It's Claire as mud

After sitting with my eyes crossed for the better part of an hour trying to understand what the incredibly badly dressed scientist was presenting to an auditorium full of people who kept nodding and saying ‘mmmm’ thoughtfully, I accepted my fate that without a science degree it was unlikely I would ever properly understand what assays, interlukin 6 receptors and epigentics are.  Concerning, seeing as it’s my job to actually communicate this to others. What is even more concerning is it made me realise there are other things in the world that I cannot understand, no matter how many times it is explained, and I don’t have the excuse of sciencey-big bang theory-gobbledegook to hide behind, like:

The electricity bill. I do an automatic fortnightly debit, but it doesn’t cover it all, so why when I try to pay the difference, I get rebuffed. Why doesn’t a huge money sucking, electricity producing, environment destroying conglomerate want my money? Is it not good enough for you? Fine by me!

My super. This is something for future Claire to worry about. Next!

Health insurance. This is quite embarrassing, but I don’t think I quite understood it until I found myself thousands of dollars out of pocket following a recent minor operation. Not to mention the other thousands of dollars I have been paying them for years and years thinking my transformation into the bionic woman would have already been paid for by now.

One Direction and Justin Beiber. Back when I was a teenager (the last millennium – sooooo long ago), the swoon worthy blokes had a bit of an edge and it was attractive that they spent less time on their hair than you did. Those One Direction (or Wand Erection as a friend dubbed them – teehee, penis joke!) boys seem to be the human embodiment of a Ken doll manufacturing line. Don’t they know there is a formula to boy bands? Duh! Where’s the ‘bad’ one? And where’s the sensitive one? And where’s the funny one? Oh and that blipping Justin Beiber, his diamond earring is larger than Kim Kardashian’s circus, sorry, I mean engagement, ring. It doesn’t exactly scream masculine, does it? Give me Zack from Saved by the Bell and Dylan from 90210 any day, even if the latter is probably about to be shipped off the local nursing home.

Sushi. I can’t quite bring myself to eat raw fish and even the ones without the fish have that icky cream cheese smothered all over it. Why is cream cheese perfectly acceptable on a bagel, but when it’s squeezing out between sticky rice and squishy avocado it makes me want to find a bucket immediately? Despite being from Queensland and not eating sushi, I’m not a complete red-neck… I have eaten some adventurous things for the record. Like a possum and no, I didn’t find it on the side of the road! It was in a very fancy restaurant, thank you very much.

Women who claim g-strings are comfortable. These traitors to the sisterhood obviously have a higher pain threshold than I or are experts at lying to themselves. No, of course my arse doesn’t look big in this horizontally striped tube skirt. I can’t help but think that people who manage to convince themselves that a strap of fabric wedged up their clacker and credit card swipe is comfortable would be the same people that think the moon landing was fake, Elvis is still alive, Harold Holt is on a Chinese submarine and Tony Abbott is a friend of woman-kind. Bring back the bloomer, I say. Prude? Who me?

Salary packaging.  Yawn. Just give me the money and make good on the promise that it’s still income-friendly to work for a charity.

Don’t fret, Delta. Those extensions should be sewn in – you don’t need to hold on.

Delta GoodremWhy is she Australia’s Sweetheart? She has bad hair extensions, even worse eyelash extensions and an out of control ego. How she managed to turn mentoring a lovely, talented, young blind girl into an opportunity to talk about herself, is beyond me. The insincerity is astounding. Oh, and here’s a tip, Delta: if you’re going to pretend to be upset, please at least muster up enough liquid or get hold of some belladonna so you can squeeze out at least one tear so we can all be slightly convinced. Although some neo-hippie yammering on about never being more connected to the universe than right now makes me produce enough tears (of laughter) that I’m happy to share.

Ok, I’ve probably (not inaccurately) painted myself as a flaming moron and before you ask yourself ‘how does she not fall over more often?’, ask yourself ‘what don’t I get?’ and please share!

Everybody needs good neighbours, according to Barry Crocker and he ain’t lying.  Unfortunately, when you buy a new home you don’t know if you’re moving next door to the Rafters or the Milats.  In recent, but already forgotten, times of real-estate boom, you could barely check if the house had a toilet, let alone if your hi-de-ho neighbour was actually John Wayne Gacy, before you made an offer or got trampled by overexcited moguls-to-be.

The different homes in which I’ve lived since leaving the well feathered nest of my folks have presented some interesting fencesharers.  The randy possums having a nightly orgy on my parent’s roof were a walk in the park compared to the antics of some of my more recent, but less furry neighbours.

Living in the Brisbane embodiment of Melrose Place might sound totally awesome, but let me assure you having neighbours jump in the pool after their mid-week coke binge and proceeding to have sex right outside your window at 4am is not fun.  And on a school night!  Yes, too old to live there even at 24.

