Who's your hero?

Today contained a bit of a shock, actually.


I decided to email one of my old university lecturers – my creative and intellectual hero, actually – because I need an academic reference. It has been a long time since I’ve studied, but I felt confident that he’d remember me because that’s just how he made his students feel – as though the hard work they did was memorable. He terrified me in my first year; tore me to pieces and then taught me how to write all over again, without all the arrogant pretence and b.s. that came from excelling at English in high school. I still remember the heartache of being told that my gingerbread house analogy in a story about suburban wicca was a contrived waste of words, a disappointment I wasn’t sure I could recover from. And yet I did, and in the process of growing as an artist he made me feel amazing about my ability to write. Perhaps more memorably, for me, he inspired a confidence that allowed me feel as though my opinions were as valid as anybody else’s – a position this timid girl struggled with amongst the highly critical, assured students of the university Arts world. And I looked forward to hopefully meeting up for a coffee to discuss my latest writing proposal.

So it was a great shock, when I googled for his alumna email address, to stumble across his obituary instead.

You actually died some time ago, Peter, and somehow in not noticing I feel as though I’ve not paid you the respect that you deserve. Even worse, though I teach to inspire students just as you did, I write drivel – and this is not your legacy at all, but my laziness.

I will do better.

R.I.P. Dr Peter Davis.

Una bella bambina

This week saw the most amazing event, the birth of little baby Isla. And I admit, I got too far ahead of myself with this one. I looked over my blog and thought, well if I can illustrate a blog, I can certainly do my own gift card for a new born baby and two of my dearest - and apparently accommodating - friends.

So I did.

The problem is, as I handed the card over, after basking all day in the warmth of how special I thought my effort was, I suddenly realised that I"M the one who's slightly special. And not in a good way. Unfortunately, my proxy niece found out after only a day and a half of being alive that her Aunty Katmol is slightly twisted. This was not my intention. Sad face. But I'll show you the card, and you can judge for yourselves:

But it gets worse.

On Wednesday, I decided the whole faculty at school should see my brilliance. (Actually, that's not true - I was feeling like an idiot and decided to INFLICT my idiocy on the whole faculty at school.) And so I sent them all a Christmas picture over the email.

It looked like this:

The only saving grace is that another teacher was so impressed, they wanted to borrow it to send out to their faculty. Yep - that is a true story. Not lying. Can only imagine she was being nice and perhaps wanted to spare me the humiliation I had caused myself. Or they are laughing. their. head. off.

Yeah, that must be it.

But what a nice lady to pretend!

Anyway, now that I am actually taking comissions for free Christmas cards, I am sure Penguin are going to ring me any day now, and ask me to illustrate my own picture book. And then Tamsin the turtle and I can retire to a beach house somewhere and drink Moet out of Magnums. And eat Magnums out of crystal champagne glasses!

And I can finish my story about Clemency Jones who eats fairy floss on the moon.

Why i should totes teach Italian. Part one.

Perche io dovrei insenare in Italiano. Prima parte. Ho fatto questo senza google traduttore. Questa e’ merda.

I don’t think “totes” is a word in Italian. When I move to Italy, I will make it one.

Today I supervised the year 10 Italian exam. It was very exciting because the Italian teacher actually believed I’d be able to answer any questions that might come up. I thought so too, until I opened the paper to see my arch nemesis right there at questions one thru five. I started sweating as pronomi leered at me from the pages, daring me to guess, goading me to pack my pistols for a dawn showdown with li, lo la and all the rest of the family.

Pronomi are the mafia of the Italian language, and I’m on the run.

I couldn’t read the rest of the paper after that. I’m still traumatised by being hit for getting the answers wrong. I’m sure that’s actually it; no one can be that mentally incapacitated as to not understand pronouns. But now you just have to mention the very word in Italian and I have flashbacks to the rage: the bulging neck, red cheeks, other students ducking for cover as the hand swings around to cuff my skull. The filthy toilet that didn’t flush, but was the only place to run and hide from the shame. Well, I didn’t run. Stiff upper lip and all that.

Yeah. Screw you pronomi.

Corporal punishment when you’re in your 30s. Must be a Catholic thing. Or a Sicilian thing. But I’m going with Catholic thing.

The Catholic Church has long given me grief. (And yes, I realise that I wasn’t going to Italian language lessons in an Italian church, but I’ve hit a tangent, so please let me go on.) I have strange problems with my wrists, for those of you don’t know. It’s not a big deal; I was born with it so I’ve very well learnt to deal with it. Basically, the joints are fused rather impractically, so that I can’t turn my hand out flat. It’s a bit of a pain, but the only people who’ve ever had an issue with it are also the ones who teach that God loves me the way I am.

Something preached but not practiced, me thinks.

