It's OK, nothing broken this time around, just some ligaments and tendons FUBAR-ed after catching a pass badly in out last game of netball for the year (we lost.) And here I was thinking I had excellent ball-handling skills.

But it has made for a dramatic end for what has been a dramatic year.

I've broken a toe, been left to the mercy of the American health system as a traveller without insurance (or a zip code with five digits--what a fuss that caused!) and nursed myself through the odd hangover.

The company I've worked for for the past seven years has gone through so many changes this year that it will be unrecognisable in 2002. We've been sold to a larger organisation, moved offices, changed general managers, changed managing directors, had nine people leave and seven people start.

Even my job has changed dramatically. I now teach courses in addition to all the other stuff I do. I project manage and next year I'm asking for a senior consultant's pay packet to match the senior consultant's responsibilities I now have.

But I can't complain. My job has allowed me to travel to Sydney, Brisbane (twice) and all over the US. It's allowed me to meet people all over the world and expand my horizons. It's allowed me to put faces to online names and catch up with dear friends that I don't get to see terribly often. Thingie hugs are just the bestest things in the world.

This year saw me evicted from my home and madly dashing around so that I had somewhere to live before I went overseas. And so I had somewhere to keep my boy when he came to see me.

I spent three wonderful, challenging, scary, exciting weeks learning my way around another person, face to face for the first time. We liked doing it so much, we're doing it again in April. Wish us luck.

I sat and watched in mute horror as the world changed irrevocably in September. It took me a long time to cry and mourn and understand what it all really meant to me. I'm still not sure that I do. But the picture I took of the NY skyline in July now holds very special significance.

I came back from the US convinced that I wanted to live for at least five years in New York. Now I'm not so sure. Not because I would not feel safe, but because it will not be the city I fell in love with earlier this year. And it never will be. That saddens me greatly.

2001 has changed me in so many different ways I couldn't even describe them all to you. Some changes were hard, some were easy, some were voluntary, some were forced on me. But that's the way life works, doesn't it?

Thank you for coming along for part of the journey this year. Thanks for your encouragement and comments and props. I hope to see you all again in the new year. In the meantime, have a wonderful festive season, whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year.

Take care of you.

Just a little exercise for those of you at home, next time you go grocery shopping, put 48 sticks of butter (for my US audience--my Aussie viewers need twenty packs) into your basket and have a look at that.

Feel the weight of it.

That used to be under my skin.

I used to be carrying that around every day with me.

That's a nasty little visual, isn't it?

Here's to never carrying it around again.

Sorry I didn't update last week, but as we get closer to the end of the year, things get more and more frantic. I was rehearsing for a belly dance performance, attending Christmas parties and preparing for my own Christmas celebrations as well as finishing up my latest project.

No wonder I'm feeling a little like I've been hit by a bus.

Although dancing with La Fée Verte last weekend probably didn't help matters.

I belly danced at a local club last Friday night. I always get a bit of a performance buzz from being onstage, so I was rather looking forward to going to a friend's party afterwards. I headed on over (in full stage get-up, I might add) to join in the fun.

The party was in full swing when I arrived, including a knot of people in the kitchen oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over a slender bottle of green liquid. Turns out a friend had recently returned from a trip to Prague with a bottle of absinthe.

Now, the most I know about absinthe is what I've seen in movies, so I don't pretend to know whether this was the real deal or whether how we drank it was correct. What we did was pour shots into wine glasses, take a teaspoon of sugar, pour a little more absinthe over the sugar, set it alight and, once it had caramelised a little, quickly stir it into the absinthe and drink it.

I watched a couple of others shoot theirs first. Most of them looked at it for a bit before drinking it, which let the sugar sink to the bottom. This meant the first mouthful was bitter as hell and most of the sugar was left in the bottom of the glass. The faces people pulled were most amusing.

I decided that I didn't want to have that sort of experience, so once the master of ceremonies stirred in the sugar, I kept swirling the glass so the sugar was mixed through as I drank it. It was still bitter as all hell, but there was a faint liquorice taste as well.

Going down, it felt like fire. It was mostly a good glowy feeling, sometimes just this side of heartburn. And while I didn't see any little green Kylie Minogues flittering about and singing, it did enhance my post-dancing buzz. Mind you, had I seen little green Kylie Minogues, I would not have been too surprised. My friend's roommate is gay and his friends kept playing Kylie all night. Imagine a roomful of absinthe-buzzed gay men grooving to "Your Disco Needs You" and you'll have a fair idea of what I mean.

Although, perhaps I DID see a roomful of fairies after all...

I don't know how I came to have this fear. All I know is that for as long as I can remember, I have been terrified out of my mind by spiders.

Let me clarify here. I don't mean little Daddy Long Legs or Money Spiders or critters like that. They don't worry me in the slightest. I mean the big hairy ones. Go look up Huntsman and Wolf spiders, you'll see what I mean.

They're not even poisonous. They are just creepy and make my skin crawl. They scuttle. They have too many legs. They have too many eyes. And they are hairy.

Most of you will not walk into a room and see something as big as the span of your hand with eight legs and a bad attitude sitting on your wall. Perhaps if you live in tropical areas or if you are a fellow Aussie, but most of you are only going to see them on The Discovery Channel.

It's a regular occurrence around here.

It happened last night.

I was snuggling up in bed for a nice chat with my boy before I went to sleep and he went to work when my eyes were drawn to the curtain pelmet. There it was, as big as my hand. And I turned into a complete gibbering idiot. Ghost quietly talked me out of hyperventilating and convinced me that everything was OK and that I could get out of bed and kill it.

They have to die. I can't just catch them and put them outside. I can't leave them, I don't know where they will end up. And before you think I'm just being paranoid, I've had multiple horrible encounters with them that all relate to me leaving 'the poor thing' alone.

I don't ask much, just that they don't come into my house. I don't have a big house. They have the rest of the whole wide world to live in. Just not in my house.

Shaking and shivering, I managed to get the bug spray (I was all out of hair spray, which is much better for immobilising them) and start spraying. I was hoping it would be quiet and just drop off the pelmet so that I could squish it.

Damn, he was jumpy. He abseiled down the edge of the curtain and hit the floor running. Right under my bed. Where I keep the ugly vertical blinds that used to be on the windows and a spare pair of fluffy slippers.

I panicked. Heaven knows what Ghost thought on the other end of the phone. I didn't dare look under the bed. I had no idea where it might have gone. And I would never, ever be able to wear my slippers again.

I couldn't move until I knew where it had gone. It might have crawled into my underwear drawer or my bed. It might be curled up in one of my slippers.

It bolted out from under the bed, running right towards me.

You'd have to ask Ghost what sort of noises I was making through all this. I think I screamed. I almost ran. Then, with a terrified moan, I yanked off my platform slipper and belted it.

It's a big slipper. I hit it really hard. Ghost could hear the thump.

I swear, if the damn thing could talk it would have shrugged two legs at me and said "What? Wha'd I do?"

I hit it again. It crumpled into a tiny ball. It was dead. And I thought I was going to throw up. I fetched some stiff cardboard so that I could dispose of the corpse. And then I climbed back into bed and tried not to hyperventilate again.

I know, I sound pathetic. But we are talking irrational fears here. I don't know why, I can't explain it. But would it be too much to ask for them to stay outside?