(I have re-read this post and I want to be absolutely clear:  not one word of this is made up for the creative purposes of Quesera.  Mariska and Cat will vouch for this.  Chip can’t vouch – for reasons that become clear later on.  I know it is long and exceeds Chip’s word limit but……it won’t take you as long to read as my nightly prayer ritual takes me.  Every night.)  

Mother Mary McKillop - or MMM to Quesera - brandy bottle not visible

As I think you may have deduced, I had what would be most accurately described as a radical Catholic upbringing.  For a variety of reasons I became a lapsed Catholic at some point in my career at Stigmata Girls’ College.

However, last year a change occurred.  To cut a rather long story short – a friend had a series of horrendous things happen to her and her family and following a number of events with mutual friends during which that family’s plight was canvassed at length I said, jokingly, that I would start praying to Mother Mary McKillop*.  These people are well aware of my formal status as a “lapsed Catholic” and therefore did not take my undertaking to start beseeching Mother Mary McKillop seriously.

However,  after my friend’s situation continue to decline, I decided that perhaps a prayer might not be out of place.  Certainly, it could not hurt, could it?

Given Chip’s position, “fundamentalist atheist” sums him up best, I opted not to share this information with him.  (This post is the first time he will see the full extent of it and I am scared that in his role as SYSADMIN, parts will be cut out.)  And as we sleep in different beds, at first there was no need to explain anything.  There would soon, however,  became some things that could require explaining.

Not Quesera's rosary beads - hers have VANISHED

At first, it all started out innocently enough.  There would be:  (1) “Our Father” (not as my Eastern Suburbs Catholic friends call it  “The Lord’s Prayer”, as clearly we are low church) (2) one decade of the rosary (3) then specific prayers directed to Mother Mary McKillop for my friend’s predicament (who I automatically also addressed as Mother Mary McKillop, St Mary of the Cross, for this is how she is known – I still use both during the prayer ritual, showing I have regressed to primary (i.e. elementary) school where everyone is known by their first name AND surname (last name)).  I stress for this post, and brevity only, she will be known as MMM.  I am not being sacrilegious.  Truly.

However, as the days and weeks wore on, my OCD kicked in.  No longer would this evening ritual be a 5 minute affair.  Somehow, and I really don’t know how, it became a 55 minute ordeal and would ultimately include St Jude, patron saint of lost causes (and my mother’s favourite saint), because I considered him the saint of last resort.  Initially, I was praying separately to first MMM, then St Jude, then return to MMM but at some point a tiny shard of common sense must have intervened because I combined them, and I think my explanation to the saints went along the lines of:  “l just felt guilty sending you away MMM while I prayed to St Jude, then bringing you back so in the interests of saintly comity, I thought I should make it a joint thing to you both. I hope that’s ok”.

And then the ritual really took off.

First, there came the addition of additional prayers:  the “Glory Be”, “Hail Holy Queen” (I have misremembered the words, and my version is like a pigeon recital of barely remembered words dimly recalled from my distant childhood – I eventually Googled to see how off I was), one which I will call “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” (this is described as MML&J in this post, again for brevity) and another “As I lay me down to sleep” (at first I was going to make you Google these but as one of them is material to this post I have repeated them, in full.  Well, insofar as I remember them).

“Matthew, Mark, Luke and John/ Bless this bed I lie upon/ If I die before I wake/ I prayer the Lord my soul to take“.  (These 2 lines have some importance.)

And: “As I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep”.

(The similarity in the final lines of these prayers is somewhat suspicious and it looks clearly like whoever “crafted” these prayers was having a bad day and resorted to blatant canonical plagiarism, but I guess we need to forgive and move on.  I’m sure that’s somewhere in the Bible.)

Then there was a change in how I would say the decade of the rosary.  No longer could I blithely rattle off 10 “Hail Marys”, I actually had to concentrate on the words as though I were truly, devotedly, offering my supplication.  Which of course meant I had to say them out loud.  Because somehow, my OCD whispered to me, this focussed my mind.  But given I no longer even OWN rosary beads, I have to count the Hail Marys on my fingers which inevitably leads me to losing count  and of course  OCD demands I add at least one more just to be on the safe side.

In time, added to this was a new requirement:  I had to learn the Hail Mary in Italian.  The reason for this remains resolutely unclear.  There is nothing I have seen or read of MMM which indicated that she was of Italian origin – quite the contrary as she was Irish – but still the OCD dictated that I had to find and memorise this prayer.  This took me a few days.  I have no flair for languages and anyway I was quite disconcerted by the fact that that the Italian translation did not use the formal Victorian** pronouns of “thee”, “thou” and “thy” but rather used the second person “te”, “tu” and “tuo”.  Notwithstanding this reservation, I persevered and this was slotted in at the end of the decade of the rosary, but prior to the “Glory Be”.

And then came the real issue for conjugal bed sharing – somehow, for no apparent reason, I now had to twist over in my bed and on the 3rd and 8th Hail Marys, clutch onto my wooden bedhead, for the second part of the Hail Mary.  This also had to be done for the two lines of MML&J underlined above.  To do this necessitated a full body twist and then either a two fingered or three fingered grasping of the bedhead, depending on the prayer (Hail Mary only required 2 fingers, MML&J mystifyingly demanded 3 fingers).