Nevermind the flamboyant flight attendant coming home from his shift at 1am, bitchily hissing and lisping into this mobile phone to his boyfriend.  It wasn’t just the mobile domestic that was disturbing, but the 22 kilos of duty-free Clarins products being dragged up the stairs, banging each metallic step on his ascent.  I hope your Beauty Flash Balm exploded all over the deezigner underpants, JustJack.

Then there was the disturbing bloke in the building across the road who would pull out binoculars to have a good old sticky beak into our units… no nudey runs from the bathroom for the residents of Vernon Terrace or Pervy McCreepy will get an eyeful of you in the nicky-noonah.

The next step was to remove myself from the hipster outskirts of Brisbane’s CBD and upon Mr C’s and my arrival to our nicely clapped-out inner-North unit, Tony* seemed normal.  Cut to Tony playing talk back radio (why?!) at ultra-sonic levels for eight hours straight overnight and being sprung trying to clamber over the lattice work of our ground-floor neighbours Rex and Carol.

Tony’s evening listening paled into comparison with another neighbour, who’s name we never discovered, but was dubbed ‘that alco on the second floor’ after the police had to be called at 11.30pm on a Sunday following three hours of window rattling Triple M.  I never care if I hear ‘Beds are burning’ one more time.  Our neighbour had drunk himself into such a stupor he could not hear the marvellous mix of Guns’n’Roses, Cold Chisel and misogynistic DJ’s, despite operating at levels deaf roadies could hear with earplugs at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

And our delightful neighbour across the hall’s welcome wagon included accusations of putting rubbish in her bin less than two hours after moving in.  When she could not find the phantom rubbish bandit, she pulled out said rubbish covered in maggots and left it in the garden.  This happened more than once.

Tired of rubbish-related finger pointing and cracked foundations from poor radio station choice, Mr C and I headed to a complex that housed more cranky senior citizens than back to back Seinfeld episodes featuring George’s parents.  On meeting our neighbour, Cheryl* listed everything she hated about the previous owners.  Can you believe they had a four year old they let play in the yard?  That would sing and laugh?  I don’t think they realised they’d moved next door to the fun police – no fun allowed.  Nor washing dishes after 5pm apparently.  ‘I can hear everything.’  Really?  Can you hear me say someone in number 12 needs to get laid?

Cheryl wrote notes to body corporate about us.  She complained how noisily we closed our door.  She yelled over the fence to ‘shut the eff up’ at 7pm to a group of eight friends on Boxing Day for laughing in our yard.  Result: we put our house on the market within six months of moving in.

The clanger hit the following Australia Day.  While enjoying the Hottest 100 at about 2pm she called Mr C demanding some quiet.  Mr C feeling bold on some festive lemonades told Cheryl to bugger off.  I went over to apologise for Mr C’s words, but appealing to her sensibilities were pointless.  When asking Cheryl to lower her voice, she claimed she had to scream to be heard over our racket.  The racket which I was straining to hear from her doorstep.  I asked when we should be entertaining our friends to be told never.  On explaining to her she was the reason our house was on the market, Cheryl said she didn’t care and hoped someone more considerate bought our place.  I hoped the local chapter of Bandidos would come to our next inspection.

Are you neighbours more like Mike and Carol or Peggy and Al?

It culminated in Cheryl calling the police on our Sing-Star send off when we sold the place many months later. A heated driveway debate the following morning did nothing to dull my ire, probably because I didn’t get to use my verbal daggers of ‘it’s no wonder you live alone’ and ‘you’ll probably die alone too’.

Justice  has not been served so I still get an intense urge to purchase rotten eggs and prawn heads every time I drive through Hendra.

Following our militant banshee co-dweller, living on a main road with a drug den across the street and two-minute-noodle gobbling student neighbours seemed preferable.

The occasional 3pm to 9am party, the intermittent shriek of ‘OMG, he SO did not say that!’ and the overly chatty Frenchman talking on Skype at 10pm every night and blowing the remnants of an entire packet of cigarettes through our living room window, really isn’t that terrible after living next to the residential equivalent of North Korea.

Even the regular domestics at our friendly neighbourhood drug dealer’s and calling the ambulance for young ladies passed out on our footpath after downing too many dodgy eccies at the Normanby can’t dampen my spirits following the reign of Cheryl Guddafi.

So the moral of the story is dodgy neighbours suddenly seem the new millenium equivalent of Mr and Mrs Brady after living next door to the Bundys – Peggy, Al or Ted.

*Tony is not his real name, but slightly unhinged loner with atrocious taste in radio/ cat burglar isn’t very catchy.

*Cheryl is her real name, and I share it because she was the most hideous human being I have ever encountered.

