The Dreaded Rebound Effect

 Holiday Greetings.
On second thoughts, perhaps it's Slightly Smug & a little inappropriate to  wish people a holiday greeting when it's unlikely that they're on holidays themselves.  I bet you're not on holidays, are you?
I didn't think so.
So, I'll start all over again with a Greeting Guaranteed Not To Grate: 
Hello, & Welcome to My Holiday.
That's better. But as you can see from the Opening Photo, I'm not. I still appear to have hayfever. Or whatever you have when your nose is blocked & itchy & you have to blow it all the time.
How hard is it to sleep with a Blocked Nose?  Occasionally, I timidly squirt a little dainty spray of 'Sinex' up only one nostril & wait for it to clear. Rarely, if ever do I venture to spray Both Nostrils.
Why so fearful of Nasal Sprays, you may ask?
Because of the Dreaded Rebound Effect. I know we usually associate the word 'rebound' with rushing in with yet another Hugely Wrong Partner five minutes after you've just gotten rid of the last Hugely Wrong Partner. But it also applies to Nasal Sprays: if you spray too much of it up your nose, it actually causes you to block up just like if you stuffed a whole load of used boyfriends up your nose. That's gross but I kinda like it anyway.
Enough Toy Medical Facts & on with the usual  Relentless Cavalcade of recent photos taken just before & during this holiday.

 Here's me before the holiday. You may notice that I'm wearing shoes that don't match my Outfit.
So, what's new?

 Actually, they're not my shoes. They're Real Chanels that belonged to one of my student's Grandmothers.
NO, it wasn't Show & Tell.
The shoes had somehow found their way into My Student's wardrobe. Let's call her Coco.
Desperate to fund an expensive Gown for the Upcoming School Formal & knowing my great love of All Things Chanel, Coco brought the shoes to class. I had already told her that I would buy them if they fitted.
Sadly, they didn't. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the outline of a Bunyan on each shoe.
I'm a great wearer of Other People's Shoes. That's apparently the cause of my v. own foot affliction, Corns. But I refuse to step into Bunyan Territory. I've got to draw the line somewhere.
I must, must stop talking about Ailments. First, Nasal Drip, now Corns & Bunyans. It's like I'm being funded by a Pharmacy.
Oh, but Poor Coco. Had to schlepp Granny's shoes in to school & then didn't get the money to buy her Formal Dress after all. 

 Here's another photo of the same outfit. It's taking Slightly Slutty to a whole new level. Which wasn't my intention. And it sort of looks like I've just ended the lesson with a great big snort of coke. But I wasn't. It was just the Hayfever. Yet another Medical Reference. I wonder if I can keep it up till the end?

 Here's someone above who has never been called 'Slightly Slutty. Queen Elizabeth . Trixie gave me this wonderful book of photos of her. I was thrilled. And of course I'm always trying to Channel a Queen. With varying results. I'm sure the Queen wouldn't ever wear a whole load of resin jewels from the recent 'Dinosaur Designs' warehouse sale like the ones I'm wearing.
I wonder what ailments she suffers from?

 I'm shocked that it's Nearly Midnite. This is unprecedented. And I've got so much more to Show & Tell. Like I wanted to explain why a patchwork quilt is laid out in my classroom. And who I was wearing. And what the posters on the back wall were about.   But I must must hop into bed.
That will teach me for not posting more often. I'm just going to to post again tomorrow after I go to the movies. I'm meeting Trixie at 9.30 tomorrow at the Multiplex. We don't know what's on. So, we're going to take Pot Luck. Talk about living on the wild side.