In parallel with these prayer content and delivery specifications, there came what seemed to be an exponential increase in the number of people prayed for.  I went from 1 family to, at current count, 27 people.  The List.  All in the same order.  Couldn’t be varied.  And around the time of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami I added in a generalised prayer for the victims of that as well.  (However, after a while I felt that I mustn’t confine myself to one natural disaster so I now have a catch-all of:  earthquake, tsunami, cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, tornado, flooding, catastrophic fire, avalanche.  There is a corresponding catch-all for human induced atrocities:  war, civil unrest, genocide, discrimination or persecution on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, religion, creed, colour etc and now with the east African situation, that’s in there too.  For completeness, these last 2 grounds aren’t directed at MMM and St Jude – they need to go straight to Jesus – and when I ask that the dead victims go to heaven, with him I have to preface this with “in accordance with your standard operating procedure”, because otherwise I feel like I am telling Jesus what to do.)

Initially I gave MMM and St Jude quite a detailed history of all the people on The List I was praying for:  I pray for so-and-so, she has type 2 diabetes and as a consequence is legally blind”.  (This friend also mentioned that  St Clare was the patron saint of the blind so she had to be invoked as well.  So until, well tonight, I had been praying to Santa Clara which was actually her name and she allegedly had a thing with San Francesco of Assisi – but Cat and I still feel responsible for the earthquake that almost destroyed San Francesco’s church as we had been discussing, um, oral sex while we were in the crypt not long before the earthquake, so just to be safe I won’t dwell on that tryst.)

St Clare, Patron Saint of TV - this item can be purchased on-line - Google it

(But then I Googled tonight to be sure and in fact Santa Clara is the PATRON SAINT OF TV who was canonised as such by Pope Pius XII apparently in 1958 – so begging for her intercession for my friend’s blindness has been a waste of countless hours, unless she is somehow receiving better TV reception – which given she is BLIND would be of NO fucking assistance to her ANYWAY.)

The only time I get any respite from this is when I am, well, drunk and I point out to MMM that I am sure she would understand given her reputed fondness for more than a nun-size serving of brandy.  If she is seeing what I am going through each night, she might even be urging me to hit the bottle more often.

But with 27 people something or someone had to be culled.

I shared my concerns with Other Jackie and Al during our Girls’ Weekend Away and they, despite being quite understandably taken aback, possibly appalled, by my disclosure, wisely counselled that it was probably not necessary to recite all the particulars every night for every person.  I could rely on MMM and St Jude to remember some of the details from the night before.  They were saints after all, not Rupert Murdoch reciting monotonously “I cannot recall the details”.

Now the full-blown back story is only given for 11 or so people.  For the others, there is a bare recital of:  name, short description of ailment or problem, prayer for intercession.  I felt that this was an immense improvement and shaved a good 15 minutes off each night.

I don’t know if you know anyone with OCD, but these changes in my prayer routine were momentous.  (The obvious word here is “miraculous” but I am not going there.)

As the months wore on, 3 further changes became necessary:  first of all I had to institute a saints triage system – whereby those in most immediate need would be moved up The List, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.  This was necessary for the obvious reason that, well, sometimes there were so many people to pray for, I would fall asleep before the end.  The second change would be the thanking for answering my pleas for intercession as in “thank you very much for interceding to assist so-and-so, but I am still a little concerned with that law firm you have directed so-and-so to .  However, I guess you know best”.  Finally I added in a general mea culpa at the end to well and truly air my Catholic guilt for not going to Mass every week (or at all since the praying started) – in place of which I had elected to monopolise MMM and St Jude for an hour every night asking for stuff.  So I had to apologise for that.

But In June something happened.  It became apparent that the nightly twisting and clutching the bedhead had caused me a serious injury.  I ignored it for a few days and then in agony I limped off to see the physio, Maeve.  Who was, yes, an Irish 20 something here on a working holiday.  Notwithstanding our obvious Catholic commonality I was edgy about describing how I injured myself to Maeve.

And so I commenced the conversation with “look, this is really embarrassing…..” and I saw her shudder and a momentary expression of horror cross her face.  She thought that this 42 year old woman in need of “work” and suspected of being a burns victim was about to reveal some unspeakable sexual perversion that young Maeve had no stomach to hear, no matter how relevant to the treatment of my injury.  Seeing that she was beginning to look very uncomfortable with this line of disclosure, I should have been straight up about the cause of my injury – left shoulder injury (GP had ventured “torn rotator cuff”) caused by repetitive, nightly twisting at specific points of my prayer ritual.  But I honestly couldn’t.  Because I recognised, as I do now typing this, that I sound. Completely. Fucking. Mad.

So I simply said:  “look, I have various OCD rituals at night that I must do and some involve wood [more alarm and slight edging away from me, as she appeared to be visualising the ghastly image of me in full S&M gear with a wooden self flagellation object], no, no I mean I have to touch wood and that is it.  The end”.

To be blunt, Maeve looked scared shitless, like the last thing she wanted me to do was take my top off so she could get access to my shoulder to do her physio stuff.  God only knew what evidence my bare flesh would reveal.  Perhaps she too would conclude, for a completely different set of reasons than those held by the Clinical Beauty Consultant, that I “had gone too far“.

