Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. I did six whole real push-ups, the ones from my feet, thank you, and literally collapsed on the seventh. Curiously, I didn’t find it particularly stressful until my body gave out under me as I was attempting number seven and I collapsed on the floor. On one hand, I know I’m pathetic. On the other hand, hell yes! Rank 2! From my feet! Eat that, everyone-in-the-world!

I can feel the ouchies coming on, even though it’s only been 10 minutes after I completed my initial test. I would have liked to have started the challenge tomorrow, but we’ll see how it goes. I have a feeling I’ll be complaining instead of exercising.

My sweet buddy, Luke, is doing this with me because he’s awesome. It’ll be fun to see if he and I can do a hundred push-ups after the six weeks is up.

She may be gone, but in a dress like this, she’ll never be forgotten:

Which is why it’s frustrating to feel the need to think and, goodness, re-evaluate my perception of self. It’s frustrating to realise that I am not that different. I am not unmoved. In fact, I am so moved by the things around me and so motivated by the desire to create that it makes me hollow inside. There’s so much inside me. I fucking have things to say!

I came to this conclusion while listening to Saul Williams and dancing around my bedroom. I decided ‘I want to be a dancer’ and thought nothing of it until I started thinking about all of the other things that I want to do. Like write, obviously. I go on about writing so often that people often wonder if it’s the only thing I want from life. But I also want to be able to communicate with paint. With poetry. I want to speak with music. I want to surround myself in beautiful things. I want to act. I want to transform. I want to escape.

Sadly, my confidence has also been dealt a rather vicious blow. I thought I was self-assured. I thought I was communicative. As it turns out, my voice is being pulled down by the undercurrent of someone I don’t want to be.

Seriously, I won’t be there for a while yet, so we have plenty of time to become BFFs forever and spend the summer catching dandelions and making up plays and stealing kisses behind the big tree in the field behind the house, before our parents come to take us away.

We’ll catch up years later, by chance, at a Starbucks; we’ll both be older, both be surprised that we’ve lived here for so long (you for three, me for five) but we’d never run into each other. You’ll have a pretty woman on your arm, dark-haired and bright eyed, and she’ll press a little closer to you. You won’t notice the subtle change, but I know that she is claiming you.

‘Oh, this is Sarah,’ you’ll say. I’ll smile and say my name and tell her how nice it is to meet her. Her hand, on your shoulder now, is placed in my view and I notice the wedding ring on her finger. You notice that I notice, and you smile warmly at Sarah. ‘We’re coming up to our first wedding anniversary.’

From that moment on we will engage in some small talk. The five-dollar-an-hour barista will call my name, and we’ll exchange phone numbers before I collect my small soy latte and get out of there. You were my first love. It was odd, seeing you married.

Three days later you will call. Sarah is out of town and you’re wondering if I’d like to come over and catch up. I agree; we set a time for seven o’clock. I will end up being a few minutes late due to traffic, but I will have a bottle of cheap wine, just like the old days, and you’ll laugh and forgive me.

But the thing about wine is how quickly it gets into your blood and turns your head topsy. But midnight we’re slurring, laughing out the old days, and all awkwardness has swallowed with every sip of bottom of the barrel Merlot.

‘You were my first kiss, you know.’ We won’t be able to remember who said it, but we will both recall the way the room seem to close in, and we could both hear our hearts beating. If we were to discuss it--not that we will ever discuss it--we’ll both tell of how, one minute we were drunk, and the next minute you were on top of me, and we were kissing like teenagers in the back of a car, touching each other through our clothes, moaning each other’s names with reverence, like we were hallowed.

No, we won’t talk about it. We won’t talk about how you tried to whisper ‘I love you’ with every thrust, and how I would kiss it away every time. We won’t talk about how full I was with you in me, or how perfectly we fit, and how I cried into your mouth as my orgasm closed in around you, and of how you sat on the edge of the bed, trying to find the words to apologise.

Two years later I’ll read about the announcement of the birth of your new son in the local paper, and, ignoring the knot in my stomach or the lump in my throat, thank God that you had the sense to move on.

Or something.

This proves two things:

1. Wow, that girl is hot!
2. Er.

I am glad to see that my enthusiasm didn’t die over week two, although I did have a minor little stress last night when I realised that writing one every day means writing 365 a year, and how am I going to come up with 365 ideas every year. Bill suggested that I write some ideas down, so I’ve decided to do just that. Good thinking, Bill.

My sister Sharyn lives in Katherine, Northern Territory, and is scatterbrained, skinny and hilarious. Because she lives so far away, she used the conference as an excuse to duck down and visit with us. It was really special as we hardly get to see her. Also, there is a goodly sized gap between us--she’s thirty-something and I’m only in my twenties--so I didn’t really know her all that well as a young girl. Growing up has given me an opportunity to get to know my sister. It’s like meeting her all over again. She has such a big personality that it’s easy to fool yourself in to believing that she’s not nearly as outrageous as you recall. Then she comes calling and completely dashes those illusions.

