First I conversed with the anaesthetist.

"So I hear you're going overseas."
"Yeah but don't think I'm not noticing that huge needle."
"Why are you travelling? Just finished high school eh?"
"Nooo!"
"Just finished uni then?"
"Nooo! I've been out for years!"
"Oh! Well I hope you've got some sort of qualification, if you're intending to unleash yourself on the world?"
"Hey. I got a degree buddy. Did you really bloody think I just finished high school? Crikey..."

Next thing I remember I can hear my voice talking and it won't bloody stop. It is saying a whole lot of stupid things. My brain feels like lead and it is pleading with the mouth, WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT UP?

But the mouth won't comply. They call this "IV Sedation", as opposed to general anaesthetic, so apparently you can't feel a thing but you can still get quite talkative.

I started becoming aware of things just as the surgeon was winding up. I felt something tugging at my tooth, but no pain. But I am babbling away in a wounded monotone, trying to make him feel bad for attacking me, "HEY. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. HEY. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."

Then I chatted to a nurse.

"You guys are so lovely. You are doing a lovely job. Really you are. You have all been so nice."
"Thank you, dear."
"You know I was so worried you wouldn't be able to knock me out? Like I would be unknockoutable and I would feel it all? You know I've been on a mad health kick purely to avoid encounters with doctors?"
"Shut up!" (That was the Brain speaking)
"Is that so love?"

I proceeded to launch into what I thought was a very articulate and detailed outline of my diet and exercise regime and secrets of well-being, weight loss and eternal happiness, but I'm sure it was a saliva-drenched numb-tongued garbled blur. As they wheeled me out of theatre my brain cringed because the mouth was still talking and talking and there seemed no way of stopping it.

Half an hour later, sitting up in a chair with my mouth stuffed with cotton swabs, grinning and giggling. The nurse was telling my sister, "This one's a talker. She told us all her secrets."

"BWAHAHA! Oh shit," said I.

I started writing this entry yesterday, tis now Friday 5AM and I can't sleep because of my Gigantor Head. I was hoping for the chipmunk face, chipmunks are somewhat cute and perky. But instead my face has taken on a lumpy potatoesque quality. I am a slab with eyes. My lips are numb so when I spoon my gruel into my mouth it slithers down my deformed chin like a useless little baby. Somebody strap me into a highchair and make some aeroplane noises!

I am hideous. Look away. Look awaaaayyyy. No hang on, fetch me some more drugs, then look away.

UPDATE -- STATE OF HEAD:  Downgraded from Mega Potato to Bullfrog. Cheeks have slightly subsided but chin still bulbous. Or as Miss Monkey observed, "A little like Gwenyth Paltrow's face in the Shallow Hal fat suit". Hehehehe.

SUNDAY:  My sister won't stop calling me Puff Shauny Shaun.

About an hour from now, I'll be clobbered over the head with a brick then some evil butchers are going to extract my freaky wisdom teeth with pliers. Well aparently it's a lot more gentle than that, but try telling that to the tumble-dryer nerves in my stomach.

I was explaining to Witold that I had four very aggressive toothies plotting to take over my mouth in bloody revolution, and he drew an Artist's Impression of the rogue choppers. Don't you love 'em?

So I am scared. Anyone in a white coat and authorative manner chills me to the bone. They had to hold my hand and bribe me with jellybeans to get a tetanus shot, and I was nineteen years old. So I've always done my darndest to avoid medical procedures, aside from The Finger incident.

Today's fears include:

• Being one of of those freaks on A Current Affair with an I Woke Up During My Surgery And Couldn't Cry For Help story
• Saying stupid things when I come out of the anaesthetic
• Terrifying small children with my swollen chipmunk face

Which is why I am writing this a mere hour before my mouth is ransacked, so I don't have to listen to your dental horror stories and/or you telling me to stop being such a pussy :)

Moving the contents of your apartment down three flights of stairs one armload at a time is bloody boring, to say the least. Plus I hate walking down stairs when carrying things, I freak out when I can't see my feet.

But I found a good way to stay awake and/or not fall down head over turkey: assign stupid personas and scenarios to each load.

BOX OF WINE GLASSES --  A family of refugees who I was smuggling over the border. Persecuted in their homeland for not being genuine crystal, they paid me $1000 to put them on a boat bound for the promised land. The faint clink clink as I ran down the stairs was their pitiful cries for oxygen.

BIG FAT ARMCHAIR WITH LURID GREEN AND PINK STRIPES --  A rather portly skank at a nightclub. She'd been in a brawl with some fellow skanks, and I was the bouncer. I slung her over my shoulder and lumbered down the stairs to throw her out on the street. She kicked and screamed the whole way and threatened to sic her boyfriend Leroy onto me.

SUITCASE STUFFED WITH COOKBOOKS --  I'd murdered my wife, chopped her into steaks and now planned to put her remains on a train bound for the countryside... unaware that Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly were watching me from a window across the courtyard.

ASSORTED BED LINEN --  I was sneaking down to the local boarding school, where I would knot the sheets together to form a makeshift ladder so I could help a number of girls named Trixie or Imogen escape out the dormitory window and far from the clutches of their evil Headmistress.

I've been wheelin' and dealin'. All I need is a cheap tweed coat with leather patches at my elbows and I could be dodgy salesman of the year. If someone says hello to me, I say, "Hey do you need a microwave?" or "You look tired, want to buy a chair to park your arse on?"