Wrinkles, bad knees, making noises when you stand up and thinking 8.30pm is a perfectly acceptable bed time aren’t the only bad things about getting older, having the joy and fun sucked out of what is meant to be a fun game by a bunch of old bats with band-aids over their revolting acrylic fingernails are another.

Want to meet new people?  Join a sports team, they say.  I’m all for being a good sport, but some people and rules make games like netball, hockey and any other activity running around in groups all dressed in the same outfit largely unpleasant – as if wearing the same outfit as someone better looking than you isn’t bad enough.

Can you tell my re-entry to team sports as an adult did not go well?

Deciding to join a netball team at 27 was not a wise decision to start with.  Athleticism was never really a word used to describe me.  Clumsy, klutzy and slower-than-an-Adelaide-Street-bus-at-peak-hour were perhaps slightly more accurate.  Did I also mention that the last time I played netball Vanilla Ice was the shiz and Hypercolour was haute couture?  So maybe I had forgotten some rules in the space of 16 years.

Despite explaining to my team that I it had been more than half my lifetime since I played and that I had all the sporting grace and coordination of Elaine Benes on the dance floor, they were mainly friends or people I already knew and were very kind and accepting of my lack of sporting prowess.  I then had the pleasure of meeting Anna*, who was a friend of an acquaintance on the team.   There were a couple of us who either had not played at all or had not played since the last millennium, which Anna did not take kindly to.  She was in fact overheard saying, “I was in A Grade netball in high school…”  “Can’t expect me to play with a bunch of amateurs…” and “well, at least they’re not fat.”

First of all, Anna – you’re 25 and school was a long time ago, get over your A Grade glory.  Secondly, it’s Boondall’s C Grade women’s netball, it’s the lowest grade possible, who did you think you’d be playing with other than a bunch of amateurs?  And finally thanks for the vote of confidence, Liz Ellis, but I soon learned that being a boombah didn’t actually hamper sporting ability.

The fabulous Sharon Strezlecki from Kath & Kim

The team we first faced off against collectively made Sharon Strezlecki from Kath & Kim look like Elle McPherson.  There is a breed of woman in her mid forties onwards, who smokes regularly, thinks chiko rolls are enough to cover your daily intake of vegetables and almost exclusively hang out at either tuckshops, netball courts or urban fringe RSL clubs.  This was our opposition.  Don’t let the rotund exterior fool you.  Beneath the heaving mass of permed hair, nicotine stained fingers and love handles that could more accurately be described as shelves, beats the heart of a ruthless athlete.  Instead of a slow lumber up and down the court, we were confronted with streaks of pleated netball skirt and hot pink bibs.  The fact that half time heralded a long awaited ciggie break did not dampen the speed and surprising lung capacity of these unlikely netball goddesses.

In game two I learned that netball is in fact a contact sport, despite being lied to repeatedly.  Being on the receiving end of a rather generously proportioned tush push that wound up with me lying on my back like a dead cockroach and being kicked in the shin more than once left me in no doubt that netball is actually nastier than sports with large sticks or bats – at least they involved shin pads and mouth guards.

In game four I learned that not only was Anna a complete beeotch, but an over theatrical banshee that may end up getting a job on Home and Away or an Italian soccer team thanks to her less-than-refined dramatics. The fact that my very limited ability hadn’t even improved to mediocre levels obviously irked our self-declared Captain Anna.  I had unfortunately been assigned a position I had never played before and had no idea where I was meant to be on the court.  The charming umpire wench didn’t think it was necessary to explain to me why I kept getting pulled up for doing something wrong – so I had no clue as to what foul I was making.  Until Anna shrieked across the court and stormed over, ‘Claire you effing (it wasn’t the word effing, but I’m a lady) moron.  You effing stand there, not there.  Do you understand?!’  During this she grabbed me by the shoulders, shook them and planted my feet on the other side of the line.  I was so enraged by her carry on that I couldn’t even respond.  I did what she asked, but silently willed her a minor injury – a broken nail perhaps?  Hazzah!  Not five minutes later, Anna received a swift shove from one of our opponents and a sprained ankle to boot.  Suck it and spare me the wailing, ankle-clutching and rolling around on polished floorboards.  While everyone fussed over her, I made (probably very unconvincing) appropriate, sympathetic noises.  Enjoy your ride home in the wahmbulance, you horrible cow.

In game five I learned that karma certainly does exist because I sprained my own ankle, probably for delighting in the misfortune of Miss Congeniality, Anna, just a little too much.

After seven games, swelling on my ankle that took three weeks to subside, being yelled at by a team mate, pushed over by superannuated Mean Girls and suffocated by fedoobedahs (you may know them as bingo wings), my return to netball came to a close.  Now I exercise in air-conditioned gymnasia watching Karl Stefanovic saying something inappropriate or half-naked women gyrating around rappers wearing more jewellery than Elizabeth Taylor ever owned in her life.  No, it still isn’t pleasant, but now if I fall over it’s my own fault and the only fedoobedahs I have to worry about are my own.

