We went shopping with the Mothership on the weekend. It was just like the old days.

Rhiannon fell into her old role of stylist: Noooo Mum those earrings do not say Come Hither, they say Come To My Tupperware Party On Thursday night. Nooo Mum, just because the orange juice is on special doesn't mean you need five bottles of it. Nooo Mum, vertical stripes are not slimming if they're made from polyester.

I reprised my acclaimed performance as Chief Whiner: Muuum, my feet hurt. Muum, I'm hungry. Muuum, I hate K-Mart and I am not going to go in there. You can't make me. I ended up sitting on the seat outside the store next to a wheezy old guy, sulking and looking at my watch. Something about spending time with that woman strips away any maturity gained since I left home and I'm ten again.

Whining aside, Mum just looks so goofy and happy for us to be with her that I follow her (limping) around the shops and let her crap on and on. Rhiannon is smarter though, she says "I'm just going to look over here for a minute", then runs out of the store.

I was in the shoe shop, glaring at snotty children while Mum launched into a tirade about the declining quality of winter footwear under $100, when suddenly my mobile rang. Sweet relief!

"Shauna! It's me."

"Rhi?"

"Yes! You have to help me!"

"What's wrong?"

"I'm in the change room at Jeans West. Can you come over quick and tell me if this skirt looks any good?"

That has to be the most novel use of a mobile phone I've heard in awhile.

Keep you calendars free on May 18-19 for the Fourth Annual Masturbate-A-Thon! Get down with yourself all in the name of charity.

There's even prizes to be won: "If you use vibrators, watch porn or plug it in, enter in the "Plug in" section and win $100 off your May electricity bill... and if you're a manual type of person, there is the "Lube Up" category where you can win $100 of lubricant."

The idea is you get your family and neighbours to sponsor you, just like a read-a-thon or a walk-a-thon. So what do you think is a reasonable rate, two dollars per orgasm?

"So we had the Cross Country the other day, we're out in the middle of a paddock somewhere and the stewed ants [mothership speak for "students"] were limbering up to start the running. And Leanne is organising everyone and getting people to be checkpoints along the course, to make sure none of the kids run off into the wilderness. Then she hands me this walkie talkie. What am I sposed to do with this? I says to her. It's a walkie talkie, says Leanne. I know it's a walkie talkie, but why do I need it? You have to report back to me when the last kid has run past your checkpoint, she says. Well, okay, but I don't know how to use a walkie talkie. It's easy, Leanne says, you just press the button and talk, and when you arrive at your checkpoint I'll send you a message to make sure it's working.

So I toddles off to my checkpoint and I am standing there waiting waiting waiting. The race starts and the kids are off, so I sit down and enjoy the sunshine. Then all of a sudden the walkie talkie is talking....

Big Mama on the Hill! Big Mama on the Hill!

... I look at the walkie talkie and wonder who this Big Mama person is, but think nothing of it. And then...

This is HQ. Come in, Big Mama on the Hill! Big Mama, can you read me?

... I am scratching my head and I just couldn't figure out what the hell she was on about or who she was talking to and thought she must have a drinking problem. And there it goes again...

Big Mama on the Hill! Hello! We are looking right at you but you do not seem to be responding! Come in, Big Mama!"

This is when my sister had to interrupt.

"Mum, how many of you had walkie talkies?"

"Three of us. Leanne and the lady at the other checkpoint down the track."

"Didn't it occur to you that you were the only one standing on a hill?"

"Well..."

"And also the only one with a walkie talkie on a hill that happened to be a little roly poly?"

"I guess my powers of deduction were a little off. Anyway I finally figured it out so I pressed the button on the walkie talkie and said, Leanne, if I am supposed to be Big Mama on the hill, I am going to have to come down and discuss this Big Mama business with you, I demand a new code name!"

THE MOTHER: Oh! Shauna! Remind me to tell you about The Pork!

SHAUNA: The Pork?

M: Ohhh yes. The Pork. The Pork I had at Neila the other night.

S: Ah yes.

M: You've never had anything like The Pork! It was simply an orgasmic dining experience! Orgasmic!

*silence*

S: Hey, remind me not to remind you about The Pork.

I thought I would be safe there, up the back and to the left, robbed of all coordination due to wine and too-high heels. Then I looked up, blinked slowly, and realised it was coming right at me, a blur of blue red orange gerbras and irises.

Holy fuck I am gonna catch the bouquet. I don't want to catch the bloody bouquet. Not for another five to ten years, and maybe not even then.