Anyway, following physio, valium and Panadeine Extra (™) the injury has improved, although the nightly prayer ritual had to undergo another variation on Maeve’s instructions.   “Twisting” (or whatever it was Maeve thought I was doing) is verboten.

But the siren song of OCD is hard to resist, and accordingly I was prompted by the triage system to undertake an exceptional twist last week, such was the gravity of the prayed-for person.  I did it.  And I am now back on the valium.  For the pain.

I didn’t add myself to The List so perhaps that’s the issue.  Either that, or I’ve seriously pissed MMM and St Jude off by combining them in my nightly prayer ritual and the shoulder injury is my punishment.

Yes, that’s the power of prayer.  All manner of things may be prayed for and some of them may even come to pass.  But. Not. One. Of. Them. can be objectively linked to my almost hour long nightly prayer ritual.  Except of course, MY FUCKING SHOULDER PAIN.

* I wanted to put some photos of the key saints in – but Chip has had to go grocery shopping and I don’t know how to do it, so he is going to do it tomorrow.  Or so he says.  Frankly I think he is still reeling from this post so may be disinclined to encourage any of this.  He even made me watch Religulous last night in and attempt to shock me into rationality

**  Possibly pre-Victorian, but it is 20 years since I studied semantics or whatever it would have been that was the source of such info at uni and I have forgotten

I know Prime Minster Julia Gillard has had a tough week and the sharks can smell blood and I don’t want to kick her when she’s down, but the likelihood of her ever reading anything I have written, even the gushing congratulatory email I sent to her Parliament House email address upon her seizure of the prime ministership last June, is non existent.

So I will go ahead and say it. I think she has had some botox in her forehead. And by the looks of things it is what the mags would pay a cosmetic surgeon to opine was “botched work”. Have a look. It is there. Right across her forehead is a horizontal crease like when you have had a tight fitting cap or perhaps a miner’s lamp* on and it looks like it has left an indentation. In short, I simply do not think it is a regular frown line.

And for those of you who think this would not be an issue if Julia were a man – I have one thing to say:  Shane Warne.  Yesterday morning I heard a full 10 minutes of breakfast radio devoted to examining this matter of immense significance to the Australian people, so no, this isn’t just because Julia is a woman.  And anyone who saw Modern Family this week knows that botox mishaps are not confined to women.

This is important to me because I want to get botox in my forehead. Because when I frown I look like Ike from South Park in that episode where he becomes “involved” with  a teacher Mary-Kay Letourneau-style.  I also want to get my lips done because I have a Pauline Hanson mouth**.

Of course I have raised this with my closest confidantes and the response has been mixed. But I was particularly interested in their views given the opinion offered by Chantal, a “Clinical Beauty Consultant” at a girls weekend away, that I had already “gone too far”.

Chip says if I do get any “work” done, he is going to get a tear drop tattooed on his cheek so I have a permanent reminder of my “foolishness”***. Mariska asked me to frown so she can see what the point is (she didn’t admit to seeing anything requiring botox, but then I doubt she would sanction work of any kind). People in the bathrooms at work often see me in there inspecting my forehead and ask what I am doing. They all demur that “no, no, it is only obvious when you frown”.

The problem is, I frown all the time. It is kind of my default facial expression – I frown thoughtfully in meetings and scowl ill-naturedly during negotiations. So saying: “you can only see it when you frown” is hardly reassuring.

Pauline Hanson lips - possibly one thing she has in common with Quesera

But the whole point of having botox though is that it shouldn’t be noticeable. It should be just removing a problem, not making me look like someone I am not. It would be different if I went ahead and had my lips done and came home looking like Angelina Jolie – THAT would be noticeable. But as I said to Chip and Fred Ex, they should be supportive of botox, as I could be really cranky with them and they would not be able to notice from my facial expression alone. The banshee shrieking would have to be sufficient to give my mood away on its own.

Crazy Jackie is all for it. But given she has had silk eye lashes for the better part of a year and has had her lips done (followed by an allergic reaction, which she informed her boss was an atypical reaction to herbal tea) that I am not sure that she is one to advocate restraint.

Nicole expressing surprise - or perhaps not?

Crazy Jackie, Louisa and I were were having dinner a while ago and the subject, naturally, turned to “work”. I said I very much needed botox because of the Ike look, but I then expressed caution because my mags have been telling me for years that once I start it, I must keep it up. As in: forever. In perpetuity. Louisa agreed. We obviously read the same science based journals. I even pointed to Exhibit A: Nicole Kidman in The Golden Compass where in some scenes it seems utterly clear that she has either just had it done (very tight, no brow movement) or has gone a long time since the latest treatment (face able to glare rather menacingly at the children).

Crazy Jackie hotly disputed our assertions. To which Louisa and I kept repeating the undoubtedly clinically based opinions contained in our journals. But Crazy Jackie kept insisting. For years Crazie Jackie has denied any botox. In fact I think she was denying it only a matter of moments before she finally broke down and confessed: she has had it done, off and on, for years. And she triumphantly concluded we hadn’t noticed the difference so clearly the journals and their medical “experts” had it all wrong. This gave me pause – which Crazy Jackie took to mean I was on board – and subsequently tried to book us consecutive appointments with her Dr Botox.

