The only reason I want to register on radar is because I KNOW this, but a lot of men are too stupid to realise it. I'm looking forward to the moment that they do realise it and I can grind them to paste beneath my heel because I'll be just as delicious as I was 20 kilos ago, they were just too stupid to see a good thing when it sashayed into a bar.

I got a shock when I went to Weight Watchers. I thought they were smoking crack. They wanted me to lose more than 20 kilos. Lose that much weight? I'd become a little pointy stick figure. I don't want to be a little pointy stick figure. I want to be rounded and curvy and sleek!

I had to have a stern word with the lecturer. She wanted me to set my goal based on what they considered an ideal weight range.

This was a problem.

An 'ideal weight range' does not take into consideration how I feel about my body, how my lover's hand feels sliding across my hip, how I feel when I shimmy. I don't want to belong to an ideal weight range, I just want to easily buy clothes.

Once I can do that, then I'm done.

I told the lecturer where she could stick her ideal weight range. I told her the day I fitted into a pair of Levi 501s in a size 14 (that's 12 for you ‘Merkins), I'm done. That's my goal and that's what I'm aiming for. I figure that it will take about 20 kilos to get there. If I get there sooner, then even better. If it takes a little longer, then I'll keep going until they fit.

I like my belly. I like my breasts. I like the way my waist narrows and then flares out into my hips.

I'm TASTY, dammit!

For those of you who were smart enough to recognise my deliciousness from day one, virtual smooches to you.

And I'll always be up for pints at the pub, with or without garlic pizza and chips. Any weight loss program that doesn't allow me to sink a couple of pints every now and again with my friends must be breaching a Geneva convention out there somewhere and can go and get stuffed.

Cheers.

But this week, no pizza, less beer and more exercise. Because if I lose 1.1 kg (2.4 lbs) this week, then I reach my first goal of losing 5 kg (11 lbs) in five weeks.

Indulge me here. I'm going to bore you with weight loss strategies for a bit.

I've set mini goals for myself. There would be no point in me looking at 20 kgs and using that as a goal. It's just too big. I'd lose heart halfway through.

So I set myself little targets in between, complete with rewards for making the distance. I've set five kilo goals, not worrying too much about how long it takes me to reach them. But it would be sweet to hit the first one in five weeks.

Besides, I get to buy myself something next week if I do. YAY! Presents!

End boring weight loss bit.

Keeping it short and sweet. It's late, I'm tired and I wanna go home. But I thought that I would share a quote that made me smile from Ghost's blog.

Q: Why do I always feel like such an idiot?

A: You aren't always an idiot, most likely it is quite the opposite. You just feel like one. And to tell the truth, sometimes I feel like a can of soda, but that doesn't make me one of those either.

Word.

For example, I'm rather looking forward to going into a clothing shop and choosing not to wear things because I don't like them, instead of being faced with no choice at all because I don't fit into anything.

But the best thing I'm looking forward to is the ability to choose men.

Let me explain.

You see, right now, I don't register on sexual radar. You can see it. I walk into a room and men's heads pop up like meerkats to see who the new person is. And then their eyes dull and they go back to what they were doing.

I'm not registering on sexual radar.

I'll walk into a bar with a slim, blonde friend and see the sexual radar blipping off the chart as they look at her. Then they look at me and the radar shuts down.

Ow.

Once upon a time, I registered on sexual radar. I'm looking forward to doing that again.

The part I'm looking forward to most?

Registering on some sleazy radar and having the guy walk up to me and chat me up.

And turning him down flat because 20kg ago, I wouldn't even have been a blip on his screen.

We don't have Thanksgiving in Australia. We do have Australia Day, where we just go to the beach or watch the cricket or bung a couple of snags on the barbie. (For those of you who don't speak fluent Australian, have no fear. We are not throwing men in touch with their own emotions on an open flame, or on small plastic dolls for that matter. To 'throw a snag on the barbie' involves barbecuing sausages. Perfectly harmless. We do not, at any time, throw 'shrimp' on the barbie. No self-respecting Australian eats shrimp. We eat prawns. Now back to the blog at hand.) It's not really a time for family to gather and celebrate.

The closest thing we have to the heart of Thanksgiving is Christmas. Now, from what I understand in the US, Christmas is not that big a deal over there. Yeah, there are presents and food and family, but it runs a very poor second to Thanksgiving.

Over here, Christmas is huge. Gigantic. It is the Australian Thanksgiving.