Nothing Like Tilda or Ryan or Ali

Hello & Welcome to My New Hobby.
On second thoughts, it's not exactly That New.
I've been doing it off & on now for some time.
Can you guess what it is?
To make it easy for you, I'll give you a list, below. You need to pick TWO because I've just realised that I have Two Hobbies - a Not That New Hobby & a Brand New Hobby.
Beekeeping?  Beer Making? Fruit Preserving? Quilting? Brisk Walking? Corn Removing? Scrapbooking?
I Can't think of any other Hobbies. Surely there must be some more?
Oh, Stamps. But I wonder if anyone does that anymore? In this age of Tweets & constant Status Updates, the Stamp seems a little passe. What a shame that I can't put a little accent over the 'e' & make it look like I'm really writing the word  'passe'. You know, like 'Passay'. I'll take any opportunity to show off my Franglais, .
Anyway, have you guessed yet?
That's right. The Not-So-New Hobby is Scrapbooking. Well, a form of Scrapbooking, like if a Scrapbook was a Blog Entry.
And the Brand-New Hobby is Corn Removal. Earlier this evening, I finally cracked & bought a packet of Medicated Corn Removers that Cushion as well as Kill (the corn, that is. I certainly hope that They won't kill me. Like, say the Special Corn Killing Agents ran amok in my blood stream & poisoned my whole body, not just the Rogue Corn?  Quelle Horreur!)
But back to My Scrapbooking.
I'm practising (sp?)   a Highly Specialised form of  The Art.  Here's how it works:
1. I relentlessly trawl the TV guide to see if any of my favourite movies are on. My favourites always feature actresses whose outfits & style I drool over. (e.g. Bette D in 'Now Voyager', the best makeover film of all time)
2. I  squeal with delight when I find a fave. (Sooo hard to find one amongst all the Adam Sandler & Sandra Bullock films. Have you seen  her in 'All About Steve', by any chance? Got to be one of the most insultingly annoying films of all time even though luscious Bradley Cooper is in it)
3. I watch the movie, pausing it (my cable TV package has this handy feature) to take photos of  Iconic Moments in Iconic Outfits & Accessessories. Like Tilda Swinton, above & below, signing a cheque at the Dry Cleaners in 'I Am Love' with a rather out of shape Hermes Kelly (or is it a Birkin?) bag nonchalantly sitting on the counter.

I adore Tilda. She is a Study in Graceful Gravitas.
How does she manage to be an Anglo-Scots Woman who can trace her family back to the High Middle Ages &  be in the same class as Princess Diana at school &  plays a Russian who speaks fluent Italian  in 'I Am Love'?
How does she manage to Effortlessly Cross Genders as she did in 'Orlando'? How does she manage an American accent as she did in 'Burn After Reading' & 'Michael Clayton'? And, most importantly, how the hell does she manage to have a husband & twin children who happily live down the road from her & her Other Partner, a New Zealand painter. Like Two Partners. At Once. And she's Not Cheating. Everyone's as cool as a cucumber.
I once had a New Zealand partner. But I didn't have a hubby who happily lived down the road as well.
I must, repeat Must, stop Comparing myself to Others. Particularly Glamorous film stars.
And I must, repeat Must, stop with the Rhetorical Questions. They're like a Runaway Train that no one can stop.  If one of my students inserts even the smallest of Question Marks in an essay, I almost make a hole in the paper crossing it out with my heavy leaded pencil.

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend 'I Am Love'. It was totally mesmerizing & terribly sad.
As a rule, I don't like to watch Sad Films. I've had enough Sad to last the rest of my life.  But it was a great pleasure to watch Tilda being Terribly Sad in a whole array of Hugely Chic outfits.
I must, repeat MUst start dressing like that.

And now we move on to 'Love Story'. It was on early this week.
Let me, just for a moment take you back to 1971 to when I first saw it at the movies.
It was the year after I left school. I was eighteen.
I swear to God that I remember that it was a rainy saturday nite. Maybe it was just raining in my heart. Anyway, it felt like it was raining.
I went into the city to see it with my long time school friend, Elizabeth. We were both longing for a boyfriend. At that stage I hadn't yet started going out with Bob, my first boyfriend, who I liked to call 'Blob' . Blob owned a white Panel Van which in those days was jokingly called a 'Shaggin Wagon'. My parents approved of him but were appalled by the Van. They always approved of anyone I didn't particularly like.

