A tattoo? No way.

If I had any thoughts about getting a tattoo - which I never did in the first place, but IF I did - they would have evaporated.

I exhausted all my adventurous spirit last weekend after subjecting my poor hair to the torture of straightening irons. It was heart-breaking to see that no matter how much I ironed it, there were still bits of curls defiantly poking out everywhere. I could almost hear them sing, "We shall overcome."

My body has a mind of its own.

Hand-made gone mad

I passed a cafe somewhere in North Sydney that said 'Hand-crafted coffee'.

What in the world is hand-crafted coffee? How can you hand-craft coffee? I'm trying hard to imagine. Perhaps the barista is sitting there grinding coffee beans in a mortar and pestle until the grounds are exactly the right size for whichever style coffee you prefer - espresso, plunger, Turkish, stove-top, drip-filter, mastication, graveling the pavement, mulching the garden, etc. Then he'll scoop up boiling water with his palms and pour it gently on the grounds while stirring it constantly with his big toe...oh, wait, it said HAND-crafted. No toe.

At least it didn't say 'Lovingly hand-crafted coffee'. Otherwise I'd have to imagine him doing all this with a bloody beatific smile on his face. That would have been too much.

One at a time, please

The mind is a fascinating thing, isn't it? Or is it the brain - I don't know where the distinction begins between the two.

You know how they say the two sides of the brain handle different aspects of our thought processes. I just realised yesterday that they throw up their end product simultaneously too, at least with me. Here I was, sitting in the bus thinking about what had happened a week ago, absolutely consumed with a certain grief (What grief, you ask? None of your business, you emotional voyeur). And I was thinking, "This boy standing next to me has one calf fatter than the other. How strange is that?" And both these thoughts were playing out SIMULTANEOUSLY in my head.

How is this possible? Does the brain compete with itself to bring out non-stop editions of breaking news?

"OK, I've got this wonderfully poetic observation on the Aboriginal flag that I'm going to think right now."

"No, wait. Keep that for the next minute, because I've got this terribly logical thought on the North Shore train line delays that I want to let loose first."

I guess usually the two parts of my brain resolve the timing issue amicably, but sometimes - like yesterday - both thoughts just jostle at the door and pop out at once. Which just leaves me feeling really spaced out.

Why didn't the smoke detector go off?

My entire home smells like a burnt offering to the gods. How was I to know that microwaving a piece of corn bread for too long would cause it to emit dense yellow smoke that engulfed the entire place? The only thing I was panicking about was that the smoke alarm would start blaring and the entire neighbourhood would come to see what was wrong.

But no. It remained as calm and serene as ever. I could not see my hand in front of my face, the smoke was so thick. But the detector cared not. Detached objectivity seemed to be its motto. Eventually all the smoke cleared off. But it's two days now and my home still smells like I've just had an ashwamedha yajna done.

Synaptic cross-connection

..so I texted my swim instructor asking her if she could take a class this week.

A while later I get this reply from her - "I've found the hinges for the door."