Soon other friends came out of the woodwork and said yes, they had had botox. One even admitted to a full brow lift – and she looks 10 years younger.

With my head full of such conflicting but patently well founded advice I had no option but to turn to the one person in whose professional aesthetic opinion I have the utmost faith. Shaun. A much decorated (i.e. awarded) hairdresser. He does hair at fashion shows and for magazines. I still really can’t believe I have access to such professional advice for the cost of a haircut.  (As a long-term client who did not jump on his bandwagon once he had reached stellar hairdressing heights , I appear to pay slightly less than his usual rates.  So I am even more grateful for his sage insights.)

At my next appointment I cut straight to it. I dispensed with all the usual pleasantries (holidays and what was happening to our celebrity “friends”, as meticulously, although arguably falsely, documented in the mags) and zeroed straight in.

He looked at me very seriously and asked me to frown. I did. He peered at the furrow and said “not too bad”. Then I went on and said: “but actually the thing I am really concerned about are the bags under my eyes. I have been paying huge sums for products which I suspect are tested on baby everythings but the bags are still clearly visible. I permanently look like I have a newborn keeping me up all night but I am clearly too old for anyone to rationally suspect that for a moment. Or else I’ve have been up all night for no good reason trying to catch up on Khloe & Lamar – they did NOT go to Bora Bora with the rest of the family  - were you are of this development?” (Judging by his reaction  I do not think Shaun cares much for the Kardashian clan.)

Anyway, Shaun thoughtfully peered at my reflection in the mirror and chopped a bit more. I have known Shaun for many years, since I was at uni and pre his many, many hairdresser awards. And I feel we have complete trust when it comes to these things. After all – he knew me when I was younger and in general terms understands what I am striving to regain. And really, it it is not a lot. It is not like I was Natalie Portman in my 20s.

And thus he opined: “You know, I wouldn’t really worry too much about the botox. But I had a client come in the other day and she has had the bags removed from under her eyes and is incredibly pleased with the outcome. It is a very simple procedure, only half a day and she was back at work within the week. I wouldn’t waste your money on the botox – I mean, you really have to furrow in order for me to see it. But the bags. They are a whole different story”.

Back at work within a week? Off work “only” half day? This does not sound as straightforward as 15 minutes of botox. But still. This week’s photos of our PM have me just that little bit less sure about the botox, and given Shaun’s account of the procedure for the bags is nothing short of alarming, I am now looking at the lips in an entirely different light.

* I should know – I use a miner’s lamp at home (on account of the prevailing house lighting “situation” which has developed).

** This is going to sound terrible but when I was pregnant with Fred Ex I spent a lot of time fretting – not just about the usual “will s/he be healthy, will s/he have all his/her digits” but also that he would inherit his father’s small eyes and my mouth. At particularly hormonal pregnancy junctures I would wail that I was destined to end up with a monkey baby with piggy eyes and a Pauline mouth. Miraculously, he has neither.

*** Chip’s opposition does not extend to opposing Demi Moore’s work, whom he hotly denies has had anything done. He claims she is genetically blessed. But he also says “if you can find Demi’s plastic surgeon and undergo the same procedures she has, then I will wholeheartedly support you”. He thinks if I don’t find this “artist” I will end up looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein.

quesera's ideal nanny

Fred Ex decided last year that he didn’t want to go to after school care anymore and pretty much guilted me into agreeing to get a nanny to collect him from school 3 afternoons a week. Before that, he used to go to after school care and we had had a very nice 50 something lady who would mind him until we got home from work. We had Liz for about 5 years and she was like a member of the family. We had unspoken rules – e.g. she would never sit on the sofas, just on the dining chairs, she would pretty much always stay til 7:30pm when I got home or stay, watching me loll about on the sofa watching E! News or reading Who Magazine.

Anyway, after Fred Ex decided that he must have a nanny and played the mother blackmail card (“I never get to have playdates” / “I always miss out on sports training”) together with the homework/faux health concern trump card (“I can’t do homework at after school care so that just means you have to supervise me and you are always sooooo tired after such a long day at work…..”. Nobody likes a suck arse, Fred Ex) I really felt I had no option but to start to find a nanny.

Louisa suggested at a BBQ we get a live in nanny as she was learning Swedish and was contemplating getting a live in nanny. I could not believe my ears. A SWEDISH nanny? What the fuck? Was Louisa punting for a divorce? Was this her ultimate goal from the exercise, to tempt her husband and then move on? I was resolutely opposed. Yes I have heard the stories. And having been a live-in nanny in Italy to a 7 year old diavolino called Marco I pretty much thought that I didn’t care how many soccer practices Fred Ex missed, he wasn’t getting a live-in nanny.

So I signed up to some website called We Need A Nanny and paid a not insignificant sum of money to advertise and see if I could find someone. I was pretty clear on the requirements: own car, driver’s licence. The basics. Very very many South American nannies responded almost immediately. No, no, it was not a problem for them to get the bus to pick up Fred Ex. “I have already been checking the timings on the website and it would only be 3 buses from the Bondi apartment where we is living with some other girls, yes, also from Chile, it is very fun, there in Bondi no? It really reeeeeeally does not bother me not even in the raining to be catching the buses. Please to be arranging a meet with to discuss start dates”. So after responding to about 25 Gabriela[s] that yes in fact it was essential that they used the stated mode of transport and having had no luck even when I switched to another website called, I don’t know, Find me a Fucking Babysitter Now and still only the South Americans’ responses, I started to become desperate.