Now let me clarify a few things here. Yes, we do celebrate Christmas in Australia. This is for the benefit of one of my readers who once asked me that very question. It's worth remembering that, like the US, Australia was once a British colony. We are a lot like you. We just have cooler accents. [grin]

The big difference between our Christmas and your Thanksgiving is that our Christmas is held in the middle of summer. Same time of year, December 25th, but you have to remember our seasons are all arse-about down here.

There is no "Walking in a Winter Wonderland". Hell, we don't even get snow unless you live in alpine regions. There is no skating, no snowball fights, no sipping mulled wine in front of an open fire. You're much more likely to find us in the backyard, perspiring gently in the 90F heat (remember, I live in one of the colder parts of Australia), watching the kidlets run under the sprinkler.

Despite this, we cling desperately to old traditions. Yes, we roast turkeys for lunch. We bake hams. We serve hot desserts. Imagine eating Thanksgiving lunch on the Fourth of July.

Yep, now you're getting it.

I have spent Thanksgiving in the US once before. I don't think it was a typical Thanksgiving experience. We were driving from Syracuse, NY to Knoxville, TN that day. So there was no huge gathering of people around a roasted bird.

As we had such a long way to go, we didn't get to linger long over the lunch we did have. It didn't make much of an impression on me, other than the fact that it is the only time I have been handed a plate that consisted entirely of yellow food. Which was pretty damn scary. But one of the things that struck me most was seeing McDonalds closed DURING THE DAY. This shocked me and gave me a much stronger feeling of how important Thanksgiving was to the US than anything I'd read or seen before.

A bit of a sad indictment, I know but it did make a strong impression on me.

So what is my point?

No real point, it just struck me that despite everything, I am still a stranger in a strange land.

But that's what makes it so much fun here.

Happy turkey day.

This is for Rhaego who has way too much time on his hands.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I spent some time at Sexpo last weekend. At some point in proceedings, an announcement was made that some porn-starlet was going to 'perform' onstage. We wandered over to the stage to check her out.

She wandered out in a sparkly bustier, skirt that was split right up to there and gobsmackingly high heels.

Heels that she couldn't walk in.

She was neither graceful nor sexy. She clomped up and down the stage with a desultory wiggle of her tits (I won't call it a shimmy, shimmies take some skill) every so often. When she found that the audience did not appreciate her clomping, she turned to us and urged us to clap.

At no point did she ask herself, "What am I doing wrong that the audience doesn't like this?" Not this little blonde. She just kept clomping, stumbling and wiggling.

When she got bored with that, she decided to hoist up her skirt and whip off her g-string.

What?

You mean that's it?

What happened to the tease? What happened to a little bit of performance, taunting the audience, making them beg for it?

Nope, she clomped around the stage, crouched down, spread her knees and showed us what she had for lunch.

We hadn't even seen her tits yet.

She was keeping nothing for the finale.

I've seen sexier lichen than this woman.

The audience still wasn't behind her so she pulled some poor slob out of the crowd and proceeded to humiliate him. Sure, it got a laugh, but we were laughing at them, not with them. His reward? She took a copy of her latest appearance in a skin mag, opened it to the centrefold, sat on it and dragged herself around the stage like a dog with worms.

Nice.

But she still had one more party trick to share with us. She got her victim to undo her bustier with his teeth and then yanked on her tits for a bit to show that her nipples stood out so far, she could hang items of clothing off them.

Great.

Marvellous.

She was a walking clothes rack with built-in gyno exam and a dose of threadworm.

Boys, does that REALLY do it for you? Or am I missing the point?

Now I don't pretend to be any sort of expert at stripping, but I know how to dance to turn on a crowd. After I've performed, gay men have told me that I'm damned sexy. Women in the audience have grabbed me and begged me to teach them how to dance like I do. I had a close friend ask me if the ‘climax' of my routine was real, because she thought I was having an orgasm onstage. I can control the way an audience breathes. I can take them up and I can bring them back down again.

And I can do it all with my clothes on.

Last week was Sexpo in Melbourne. It's an exhibition about sex, in all its shapes, sizes and flavours. Once a year, the sex industry hires out the gigantic Melbourne Exhibition Centre and, well... exhibits.

It is probably worth explaining that most of the sex shops around here tend to be the type with the painted-in windows, sticky carpet and dodgy-looking old blokes with raincoats on. Not the sorts of places a girl wants to go shopping. Sexpo was my opportunity to go shopping without caring about the creepy old guys in coats. With several thousand other people around me, I felt pretty comfortable, strangely enough.

The place was packed when we got there. We looked at the guide we were handed at the door and planned our attack. One of my friends had done her research, she'd visited an Australian online retailer and figured out exactly what she wanted. The rest of us just wanted to wander around and see what we could see.

