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I’m not an overly girly girl. I mean, I can be, if I feel like it! Look, I really enjoy getting all dressed up on occasion but you’ll never catch me at the races in a “fascinator” and stilettos just aren’t for me. I’m too tall for one thing – I detest towering over men – my poor old bone grafted toe isn’t quite up to bearing my body weight for hours on end. Also, I like to be able to walk and not hobble. Run if needs be.

And I’d rather not be completely crippled with a shocking back and knees by the time I’m ninety. There’s plenty of stuff I’d still like to be able to do at that age.

I’ve been feeling a tad strung out of late. Partly it’s the commute from deepest darkest Suburbia-Urbia to work (gotta find a new pad soon!), which requires me to be in the shower at 6am in order to take a bus and two trains to get to work at 9am. Yeah.

And then there’s the coffee. I gave up my one cup a day habit (okay, perhaps it sneaked up to two more often than I’d care to admit) around six years ago. It’s the fault of this gag-worthy doco that pointed out in graphic detail just what coffee does to the body. In short – it leaches calcium from the bones to deal with the onset of adrenaline caffeine creates upon ingestion. Kinda gross.

Not exactly conducive to a long life either.

With the extended commute each side of my day right now, I confess I’ve stooped to drinking coffee again. Every weekday morning. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and let’s face it – Australian coffee does have an utterly glorious aroma. Not like the shite they pass off as coffee over the pond in the US! 😉

As a Metal Boar (Chinese Horoscope) I definitely and utterly fall into the category of the die-hard sensualist. And I’m liking that morning coffee far too much. More than that, I’m suffering the climb-the-wall anxiety that apparently goes hand in hand with imbibing an adrenaline pumping drug for the first time in ages.

The caffeine hit lasts all day long – I get that tense feeling pretty much all over and my scalp itches.

Anyway, this afternoon I found myself sitting in a pink decóred “Hair & Nails” salon directly underneath my offices: Hannah’s. It’s convenient and cheap, with Asian love songs blaring and a lucky golden waving cat at the front door. The girl/women workers barely speak English – not that it matters – and laugh at almost anything I say.

Usually my attempts at self-pampering include a pedicure, or a massage. At a stretch, I might indulge in a facial once in a blue moon. But not today. I’m there, almost inconceivably, to subject myself to a fake spray tan.

Never had one before. Not sure I’ll be doing it again in a hurry. I mean the result was good, but it just seems rather vain to me. Not to mention spraying chemical crap all over my body. And usually, I just don’t care so much how I look.

Geez, if I was still living in Sydney I wouldn’t even need to fake it. Up north I could effortlessly maintain a natural looking perma-tan from just wandering around. But in the deep south we just don’t get enough sun for that. Coming out of my first Winter here I was horrified to realise my skin was several shades of blindingly pasty white.

Right now I’m a pleasant faux light tan colour. That’s after twenty minutes standing in a room the size of a wardrobe stark naked ‘cept for the paper knickers they supply, begging the tiny Asian lady to not turn me orange and hoping she understood something of what I was saying.

The aroma of my skin isn’t anywhere near as nice as coffee though… but apparently it evaporates pretty quickly.

And I guess there’s a laté in my near future, just over seven hours away…

~ Svasti