Crazy Jackie’s 13 year old son volunteered at the BBQ that a hot Swedish or South American nanny would be really welcomed. And as the fathers at the table (including Chip) all sort of grunted in agreement I made a decision that no South Americans. EVER. I don’t care if they have a car or a helicopter or not. Plus, and I do not mean to be racist, but they need to be able to speak English in a grammatically sound way, because god knows Fred Ex needs all the help he can get with his school work – which, judging by the almost verbatim quoted sentence above, they didn’t seem to be able to do. (I don’t actually think that’s racist. When I was a nanny to il diavolino there is no way they would have let me loose on his homework with him. In Italian. Before I could deliver a perfectly grammatically correct sentence in the present tense. Which clearly was a challenge for Gabriela[s].)

Eventually, we ended up finding a uni student and she turned up and she was approximately 18 – but she seemed responsible (well, as responsible as someone that age could be) and she re-arranged the DVDs and seemed to supervise the homework and also the clarinet practice. So it all seemed good.

And then it happened – I came home from work one day – and she and Fred Ex were both in the pool. I know it was hot. And I know it was Fred Ex who suggested it because we never go in the pool with him. We have lived in this house since 2005 and I have been in the pool ONCE. But day after day this would happen. In between cooking cupcakes for the midnight premiere of Harry Potter 8 or something (for HERSELF AND HER FRIENDS, NOT HIS) she spent the better part of most afternoons in the pool with him.

He denies it, but I think Chip thought this was a tremendous change of arrangements. And unlike Liz, I would come home and find the teenage nanny curled up on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, in a way that suggested a sort of dexterity that alarmed me, and she would be chatting away to Chip and giggling like a, well gigging like a 19 year old. And not just a sofa. MY SOFA. The one I loll about on and is known as “mine”. All of a sudden, the rigid adherence to the schedule didn’t worry me so much – when I was home she could go. I didn’t want to be surrounded by the young nubile nanny and her bikinis and her flexibility any more than I had to be.

Anyway, so she decided to move back to the country (she was a uni student who had an exam the day after the midnight premiere of Harry Potter 17 so we figured she’d failed) and we had to find another one.

Meet your new babysitter

Given the poor track record of the nanny websites and my even greater resolution for no South Americans, we found another nanny through a friend. (But I just need to pause and put it out there: my ideal nanny is Mrs Doubtfire. Once when Fred Ex was whining about the choice of babysitters I* concocted this story about a fictious cruel babysitter my sisters and I had had when we were young and when he asked what her name was I immediately said “Phyllis Diller” even though I know nothing about her except she’s old and possibly had much “work” done, but that could be Joan Rivers so who knows really. But threats of Phyllis Diller, if he insisted on a different babysitter, have worked to date and will until, well, the inevitable death of Phyllis Diller (unless she’s dead already?)

Anyway, the replacement nanny, if anything, was worse. This one was a teenage amazon – 6 foot tall. AND BLONDE. And she too liked the pool and bikinis.

Right about this time our old cleaner quit and we had to replace her as well. And the agency sent along yet another uni student. Who looked like she had just stepped off a Chinese Vogue photoshoot. I comforted myself with the thought that at least this one was in her 20s and wasn’t around in the evenings. Or in the pool.

That was how desperate the situation had become. It felt like I was cornered by hot young women, all of them in my house and pool. My therapist nodded her agreement as to how “we all know that the situation of nannies is not beyond the realm of possibility”. Which, while I should have been happy that it meant I wasn’t being paranoid, actually made me more worried because a rational and educated woman also acknowledged the potency of the threat.

The amazon decided she wanted to earn more money as a telemarketer so we then found another nanny. A friend of a friend of hers was arranged. Please please please. Just one ugly nanny. Just one who is not hot and over 20. I workshopped it at length with my work colleagues as we tried to figure out a lawful way to say: do not apply if you are hot. Or under 25. A young male colleague couldn’t see my worry but did seem particularly interested in the outcome. Perhaps he saw it as an alternative to going to The Ivy or as a sort of on-line dating service, without having to go on-line and encounter the photoshopped or fake photos. All he had to do to gauge the nanny hotness factor was my outraged response to each one the morning after I first saw them.

Well. I arrive home from work the first night** with the new nanny. This one looks like Miss Teenage Australia except a little on the short side. But she has better bone structure than Jennifer Hawkins so Mrs Doubtfire she is not.

At least it’s winter and English is her first language. Perhaps I can engineer a resignation between now and bikini time?

Right now, I don’t even think the South American option could possibly be worse. Hey, Fred Ex could learn Spanish. Or Portugese. The only thing I am pretty sure of – Chip is regularly checking the Weather Channel.

* Chip claims that Phyllis Diller was his idea which I reject strongly.