When I was in prep, I wasn’t allowed to do PE. Why, you might ask? Well, I couldn’t do the sign of the cross because I can’t touch my shoulders properly. So I guess the crusty old nuns thought my immortal soul was in danger. It might seem like nothing to you, but I really did not like being taken into the basement and yelled at for not being able to touch my shoulders. I was timid enough as it was, thank you.

But it gets better! This year, at our extra special celebratory mass at work, the crusty old Bishop (they’re all crusty) wouldn’t give me communion until I held out my hand “properly.” He didn’t care that I couldn’t – he tried to FORCE my palm flat. Part of me wishes he’d broken my wrist, because I’d be a very rich woman now. Smiley face. But I was very upset. I don’t really know why. This wrist thing is actually a small part of a much bigger issue, and it’s the very people who you’re supposed to be able to lean on for support – the church elders – who make you feel the most like shit. And no, I would never lean on the church elders for ANY kind of support. But that's not the point.

Needless to say, no more Eucharist for me.

Anyway, somehow this blog just went from fun times about Italian, to me re-living images of nuns with a big wooden stick, in the wee hours of the morning. Good times!!
Here’s a picture to bring this back to a more upbeat place!

This is my dream vacation. And before you ask, I am not swimming in a muddy dam, or a bucket of excrement. Nor is it Oompa Loompa land - those things give me the willies. This is pure, unrefined melted chocolate and, unlike big, fat Augustus Gloop, I can swim in it.

I also have a money tree. If you'll pardon the pun, life is sweet!

Amen!!! (With no hands on shoulders. Crazy Mo-Fos.)

The Silly Season!

A rather inane post, but that’s the kind of mood I’m in – prone to ridiculous bouts of silliness. I think it’s the Christmas season. I’m assuming it’s this for a couple of reasons:

a)      I am obsessed by the idea of eating plum pudding, and just spent about an hour looking at ALL the food and nutrition statistics on ALL the different puddings, only to have my worst fears confirmed:  no, I cannot have plum pudding as I wait to win the Skinny Santa Challenge. I’m being such a hard arse that even though I went for an hour walk, uphill, followed by a forty minute bike ride, I am not allowed to have pudding. The end.

Merry Fucking Christmas to me!!!

b)      On my hour long walk, I sang Christmas carols the whole way. Loudly. And I didn’t care who heard me. And I daydreamed about meeting Santa and what I would ask for.

This is a picture of me and Santa. I know I’m sucking up, but I’m hoping that he’ll see this, and get me what I’ve always wanted.

Or I’ll break his legs off.

c)      Christmas is known as the silly season, and I am being very, very silly. For example, today I cleaned my entire desk. Totally wiped it down and everything. There is even a vase of flowers on there, because I felt in the mood for some extra ambience! (Note: I bought them, I did not steal them from the nun’s rose garden).

Why is this silly, you ask, and not a perfect example of cleanliness and hygiene? Well, if you know me at all you will realise that my brain is scrambled eggs on toast when it comes to normal things like filing and order and neatness. So, I’ve filed everything away today, tomorrow I won’t know where ANYTHING IS. And I knew this before I did it. Pure idiocy.

But it sure is pretty to have flowers at work. Even if you buy them yourself. Here is a picture of my flowers. 

It’s a splendid vase, too. The coloured bits flying off it are refractions of light because it’s made of crystal. Expensive crystal. I just happened to have it lying around. Smiley face.

Tonight I am going to win a Jellybean bike. That won’t be silly – that will be AWESOME! My current bike is like riding an exercise bike: you pedal and pedal and just never go any where. It weights about forty kilos, so I guess that’s why.I've had it for about four years now, which doesn't really make me silly - it makes me a moron.

(Note: I have never, ever put bike on the scales but it’s heavy. If you dropped it on the coyote’s head in a Warner Brother’s cartoon it would do the trick way better than an ACME anvil. No coming back from that one, coyote. You'd be dead for sure.)

I’d like to watch some Warner Brother’s Cartoons. In Italian. Now THAT’S silliness!

I want a jellybean bike!

I Have a Dream ...

I have some new goals that I would like to share with you. They are totes important, and have been the work of at least twelve hours of careful consideration. So they are not to be mocked. I will list them in order of them being achieved:


1. On Monday, I am going to win a Jellybean bike worth five hundred dollars. I have next to no idea how good a Jellybean bike is, but it will be free, so I will still be able to buy my Trek bike if a Jellybean bike is just a prettier more expensive version of the shithouse bike I have now. I am going to get a green one with blue wheels as I don’t believe “blue and green should not be seen unless there’s something in between” is still in vogue any more.

Besides, there will be something in between: the tyres are white. Awesome! I was going to get yellow and green, but then I realised I’m not sixteen any more.

