbled across the floor. "Mum, mum, look at me! I've got a bad leg!"

He pulled out a larger crutch about twice his height and tried to hoist himself up on it. After crashing to the floor three times, he slung it across his body like a gun, making those sound effects that only little boys seem to be able to do, like psssssssshowwwwwwwwww!, and the one that sounds like an explosion and requires a lot of spit in the mouth to pull off.

"Adam. Put. The crutch. Away." His mother's ponytail was fraying around her hairline in damp tendrils.

The boy sighed heavily then looked around for something new to do. I smiled sympathetically at the mother and she lifted the corners of her mouth very faintly in reply.

"Mum, mum, look at me!"

He had climbed up onto a trolley bed in the corner. He lay on his back with his arms at his sides.

"What are you doing Adam?"

"I'm Claire!"

"Who?"

He lay very still then suddenly shouted, "CLAIRE!"

He jerked his body up and down like he was having a fit, then collapsed back onto the bed. He rubbed his hands together vigorously then slammed them down onto his chest.

"CLAIRE!" he shouted again, jolting his little body into the air.

He caught me staring at him, and rolled his eyes impatiently. "You know, like on the telly. On the doctor show! When the people have heart attacks someone always yells for Claire."

"Oh yes, Claire! Of course!"

He lay back down again and performed his defibrillating routine a few more times.

The little one was starting to cry. The mother looked like she was about to cry too.

"Adam, sit still and be quiet!"

He slumped down on the bed, arms and legs out rigid. He gave a slow, wheezy gasp. It looked like we'd lost the patient. His eyes went wide and blank, his mouth opened and tongue flopped out. Not even mouth to mouth from Claire could save this one.

I thought his mother would weep with relief when the doctor finally appeared with Patrick's x-rays. They were herded off to another room to view them. Adam trailed along, firing his crutch/lethal weapon at pot plants and random hospital staff.

Moments later the nurse appeared and announced that Jeanne and her brand new baby were ready for their photo. I rummaged through my bag for the soft-focus filter as I walked past the x-ray room.

"Patrick! Look at ya bones! Ya look like a chicken! Little chicken bones! Ahahaha!"

We had chocolate, rice, orange juice, pastrami and soap. The guy behind us had a box of Home Brand Choc Chip Museli bars, one of those Tuna Lunch Kit things with crackers and tuna and mayonnaise, and a can of Campbell's Chunky Soup.

"Well, he'd never get anywhere with me," declared my sister.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's got no taste, he's cheap, and he can't cook."

Watch your trolleys, boys. You're being analysed :)

He's looking at the bed, and she knows he's thinking about the bed. Sometimes you can just see someone's thoughts racing across their eyeballs. He's mentally bouncing up and down to test the mattress, then pulling back the covers and dragging her in beside him to have his wicked way.

She shivers and panics and wishes she'd never brought him back here.

"Look," she says, "You know that thing the other day, where you said you were in love with me and that you wanted me real bad, you remember the thing?"

He nods eagerly.

"I just want you to forget about that, okay? It's not going to happen."

He looks confused.

"I don't want that kind of thing. I can't handle that kind of thing."

She wished he didn't have to look so wounded.

"This bed isn't made for that kind of thing. It's not one of those hey baby, let's go, steamy night of passion kind of beds. Look how the blankets are all churned up like that, that's because I was just curled up in a ball right there a few hours ago, staring at the ceiling. And there's Mars Bar wrappers too. To your left are some books that I tried to read but just abandoned because the words were too big, then I accidentally rolled over on top of them during the night and made the pages go all dog-eared. Under the covers you will find the Hello Kitty vibrator tossed aside, my heart just wasn't in it. If you lay down you'd feel some poppy seeds press into your back, even through I know the bed isn't the place to eat bread rolls. And you see those dead tissues, they're all crumpled up with tears and snot when I was laying there feeling sorry for myself. And right at the bottom where the sheets tuck in, there's a bunch of grotty old socks that I kicked off in the middle of the night when my feet got too hot."

He looks even more confused.

"Don't you see how wrong this is? I am quite happy being miserable and I don't want you barging in and ruining it. I just want this bed to be for me to hide under the covers and wallow. I cry in there! I fart and scream and sing! I don't want you thinking about me or looking at me or wanting me. I don't want you, or anyone at all, to come any closer.