** Isn’t this an indictment – I don’t even meet this Miss Teen Australia before she turned up – she was a friend of a friend of the amazon. Poor old Fred Ex just got her rego number and a description of her and her car and off he went with her. Because the whole Nanny Saga was a source of daily dissection among my long suffering colleagues, I was describing this arrangement to my secretary and she just went really quiet. And as I said it out loud it really did sound terrible and I felt just horrible. Sometimes I wonder when Fred Ex is going to put himself up for adoption to get a “normal” family. I asked Fred Ex about it that night – and he said “nah, it’s all good I don’t mind it at all – it’s quite exciting and much better than going to after school care”. My therapist says this demonstrates his incredible ability to adapt to any situation and claims this will be an immense life skill. Maybe she just told me this to stop the guilt.

***If this post had to be classified by a ratings board it would get an MA – for frequent coarse language.  You have been warned***

My mother always said “there are enough words in the English language without resorting to swearing” although she sometimes mixed her admonition up with “Shakespeare didn’t swear”*.  But as he was Shakespeare he probably didn’t actually need to.  By the time I had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover and seen for the first time the c-word in print as opposed to, say, on the wall of the toilets in Stigmata Girls College, maternal approval of anything really didn’t matter anymore so there was no point saying:  well Shakespeare may not have but DH Lawrence fucking well did and he went for Big Bertha.

My mother’s only swear word was “bloody” and mostly she would content herself with “ruddy”.  “Bloody” was reserved for something extremely serious.  Extremely.  Like being suspended from school for propagating anti-Catholic sentiment.  Once when I was about 15 I called her a fucking bitch within ear shot of Grandpa and he chased me around the house with a slipper trying to strike me for my “appalling behaviour – you little beggar” (he didn’t get me – he was in his 80s) (Fred Ex tries that and Nono and Other Nono** are going to be put away for a very very long time at the top of a dark cupboard.)

But I was watching Angry Boys the other night and I realised – I sound just like the Dunt boys.  A bogan.  I use the f-word ALL THE TIME.  Relentlessly.  (Chip does not swear.  He says he thinks it sounds class-less.  And low-rent***.)

The first time I even heard the f-word was in 1976 when I was in year 2.  Inexplicably my parents had reconciled years after divorcing and we were shipped off to a, well, low-rent suburb of Adelaide.  We came from Sydney’s north shore.  I am reasonably certain the f-word wasn’t used at my local parish school.  But Adelaide was a different ball-game.  Even the kindy kids used it.  I even saw it written on the bathroom wall: “fark” – which is how I thought it was spelt until I was at high school.

Anyway, the thing is – now, I am like an addict.  I hide it from those that I want to shield from my routine use of it.  Hence, I have resorted to the creation of spheres of swearing.

At home, in front of 10 year old son Fred Ex, it is a really big deal if the f-word slips out.  As in:  “I cannot believe we almost died because that fucking monster tried to run us off the road.  Listen, I am only using that word because we could have been killed”.  And then I say self righteously “you are not to use that word, do you understand.  NOT TO USE IT”.  He doesn’t.  Probably because he thinks I will call him a fucking monster and run us both of the road.

But I do not gratuitously slip it in to conversations like “have you got your fucking lunch order?” or “have you packed your fucking lunch?”  I like to think I am restrained.  Certainly by Dunt standards.  (The importance of not swearing at, or in front of, Fred Ex was emphasised to me when he was searching youtube on my BFF Mariska’s iPad to show Mariska and her partner that clip of Tony Abbott glowering at the Channel 7 reporter – you know the one where he is shaking with rage for a full 20 seconds?  Anyway, we found what we thought was the clip not realising it was a spoof clip where Tony Abbott fires back at the menaced Channel 7 reporter in a broad bogan accent “fuck off, you cunt”.  Fred Ex is very good at bogan accents and immediately said: “fuck off, you cunt” with pitch perfect tone which demonstrated that perhaps he has a promising career as a linguist.  But just the same we all quite literally leapt up to snatch the iPad back just in case he hit “replay” which I knew he was itching to do because of the reaction we had given him first time around.)

Similarly, I do not use the f-word in front of clients.  Despite the fact that they swear like sailors.  I am sure in fact, that some of them were once sailors.  The only time I have ever sworn within earshot of a client was when I was being screwed on every level by some company and I walked out and said “that man is fucking doing my head in”.  And my clients, mostly men, were shocked.  Like I had just suggested we disembowel the provoking man and then roast him on a communal pit.  Precisely because I had previously shown restraint even under extreme provocation.

But the thing is, the minute I am away from children and clients – I just.  Can. Not. Stop.  Most days before I have even unlocked my office door I have directed the f-word half a dozen times – at other motorists, Tony Abbott on the ABC, the traffic, the traffic lights, myself.  And I don’t even count lesser swear words.  Shit or crap or bitch or dickhead or wanker.  These ones I do not even really register that some, well MOST other, people may think are inappropriate and unprofessional.  My poor poor former secretary, a lovely woman in her 60s, who didn’t look anywhere near that, was subjected to it for years before I found out her age.  When I found out her old she was I was horrified  - she was a grandmother and I was cursing like that?

Then hearing the Dunt boys I realised – I am the only person I work with who speaks like this.  I am the Dunt boy equivalent in my workplace. The one who others just observe in that sort of appalled: don’t-come-near-me are you even fully evolved kind of way.  I think people are expecting me to cup my mouth and shout: “NATHAN”.