But I held out my arms limply and accepted my fate. Until she came out of nowhere, her squeal piercing through my champagne fuzziness. She lunged across the dance floor, sending half a dozen girls crashing to the floor in a tangle of bare arms and strappy shoes. She plucked the flowers from the air just as they grazed my fingertips, bellowing in triumph. She waved them around her head then galloped happily over to her boyfriend who gave a tortured smile.

Strange day. It was my first wedding that wasn't one of my parents getting remarried. The bride was nervous and grinning and the groom had wet eyes and cracking voice during the vows. They looked so happy to be there. Imagine that, someone tolerating your crap enough to want to be with you for the rest of their life. I can't imagine anyone feeling like that about me. It's too bizarre.

But if I did ever get married, I would exclude the following: prayers, flowergirls who won't sit still, prawn cocktail where the prawns look like severed fingers, vol-au-vents, steak diane, fruit cake, John Farnham songs, the local Golf Club.

This week I've learned the importance of good signage in the workplace to warn employees of potential hazards. I've also learned the importance of ensuring none of these posters are designed any later than 1985.

There are hundreds of signs available from the National Safety Council of Australia and fall into four different categories:

1. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using good old-fasioned shock value.

2. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using terrifying fashions from the 1970s.

3. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using patronising phrases stolen from your mother.

4. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by celebrity cameos from the likes of Olivia Newton-John and one of the guys from The Village People.

Just a quick trip into the supermarket for orange juice, that's all. I'm standing in the aisle debating the merits of pulp-free versus pulp-clogged when a sweet, cheery voice floats over the speakers.

I thought love was only true in fairy tales...

I choose some juice and know I really should head straight for the checkout, but it's such a lovely tune.

Love was out to get me
That's the way it seemed...

Only Neil Diamond could pen a song so jaunty. And it's the Monkees singing it, not that recent inferior cover version. And I'm a dork so I know all the words. So I swagger down another aisle and sing. I feel like Elvis in a dodgy musical, where he's walking down a beach and hawaiian-shirted back-up singers suddenly appear from behind sand dunes, armed with ukuleles.

There's a short rolly lady and her pricing gun is loaded with REDUCED stickers. She's grinning as she attacks some blocks of cheese, because she's a dork and knows all the words too!

Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

I look around and notice that the other shoppers seem to be enjoying the song too. There's a few absent smiles and drumming of fingers on shopping trolleys, we're all gearing up for the big chorus.

Old grey banana-groping guy in the produce section: Then I saw her face!

Rather handsome lad selecting tomatoes: Now I'm a believer!

Everyone's right into it. It was magic. Except for the babies and grotty toddlers, they're too stupid to know a good tune. The Wiggles, pah!

I'm in love...

The checkout chick with violent red lips (scanning large box of Rice Bubbles) harmonises with the Eagled-Eyed Customer (making sure she gets the Bubbles at the sale price, dammit):

Ooooooooooooooooooohhhhh...

It's interesting to watch other people to see if they fancy themselves as a lead singer or if they wait for a harmony or just pipe up occassionally in the background; whether they audibly sing or just move their lips; whether they scrunch up their forehead with feeling or nod their head.

Miss Permed and Peroxided in queue reading Who Weekly and discreetly picking undies out of arse: I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her if I tried.

Baldy man with air guitar action: Durn da durn durn durrrrn!

I wander down the baking aisle during the second verse, humming and wondering if there's anything else I need to buy. I pick up a box of Green's 97% Fat Free Chocolate Mud Cake Mix. I think that a 97% Fat Free Cake couldn't contain enough mud to be tasty, would be more like dirty water really. But I want it anyway.

Soon we've belted out the second chorus and it all goes crazy. I am swearing and shoving my ageing credit card in and out of the machine in time with the fade out, thinking vaguely that I'd have had enough cash if I'd stopped at the juice, but now I needed Mr Visa for all this unnecessary shit I'd accumulated.

The next song is an Eagles chestnut and somewhere there is a crack team of behavioural marketing gurus watching us on surveillance tapes and cackling with glee.

"I am having trouble finding things on the Internet lately."

"Have you tried Google?"

"Google? Is that www G-O-G-G-L-E dot com?"

"No, that's goggle."

"Oh. So if I type google in to Yahoo, will I find Google?"

"Ummm."

Brief, merciful silence.

"Did I tell you I took a bath in methylated spirits the other day?"

"No you did not."