How have your forays into team sport during adulthood gone?

*Anna is obviously not her real name, but Anna is much easier to say than ‘short, bitter woman who left her glory days behind when she left high school’.

It’s only Poosday, and I’m already wishing it was the end of the week.

A two-hour meeting that went around in circles and achieved nothing had me wishing for bomb threat on the building we were in, but to pass the time (and look like I was taking notes) I instead compiled a list of the things that annoys the sweet bejesus outta me.

It’s incredibly cathartic and I would highly recommend it next time you’re stuck in a completely useless conference or trapped on a train that has had a 40 minute delay due to a track fault at Bowen Hills while you practice holding your breath thanks to your seat mate who thinks deodorant is optional in Queensland in February.

Other than pointless meetings, it goes a little something like this:

When people confuse your and you’re.  Your constant use of your and you’re incorrectly just proves that you are an idiot.

Their, there and they’re. Very much in the same vein as your and you’re.  Grrr.

‘So Jane and myself went into town’ – it’s Jane and I, you moron.  Are you saying myself because you think it makes you sound more intelligent?  Saying a two-syllable word doesn’t make you any smarter.  In fact, it makes you infinitely more stupid in this case.

Wow, someone’s a grammar Nazi.  ‘There’s no need to be rude to Jane and I’ – in this case it’s Jane and me, you twat.  If Jane wasn’t there would you say ‘there is no need to be rude to I’?  Unless someone has an Oedipus complex.  And why is this Jane broad hanging out with you when you can’t even speak properly?

People posting ‘sexy’ pics of themselves on Facebook.  Ughhh, you’re female, you’ve got boobs, we get it.

Guys posting photos without their shirts on.  I don’t care if you doubled as a shirtless waiter while studying law at UQ, you will always be seen as a shirtless waiter now, thanks to that hideous Chippendales profile pic.

Sorry Mums out there, but I really don’t need to witness the minutiae of every single milestone of your child.  I am so happy you’re enjoying being a Mum, but I have had to temporarily hide your Facebook profile because I don’t want to know that ‘Braxton did his first poo in a big-boy toilet today’ and ‘Trying not to laugh as Tarquin sings along to Glee’.  Hint – Tarquin is SUPER gay.  ‘I am so blessed to be a Mummy to my three beautiful children’.  Glad you think you’re blessed, the rest of us think you’re the disseminator of devil spawn and cast members from Children of the Corn IV.

Totes, OMG, LOL, IMHO, WTF.  Seriously, WTF?  OMG, it’s totes not that hard to type a few more letters.

‘I literally died’.  Well reincarnation must be true then because I thought you figuratively died.

Jamie Oliver’s man-of-the-people talk.  ‘Play me a tune, brutha.’  Go home and help your poor wife look after all your ridiculously named children, you stupid man.

Jamie Oliver is the one on the right.

People who get on the bus with no intention of catching it, but to ask the driver for directions or for advice on what other bus to catch.  Some of us need to get home quickly so we can go to the toilet!

Hey!  It turns out that meeting wasn’t a waste of time after all – I feel so much better!

What annoys the poop out of you?

Why do celebs think we’re interested in their opinions on social issues? 

Frankly, I find Shane Warne completely terrifying and amusing all at the same time.  It’s hard to take a man who’s skin tone resembles an Oompa Loompa after a tumeric marinade and eyebrows that are rapidly crawling towards his (Advanced Hair, yeah yeah) hairline seriously.

Warney's next step in hair replacement?

So why should the cyclists of Oz give a poop about what this formerly fat sportsperson desperately trying to recapture his youth by staging a sporting comeback and dating the mother of all WAGS thinks about cyclists? 

By the way, how much of a freakin’ chameleon boyfriend is Warney?  As if he would have lost a small child in weight and got all that Botox if he wasn’t batting so far above his average in the girlfriend stakes.  Shurley is such a ridiculous spectacle that I just can’t look away.  That is an atrocious/fabulous reality show waiting to happen.

And Mark Wahlberg, please stick to producing awesome television shows and stop talking out loud.  Apparently Marky Mark (that’s Mr Mark to you) believes he could have prevented 9/11. 

I do wonder if Mr Mark has not yet realised that cameras have stopped rolling and that faced with an actual deadly situation, most people don’t miraculously leap up and start kicking some bad guy ass. 

Life is not a badly choreographed ninja movie where badies line up one by one to get their bots handed to them, so I’m not quite sure the former CEO of the Funky Bunch could have single-handedly saved the lives of over 3000 people. 

It might be a different kettle of fish if Chuck Norris was around or Miss Piggy.  Hi-ya!