I read somewhere about someone who used to write down every nice thing that anyone ever said about them. For future reference. To soothe their soul on a Nobody Loves Me day.

It could have been a skanky spiral notebook or maybe it was a sexy little Moleskine, coz if they wrote it down on something sexy, well that would just make the sentiment all that sweeter when they re-read it later on. And they wrote it with a really good pen. Not necessarily expensive but just one that felt so right in your hand, made your handwriting look carefree and light. They didn't hear good things all that often so they'd had the notebook for years and years, and each compliment took up a whole page.

12.03.2001
Checkout chick at supermarket said Hey did you get your hair done today coz it looks real good!!!

29.10.1993
"That was the best cup of coffee EVER" -- my boss

13.09.1997
Random stranger with pink hair gave me their car parking voucher because they were leaving and it still had an hour left on it.

08.07.2002
Mum said, "I like what you've done with the garden".

It's a good idea really. I might try that for the new year. That way if someone tells me I look like shite or I'm fired or Let's Be Friends, I Don't Want To Shag You, I could flip open my notebook and clear my throat and say, "Well I don't CARE! On the Fifteenth of March a tall guy in red shirt pinched my arse at the pub! I don't need you!"

Well that was the best christmas party of any employer i've ever been employed with EVER! i never write about my new job, why? because i LURVE IT. i like being the marketing communications chicky and writing things and being creative and the people are the bestest loveleist people i've ever worked with and they make me feel like i have a brain and what i do means something. and WOW i had that whole bottle of red on my own. there's onlysomething to werite about if the job is bad, right? so that's why there's nothing to sya about it. life is good people, if you just stop lookingh at the tiny bad things. and i love YOU and you over there too. merry xmas to you all.

UPDATE: I just wanted to add that I walked into a tree as I wandered home. Hehe.

My mind is on other things, like fresh raspberries. Check out the Olden & Golden on the sidebar, or just go play in the archives. Remember a time when I wrote remotely interesting things. First one to leave a (proper, thoughtful) comment on every entry wins a prize!

Did you know about the secret life of Shauny and Rhi? The life in which we are arse-kicking space pirates, with ample bosoms and witty dialogue, plundering our way across the cosmos to steal cubic zirconias?

The ever-so-clever Mattay has immortalised us thus in his brilliant comic, Cosmic Corsairs in the Cubic Conundrum. He created the whole thing in one day as part of a 24 Hour Challenge - 24 pages in 24 hours! Take that, NaNoWriMo-ers. Since then he's published it complete with glorious colour cover! The critics are raving, and you can buy it at the comic counter at Impact Records or from the man himself.

The other day Mattay was leaving a copy at the Paperie at Woden for a guy who works there.

"So you're the famous Mattay!" said the dude behind the counter.

As Mattay did his endearing modest smiling aw shucks thing, I couldn't resist pointing to the cover and blurting, "Hey! That's me!"

Counter Dude looked at the cover and looked at me then frowned. "It is?"

"Yes. IT IS."

Bah.

I wish I could live up to my comic form. But my hair is not that sassy. And that body? I would have to be chained to a treadmill and fed nothing but lettuce leaves for ten years to achieve such an alluring physique.

Also, our dialogue is not that zingy. Take Sunday night, as our two heroines sat on opposing couches, antsy and cranky from the horrible heat. Our positions had varied little for the entire weekend. So by Sunday we were going slightly batty.

Rhi was fumbling with a bottle of Sweet Chilli sauce on the coffee table. "You know, I would take great pleasure in just hurling this bottle at the wall and watching it ooze down."

"That would be cool."

"But guess what would be cooler? THIS!"

That was when she poured her glass of water over my head.

With that, our maturity level plummeted fifteen years. We spent the next hour punching and kicking and shoving and slapping. I finally called time out after being whacked on the head with a copy of Paul Clitheroe's Make Your Fortune By 40.

Later on, as I was talking on the phone, Rhi was perched on her couch eating a bowl of custard and peaches.

"Hey," she said, interrupting my conversation. "Hey. Hey." She poked my leg as I ignored her. "HEY. HEY!"

"WHAT?"

"Do you think it would be funny if I poured this bowl of custard over your head? I think it would be."

I assure you, the two-dimensional comic Shauny and Rhi are far more exciting, mature and classy. So get your copy while stocks last!

We were equipped with only an apple, a bottle of water, a dog, and a warning to watch out for snakes. Then we were dumped at the railway line with a few hundred sheep.

It was slave labour, I tell you. We were like the children of the industrial revolution, except our faces were pink from sunburn instead of black from coal. I'd dread the clop clop of my stepfather's Blundstone's on the verandah, knowing he was going to peer into my bedroom window and ask if I was busy.