So I decided that I had to impose a limit of 5 f-words per day.  Someone suggested a swear jar.  But as I am the only one contributing to it I just didn’t see the point.  It’s my money, who the fuck cares if I have to put it in a jar.  It’s still my money.  Seriously.  If they had suggested a Project Compassion (™)**** box I may have given it a little more consideration but as no one at my work place appears to have been suspended from a convent for propagating anti-Catholic sentiment this solution remains  understandably off their radar.

Five f-words may sound like a lot.  But the first few days were, well, fucked.  I would blow through the 5 words before 10am.  And then spend the rest of the day growling that I had used up my limit.  Or stop mid “fu—-” and say: I have already hit my fucking quota.    This has been going on now a few weeks.  I am swearing less.  But I am also finding that my previously off-limit swear zones are becoming less policed.  I am far more likely to blurt out the f-word in front of Fred Ex.   Clearly the spheres of swearing are like needle injection rooms.  They have been saving me from full blown f and c-word rants at home.

And I am now questioning my whole quota thing at all – or at least suspend it til next Lent so I can get me a Project Compassion box.  Get some real skin in the game.

* I don’t know if this is true.  Mariska and her partner Cat googled the Shakespeare claim and it appears that he did in fact swear, but just didn’t use 20th/21st century expletives.  So I think that as far as my mother’s claim goes, she may be technically correct.

Then again it may be in the same calibre as the “drug dealers use Mr Whippy to peddle their wares, that’s why you can’t have it, ever” statement.  Or “there are rats as big as dogs in Wynyard train tunnel” which was apropos fuck knows what but it may have been to head off any adolescent inkling to go caving in there.  As if that were ever a possibility.

** These are Fred Ex’s toy rabbits which rattle and who he has suggested are together in the way that Cameron and Mitchell are together in Modern Family.

***  Low-rent is my word, but Chip likes to use it as though he coined it.

****  This is just awful and I hate to admit it, but the images on the boxes always scared me.  Anguished hungry children always ensured that my Project Compassion box was always full by the end of Lent – also because I just wanted the faces to go away.  Given the money was principally derived from foregoing chocolate, it wasn’t like it was a big ask – pretty much after it was dropped off at mass on Easter Sunday, the egg hunt began.   Chip claims that “their PR people have gotten to them because everyone is now looking smiley and happy”.

I went on my first “girls’ weekend away” about a month ago.  I accept this makes me a late adaptor*.

Anyway, it was a straightforward plan:  Other Jackie and I leave Sydney at 2:30pm Friday afternoon, arrive at posh resort following leisurely drive, in time to colonise the sofas closest to the fire, start consumption of Veuve (or French of equivalent stature)  and forget work.  Followed by a chaser of rejuvenating facials and massages.  Yes.  This was how adult women spend weekends.  Away from children’s  soccer and compulsively checking the wet weather line just in case.  This was what the resort website promised.

Except we are lawyers.  And so of course the 2:30pm Friday departure morphed (following many teary texts and bright exhortations to “THINK POSITIVELY!  we are going AWAY FOR THE WEEKEND.  Your 8 hour telecon MUST end soon.  And of COURSE you can ask for a toilet break – it is a human rights issue”)  into an 8:30am Saturday departure which had us arriving just as breakfast (included in our package ) was finishing up.  After heated discussion with the staff, swiftly followed by resentful checking in prior to consumption of breakfast items disdained by other guests, we had arrived.

And just in time for our appointments at the in-house spa.  Yes, we should have known that simultaneous appointments and the ominous sign to “Massage Room”  meant that at least 2 of us were undergoing the treatments in the same room.  At the same time.  These are good friends of mine.  Just not get-into-your-underwear in-front-of-friends.**  Having concluded with Other Jackie that we were ok with this.  That there was to be no chatting, yes we will be FINE, we started filling in the and I am not kidding TWO PAGE QUESTIONNAIRE about ourselves and our health.  TWO PAGES??  Most CONSULTANT NEUROLOGISTS don’t ask for that much information.  Are you on any drugs?  Yes.  I listed all of them.  Do you have any health conditions?  Yes.  Are you stressed?  YES MUCH MORE SO AFTER THIS QUESTIONNAIRE.  ”Clinical Beauty Consultant” Chantal smiled and nodded thoughtfully as she read it all. As though she had a clue what any of it meant.   Or if it were even real.

What had I put?  That my doctor prescribed rohypnol to help me sleep?   BUT WHAT ELSE HAD I PUT?  I don’t even know if I actually got to the point where I was making drugs or ailments up.  But plainly I must have made up that I had been seeing a dermatologist because Chantal eventually circled back to that one.  I toyed with not putting down my real job.  But I was too affronted by the intrusive medical inquisition to think of anything interesting and besides Other Jackie is even more of a rule obeyer than I am.

Anyway, having removed our clothes (outer garments only), we lay on the parallel treatment beds for the luxury to begin.  After about 5 minutes I became aware that the noise that was coming from Chantal’s hand area did not sound like anything I had encountered while having a facial.  And I have one facial a month.  It took me slightly longer to realise that the noise was the sound of latex.  Latex?  What the hell had I put on the questionnaire?  Was there a question that asked if I were an IV drug user that I had inadvertently said yes to?  Did I appear….unwashed?  Did Chantal think that my rohypnols were illicitly acquired?

