I am not a serious moments kind of gal. I've tried. I have. But serious moments make me cringe, and cringing just  takes the whole seriousness away, so basically we're back to square one.

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I'm sorry I haven't been blogging. My teachers have decided to give me ten trillion assignments.


"Jimmy! I thought I told you to do the dishes after you do your homework! Why are you watching television?"



"It's okay, Mom! I haven't done my homework yet."
 
xx Miss Moi

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I had one bout of running.

It happened last week. It was an average Sunday afternoon, and I was faced with the pile of homework I was kind of of meant to do last week, and decided it was the perfect oppurtunity to start the fitness routine I've been meaning to do for, what is it now, years? Anyway, enough of that, back to my story. So, I went for a run. Not just a 'that was such a big hill, time to sit down' (I say this because that is the majority of my PE class). This was a super duper half hour, continious run, where I ran continiously for half an hour. Oh yeah. That's right.

So I came home totally refreshed and proud of my awesome running skills. Had dinner, avoided homework, went to sleep, etcetera, etcetera. Woke up in the morning and - kablamoo. Complete and utter pain. Like you would not believe. All up and down my legs. As I stepped. Every step. ... Sorry, I just had to take a moment I was reliving the utter PAIN that I had. So burrrrrr, fast forward, rewind, stop, hobbling to school with my friend and trying to act like, hey, this is good, this is fat burning and pure muscle forming! (I think I may have actually pulled something, but anyway). And she asks me, 'Miss Moi, did you stretch?' Silence. Silence. Silence.

Stretch? What is this? I do not stretch. That is what you do in primary school where you fly your arms everywhere and try to hit the other kids. People actually stretch? This is serious news to me. Anyway, I decided not to let this little hiccup get the better of me and went for a SECOND RUN. Note the capital letters, as this is an important part in you realising truly how much of an idiot I am. I mean, you can see the ending already, but no, I of course though I had struck gold. Sigh.

Anyways, got home, put on some deep heat (liquid heaven), did some demented stretches and got back out there! It actually wasn't too bad, the pain had kind of faded, it was a beautiful day, I'm young, free, invincible... Next morning. Oh. My. God. Literally cannot bend my legs. Think they may have to be amputated. Am considering how this will affect my chances at being an olympic runner. May have to give up this fleeting dream. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

xx Miss Moi

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Do you ever have one thing among all the craziness that makes you just step back and go 'wow'. Mine are normally really stupid little things that actually mean nothing but that take me by total surprise.

Example One: Allow me to introduce Person A. Person A enjoys Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain. Okay, in actual fact Person A is simply a guy at my school, you know the type, never do any work, always mess around and are most likely doing some kind of drugs.

So, as the story goes, I am sitting on a couch in the Library during a free period, quietly minding my own business when KAZAAM! my pencil case and all my other books go flying off my seat. I'm putting the books on my lap away so I can lean down and get it (a massive task as I always seems to have ten billion, after starting off with one...) when Person A, sitting on the couch next to me, leans down and picks them up for me. It literally caught my breath a little. And no, not because we had a Hollywood moment where I look up and he's leaning into me. Just because it was the absolute last thing I expected someone like Person A to do. Maybe snigger to his mates or make some joke about being 'un-co', but never actually help me. And it made me think; would I do the same if it happened to him. Most likely, no. Because I'd written him off as a tool. It made my day.

xx Miss Moi

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I go back to school tomorrow. Sad, but unfortunately true.

You know that feeling you get right before you have to do something you don't want to, that unwarranted sense of dread like the world is about to collapse and there is nothing you can do about it but eat some icecream and wallow in your sorrows. It creeps up on you from the moment you're at the halfway mark of your holidays, and can no longer tell yourself you have ages left. Each day of that gloomy week a weight is put on your heart, growing heavier, heavier, heavier. The night before is the worst - it's like Sunday night but without the good TV. There is no way you can deny it any more, as hard as you might try. Gone are the days of waking up half an hour before you go back to sleep, the days of going into the city DURING the day and seeing people stare at you in awe, and most importantly the days of being able to go to the bathroom without having to get permission from a middle-aged discontented teacher. Sigh.

But back to the feeling - it's not just before bad things. Right before you're having a party, for example. That half hour where you sit around worrying that no one will turn up and you'll be left all alone with a packet of streamers and a bowl of punch. Everything's laid out, everthing prepared and there's nothing you can do but... wait. There's nothing you can do, the inevitable is soon to become the reality. Before a test, when you wonder if you have in fact done enough (in my case, most likely not). Before an awkward telephone call to, perhaps, tell your boss your quitting (something I still haven't quite got the guts to do). It's when you're nerves kick in and you're common sense goes out the door. You know that there's nothing you can do, and while this should be a consolidation it soon becomes a fear.

So, what to do in these times? Well, isn't it obvious. Nothing.

xx Miss Moi

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I love lists. If you say that you don't like lists, then you're in serious list denial and need to go write a list about it. Everyone makes lists, from the mega, i.e. 100 things to do before I die (number one, meet Zac Efron) - to the not so mega, i.e. things to buy at the supermarket (number one, Zac Efron). They help put our lives in order. When things get way to stressful, write a list about and suddenly everything is in one neat, orderly package. What's not to like?