"Well I can tell you now! There's been a stink in my classroom, for a week now, we couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but it smelled like metho. On Thursday, no, Wednesday, the kids were in Scripture class, but I had to hang around and make sure they didn't misbehave. So I decided to investigate! I sniffed here and there and managed to track it down to this one particular cupboard. I ferretted around but couldn't see any metho. But then I noticed a big wet stain on the top shelf. It looked like something had leaked from above. Anyway, so I gets on a chair and hops up and there's was two huge bottles of metho sitting on top of the cupboard! I'd say they were left over from the days of duplicating machines, before photocopiers. And one of them had a huge hole in the side of it that had been gnawed away by mice! I'd say the mice started chewing the bottle some time ago and got all crazy on the fumes and said oh boy oh boy, let's have a party and bought round their other filthy mouse friends and chewed and chewed and eventually it started to leak! Anyway, I reached for the bottle but I slipped on the chair, next thing the grotty bottle of metho goes flying in the air and I go flying and I end up with a mouthful of metho! I was snorting and sputtering but I couldn't swear because the students were there and it was scripture class! So I had to go home and get changed otherwise I'd have stank all day. So yes. Wasn't that exciting?"

Pause for breath.

"So why didn't you tell me things were going so bad with your job?"

"I dunno."

"So have you adopted your sister's policy of Not Telling The Mother Anything?"

"I already had that policy, I just didn't tell you about it."

It's Harry's birthday today, he's 3. Which is 21 in dog years. So it makes sense in a way that he's not my dog anymore. Most 21 year olds are off seeing the world and having all sorts of adventures. Then again, many are still at home sponging off the folks.

As soon as we moved to our new apartment, everyone said to me, "Well good, so the Saga is over." Perhaps meaning, finally she will shut up about it. So I've kept quiet and made sure I'm busy. But jeez... I miss that little bastard.

Blogging is just not the same without Harry around to provide content. I have to keep ringing up The Mother and saying, "So, have you done anything funny lately?"

Our garbage bin always stinks because there's no Harry to eat all the leftovers.

My clothes always look clean coz there's no pawprints or bits of fur from being attacked.

We had trouble getting our compensation money. The court ordered they pay us by a certain date, and whaddya know, the day came and went without payment. So we marched up there the next day. The Agent known as Hambone J (due to her upper arms resembling a bulging pink christmas ham) said, "Where's your receipts?"

"What?"

"Well I'm not paying you any money unless you give me receipts for your moving costs. Besides, if it adds up to less I don't have to give you the whole amount."

She fully expected us to agree with this bullshit. Instead we caused a big scene in their office, demanding she hand over the money. My sister had to madly shake the court order in her hand and shout, "IT'S RIGHT HERE IN THE COURT ORDER!" before the bitch finally backed down.

Then we had great battles over getting our bond money back. They called me up with an extremely petty list of Things That Were Wrong in the house, such as "cleaning product residue left on the kitchen sink". We all met up there and went around with a bottle of Spray N Wipe until they were satisfied.

I just wanted to scream at them, they were just so fucking smug and evil. Did they not bloody comprehend the crap they'd put us through? Because of their evilness I LOST MY DOG, dammit, yet they still put us through hell when we moved out.

Here he is the night before he left, sitting on Q magazine with the most retarded expression.

And this was just hours before he went, sulking in the garage after I gave him a bath.

A few weeks back I went up to visit him for the last time. The little bastard didn't seem to recognise me at all. He ignored me and jumped all over his new mum. He wouldn't come over for a hug or anything. I felt so crushed. Rhiannon kept telling me "he's just a dog, and not the smartest one you must admit, of course he's going to forget."

Everyone else keeps telling me to get over it and that I should be greatful that he's liking his new home. But it just hurt so badly when he didn't even come over. I felt like kicking him, "You little turd! I rescued you from the pound when you were all manky with fleas. You're supposed to love me!"

It's such an empty and pathetic feeling, but I hate not being needed anymore. A big part of my life is over, just like that, and it still hurts.

As the blogging community is all too aware, the enticing world of the Internet can be highly addictive. Back in 1998 I had an article published about this very phenomenon, but little did I know what an epidemic it would become.

Internet Addiction has caught the attention of legendary children's author, Richard Scarry. He has started The Richard Scarry Fund to help cure innocent children of this terrible affliction, and encourage them to get their fat asses out into the sunshine.

The Canberra Bloggers have decided to make a contribution to this worthwhile cause. We have been collaborating on a very special calendar to raise funds. It's currently at the printers, but will soon be available for purchase at a very reasonable cost. In the meantime, you can catch a preview from any blogger displaying the Foundation banner.

It was a tough decision, but in a crowded calendar marketplace, you have to be bold to be competitive. That is why we all chose to pose nude.