Despite the Peruvian flute music designed to induce relaxation, my mind was racing.  What sort of person did Chantal think I was?  How dishevelled must I really appear?  How could I have been this deluded for this long about my appearance?

After what seemed like 5 minutes since the latex discovery Chantal and her colleague each whispered in Other Jackie and my ears “how does that feel?  Hmmmmm?  Nice and relaxed, hmmmm?  Well, we will let you get dressed”.

What the fuck?  This had gone on for no more than 15 minutes.  And then I SAW that Chantal had indeed been wearing latex gloves under which a weeping sore seemed to be begging angrily to be let free.  “Was yours wearing LATEX?” I hissed at Other Jackie?  “Um, what – no?”.  At which point we started that convulsive silly giggling that sometimes just happens, ok, Chip?   It is not hormonal hysteria.

And then they returned.  “Now” said Chantal, “you said in your questionnaire that you had been seeing a dermatologist, hmm”?  What?  I said no such thing, I wanted to say.  But I was still recovering from the latex so I just sort of smiled stupidly as she continued ” you know, the thing about dermatologists is that they can go … (slight cough) TOO FAR….they can…. cross the line sometimes.”  What. Was. She. Saying?  Stunned I continued to grin as though, yes Chantal, you got me right.  All those other non-latex glove wearing beauty therapists have not seen my clearly botched “work” BUT YOU HAVE.

And as though my reaction confirmed another deeply held suspicion she moved closer to me and again with the whispering.  “One of our products has been especially designed for” …. and here her voice trailed off and there was a slight pause as though she didn’t like to bring it up. “Burns victims”, she shook her head sadly.  I am 42.  Am I that hideously disfigured that a woman with a weeping sore hand that must be sheathed in latex has to recommend honey based products because of their apparently unparalleled incredible success with poor burns victims?  Clearly in the Clinical Beauty Consultant’s professional opinion, I am.

*  Chips says it’s adopter.  But I like this description better

** I actually don’t think I have friends like this.  I don’t even undress in front of The Sisters.  This is no doubt related to my arch Catholic upbringing during which we were constantly exhorted by Patience to “put your legs down in case the priest calls in”.  He never did.

All 1st Blogs S-U-C-K

“Don’t worry about it ALL first blogs suck”.  This was the key take home point from the “how to blog book” I bought on Amazon (US$35 + P&H).  According to Mitch or Leigh or Darren* losing your blogging virginity is precisely the same dignity-less experience that the REAL loss involves – but this time it’s more public.  Or not.  Depending on if anyone actually reads your first crap blog anyway.  Which of course they won’t if Mitch is to be believed.  Apparently I have to be posting daily blogs (optimal) but at least 3 times per week if I am to stand any chance of anyone happening upon anything I blog without me cajoling them or shaming them.  “You didn’t see it?”  Resentful silence.  “No, no, it’s fine.  It’s just a hobby, not my LIVELIHOOD or anything”.  Or threatening to write inflammatory personal pieces about them if they don’t. (I won’t.)

Mitch says I will get better.  It may take a year.  But apparently in a year I will look back and groan at what I have just written but somehow still feel so much better that I have taken this life changing step.  Blah blah Belle du jour, you TOO could have your blog turned into a TV show starring that girl who was on Dr Who but who before that was some Brit singing teenager who inexplicably married some wildly unattractive ginger headed London DJ, approximately 20 years her senior.

So was that US$35 + P&H worth it?  I am not convinced.  Mitch wrote the same piece twice.  Allegedly in different styles to illustrate the differences in writing “voices”.  They were both as boring as each other although there were marginal differences in content that I wanted to mark up and send back to him to say:  it is one thing to claim that you are writing the same thing but with distinctly different “moods”.  But wasn’t your message that you were writing exactly the same thing – just differently? When the moods are clearly indistinguishable, I SOMEHOW THINK THE POINT OF THE EXERCISE IS LOST IF THE CONTENT IS NOT THE SAME.  The thing is Mitch, if you say you are writing the same thing but with “different” voices it has to be the same thing.

Anyway, I have decided I will not send my hand scritched amendments (in red pen) to him to prove a point.  The man has published a book about blogging that is available from Amazon and speaks at conferences on the subject.  So I assume that he is doing quite well with his dubious advice.  So I will resist.

One of the other take home points is that apparently I am not to blog using a word type program as it gets mangled up when you try and post it on your actual blog something something techy  I don’t understand.  Which my blog-head husband Chip had already told me about.

I think I come down on the side of “that’s US$35 + P&H I will never get back”.  Unless of course I am the new Belle de jour.**

So.  I’ve now lost my blogging virginity.

*  None of these are Mitch’s real name.  He has in fact a name that is curiously genderless.  Which forced me to read the dust jacket and the introduction and other plauditory statements affixed to his tome which led to my knowledge of his touted blogging successes, just to see if ANY of them said “s/he has been offering useless advice for blah years”.  Which it seems he has.

**  This won’t happen.  I am blogging about everyday things that happen to me which principally mock myself – and as I don’t work in a brothel or attend fetish nights it’s going to be pretty lame.  Comparatively.***

*** Chip says not to include the second note as it insults the reader something something as if you would ASSUME that the reader would think that and my job is to correct you whereas and I quote “we were right there with you”.  Or something.