The problem with Blob was that he was nothing like Ryan O'Neal, which we all know now, in hindsight, is a blessing. But certainly NOt at the time.
I was desperate to meet someone called Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan's name in the film) who I would teasingly call 'Preppy' just like Ali McGraw did in the film. I would visit his hugely wealthy but dysfunctional family at their cold but impressive mansion & even though I was from the wrong side of the tracks, I would quickly win them over with my grace & charm & of course my Ali McGraw-style beauty.

I would work tirelessly in a variety of low-paying but worthy jobs  to support Oliver through Harvard Law School.
That was one of Blob's great flaws. He didn't go to Harvard Law School. Instead, He ran the Kitchenware Department at Grace Bros, Roselands, a suburban department store.   His family were from Norfolk Island & he was a direct descendent of John Adams who was part of the 'Mutiny on the Bounty', made famous by the Marlon Brando film.
Blob had a rather Swarthy Look. It was nothing like Ryan O'Neal's.
After about nine months, we broke up.   I went on to marry someone who went to Sydney University Law School. It was the closest thing that I could get to Harvard.
Bob eventually went back to Norfolk Island where he drove a Tourist Bus. Perhaps he's driving it now.
Luckily, unlike Ali in the movie, I appear to be still alive. Here she is is below,  bravely watching Oliver showily prance around Wolman Rink in New York's Central Park  because She's too sick to skate. 
Then they make that gut-wrenching walk in the snow to the hospital where she dies.
After watching 'Love Story' the other nite, I now blame everything on Oliver Barret IV & Ryan O'Neal.

Non-Drowsy Spring

 Hello & Welcome to Spring All Over Again If It's Fall Where You Are.
That probably doesn't make sense but neither would you if you looked & felt like me right now courtesy of Spring. 
All week I've been trying to ignore Spring Symptoms which involve Massive Watering & Uncontrollable Itchiness from  vital areas connected to my head: My Left Eye (it seems my Right Eye is above it all & has refused to join in); Both Nostrils & Both Ears. You can see the damage that Spring has done if you look closely at the Wan little figure below, taken today in front of a Plastic Container City situated in a Maths Classroom. You'd never see anything as tasteless as this in an English Classroom. No way.
Note I'm desperately clinging on to a clutch of Aloe Vera scented tissues & all my make up, particularly around my left eye has been eradicated by constant watering.
If you look below my Spring Infested Head you may just be able to spy a fab brooch of the Head of a Zebra that Darla sent me some time back. If only I had been well enough to enjoy it.

But I did enjoy assembling my Homage (pronounced 'Hom-marge') to Spring in the photo above.
Let me explain. If you've never been in my kitchen you won't know that I have a large statue of Our Lady Sans Hands sitting on a large green terrazzo bench. I usually decorate around it on a Seasonal  Basis. Sadly, the Easter Homage which featured chocolate Easter Eggs & Pipe cleaner chickens rather overstayed its welcome. I only took it down this week & Easter's been over for months & months.
Anyway, The Spring Homage is a combination of Real & Fake Flowers, which is by far my favourite way of Decorating with Flowers. It kind of sums up Life really - both Real & Fake at the same time. 
Because of course I'm practising (does that last word have a C in it rather than an S, I wonder) Abundance Through Frugality,  I only bought one bunch of Tulips that were completely closed up at time of purchase & placed each stem in a glass jar that perhaps once contained Pasta Sauce or a Slew of Artichokes.
I then covered the bottom of the Homage with the flowers from a Fake Hawaiian Garland that I bought at my fave $2 shop & then artfully placed the contents of a packet of Plastic Butterflies around the flowers.
And Hey Presto, I've made something that Martha Stewart would be Green with Envy over! Only of course she now must be busily ordering her Large Army of Worker Bees to gouge out the innards of large pumpkins in preparation for her Halloween Decorating Special.