There was the usual tacky lingerie with nothing in my size, which was disappointing. One stall was selling zodiac-coded vibrators. The Scorpio model looked like something out of the pages of a H.R. Geiger sketchbook and apparently Cancerians like a lot of texture. For $30 (US$15) we could get a zodiac vibrator, a ‘lady-finger' vibrator (if I ever get fingers that size, not even Weight Watchers will be able to help me), oriental balls and an R-rated (which translates as "We'll show you some naked bits, but you're not going to see any action.") video. Value-packed porn! And not only that, they even included the batteries and some lube.

We wandered around and goggled at dildos shaped like life-like arms with fists, vibrators that wriggled, twisted and gyrated and oils and lubes in every flavour under the sun (my personal favourite was the honey body dust). There was everything from brothel discount cards to remote-controlled latex feet. The Japanese seem to have picked up on the trend that Apple set. Pretty considerate, if you think about it. Now you can surf porn on your iMac and get yourself off with your matching vibrator.

You could dip the body part of your choice in latex and have a plaster cast of your bits made. Muscle-bound boys in hot pants and busty girls in bikinis wandered about stroking the backs of attendees' necks with vibrators or spanking them with crops. I was rather impressed with the vibrator holsters some of them had. We sampled Hot Sex (a creamy-gingery cocktail mixer) and Pearl Birds (external application only). There was even a booth where you could have your photo taken with two naked models posed in the position of your choice.

We ended up at a booth that sold beautiful corsets, leather outfits and boots. A red brocade corset had grabbed my eye, much to the amusement of a gentleman sitting on a throne within the booth. I tend to have a very expressive face and the combination of my wide-eyed excitement and a t-shirt that read "make me purr" had got his attention.

He very helpfully came over and began to demonstrate the benefits and features of each of the different styles of corsets. I use the word ‘demonstrate' advisedly. You see he demonstrated them by grabbing my breasts and hoisting them this way and that to show just how much cleavage I'd get with each style.

I bet he thought he had the best job in the place.

But seriously, the people there were very, very helpful. I could ask the sorts of questions that you never get to ask. People were proud of the industry they worked in and wanted the public to understand it better.

It was fun and it was all a bit of a laugh, really. And that is how sex should be.

So if you find yourself in possession of the ball, you have to pass it within three seconds or the ball goes to the opposition. There are more rules about where the ball can go and how far it can travel in one pass and stuff, but that is boring. There are six players per side and the ring has no backboard. So when you shoot, you don't get to bounce it in off the backboard, either it goes in or you lose. You only get one point per goal and no bonuses from shooting it outside the netball equivalent of the key.

We are the crappiest team in the league. Possibly in Melbourne. Maybe even the world.

We are BAD.

How bad are we? The umpires deliberately make calls in our favour just to give us a chance. Last night one of our players hit the ball out of bounds. The umpire called it as our throw in. Our player told her that she had hit the ball out, it should go to the opposition. The umpire smiled, indicated her whistle and said, "I'm the umpire. I make the decisions."

That's how bad we are.

We are getting better. We are scoring more goals each game. But our losing margins are increasing exponentially. We got trounced by 18 points last night.

We get done like dinners.

Those of us who have played before, haven't played for around 15 years or so. Those of us who haven't played before, come from backgrounds like rugby and Australian rules football. We tend to be a rather ‘physical' team. And in a non-contact sport, that doesn't go down particularly well.

Especially when we flatten opposition players.

More so when we flatten players on our own team...

I've learned a lot about my co-workers playing netball with them. For example, the gorgeous, blonde Bridget. She is sunnier than a summer's day. A beautiful, fun, wonderful person. Just DO NOT get in her way when she's trying to get the ball because she will lay you out flat and nearly knock you unconscious on the way.

I'm a little sneakier, I'll just get in your way and stand on your toes. Then I go all big-eyed and apologetic. Because I didn't mean it. Really I didn't...

The only games we have won so far have been forfeits when the other team doesn't show up.

Anyway, we were getting annihilated last night, again, when a couple of the girls started giggling like mad. They waved my attention over to the court beside us where another couple of teams were playing.

Oh my...

There was a gentleman playing who had chosen to wear itty-bitty jogging shorts to play. Shorts that did not quite cover his tackle. And there it was, waving in the breeze.

Line of the match? "They should be disqualified for having too many members on the court..."

I'd done this before. And it ended horribly. It rebuilt walls that I had painstakingly dismantled so that I could experience the joy of committing myself completely to a relationship.

Walls that I am painstakingly trying to dismantle again, even as we speak.

