For the past few days I’ve had one of those on-and-off eyelid twitches going on. The ones they say are linked to stress, anxiety or lack of sleep. I am not sure which one it is in my case, but I do know that it’s making me look liked a crazed psychopath at work about to bludgeon someone to death with my keyboard. Which isn’t far from the truth.

For the record, it’s the right eye.

I wrote a beautifully eloquent post about the election (I swear!) and then promptly closed the window in the excitement of it all. So instead, let me just draw your attention to our “first ladies” last night.

Janette: Pursed lips, nagging husband trying to be funny (can anyone say “talk show”?). Asking husband to kiss her on stage and he blatantly ignored her.

Therese: First thing she does is shake her bosom everywhere in a very Divine-esque manner.

Can’t you just see the Ladies Auxiliary for Prime Ministers now? Therese will be baking party pies, bringing cocktail frankfurts and spiking the punch while Janette whines that the cucumber sandwiches are only buttered on one of the slices of bread.

We have spoken, and we said “We’d really rather not see or hear you ever again, John, if it’s all the same.” And to the pensioners who called up talk back radio late last night using the The Youth Have Ruined My Life™ line again, my grandparents had a Labor sign in their front yard, bless their cotton socks. Now bring on the senate results!

What a whirlwind of the mundane and the extraordinary my life has become these past few weeks. And what a crap opening.

Work really is that circus that everyone describes. I’m in a team of all females (excepting myself), which you can imagine can get rather whispery at times. I’m out of the temp room and I couldn’t be happier that I went from a bunch of excessive “Bless You”ers to a team who barely refocus their glances when they hear a nearby sneeze. I have never been a “Bless You”er, mostly because I feel like I’m not really the person to go around blessing other people. If I was, I certainly wouldn’t give them away freely everytime someone sneezed. I tried saying “Bless Shoe” but even that didn’t sit well. In my previous team I felt expectant stares at me when I was the only person who didn’t go through this ridiculous ritual of all taking turns giving their blessing every ten minutes. Now I feel I’m with my own kind of smug bastards who don’t care that someone might have just ripped up some serious nostril muscles trying to stop their computer screen from looking like it was raining.

If there is a downside, it’s that I’m still sitting next to a woman who refuses to let any conversation steer away from her, her extended holiday to China, the fact that she once managed a multimillion dollar software company, her daughter who is apparently so perfectly behaved and loves to share her apple slices with other children at the playground or her banal observations about married life that she had heard from some stand-up comedian in the early nineties, just like everyone else, and is recounting them followed by her insistent laugh ensuring we all know how wildly witty she is. Today, during one of her thousands of lengthy phone calls to her husband, sisters, pre-school, mother etc. she was informed that she had missed her child’s kindergarten orientation day. She turned to us all and indignantly cried out about her misjustice, and people were so unaffected by her conversation that no one at all even looked at her despite the heavy expectation punctuated by the glistening silence.

What makes it so hard to be rude is the fact that she genuinely acts out of well-being for people, however even I had my limits when she announced that my stapling was “unprofessional”. I tooled down, turned to her and assaulted her with a short essay on the advantages of diagonal stapling. I later noticed her later staples were all diagonal.

Besides work (which I am actually sort of enjoying, although I would really like to see another male join the team), H.M.S. Pinafore has opened and the conversation in the wings and pit has been of a rather posterior persuasion. It all started with our “emergency evacuation” stories, capped off with a golden story that Dennis unleashed on us five minutes before one of the performances which must go down as one of the classic pre-curtain discussions of all time. Later I explained the concept of pooting (a fart plus one, shall we say?) as Lisa very nearly demonstrated it in the pit only moments later. Next it was time for my lesson as I was introduced to the world of Aquaturds, which was really pertinent considering we had just been discussing water-births for Lisa and Danny’s impending offspring. All of this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as the tone was established early on when I drew up a “Fart Chart” on one of the pit walls to monitor our extra-curricular output. Top honours after week one go to the pregnant woman, Tim a very close second and I’m coming up the rear.

Other than that, my birthday was a fairly quiet affair with work and the theatre taking up most of the hours, but that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Thanks to all those who gave me birthday wishes.

Con: Coming home after a long day at work friday to have to tutor and work all night on for the theatre group.
Pro: That was the last time I’ll have to tutor this year.

Con: Waking up early Saturday to go into work for 5 hours of overtime.
Pro: Promptly spending that overtime money at JB Hi-Fi getting DVDs of Murder She Wrote (Season 1), Mission Impossible (Season 3), Arrested Development (Season 3), Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 3) and Summer Heights High.

Con: Spending hours in intense heat raised above the stage playing in the band for a show.
Pro: Preceding that with a brunch in the harbour in perfect weather.

Turning twenty-two tomorrow… undecided.