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… shut up and eat them. This has always been my approach. Put up, shut up and get on with things. Don’t incite conflict. Don’t argue too much, just… take the damned lemons and enjoy.

I’m a little fucked up right now ladies and gents, you’ll have to pardon me. I’ll probably end up closing this post.

Angry young woman at the wheel. What kind of doctors look at a young teenager who has almost doubled her weight in a matter of months and not wonder why? What kind of doctors tell this girl she just needs to cut out the junk food and excercise more. What kind of specialist mutters “You probably can’t have kids, never mind” without making eye contact and then sends a 16 year old on her way? How many doctors did I see? How many of them looked at side issues - bad back, bad knees, weak ankles, weight, and blamed me - they all of them BLAMED ME.

It wasn’t my fault.

How many times did I cry in front of a doctor? How many times did they reduce me to tears telling me I was just a lazy, fat girl. How often did i plead with them to understand? That bloody dermatoligist telling me if I ate less McDonalds I wouldn’t have a problem. I sat in her waiting room crying in front of strangers, crying in front of the nurse who was tkaing my blood because that doctor TOLD ME NOT TO LIE TO HER. I haven’t eaten McDonalds since 1998. Oh, wait, once since then, but still. She didn’t believe me.

And I wasn’t lying.

And so i get a diagnosis, finally. After14 years i am finally NOT a freak of nature. These things ARE real, and there is a reason for them and I am so relieved, and so optimistic that i gobble up the medication, totally oblivious to the effect it is having on me. After a while, after too long, i notice - really notice - that I am miserable to the point of wanting the whole damned world to go away and am bitching at people constantly. I mention this to the doctor “Oh don’t worry about this, this is the only treatment”. So I stop. And figure I’ll just get on with my life anyway.

No one told me weightloss would be harder, no one told me feeling full after a meal was harder, no one told me anxiety was part of this, not one fucking doctor in 14 fucking years. And this bloody THING lurking inside me LOCKED ME AWAY FROM THE WORLD and it makes me feel ugly and alone and I am alone.

I am, at this point, incredibly lonely.

So on the 18th of this month I start it all again, the blood tests and the other tests and this and that and questions questions questions and I’m scared to death of it all because what if they blame me again?

It’s not my fault.

It’s not.

Yeah, I’m just whining, but I have some big adjustments to make, not all of them medical. Michelle tells me one step at a time.

I think my world is ending. At this point, I would eat the lemons and smile.

Where to begin with Paul Hogan? I could say “I’d quite like to maim Paul Hogan” but the surgeons did that already in the name of plastic surgery (baaaaaaad plastic surgery). The first time I saw his new face was very alarming and I had to take to my bed for a week and survive on tea and chocolate. Oh, the humanity.

There was an advertising campaign here that ran, i think, at the same time as the first one in the US trying to tempt people to come see Australia. The adverts were to encourage people to be nice to tourists and “Say Gidday!”. There was a jingle which I have thankfully forgotten, but I do remember people leaning out of car windows with HUGE fake smiles that looked slighty painful and saying “G’DAY!” with all the passion they could muster. This was sometimes matched with a big, cheesy, thumbs up sign. I think perhaps anyone wandering out of an airport to this kind of behaviour would be wise to turn around and go back.

Anyway, it is mainly due to Paul Hogan (and in no small part Steve Irwin) that i get a certain set of questions over and over again, as well as comments like “Throw another shrimp on the barbie!” or “Fosters, it’s Australian for Beer!”. This second comment I always reply to in the same way by saying “Actually, Australian for Beer is… beer. Try and keep up”. The first comment I tend to respond to with “Crikey mate, bloody good idea. You crack a tinny, I’ll grab an esky and turn on the footy!”. This is usually followed with “heh heh, you’re Australian!”.

I am Australian, and yes, i do see kangaroos on a daily basis BUT I don’t live in the suburbs or city. JP, I know you don’t believe me but I do so too! Nyah nyah! My country is bigger than yours and we have more sunshine. Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes. The idea that kangaroos are just leaping about in the middle of Melbourne is a common one. they’d play merry havoc with the tram system.