2. I am going to finish the application for my PhD. I’ve kinda-sorta gone off the idea a little bit, because I think it will be a lot of work and I may end up hating the very sight of Jane Austen – which would fracture my very identity! – but I need to have my PhD to complete a dot point further on down the track. (It can’t be the next one as I have to do this in order of accomplishment and I will not be Dr K. Molony for a Very. Long. Time.)

3. I plan to try and scam Deakin University by also studying a degree in International Development at the same time – at the same uni - with a second major in Italian.

4. My reasons for this are simple: I have decided I want to work for the UN. Yes, you saw correctly. I want to go and help in refugee camps. True Story. The language part is not only because I foresee a few more Italians in refugee camps in the future, but a lot of these jobs (yes. I have already looked. I would have left yesterday) require a second language. Actually, they ALL require French, but I don’t want to learn French, and I don’t really want to go to Haiti either which is where a lot of these jobs are.

An interesting factoid that I only recently found out: Somalia was colonised by the Italians a long time ago. Maybe I could speak Italian there.

I doubt there are any refugee camps in Somalia though. I think that’s the point.

5. Oops. So, apparently I’m continuing my PhD from Somalia. I hope I have internet access.

6. I plan to stop making stupid deprecating jibes about things that are actually important to me. A lot earlier than dot point six, actually. My cynicism isn’t actually very funny. Well ...

7. I’ve graduated! Hooray!! I’m now about fifty-five years old! And I get to wear a ridiculous floppy hat - with Gold tassles!!!

You are right. I need to work on my tassle-drawing skills. But otherwise, this is what I will look like at 55. Not bad. Probably need to use the Clairol more often.

8. I am going to publish a memoir that will be completely self-illustrated. In Microsoft Paint.

9. I’ll be sitting on a plane on my way to a United Nations Conference in New York, which is where I now live, and someone will call out “Is anyone a Doctor?!” And I will pretend I am, because – well, I am. But only if I know it’s not serious. Which may be difficult because, unless they’re also teaching physiology in Doctorates of Philosophy these days, I will not have the training to tell. And then I will look stupid because I already lied.

I would like to scratch dot-point nine from the records.

10. I will look back on my life and sigh. Because none of this is what I really wanted. And I'm still being glib when I shouldn't be.

Bless You!

Sneezing is bullshit.


No, seriously.

Some people think it must be a joy to sneeze all the time, and I am here to tell those people: you are wrong. And for all those juvenile anthropologists-come scientist-come-gullible suckers who are about to jump in and give some smart arse, ill-researched quip about sneezing eight times in a row and its equivalency to, well ... my parents read this blog ... again, you are wrong. WRONG!

Go on! Actually sneeze eight times in a row and you’ll see what I mean. It is actually equivalent to being hit in the nose with a brick! A brick which then splinters into fragments that lodge themselves in your sinuses. Before they explode , like cluster bombs, right at that point where your nose reaches your forehead. ish.

And this is so NOT like the other thing. (And if it is for you, then my condolences. You fucking sadist.)

This week, as Melbourne’s weather decides whether or not to be manic or depressive, I haven’t stopped sneezing. At first, hayfever kicked my arse as spring finally sprung. Sprung like a ninja! I hate Spring. I swear to god, I cannot go outside without sneezing right now. There’s even an area of the yard at work, between the rose bushes and the daisies, where I will sneeze EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Today I walked past there five times in the space of about twenty minutes. That equals roughly 60 sneezes. And one mighty big headache. I once researched it – google doctor – and apparently I have something called ACHOO syndrome. It’s where the sun makes you sneeze. No, I’m deadly serious. I’ve had this belief since I was eight years old - the fact that a doctor who hadn’t even been born when I was eight is now confirming my diagnosis makes it true. It also makes me at LEAST as smart as google doctor. I'm not sure if I should be crowing about that.

It’s confirmation of what I’ve always suspected: I am allergic to being outside. I hate outside! (The symptoms miraculously go away when I am lying down at the beach, lying down in the park ... and that is all. Yard duty outside causes anaphylaxis. And so does exercise!)

And now, as the weather turns nasty, and then humid, and then nasty again, my sinuses have decided they enjoy being clogged up with the green-mucous equivalent of a tampon, and they’re completely blocked. Bring on the spring-time cold – one of the most joyous experiences known to man. And my second of the spring! I’ve obviously been a VERY good girl this year!

Why is it so much worse to have a cold outside of winter? Or is it just me? Doped up on kick arse pseudoephedrine and codeine, am I going to far – like comparing snot to tampons just maybe went too far?

It’s my nose, though. My green snot.

This is my depiction of the monster currently invading my olfactory system. Don't be fooled; he may look harmless, perhaps even slightly like a rather insane pear, but he's not. He's a virus, and you don't want to fuck with a virus - even one that's only been painted.

