Mixed lollies - random insights into my last few days.

A guy at work has started up a mixed lolly jar. Well in fact it's kind of a mixed lolly bin. Normally I withstand it with absolute finesse - lollies always seem like a wasted opportunity to me, seriously why would you eat a lolly when there is chocolate out there waiting to find a home. So, last week he completely uncharacteristically splashed out and bought mini chocolate bars. The type I haven't eaten for literally years. They went dialobically well with the overbrewed office coffee and I ate so many in one afternoon (4? 6? I lost count) that I almost brought on some kind of hypoglycemic coma. I could almost feel the sugar coursing through my veins. Ah office life. Today I fossicked in amongst jelly beans and chocolate coated irredescent bananna flavoured mini door mats like an addict, looking for one last mini chocolate bar. To no avail. I settled for a jelly bean but it was grainy textured and tasted wrong.

Earlier today I had outfit dilemas, precipitated by an ongoing paucity of clean clothes. I started out in glamourous 70's cocktail wear, realised the error of my ways, found myself in a jaunty 50's style milkbar outfit (seriously, complete with red chiffon print neck scarfe), briefly culdesacced in a very noticeably unhemmed but otherwise this decade skirt, then popped out the other side in grey and black office garb. Which was for the best all things considered. Made mental note not to tell my manager that my normal clothes were wet on the line if asked (unlike a few weeks back when I was wearing sensible black crepe dress to work and got compliment).

Needn't have worried. because I said something rather worse. Well several things. It was mega foot in mouth day. I told her (when asked about my thoughts on my *career*) that I 'just couldn't imagine spending the rest of my working life in *type of organisation we work in*' - then I said it another way, you know, just in case that wasn't clear, said 'you know, I just realised I can't imagine staying in *our field*, you know? Like maybe I could keep working in this type of job long term but I'd have to supplement it with other things to sustain my interest, other pursuits'. It was only afterwards, as I walked away that I thought - 'oh'. Oh as in, oh, this is the person who gets to decide whether I get another contract or not (Cleo career advice? 'yes girls, be sure and play hard to get with your workplace. Nothing excites prospective employers more than absolute disdain for their industry and a demonstrated lack of interest in your own career...') and oh, as in oh, did I just completely dis this person's working life, this person who after all is maybe 15 years older than me and quite satisfied with their role in this industry and sees it as an exciting place to work till the end of their days?? Aaah, nice one all round. Maybe I was destined to do something stupid today and I should have stuck with the poorly chosen outfit and spoken benign words instead of the other way around.

Have a quiet house tonight after a few days of houseguests. Liked it - some noise and colour and raucous chatty fun for a few days. Other people doing the dishes for a change! Dancing in my loungeroom! Showing off my lovely town! I think it wore me out though. That and track work slowing down my commute to the city to a snail pace. By the time I got there for sat night I was just about ready for a nap. Not quite gee'd up for inner city glamour with the lip glossed crowd from the shallow end of the gene pool. Tanned boys in carefully casual hair and shoulders. Long tressed girls in strappy shoes and nice toenail polish and as little else as possible. It was *atmospheric* and exhausting. Seriously, imagine the stride up the entry stairs almost past the waspish door girl only to have her attention snap to you, like some hyena gaurding ancient Greek doors to the afterlife, with clipboard at an accusing angle, to say 'excuse me?'. And the careful walk back down hours later, careful, so careful in backless heels, not wanting to slip and slide on grazed butt cheeks down the stairs past door wasp and the q-ing hopefuls below. Not that glamour can't be fun, but doesn't glamour only exist in comparison to non-glamour? Isn't it only fun because there's a sense of acheivement in having the kind of package that other people will envy? Of knowing that many, countless many unwashed, unlabelled, bad haired, dry lipped, bad-teethed, non-eastern suburbed types will not be there, would not be let in, even if they had the inclination to go? And isn't there something icky about that?

Life drawing tomorrow. Looking forward to it. No outfits at all, there's a solution. Of sorts.