Was I busy? It was the Christmas holidays. I was stranded on a farm, miles from friends and ice cream shops. Of course I wasn't busy.

"Can you babysit the sheep this afternoon?"

"Meh. Okay."

The summers were always dry, there was never enough for the sheep to eat. There was an old railway line that spliced our farm in two, choked with grass and other culinary delights of the baavine variety. So with council permission, we were allowed to let our sheep graze there.

But someone had to watch the bastards, to make sure they didn't fall down a ramp or get their stupid woolly arses stuck in a barbed wire fence. So Rhi and I had to sit there for anywhere up to five hours, one on each side of the tracks, while the stupid sheep wandered and nibbled ever so slowly.

Mum had ferreted through her linen cupboard and presented us with two ancient brown bathmats to sit on. So we sat there sweltering on our crappy mats like little genies. We'd read our books, sip our water, glare at the sheep. We'd sneak up onto the tracks and be Olympic gymnasts on the beam. We'd lay down and scream helplessly after being tied to the railway line by an Evil Villain.

When we got bored of that, we'd sit back down and shout at each other over the line. I must have been about 10, Rhi was 8. We had such deep, shouty conversations.

"Do you think we'll get anything good for Christmas?"

"Probably not."

"You know what? This sucks."

"Yes."

"Jesus was a shepherd, wasn't he?"

"No he was a carpenter. But if he was a shepherd I bet he wouldn't be sitting on a bathmat."

"Yes, one of the disciples would have made him a chair."

"And brought him an ice cream."

We'd pause to let resentment and self-pity boil in our blood for awhile. Grrrrrr.

Then we'd decide what we'd do when we won Lotto. We wouldn't give a cent to our stepfather, as revenge for making us child slaves. We then verbally furnished our new mansion, room by room. I talked about the books I'd write while living by the sea. Rhi talked about the barrels of money she'd have from her five-star restaurants and hotels. We vowed to leave the sheep and the snakes far behind and take on the world.

So that's how we spent our summers. Plotting and scheming, bitching and dreaming. And throwing the occassional rock at a stupid sheep.

"Why don't you give me something I can use?" I asked The Mothership as she crossed her eyes, tongue curled up, checking her top lip for stray capuccino foam. She'd spent the whole meal relating stories in her booming Teachers Voice, my mascara was smeared from laughing.

The Mothership loves telling stories and loves me regurgitating them on here. I've got a good one for ya, she'll say on the phone. Or she'll ask hopefully, Are you going to use this on your website? Huh huh?

Famous among dozens. But lately they've all been school stories, not ones I can repeat online without fear of retribution from the Department of Education or deranged parents.

She was in a somewhat melancholy, philosophical mood. She just told us about the little kid who wrote a "death threat" to another little kid on the toilet wall. With a piece of grass.

"Who would have thought you could write with a piece of grass?"

"Well some blades of grass are quite thick and juicy. Inky." She looked into the distance, shaking her head sadly.

"You know what's happening here?" she mused. "We're just like the rats and mice."

Stunned silence from Rhiannon and I.

"Well, think about rats and mice. They breed like... rats and mice. Their world is so overcrowded and dirty!"

"Yes?"

"And look what happened to them! Their world got crazy. So what did they do? They turned on each other. Violence! No respect! Biting each others tails off! Hitting each other on the head with hockey sticks! Some of them became cannibals!"

"Do you have evidence to back this up?"

"And that's what's happened to the humans. We're going the way of the rats and mice. Everything's dysfunctional. Overpopulated. And it makes me so sad. People just don't care about people anymore!"

"But we live in the sticks, Mum. It's not crowded here. You haven't really thought this through have you?"

"Hey! This is something I've been pondering a lot. It keeps popping back into my head at night. So it must mean something."

There'd been a little rattle in Manuel for a week or so now. Nothing too bad we thought, but we booked it in for a service today. But last night on my way to singing class, I had a little adventure.

Somewhere around Parliament House, the rattle turned to a clunk. Then when I stopped at the lights in Woden, Manuel stalled and wouldn't budge. And of course I happened to be on a hill with half a dozen cars behind me. I turned the engine over and Manuel gave a halfhearted urrgh urrgh urrgh before dying again.

Up until that point I had completely adored Manuel, so compact and reliable compared with the piece of shit cars I've had before. But as soon as he misbehaved, I became filled with panic and rage. The light was going to be green in a second. I couldn't bear the thought of being stranded. Like one of those stranded losers that break down at a major intersection and pace round with a mobile phone while every passing vehicle beeps in disgust.

And I'm pretty crap on hills as it is. I've only been driving a stick for a few months. I have no idea what I am doing. So in the end my tactic was to press all the pedals in a random sequence like a deranged organist, simultaneously screaming, "COME ON YOU LITTLE RED FUCKER!"