"Please understand. You don't want to be here. Not with me. So please just go? Okay?"

But he just sits there.

Help me with excuses for why I shouldn't be forced to go out tonight. My ideas so far:

1. Don't wanna.

2. I have a sore leg [this was our excuse for all seasons in high school. Didn't do my homework coz I had sore leg. I can't kiss your grotty mouth o' braces because I've got a sore leg. I need five dollars because I have a sore leg.]

3. I can't miss Burke's Backyard

4. If Harry is left unsupervised every shanky ho-dog in town will take over our yard.

5. I'm writing the world's most shithouse novel, dammit.

6. Because I am sick of going places with you perfect flatmates who always look so goddamn glamourous and perfect and make me feel perfectly inadequate.

7. The neighbours across the street invited me over for cocktails, Bible Study and wild orgies.

Hmmm.

UPDATE: HA! Went out! Had good time. Silly me.

Well! Nanowrimo-ing during work hours when there's a 48 page newspaper about wheat crops to convert to HTML, how shameful!

So you know in a catholic church when you go inside and there's that sink thingy with holy water in it, and you splash a bit on your forehead? What do you call that? It has a name, I think. Microsoft Word had 0 results when "holy water sink" was entered into the thesaurus. If anyone knows please pipe up! If the guy and the girl are going to break into the church and shag in the confessional, they may as well bless themselves first.

Cyclists of the nation's capital, listen here. I really respect your eco-friendliness, your bravery to ride on a winters day, the muscular thighs and pert buttocks for my viewing pleasure. But why can't you make up your bloody mind. Are you going act like a car, or a pedestrian?

There's nothing worse than cruising along a major road in peak hour and you're wobbling all over the left lane. You won't bloody stay near the edge and there's nowhere for me to move because all the other lanes are clogged. I'm terrified of coming too close and shaving off your arm like a meat slicer, but you just keep pedalling along, veering ever closer to my car, when there's a perfectly good bike path a few metres away!

Then in the morning when I am late to work, you chug along the street as slow as molasses, so I put my foot down and overtake you. In return you get all huffy and wave your fists and curse at me!

I almost killed one of you when turning down a street. This time you'd chosen to go Pedestrian and ride along the footpath. You got to the end of it and instead of stopping to look for cars as a normal pedestrian, you decide you are a law unto yourself and sail across the intersection without stopping for me, who was already halfway turned into the street. So I have to slam on my brakes, and suddenly your front tyre is kissing mine.

"Gee, don't you watch what you're doing?" you snarl.

If you want to be given the same courtesy as an ordinary old car or someone on foot, how bout giving me some courtesy? You expect us to treat you the same as any other car on the road, yet if the light goes red you decide, "Hey! I'm going to make a like biped now and ride across the crossing! Then when it's convenient for me I will ride in the middle of the frigging road again!". You're zipping all over the place like an angry mosquito, confusing me and scaring me witless.

So if you expect me to brake at the zebra crossing, pick up your act. Or better still, use one of the twenty bazillion bike paths in this crappy town. You can't have it both ways. Make up your mind before I mow you down in cold blood!

After much kicking and swearing and Crispy M&Ms, finally got the Movable Type cooking. It won't look much different to you but it should be a whole lot easier for me to run back here. Exxxcellent.

You may need to hit Refresh a few times to clear the old pussycat out of your browser. I also don't have Netscape here at work so if it looks like turds in your browser, please let me know!

Thankyou to Daniel-san, who was the charmer that bullied me into converting to MT in the first place, then spent many hours installing the software, helping me with templates and stylesheets, and listening to me bitch and scream about what a waste of time the whole exercise was. Hehe.

The archive page has moved, and has shrunk dramatically. I managed to bulldoze 1300 entries down to 400, so most of the shitty "I hate the world! I want chocolate! Work sucks!" one line posts are gone.

We also now have proper comments, so you can stop emailling to say Mr Guestbook is clunky and inconvenient. But he'll still be there if you need him, all 849 glorious entries of the cranky ol bastard.

You can now expect the usual rambling posts o' shite, but now I'll probably whack a gratuitous question at the end to beg for comments. Don't just love how people do that? It goes something like this:

Entry about me. Me say things about me so me look cool/tortured/cute/angsty/unique/endearing. Me me me me. Me again. Me.

So... how about you? Click here to leave a comment!