There's only a month until we skip the country, so we're selling a lot of our worldy goods. We were supposed to have a garage sale tomorrow, but I've managed to offload so much of our stuff to friends and people at work that there's not enough left to have one. We've had people fighting over furniture, minor bidding wars and one packrat Mothership attempting to hijack the whole event.

MOTHERSHIP:  You're not selling that toaster are you?
RHIANNON:  Yes we are selling that toaster.
M:  Can I have it?
R:  You already have a toaster!
M:  But my toaster might die! There could be a toast situation. I need backup!

This whole thing is so surreal. It would appear things are winding up, doors are closing. Our furniture collection is slowly eroding, the gym membership has expired, we've given notice on our flat, there's moving boxes everywhere, they've found a replacement for me at work. I'm watching this flurry of activity with my usual absentminded blahness and can't comprehend that I am actually leaving.

And I don't want to stop and think about it, because then the panic kicks in and I start running around in small circles, muttering what if i can't find a job what if noone understands my accent what if all my friends forget me what if we can't find somewhere to live what shoes am i supposed to pack?

BOSS:  We just interviewed someone to replace you. She's really good.
SHAUNA:  Oh yeah? Is she better than me?
B:  She's not that good.
S:  Well, good.
COLLEAGUE:  Is she good looking?
B:  She's very good looking.
S:  Hmmph.
B:  And she's a snowboarder. Very athletic.
S:  Bah! I can't compete with that. I hate you all!

It was wonderful to see so many people sardined into Garema Place, getting all passionate and shouty. Afterwards they piled into the cafes like any other Saturday afternoon, except for the homemade peace signs cluttered at their feet.

Year 7, 1990. I used to watch the popular chicks draped over the bubblers at recess and wonder why the lads loved them so. Why had these girls nabbed the hottest (scrawny, arseless, crackly-voiced) boys in our grade? What did they have in common?

After a lot of scribbling in notebooks and scientific analysis, I concluded that the successful chicks all seemed to have huge, gravity defying fringes. That's bangs to you Americans.

These saucy babes had perfectly boring straight tresses in the back, but perched on their foreheads were magnificent works of art. The fringe stood noble, unmovable, a seperate entity. It was a careful construction, invariably bullied into place with half a can of hairspray.

There were a few different species. Some shot straight up like a picket fence, others spiked violently to one side like a backslash. Then there was the mushroom, my personal favourite. It had a distinct core, then each bit of hair had to be individually pulled outward so it fanned from the centre like petals on a (very tacky) flower.

I thought these chicks must have held the secret to man-snaring in their tidal waves of hair. Was there some mystical allure in their ponytails, scraped back so tight that their eyes narrowed like a cat? Was the scent of Taft SuperHold Laquer an aphrodesiac?

By the end of Year 8, everyone had adopted the freaky fringe, even me. But I was still no more successful with the lads than the bookworm with the body odor or the skanks that trolled the canteen lines asking, "Have you got five cents?"

Luckily I got older and realised that a particular hairstyle wasn't going to open the door to sweet sweet lovin'. There's no secret, no special formula to finding romance. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes even while you're having a really bad hair day.

There's a few people moaning about being alone on evil Valentine's Day today. Chin up, I say. There's friends and music and vibrators and chocolate and puppies to make you smile. And it could be worse, you could have a really stupid fringe.

You can vote now in the First Annual Nude Weblog Awards.

This here blog is up for the 'Weblogger We'd Like To See Nude' award.

UPDATE:  There's an awful lot of new people stopping by. Please say hello! You're freaking me out. And don't be put off by the recent crapness. There's archives!

I bought a pedometer yesterday. It is a very clever device - it tells you how many steps you've taken, how many kilometres you've roamed, how many calories you've burned and how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man.

People have told me pedometers are highly inaccurate, but I say pfft to that. I care not for precision instruments. I just wanted to try and beat the number of steps that I did the day before. Exercise is no fun unless there's some sort of petty challenge involved.

So clipped the contraption to my skirt and strolled out of the Sportsman's Warehouse thinking I was Ms Sportypants. I adopted a jaunty John Travolta Stayin' Alive kind of stride that I figured would definitely register on the pedometer. Oh yes. I felt so cool and so healthy and so convinced that by the time we departed in six weeks, I would be morphed into the foxiest thing Scotland has ever seen.

Then POW! Right outside the Canberra Centre in a crowded lunchtime, the heel of my left shoe snapped off. My ankled wobbled wildly and I said, "Ooof!". I staggered across the tiles in ungraceful fashion, handbag swinging as I swore.

The next hour was spent sulking and stomping around the shops in search of a replacement for shoes I bought barely three months ago. It's hard enough trying to find dainty summer footwear for a size 10 hoof as it is, let alone when the Christmas sales are over and the winter stock is coming in. After five different salespeople in four different stores rolled their eyes at my predicament, a young gentleman finally shoved my feet into a pair of size 9 mules and declared it a perfect fit. Such a Cinderella moment.

But as soon as I clopped my way back to the office, I realised these boots weren't made for walking. So I switched back to the broken shoes and went back to the shoe store and whined until they gave me a refund.

I was still shoeless, but all that mucking about added up to 3500 steps. Woohoo!

The recent bushfires came nowhere near Goulburn, where The Mothership resides. But she was determined to be prepared for the worst. So what did she do? Fill her gutters with water? Hose down the roof? Pack up all her ornamental chickens?

No. She got some animal tranquilisers. So she could knock the dog out in the event of an evacuation.

"Well do you have a better way of getting Bert into the car?" she protested, "He wouldn't bloody stay still long enough."