Many magazines, TV shows and movies throughout the ages have used lists to try and make people laugh, bring up ratings and basically fill in that extra page on the back of their magazine. I personally love Jamie's list in A Walk To Remember, but the unreputed master of list making must of course be David Letterman. His 'Top Ten' Lists are legendary and give inspiration to us lowly listmakers. My personal favourite is his "Top Ten George Bush Moments", at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w73dVVPRk0. It's a list AND it insults George Bush! Snaps!

Now, here is where my previous promise comes into play. You know, about making my blogs a bit more personal and trying to shift that hazy mist that always seems to develop whenever I start to mention anything whatsoever actually about me. I could continue this blog by putting in some funny lists off Google, but no, I'm going to tell you the start of my list of Things To Do Before I Die. It's very dodgy and nowhere near completion. Here goes, in no particular order...

1. Swim with a dolphin
2. Take the next to taxi to the airport and catch the next plane leaving
3. Run a marathon
4. Go parachuting
5. Plant a tree
6. Do standup
7. Bungee jumop
8. Learn to fly a plane
9. Go in a hot air balloon
10. Ride a camel along a beach
11. Make a meal from only the ingredients in my backyard
12. Teach someone to read
13. Go stargazing
14. Have my portrait painted
15. Go to the opening night of a ballet
16. Be in three places at once
17. Go to my school's 20th reunion
18. Shower under a waterfall
19. Fall in love
20. Have my heart broken
21. Learn to yodel
22. Jet ski
23. Learn a foreign language
24. Go skinny-dipping at midnight
25. Send a message in a bottle
26. Learn to ballroom dance
27. Write a novel
28. Experience weightlessness
29. Drive across Australia from coast to coast
30. Sleep on a beach under the stars
31. Drive a convertible with the top down
32. Have a midlife crisis
33. Scuba dive
34. Go to a football match
35. Go to a rock concert
36. Visit every continent on the planet

Any suggestions? What's on your list?

xx Miss Moi

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What are we coming to when almost on a weekly basis more schoolyard bashings are showing up? I was absolutely shocked and disgusted to hear about the 15-year-old girl from Queensland who was bashed by three other teenage girls, while bystanders filmed it on their mobiles. The year 11 student was confronted on her way home from school and bashed repeatedly in the face and thrown onto the road. A crowd formed, some of whom started filming it. Her attackers than warned her to 'get her coffin ready' if she told anyone what happened and left her, bloody and bruised with a broken nose. The police have charged one seventeen year old girl with assault and warned more arrests were to follow.

And yet, this isn't unusual in the least. In fact, it become part of the norm in news headlines. A culture of bullying, and more recently cyberbullying, has been in schools and teens for, well, ever. With new advances in technology, it, unfortunately, creates a new forum for people to be harrassed and tormented. While I've never seen or experienced anything as disgusting as this, everyone, and I mean everyone, has seen, and maybe done, some kind of bullying. It's just those little things that you don't really think much of but that can have a huge effect on people, like posting a bad photo or making a mean comment. You just don't know what will tip people over the edge. So please, please, please, make sure you think before you act, especially online where the entire world can see it, and just think what effect something might have on everyone involved. In saying that, if there's anything that offends you in anyway on this blog, please just comment it and I'll modify or take it off straight away. And if you have any problems, please call the Youth Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

I'm sorry to have such a serious blog, but rest assured tomorrow it will be back to Twilight and bad haircuts tomorrow.

xx Miss Moi

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Everyone has had at least one bad haircut, so you know the feeling that your entire world is collapsing because you share some uncanny resemblances to a poodle.

I have been lucky enough to have had very little bad haircuts, a part from a few manic streaks that, instead of disappearing, turned a weird shade of orange. But this all changed when I decided to get a ‘quick trim’ while getting my hair straightened at the hairdressers. I’ll let you in on a little secret about my hair; there is no ‘quick trim’. As much as I love my hair, there is so much of it that it often blows out to insane proportions and I wonder how I manage to hold my head up with so much weight on it. The poor hairdresser looked at it with obvious terror in her eyes, but bravely set to work. I told her I normally have a side fringe type thing (really just a cowlick gone wrong), and she swept it all to side. This whole fiasco is really my fault, because it is at this point that I should’ve stepped in and said something, but instead I quietly nodded as she snipped along this line. She then asked me to style my hair as I normally would, and in doing so I saw with great terror the small tuft of hair popping up. I’ll be the first to admit it, I am an extremely dramatic person and I had to fight hard to hold back tears as she tried to flatten, spray and eventually just chop at this horrible mess. After smiling my way out of the shop, I sat in tears on my bed and refused to speak to anyone, mourning the loss of my perfect hair and devising ways to avoid being seen with it. Running away and joining the circus crossed my mind. I could be part of their freak show, "The Girl with the Demented Hair".

After a few hours of private contemplation, I realised I might have slightly been overreacting. It was nothing some careful handy work with a straightening iron and a can of hair spray couldn‘t fix - but people don’t seem to realise the great importance hair is to us. Celebrities and everyday people alike spend hundreds of dollars to get the perfectly ‘natural’ hair. There are scientific methods to do just about anything to your hair, from making it straight to curly, long to short, frizzy to smooth, and everything in between. But there is one thing that can’t be changed - the fateful snip snip of the scissors and the disgusting mess you’re left with. Oh well, maybe poodle’s coming back in.

xx Miss Moi

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