Of course, if nobody panders to my thinly-disguised pleas for validation, I will probably rip down the comments code and flee to Guatemala or drink heavily or become a nun.

Got home from work about 1.30am after the election. I was planning to spend the night Nanowrimo-ing, but we ended up having to manually update one of the tallyroom pages all night so I was busy after all. And a big hello the artist known as AEC Call Centre Chick, who redirected a few callers who were having troubles with the virtual tallyroom to my blog! Ha ha! It's a small world.

Up early-ish and ventured out to Tuggeranong to collect Row, and I managed not to get lost this time. We then met up with Taipei's finest son, TC. After visiting Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, and crossing the Nullabor on the Indian-Pacific, he was wildly excited and breathless with anticipation to embark on the Tour de Canberra.

[warning: adjectives contained last part of that sentence may be ficticious]

First stop was Telstra Tower. We went to the highest viewing deck but it was so bloody windy we had to go back down. Next we headed for the National Zoo And Aquarium, also known as the Zooquarium. When TC mentioned he'd already been to the Perth and Taronga Zoos, I knew that the Zooquarium would have been a godawful anti-climax, so we skipped it. Then Row piped up and said she knew of a golf course that had Real Live Kangaroos on it, so we wandered along this lovely leafy path near Government House to find them. The roos were nowhere to be seen, apparently in the clubhouse playing the pokies, but it was a lovely place, with the little bridge and the lake, very peaceful.

After lunch we went to Parliament House, which is really bloody boring when you get down to it. The lift to the top was closed so we hauled ass up the slope, which I think is quite a good workout for the ol' calves. Next we went out to Mitchell in search of a so-called Motorcycle Museum, TC being the quite the motorcycle man. My phone directory was very new and supposedly accurate, but there was no bloody Motorcycle Museum to be seen. Hmmm.

Next stop was a toss up between the National Museum of Australia or the National Museum of Erotica (yes, it's at 37 Northbourne Avenue. Who knew?). I was keen for the Erotica Museum but somehow we ended up at the NMA. We passed a few signs that said "PARKING LIMITED! SHUTTLE BUS AVAILABLE!" but I declared that as Queen of Parking I would get a park. And I did, second space from the front. So of course I took a photo of the park and wouldn't shut up about it for a few hours, generally annoying the crap out of everyone I'm sure.

The Museum was a little overwhelming. First you have the ridiculous architecture, then all the exhibits seem to have the philosophy of WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY and we're going to fling as much of it in your face as possible. Some of the bits were really well done, I found the "First Australians" section really great, they did not hold back and I wish a few ignorant clods I know could see it and realise all the crap Aboriginal people have had to contend with since the white boys arrived all those years ago. It really was very well done.

The other highlight for me was the museum cafe which was delightfully titled, Cuiseum. Haw haw. God helps us all.

Back outside again with the wacky architecture, we tried a few mirror shots in the groovy souvenir shop windows. I marched right up to a window, went snap snap and was all done. But TC zoomed in and out and stepped here and there and back and forward and readjusted, I was wondering what the fuck he was doing, but later when we compared pics on my monitor, I could see how putting a bit of thought into a photo goes a long way. I have much to learn. Mwahaha.

After that we realised we were pretty much out of things to do, there was always the Gallery or the War Memorial but I think we were all touristed out. We trekked back out to Tuggers to take the lovely Row home to her lovely family and precious breadmaking machine, then it was back to Chateau Shauny.

Harry took an instant liking to TC, with much friendly licking and wrapping his paw around TC's arm if it looked like he was about to stop the patting. But then later in the backyard Harry was being a pain in the arse, jumping all over everyone and refusing to sit still. So TC grabbed the hound in a headlock. Harry's pride was wounded by that, so decided he'd like to eat TC's arm. He'd shove him out the way over and over again, but Harry would just spring back up again like a jack-in-the-box, paws up and ready for more. And later on Monty came over, so TC got to see Harry trying to climb aboard Monty. That dog has no shame. I will have to lock him a cupboard next time we have company.

My sister cooked a lovely meal followed by a kick-ass Apple Almond Cake. Oh it was lovely. With double cream on the side and everything.