Apart from that, I don’t even know where the inspiration for this blog post came from – maybe the fact that I sneezed eleven times in a row just before I started. And I’m not exaggerating. There are droplets of sputum everywhere. I think.

What’s sputum?

There's a graveyard of tissues, anyway.
My record for sneezing is thirty six times in a row. That’s more than four bricks. Somehow, Bless You just doesn't cut it when you've just been cluster-bombed by four bricks!
What's your magic number?

Good times! (Or, I'll be a painter yet!)

I just had one of the best weekends - mostly because of the awesome people I spent it with, and a very haemorraghic monkey. And though there’s probably nothing I can write that will do justice to the usual biting cynicism that quite naturally goes along with this blog, I have the most amazing picture to share with you all! It took me FOREVER to do Sunday night in the ads of Underbelly, so I hope you will appreciate my growing prowess with the paintbrush/temperamental touch pad thingy on my computer, and not be mean.

If you are mean I will simply hope you get an airborn strain of Ebola that has not yet been identified yet, will bleed out of your every orifice until not even Dustin Hoffman will be able to save you. (Yes. Part of my glorious weekend involved Outbreak, a packet of chips and some mighty fine Cadbury Dairy Milk. I will draw you the monkey later, and maybe even my representation of someone with haemorraghic fever - though you won't like it; it will be grim.)

But these are my girls.

My first group sitting. Lol.

Those in it will recognise themselves in the incredible likeness! I have included the little babies in their mummy’s tummy’s – it was a baby shower, after all, so their presence must be noted. And it’s a pretty kick-arse couch, even if I do say so myself.

And obviously, I do!

I would have drawn genitalia, except that one might be a secret and the other one is a surprise. I think it’s a girl, though. I have an almost 100% track record of being wrong, however, so that might mean it’s a boy – not hedging my bets, just saying that I have no claims to being a psychic. I am extremely modest in my abilities and therefore do not profess to have attributes which clearly I do not. I can humbly attest to being good at nothing much in particular.

But if you say I’m crap at Microsoft Paint, I will kick your arse because CLEARLY I am monumentally awesome.

After the delights of my afternoon with my oldest, best-est friends, on Sunday I had an equally entertaining time at the Tutankhamen Exhibition.

You know what’s coming now, right?

This is Tutankhamen. I know! It’s just so realistic looking, I could seriously have pillaged it from the original tomb which was found by British plunderer – I mean archaeologist – Something Carter on the 4th of November 1922! I’d draw him, but I can’t even remember his name let alone what he looked like. I may also have the date wrong.

Good times, weekend, good times. Now, bring on the next one!!

(Also - ready to take commissions upon request! Ha ha ha ha ha).

Time to Pretend!!!

Another year, another million dollars.

Ok, neither of those statements are quite correct - but one is more correct than the other. (And yes, I would quite happily work the year all over again to have the OTHER one be correct; Dear Gypsies: please give me a million dollars or I will rip your face off.)

The year is not over, but it's time to pretend a little. I have finished teaching the poppets their normal, mainstream, pre-examination curriculum. And - no matter what - I have finished teaching year 10. There are no more year ten classes in 2011, and it is a most auspicious day!!!

Don't get me wrong; I actually loved my year tens, but they seem to have developed an irrationally early hankering to be done with school and not give two figs about anything to do with exams, which made revision reeaaallly hard work. But I still bought them chocolates, and even though they continued with their relentless apathy until the very end, I reasoned that if I punished them by NOT handing out the chocolates, I would end up eating 24 fun sized mars bars. So I caved on the promises that they would indeed send me their revision work over the email. That they would indeed study persuasive techniques and their purpose and effect on the reader.

Yes. Yes I am a huge sucker. Obsessively checking my email and getting more and more disappointed by the hour. Sad face. I also I ate a chocolate. Ok, two chocolates.

Four.

But even if I'm not really finished yet, or a million dollars richer, in six weeks time I will be standing on the dome of the Duomo. Here: I drew you a visual so you can picture me with my massive gelati and cafe!

Please note - neither me, nor the chiesa are to scale.
Neither is the gelati. Or the coffee.
I'm not very good at scales. Especially if I stand on them. I break them.
i leoni e le tigri e ... crap! What's bears?!! Oh My!

Four mars bars. Not even snickers. Such a waste.


On a brighter note, now that I have stunned you with yet another successful portrayal of both myself AND one of Italy's greatest landmarks (Suck on that Michaelangelo!), I am going to treat you to some real brilliance: one of my beautiful year 12 students sent me a drawing!! Knowing how much I wish to wake up in 1820 and marry Mr Knightley and wear bonnets, she showed me what I would look like - what I have looked like, in fact!

I've saved the best for last: here it is!

Time to pretend: I am Emma, and these fabulous girls are still in my class. Either that, or I am in Italy with Mr Knightley right now :-)