Manuel obediently limped around the corner. I thought I was going to make it to my teacher's house but then the revolting burning smell started. I pulled over and called the NRMA dude.

Then I called my sister, and we ranted and raged about our Piece Of Shit car that we only bought six months ago and how dare it do this to us!

Then I called Jenny and told her I wouldn't be able to make it to singing class. The trio would be a duo tonight. But as it turned out, Inge hadn't made it either due to "illness". This made our teacher very suspicious of my "breakdown". He asked Jenny would she like to do the class solo. Jenny thought for three seconds and said, "Naaah."

She left him huffing and harrumphing at his piano, apparently believing that the three of us had concocted this elaborate scheme to wriggle out of class. Then she came to keep me company while I waited for the NRMA.

He didn't take long. And he was rather cute. I hoped that nothing too major was wrong with the car, but at the same time I hoped there was something majorly wrong with it, so I wouldn't look like an idiot in the presence of such cuteness.

No such luck.

I popped the bonnet and he peered under. "Umm. Where's your radiator cap?"

"What?"

"You don't have a cap on your radiator."

"Holy shit."

Then I remembered. Rhi had been checking the oil and water about two weeks ago. Manuel is her first car, so she's never had to do that before. She kept asking me, "Am I doing this right?" and I was saying, "Yep, yep" without really looking. When she screwed the radiator cap back on, I'd thought to myself that I usually had to press down harder for it to go on. But I thought maybe she didn't need to exert as much energy as I, being of superior strength and fitness.

Now I realised we'd been driving around for up to two weeks without a radiator cap, letting things bubble and boil to the point of disaster. During this time I'd complained to Rhi that the car "smelled funny". She said it was the air conditioning. I said, "Air conditioning doesn't smell like dirt and burny things." But did I look into it further? Nooo.

"So there's your problem," NRMA dude said with a little grin.

"Right."

"Umm. Why are there chicken feathers under your hood?" Jenny asked.

I peered closer and frowned. "Maybe we ran over a chicken somewhere along the line."

"Empty radiator combined with BBQing chicken would explain the burning smell you mentioned," said NRMA dude.

It was all rather humiliating.

He got a bottle of water and topped up the radiator. While Manuel gulped and sputtered in relief, I decided I had to try and redeem myself.

"I know what you're thinking, that I am a stupid woman driver who can't do something as basic as keep her radiator cap on, but you have to know it wasn't my fault!"

"Is that right?"

"I own this car with my sister, see. She's never had a car before and the other day she was checking the oil and water and she was putting the cap back on and she asked me was it on properly and I said yep, yep but it looks like she didn't put it on properly at all! Can you believe her? I mean how hard is to --"

"And you were supervising?"

"Well, yes."

"So why didn't you check?"

"Because we were on our way out to lunch and I was hungry!"

"I really don't think it's fair to blame your sister."

"Bah!"

He topped up the radiator then we putted up to Philip to look for a cap. It's a suburb choked with car yards and petrol stations, but everything was either closed or cap-less. We were parked right next to a Ford dealership. There were dozens of Fords with Ford-y radiator caps just ripe to fit onto my own little Ford, but no Ford salesman around to help us.

"It's a pity we can't break in and steal one," mused the NRMA dude.

"Well why don't you?" I coaxed. "You have the tools!"

But no. In the end the only option was to limp back home with Jenny following me in case I broke down again.

"You'll probably have to stop three or four times when the temperature gauge goes up, then fill 'er up again and wait ten minutes before you go home," NRMA dude explained. "Or if it dies, just call a tow truck."

"Bloody hell!"

"Just be thankful you didn't blow a head gasket!"

"Yes sir," I said sheepishly.

It was the longest 15 minutes of my life, putting along and hoping the car wouldn't explode. Miraculously, the gauge didn't move at all. Jenny drove in front of me and the NRMA guy followed behind. He'd said he had to go elsewhere, but ended up tailing us. Perhaps he didn't trust my driving.

Finally we were back in Braddon and I thanked the NRMA dude for his help.

"Why is it whenever I call the NRMA it's always something stupid?" I pondered. "On your TV ads it's always high drama, like crumpled cars or people with their limbs on fire."

"Heh," said the NRMA dude.

"And your slogan, Call N-R-M-A For H-E-L-P. I think it should be Call N-R-M-A, You D-O-R-K."

"Heh," he said again.

And off he went. Jenny came bolting over from her car. "Did you see that? He was in behind you and I was in front of you! I was driving along thinking, 'Woohoo! Shauna's in a cavalcade!"

"I know! A cavalcade! I felt like JFK or something."