It was a dilemma of eight-legged proportions: should I try to kill the two gigantic (okay I exaggerate) arachnids climbing up the wall of my bedroom; or do I really want to call in macho neighbourly assistance at 11.30pm?

They were no tarantulas, but let’s face it, they were way bigger than the occasional daddy-long-legs you see scurrying around - heck if it were a daddy-long-legs I would have wished it good night and gone to sleep. These were big enough that their legs, all sixteen of them being that there were two, were of a substantial width, and their bodies made ewww-evoking crunching noises when you squashed them.

Yep, I squashed them. Both of them. All. By. Myself. (I admit I considered bringing in the kitten and setting Tommy loose on them.)

It wasn’t without its tricky moments. Given that they were both perched in a corner of the ceiling, I had to first find a way to get them down. I thought about going downstairs for a mop, then decided it would be a lot less trouble to scrunch up a piece of paper and throw it at the pesky pests.

It took longer than I thought - okay, fine, I’m no sharp-shooter. But eventually, spider numero uno fell to the carpet and I hurriedly squashed him several times as hard as I could without actually having to feel anything, which of course didn’t work. Finally, just as it seemed it would disappear beneath my bed forever and I would have to crawl down there if I was to be rid of it, I gave it an almighty squash and it was flat as a, what do they say, a pancake.

Spider numero dos didn’t leap off the wall; it chose to crawl down it. Squashing it was easy given my experience with its compatriot, but it left a rather icky stain of spider guts on my wall. Don’t worry, I’ve cleaned it all off and flushed them both down the toilet.

If these critters get any bigger, I am seriously calling in reinforcements.

In the past three days,

I have played tennis three times (my tennis is lousy but I love it),

gone for one run (every time I am not physically running I am filled with fresh resolve and I forget how pathetic I look trying to cover that measly distance),

vacuumed my entire house from top to bottom (I get to mean it literally because my house has an upstairs and a downstairs).

I’d be feeling a whole lot fitter if my arms and legs weren’t quite so sore. But you know what they say about pain.

I get hooked on The West Wing!

Between my list of television serials I intend to catch up on, a firm determination to get running and regain some semblance of fitness, the Aussie Open, cleaning house from top to bottom, keeping my kitten company, and generally enjoying life in community, I expect to be very occupied.

Yes, we got a kitten. Very naughty but oh so so cute. I firmly believe the only reason people get pets and actually keep them is because animals are so cute when young. By the time they’re big and old and grumpy and not even a quarter as cute as they were in their baby glory years, it’s too late to get rid of them.

(Sometimes I think the same applies to kids.)

I drove in to work today. Woohoo! Me, set loose on the roads of Melbourne! I have to say, I’m mildly distressed. It took me almost an hour to get to work today, when during the year-end break it only took me 10 minutes. Okay, so Y drove all those times, but I’m not that bad. I expect it to not be a regular occurence, because according to the trusty morning radio, there were two truck breakdowns on the freeway this morning that contributed to the chaos.

I am so looking forward to the long weekend. Friday is a public holiday. And my in-laws rang to make sure all was well the other night. And everyone has been absolutely divine in making sure I have transport slash food slash company. And my kitten has made me his new best friend because even though he likes Y more (as do all animals) he doesn’t exactly have a choice. Beggars can’t be choosers and it’s either me or nothing. And he needs me. Happy sigh. I feel so loved.

I am a walking paradox, a clash of mismatched personalities and desires, a living and breathing contradiction. And just for the record, I’m blaming this latest spew of self-awareness mumbo jumbo on PMS.

Uncertainty is exciting - or so I have always maintained. The unsure future, never quite knowing where we will end up or what we will be doing, is all part of the thrills of being young marrieds living it up in our 20s. Migrating is as simple as buying a plane ticket and packing a suitcase, and don’t ask me where I will be in two years because I haven’t a clue. All this, coming from an obsessive list-maker, who thought she would try a year without an organiser and has recently decided to give in and buy refills for her little-used lime green former faithful companion. I say former because while it has continued to avail itself to my whims and fancies, I have not been faithful in using it. Why I need an organiser I will not use defies logic, and perhaps I will stick to saving trees and not get those refills after all, but something anal in me screams out for the order of white pages neatly lined and laying out my entire week, month or year before me.