It's slow going, knocking down walls.

Especially ones which have the sorts of foundations that mine are built on.

This is not to say that having these walls in place is acceptable. It is simply saying that this is how it is for me.

I'd love to call in the wreckers to knock the whole thing down in a day, but it just doesn't work like that. I need to dismantle them better, crack the foundations and ensure that they can't be built again.

It's bloody hard work.

But it's worth the effort.

"Fortress Around Your Heart"--Sting

Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers in beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding through the night
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognised the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle
That I'd invented inside my head
Away so long for years and years
You probably thought, or even wished that I was dead
While the armies all are sleeping
Beneath the tattered flag we'd made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the lands I'd known
I recognised the fields where I'd once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

I know in my situation, doing the long distance thing, that expectations can also be a dangerous thing.

When you have been doing the long distance thing as long as I have, finally meeting the person can be like the worst blind date ever.

Now, I can hear you ask, how can it be like a blind date? I mean, you know this guy don't you? You've been talking to him almost nightly for nearly a year and a half? If you don't know him by now...

Well, it's all a little bit different when you are face to face. Expectations change.

You know where you stand on the phone or on email. You know the rules of the game. You know the dimensions of the field. You know how things work.

Not only that, but you've had the big discussions. You know his darkest secrets and he knows yours. You've talked until three in the morning about this, that and everything else.

What is there left for you to do?

I know what you are thinking. "Sweet Jaysus, girl. Do we have to draw you a picture?"

Yes, I know there is that.

I was abundantly aware of that.

It didn't make things any easier.

It's kinda weird, really.

I remember the day my boy was arriving very clearly. I kept myself busy. If I didn't I would have gone out of my tiny mind. I pedicured and waxed and blow-dried. I tidied and cleaned and washed. I straightened, I fiddled and I changed. My brother came over and watched me clean out boxes of mail I had kept for 20 odd years. I needed SOMETHING to do. He tried not to laugh at how nervous I was.

All the things that had been plaguing me in the months leading up to this were coming to a head. What if we weren't physically compatible? What if we didn't work out? Or, god forbid, what if we did? What would we do? Would my family like him? Would my friends like him? Would he like my family and friends? My mind was spinning out of control.

As I drove out to the airport, I rehearsed welcome lines in my head. I didn't want my words to betray my nerves. Control freak? Moi? Never! I don't even remember what it is I wanted to say. Or whether I managed to say it, after all that. Mind you, looking back on it now, he was probably too nervous himself to care whether I came off sounding cool or not.

I got to the airport early. I must not have looked as panic-stricken as I felt, or security would have been called as I wandered through the deserted terminal. I found the gate I needed to be at, pulled out a book and pretended to read. I considered hiding behind a pillar so that I could see him before he saw me. I dismissed the idea. How would I have felt in his place? So I sat at the gate, pretending to read, pretending like something huge and overwhelming and scary and wonderful wasn't about to happen, because if I acknowledged it, I would have run away.

There was another family waiting at the gate. They started crowding the window, gabbling excitedly to each other.

Dear god, the plane had landed.

It was like out of a sitcom. Should I stand? Should I sit? Should I lounge against a pillar? Did my hair look good? Did my breath smell good?

OHMIGOD...

It's him.

And thought just left me.

I seem to recall that meeting him and holding him and taking his hand and collecting his luggage wasn't nearly as scary as I'd anticipated. I think I said words. I couldn't tell you what they were. We found his bags then we found the car. I managed to get us lost on the way home.

He was here. What on earth was I going to do with him?

No, I really don't need you to draw me a diagram.

Let me explain something here. I'm not a one night stand kinda girl. I just can't do it. I need to know someone really well before I let them into my bed. I need to be comfortable with a person. Now I was comfortable with him. On the phone. In email.

In the flesh?

I didn't know him from a bar of soap. And I was terrified.

Not only that, but, unwittingly, he had broken my cardinal rule. You see, he lives at home. His dad is a heavy smoker. His clothes were permeated with cigarette smoke.

I couldn't smell him. All I could smell was stale smoke.

Stale smoke doesn't smell good.

A boy has to smell good. It is imperative. There can be no toe curling if a boy doesn't smell good. I don't mean covered in cologne. I just need to be able to smell a guy. I like to know what his body smells like, what his hair smells like.

So you can see where I was. I had this guy in my house that I didn't feel I knew properly whose scent was being masked by stale smoke.

Call me picky if you will, but that's just who I am.

But my motto? "No regrets."

There really wasn't a choice, deep down.

The moral of this story? Push your boundaries. And smoke can always be washed out of clothes.