I never considered myself to be overly Aussie in how I spoke (or, what with it being TSO, how I typed) until Buttercup said “You know, I never know what you’re talking about”. Damn.

here goes… “Damn the youth of today”. There, I said it. I am officially old. Someone fetch me a Horlicks and a blanket. OK, reason for this comment is: Yesterday there was a group of teenagers hanging around at Allwood House. Two girls (dressed like slags, so I hear) and three boys. At one stage they were pulling things out of the garden, so Rod (caretaker for the house) wandered over and told them to stop. This got him a mouthful of abuse which didn’t really bother him. Today Mum arrived at allwood to find broken glass all over the seats in the conversation pit (it’s like a sunken gazebo) and a broken window in the kitchen. They’d taken the tea and coffee money (about 40cents, bit of a wasted effort for them). What gets me, what really gets me is the mindlessness of this. “I can do what I want, fuck you”. It’s so incredibly depressing. This kind of teenager has no interest in anything around them unless it gives them something. I noticed it when I repeated year 12. The year before, when I was with the people I’d been with right through school, I’d see the PM on the news making some inane comment and the next day I’d say to Deb or Elvie “Oh god, did you see the PM talking about greenhouse gas emissions?” and they’d say “Oh hell, yes” and we’d have a bit of a rant. The following year I’d go to school and say “Oh god, did you see the PM talking about healthcare?” and they’d say “you watch the news??”.

This, I suspect, is part of the problem. There’s no world view, no looking to the bigger picture, no thinking of other people or the results of actions. Never mind teenagers, it seems to me that there’s an increasing number of people thinking “Me Me Me”. Of course, not every teenager is like this. I like to think the majority are well balanced (ok, as well balanced as you can be at 15 anyway) and interested people that will go on to be good adults. But it’s hard to maintain that when there’s broken glass on the seat. I’m finding it difficult to have faith in human nature at the moment, but perhaps being in customer service is also having an impact. Every time someone gets abusive over an 80cent fine I think “You know what? There really is no fucking hope”.

Complaints complaints complaints. Whinge whinge whinge. What’s most annoying about complaints is those people who make a complaint about soemthing that was going to be changed/fixed etc anyway, then they get all up themselves ‘coz they think they had some direct influence. Example: we used to stick security tags to the CDs which was not an issue until CD burners came out, then people would peel the security tag and the barcode off in order to burn the cd, this meant that the security tag (a thin strip of metal on a clear sticker) would get twisted and often lift off. This is incredibly annoying when you play a CD ‘coz it goes “thwaka thwaka thwaka” the whole time the CD spins and in some cases lifts of inside the CD player and gets stuck in there. Anyway, we stopped doing it pretty much for this reason (and also because when peeling off the sticker, the silver backing peels off too). A couple of weeks after we decided to stop putting them on, some woman comes in to say a tag had lodged in her CD player. She was very irate. I apologised and said “But we aren’t putting those tags on the CDs anymore for that reason”. “Oh good,” she said, “I’m glad I’m being listened to. It’s about time my comments were noted”. Yes, we determined using our psychic abilities that this would happen to you personally.

That’s the other thing, people take problems etc so personally. If our library software crashes, it’s obviously timed and planned just to annoy who ever we happen to be serving at the time. If a book is missing in transit, it’s not just one of those things that happens (and it happens a lot), it’s a personal attack on the borrower who requested the book. If we can’t change a $100 note for an 80cent fine it’s not because we just don’t have the change, it’s to ensure the fine stays there to be annoying next time.

*Sigh*, I’m such a whinger.

Actually, the line after that one is quite applicable, but I’m not putting it here.
There was a bit in Clocking Off where thingy (you know, blonde, Lesley someone. Was in Bob and Rose. Lesley Sharpe? Something like that) has a breakdown and is standing in the foyer of a private hospital where she’s just has her breasts enlarged. She’s standing there pouring out all this incredible pain and heartbreak in a long stream of muddled shouting. That’s kind of what my internal monologue is like at the minute. It’s pretty much like this:
“I told her it wasn’t a final notice, why doesn’t anyone ever listen and no one ever reads the fucking signs and why is it my fault, she damaged the bloody book and didn’t have to pay as it was a notice how the hell am i supposed to know what’s wrong with the photocopier it’s not a computer so I don’t know and if I do fix it they’ll come to me all the time and i can’t handle that i said, didn’t i say don’t reset the pcs? I said that to everyone made sure you all bloody knew and now you come up into my personal FUCKING SPACE and shove your face right into mine to tell me that the FUCKING OPACS AREN’T WORKING and that’s only because YOU reset them when I told you not to so why is it my problem? YOU phone IT and tell them because I have seriously done my best and SHUT UP about Shane just shut up i don’t need to hear how fucking perfect things are because if I have to be the FAT DUMPY and frankly HORRIBLE friend one more bloody time I’ll run away and be a hermit oh shit shit shit i’m going to be one of those old maids with a hundred cats and I don’t even LIKE cats and why isn’t this FUCKING COMPUTER WORKING stop waving your bloody letter in my face i’m a libraryofficer for fuck’s sake, I have no power over anything so don’t abuse me about it i told you it wasn’t a final notice and told you to bring in your stat dec and that’s all I can do, damn it” and so on.
At this stage I basically want to curl up in a corner and cry for a couple of hours, but, for various reasons, won’t. Oh well. See if I’ve perked up at all tomorrow.