All gushing aside, she makes the best potato bake using potatoes, cream, cheese and (a secret ingredient that has been removed in the interests of making this our first ever super secret family recipe!). Not kidding! When she told me that she was using that to make a potato bake I died a little inside. Turns out, this potato bake is so good that it should probably be a sin to make it some other way. In fact, if you checked in some obscure gospel like Azariah* or something, you’ll probably find that it is. If it’s not, I invite God to taste it and then tell me that there is any goodness in deviating from a perfect recipe.

She left yesterday. I looked in the fridge for left overs but found none, and have missed her ever since.

I took a huge break over the four day period that Sharyn stayed with us, but I have been writing fairly consistently. I have four pieces of flash fiction in the works, each beginning with a ‘first liner’ that people helped me pluck at random from this thread on the roomtowrite.com forums. (For those who care to look, yes, at some point at night last night I did decide that ‘the ocean was dark and livid’ would make a fabulous starting line. I have since retracted my opinion.) My four starting lines are:

My eyes fluttered and my last breath crept from between my lips as I slipped into the darkness of death.

He burned it all.

“Some scripts just wind up in the trash!” That’s what he said to me!

Isabel watched the ants wandering in the bottom of the glass bowl, then lifted her magnifying glass and smiled her gap-toothed smile.

The last one wasn’t the original prompt, but I couldn’t remember the old one off the top of my head and it appears that I’ve, er, misplaced . If I find it, I suppose I’ll simply do five. I can do it. I’m tough. I also have three poetry first lines, and I can do those, too. Really. I’m a beast. I win all. I would have had them all done by the weekend if I didn’t have to work tomorrow.

I’m a bit nervous, I think. I don’t think I want to work and grow up and stuff.. Hopefully it’s the kind of job that makes the day pass quickly....

*I think I made this book up in my head, but it sounds very biblical, doesn’t it?

It really was a remarkable event, and I’m very sad that my camera isn’t of good enough quality to capture it, especially as the night was so wonderfully clear. My mother is in Canberra on business, and she took her super camera with her. I called her to remind her about the eclipse, but last I heard she couldn’t actually see the moon and had decided to go for a wander. With a little luck she found it and took some really amazing pictures of heartbreaking beauty.

In other news, I’m feeling rather distressed and can’t put my finger on why. The new job, perhaps? The idea that I’ve finally picked a career path? Or the fact that I’m ready for a boyfriend, but there are no potentials in sight? I suppose I’ll know what it is when I’ve fixed it.

Consequently, I think I’m going to see if I can orchestrate some kind of date with Orlando Bloom. The more I see of him the more I’d like to get to know him in an oddly non-celebcentric way. Orlando, if you’re reading this, drop me an email.

If you read my last journal entry you may have noticed that I was going for a job interview. Apparently that interview wasn’t an interview at all. Apparently it was an opportunity for me to go in there and fill out the paperwork necessary for me to take the job. I didn’t even really know what I was doing, and yet there I was, giving them my personal information and signing documents that let the police check my criminal record (which is non-existent, thank you very much). So when did I get the job? I’m still trying to figure that out. You see, my new boss-to-be called a lady who works for my father and asked if she could refer anyone who would be ideal for this position. The lady at my father’s office happens to be mad for me and thinks that I am perfect for an administration role, so she dropped my name. And you know something--I think that that is the moment that I got the job. I think this because when my boss-to-be called me she sounded as though she’d already made up her mind. Or it might have been after I said ‘yes, I gave the lady in question permission to pimp my name for your OH&S job.’ Maybe that meant, ‘yes, I want your OH&S job.’

A small part of me thinks I am pretty silly for allowing my father’s colleague to drop my name. The larger part of me is screaming ’you idiot, you had it made!‘ But whatever, larger part. I can’t mooch off my mum and dad forever. Besides, this is only an interim position and I’m not qualified to take the job on on a permanent basis. I’m just there to fill in for a few months. The work sounds easy, and the money is probably good. I normally would have asked about the cash, but I’ll be damned if I thought I’d ever be sitting here writing about starting a job in anything other than retail. I even tried to sabotage myself by admitting that I wasn’t qualified and making a fool of myself in the interview. I looked pretty hot, though. I bet that’s why I’m sitting here, all employed and un-mooching. Damn my superior genes. I would cut off my nose, but then the mirrors in the house would be sad because I would use them less often. Boo. How could I be so selfish?

In other more important news, I am editing a story. Hooray for me. And hooray for you what gets to read it, innit!

P.S., I am not going to proofread this post before I press the publish button because, damn it, I’m a working woman now and I don’t have time to play silly buggers with grammar and spelling.

P.P.S., pls dun tell teh english i say dat or it will leve me........

P.P.P.S., i fink it alredy nos........o shi-