This was supposed to be longer, but 5.30 beckons.

those three seconds of disorientation when my alarm goes off on a Monday morning and I rummage through my cotton-wool brain to realise that I have to get out of bed and start a new week at work.

It’s Friday afternoon at work and I’m just about mentally shut-down for the day - make that the week. There’s nothing to do, or nothing that I can think of, and I’m avoiding being even marginally productive work-wise, by being productive blogging-wise. Actually, I do need to be productive freelance-writing-wise, but I’m lumping that under work and putting it on the backburner - for these 10 minutes.

Lately, I’ve been caught up by a terrible mood of ‘I want to…’. I want to exercise, I want to start running, I want to do scrapbooking, I want to make mosaic works of art, I want to write decent blogposts, I want to not write long, meandering blog entries, I want to relearn Spanish, I want to learn sign language, I want to bake or try to, I want to watch a whole heap of movies, I want to play tennis, I want to go the Australian Open, I want to I want to I want to… Story of the last couple of weeks. And that’s in addition to my already established wants - travel the world, whale-watching… I’m thinking of adding wakeboarding or a similar being-dragged-behind-a-boat watersport and surfing to the mix.

Yesterday in a fit of determination, I decided to turn my wants into dones. Or rather, will dos. So I did the load of ironing that’s been sitting in our living room for the last five days. It had nothing to do with my existing list of desires, plus I hate ironing, but it was the first step in putting my life in order, not that it isn’t but I sometimes perceive it to be because chores are a never-ending chaos though I try to minimise them the best I can. Hopefully, that one step will trigger a whole lot of other steps that actually have something to do with that which makes me come alive.

I am caught in a funny limbo of excitement and tiredness. I am mentally excited but visually tired. I’m not physically tired mind you, I’ve been clocking good hours these past nights, but I feel visually tired. Or perhaps it’s just a spate of emotional gloom. The weather’s been cracking the 30s on an unfortunately regular basis and what we need is a damn good downpour, but the longed-for grey of rainclouds seems to have settled in me and refuses to budge as sure as the heavens refuse to open up. It’s all a mish-mash of verbs and adjectives that do not fit, but it is the limbo that I am in. I think I need exercise.

Time to be productive, you know, freelance-work-wise.

has successfully gotten rid of the pesky 50 Euro cents coin.

Someone gave me a Euro fify cent coin instead of an Australian one-dollar coin. I would tell you who it was and when it happened if I knew, but (dammit) I don’t. So I’m stuck with a coin I basically cannot use - until I haul ass over to Europe. Which I am planning to, by the way. What, you think I’d learn how to say, ‘Give me a chocolate ice cream, thanks’ in Spanish and not ever get to use it?

Alternatively, I could also try to pass it off as a one-dollar coin and give it to someone else. I’ve given the possibility some thought and decided I would have to do it unconsciously, i.e. mix it with all my other coins and use it unawares, because I would be too nervous about my little scam otherwise and I am a terrible liar.

So there I was, last Friday, standing in front of a (train) ticket-dispensing machine, digging in my purse for the rogue coin - if I can just feed it into the machine so I never have to give it to a real life human being… - when a voice goes, ‘Excuse me?’

Standing behind me to the left was an old guy - white hair, small-framed, thin and surprisingly sprightly-looking with a bag over one shoulder and pulling one of those small luggage bags on wheels.

‘You can use my ticket, it’s a weekly ticket and I don’t need it anymore,’ he said, brandishing one of those drastically-expensive stiff rectangles of paper we call train tickets in my direction. Honestly, I was too surprised by this unexpected angel-in-khaki-shorts to thank him as effusively as I wanted to, but I did manage a thank you and a smile and he was gone. Just like that. And I had in my hand a ticket which only expired three days later.

So to the uncle with the what I suspect to be a Singaporean accent, I probably won’t recognise you because I’m really bad at faces (and even worse with names), but this blog entry is for you. Thank you for being an angel in khakis. I’m using your train ticket today.

Sorry, do I sound too excited?

(More to come later… if I can)