I felt a bit rotten when I dropped TC off at his hotel thingy, it was on Northbourne and I stupidly decided to just pull over on the side of the road while he got out. Then I noticed in the rear view mirror that a bunch of cars were poised at the lights and when it went green I have a stack of vehicles up my arse. I once had a small car accident on that intersection so it was a bit deja vu-ish. I was all panic and "Bye! Bye! Bye!" and practically shoving him out the door, tyres whining as I sped off. I felt like one of those mothers hastily dropping their offspring at school on a Monday morning, speeding off home so they don't miss Good Morning Australia or a shag with the milkman. So I do apologise for that mate!

Anyway it was great day, despite my embarassment about the chronic blandness of this town. It was great to meet TC, he is a real champion, zingy sense of humour, excellent to talk to, and not an axe-murderer. And now I have something to do next weekend! Erotica Museum here we come! Ooh er double entendre.

There are ways of dodging the How-To-Vote card mob. Just rock up to your local polling place fresh from your Body Combat class as my sister and I did today. Resplendent in sporty leggings that make the arse look as wide as this great brown country of ours, tomato red faces, dripping with sweat, practicing our hooks and jabs and elbows and roundhouse kicks as we approached them. We entered the church hall at Reid without a single piece of paper being thrust upon us and were able to cast our vote in peace. Kick ass.

When you get to about Year 6 you look back down at the kindergarten kids and think, "God they're so tiny and useless, was I ever that tiny? I was not that tiny. And they've got it so easy, with their naptimes and fingerpainting. I've got a huge social studies project to do plus Little Athletics after school. I got no time for napping."

Then you start high school and you look back at the Year 6's and say "Oh those Year 6's think they're so great, but they know nothing of the real world, I mean I get like an hour of homework every night. Then there's peer pressure and hair in strange places."

In Year 12 when your ears are bleeding with stress, you look down at everything from Year 7 upwards with great derision. Especially the Year 10s and 11s with their eyeliner and attitude problems and the underage drinking like they just invented it. "Pah. Silly bitches. You have no idea what you're in for in Year 12. The pressure. The expectation. The fate of the world resting on your exam results."

Then when you hit university it's time to scoff at the foolish Year 12 students moaning about their stupid, inconseqential exams. "I stayed up all night writing this highly complex essay, man. You have no idea about the rigours of academic life."

As soon as uni is done and you're thrust into a Real Job, you can then walk by a university campus and sneer, "Oh look at those decadent, selfish layabouts. Making eyes at each other on the library lawn. All that shagging and recreational drug use and sleeping in til noon, they'll get a shock when they get into the Real World! Long hours with poor pay and little recognition! And far less sex! Oh ho ho! My word yes!

Then the late-thirties early-forties middle management roll their eyes at me if I dare to look stressed, "You're a young pup, you have no idea about stress, wait til you've got the CEO breathing down your neck, a mortgage, three kids, a cheating husband and VARICOSE VEINS, dammit, then you'll know what life's all about!"

You can feel superior and sage at any age, as long as there's someone around slightly greener than yourself.

How long does this go on? Does it get to a point where we no longer feel the need to feel more wise and worldly than someone else, or does the drooling 90-year-old dame in the nursing home say to the 80-year-old dame with the crocheted blanket, "Listen lovie, shut up about your arthritis, you've got no idea about the Real Pain. When you hit the big nine oh and your breasts finally dangle all the way down to your toes and you can't watch The Bill for your cataracts, THEN you'll have something to complain about."

Imagine a world without bacon!

November 1 is All Saints Day, which means the nation pauses to celebrate the high-rating Channel 7 drama and reflect on the wonder that is Georgie Parker.

It's also my birthday. So please be pleasant to me today. And it's never too late to buy my love. Hurrah!

Later that day...

Hehehe. Have a listen to this! Nobody says happy birthday quite like Miss Helen (the Helen Razer helen that is, not Boss Helen)

And later still...

Hehehe. Much red wine and feeling fine. It's fun to sing stupid songs when tipsy. Tonight we have a medley of Destiny's Child, Little River Band, and also just repeating over and over No You. Won't. Sur. Vive. Me Myself And... I!

Don't blame it on the sunshine. Don't blame it on the moonlight. Don't blame it on the good times. Blame it on your traumatic childhood.

The birthday was so good, I had no idea people could say such kind things. I have been getting all sniffly and sentimental. Thankyou to all of you groovy creatures :)

My new flatmate has a Steps album with the witty title, "Steptastic". Or is that Steptacular? Stepilcious? Stepdedidoodah? Either way, colour me disturbed.