 When I was leaving for School this Morning, Fotheringale, my building's Concierge who turns off the vacuum cleaner to  deconstruct my outfit every morning, announced that I resembled Joseph & his Technicolour Dreamcoat in my Patricia Pepe of Firenze cut-out jacket. When I got to school, Sister Anne, the only Nun still standing, strongly disagreed with this description when I told her. Sadly, I didn't wait around long enough to hear her reasons.

 Have I mentioned that I've been Uncharacteristically Baking Cakes & Puddings lately?
My daughter Maeflower told me yesterday by phone that she had never experienced this from me as long as she's known me. I think that she's relieved though because Baking Cakes in Middleage,if you haven't had a lifetime of doing it before, requires Reading Recipes & learning New skills, which of course has been clinically proven to stave off Dementia.
Clearly in my case it's working.
The picture above was taken in The Ancient Black & White Room at school yesterday. It was a  girl in my tutor group's 16th birthday & I made her a chocolate cake because I wasn't confident that anyone else would bother bringing one in for her. Perhaps I'm Overfunctioning?
Anyway, I used a recipe that my Mother left behind inside an old cook book. It involved using cocoa which I think is Old Hat these days. I think Modern Recipes use melted chocolate.
I had great plans to write the girl's name on the cake with Smarties. I tried doing it & discovered that it was almost impossible. I couldn't form A Perfect C.
Maybe I should watch back to back episodes of 'Ace of Cakes, which is constantly on The Food Channel these days.

 Oh, I finally cracked a couple of hours ago & toddled down to the pharmacy next door to get some Non-Drowsy Anti-Histamines because the Watering & the Itching was becoming unbearable.
I'm now feeling more than normally drowsy for this time of nite. And also a  bit off-kilter, like I might be leaning a little to the Left or something. And even though the itching seems to have turned down a few notches, my left eye is still watering.  So, you'll understand that I've again put in that photo of the Chanel Window at Bondi Westfield that I already used last blog post.
Sadly, it hasn't got any more interesting than last time. It's still a grey handbag made from a Reptile. My guess that it cost about $8000 which is nothing when you compare it to an Alligator Bag by The Olsen Twins that cost $89,000 that the Panel on Fashion Police (see, I can't write a blog without mentioning it) were scathing about. Who  the hell do the Olsens think they are, Coco Chanel?  Apparently, Alligators are Hard to Catch which really bumps the price up. Who knew?
Clearly, I'm under the influence of Non-Drowsy Medication.

I'm reduced to wearing flat shoes - these ones are Completely Plastic from 'Target' .
Pourquoi, you may ask?
DON'T READ THIS NEXT BIT IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH. THIS MEANS YOU TRIXIE.
I have Unbearable Corns on both little toes. I didn't know what on earth was going on with the toes. All I knew was that Something Bad was Happening. So, when I went to the Pharmacy for Non-Drowsy Medication, I got the pharmacist to look at them. She sat me down next to the counter & got me to remove my Pumas (even though I'm suffering I still went to Boot Camp. Hope I don't come down with Pneumonia tomorrow). Immediately she diagnosed Corns which she says is caused by wearing Other People's Shoes.
I now must see a Podiatrist who will remove a tiny piece of Grizzle or is it spelt, Gristle, which forms the Nucleus of the Corn.

  I'm getting more & more drowsy. I must hop into bed. Perhaps then my Left Eye will mercifully stop watering.
So,here's me in front of the whiteboard this week. I'm wearing Spring. The outfit above has a Slight Sheriff of Nottingham feel to it or at least what the Sheriff of Not. looked like in Robin Hood, a favourite TV series of mine from the 1950s  with its studded jacket.
The one below is like the Packaging of Gwen Stefani's Perfume, or at least that's what my student's told me.
Lastly, I can't stop playing the 'Glee' version of Florence & the Machine's song, 'The Dog Days Are Over'.
In my case, that's soooo True.