Jet Plane

I guess I am not the only one wants to see the world. Clearly the ash from Chile is on an adventure of its own and who can blame it? There are some bloody great sights out there.
Hopefully this ash won't be stalking me on the weekend as I head over to my constant stomping ground, New York.
I feel like I haven't travelled in ages. There was a while there when I was in multiple countries in matter of weeks - most of them war zones. While catching the subway in NY can be like a war zone I am aware this trip is a little more tame than usual. I will take my trusty camera and film my doco on the UN, I will write some articles for magazines but really my main goal is to eat as much NY pizza as I possibly can without vomiting it all up and wasting pure gold.
Oh how my ass will grow with such love. It is already in counselling for how to react when everyone will have no choice but to say yes to the question: Does my bum look big in this?
Then on my way home I plan to make a pit stop to a place where many fear to tread. Well maybe I am exaggerating but this is where they set Children of the Corn. That's right I am heading back to Nebraska. Yes I did say back to. 
Twenty years ago I spent a year in Nebraska and now I get to celebrate how old that makes me sound with all my fellow classmates. Did anyone say "High School Reunion?"

To be continued...

Peeping Paula

Do you ever look at your life and wonder if it is the one you are meant to be living? I do.
I can't help but feel like I am missing something - a bit like losing a matching sock and no matter how hard you look it is nowhere to be found. That one lone sock will forever be worn with one that doesn't quite match and yet it is still functional. Sometimes I feel like that is my life: a non-pair of socks.
I certainly have no regrets. I most definitely have made mistakes. I am proud of who I am and what I have and will achieve but...yes there is always a but.
A couple of years ago I think my life was supposed to turn out differently than it did. Sure you say, everything happens for a reason and I would nod along with you on any other occasion but on this one I beg to differ.
Like all good stories it involved a boy, love at first sight, a war and an ending that will one day be like The Bridges of Madison County. 
I can't change the way things have gone and nor would I want to but what if this was not the way it supposed to go?
Now I would be married. I would have had a child, maybe two. I would be speaking another language. I would be right where I was meant to be.
Yet I am not. I am not unhappy. I do not feel hatred and again, I do not regret. Yet when I look at my life from the outside in I know that something isn't right.
I am missing my sock.

The Boogeyman

Ever since I can remember I have loved getting scared.
As a teenager there was nothing better than slumber parties with the girls, with them shrieking in terror hidden inside their sleeping bags while I screamed at the TV telling the characters to stop being so stupid!
Freddy, Michael, Jason and Chucky were the men in my life and I couldn't get enough of them.
To get scared was such a thrill and so hard to come by that I would seek any way to feel it. Jumping out of planes, filming in war zones, picking up spiders and my idea of an ultimate good time is sitting all alone in a cinema with a horror movie playing.
So last night when I couldn't sleep, I tried to work out what my problem was. I began to realise that my lack of slumber was because I was... afraid. No there was no killers in the house or drip, drip, drip coming from the kitchen, this was far worse.
I was afraid of living.
The idea of traveling alone freaked me out, the idea of being successful make me feel sick and the idea of doing anything differently made me want to find some killers to help distract me from my own crap.
Normally I coveted being scared, I relished the feeling - yet here I was trying my best to make it go away.
I suddenly wanted to be one of the girls with their heads in their sleeping bags, willing all the decisions in my life to be simple and without change.
I put it down to getting old. Maybe the time had finally come where I was "settling" and this was my life. I watched other people live this kind of life every day, like they didn't have a choice about their destinies. Yes maybe this was my time to join the production line.
Then this thought scared the shit out of me more than seeing Michael Myers in the flesh (that may be a small lie as nothing is scarier than Michael Myers) and I realised that maybe I was just more practical in my old age. Rather than look for ways to freak myself out and dive into things I would slow down a little bit and think things through.
So instead of taking a day to think about whether I would go to my 20th year reunion in Nebraska I took two and rather than go walking by myself at night I now wear a miner's light to spot any nasties.
Yep, I may be getting old and therefore wise but I will hopefully always embrace getting scared and out of my comfort zone.
Oh and this weekend I am sleeping overnight at an old asylum.
Yep still got it!

Tolling Bells

So there I am at work on Friday night, working alone and watching customers come in and buy their items. It is hard to not think of what is happening on the other side of the world as two lives are coming together in spectacular fashion. I ponder my life and how simple it is in comparison. It is not that I want to be a princess but it is that I want more than what I have.
Do you ever wonder if there is meant to be more in your life than there is? Lately I have been thinking about that a lot and I think it is time to get things going, especially now that I am actually getting old. It is time to stop looking at other lives around me and coveting what they have achieved and start getting some things organised.
I will make a horror movie, I will write not one book but many, I will work with Drew Barrymore, I will pash Adrien Brody...actually speaking of pashing let me share a story from today:
At work (again) and in walks this very attractive man. As he walks past me at the counter we check each other out. I silently am grateful that I look semi-decent and actually brushed my hair that morning. Hell, I even put on a bit of Britney Spears perfume. So as he checked me out and I returned the favour, I actually felt like I deserved it.
I was chuffed when he went straight for the documentary section (given I make them myself folks) and knew we had a lot in common already. I was sequentially chuffed when he came to the counter and asked me a question. Then as usually happens at work some tosser comes to the counter and needs information on the latest Andre Rieu immediately. Hence my hot stuff cutie leaves. Time passes and then lo and behold  hot stuff is back! He goes back to doco land and comes back to the counter with a purchase. It is The Bush Tucker Man and he tells me how you can take a man out of the bush but can't take the bush out of the man. My manager suddenly look over at the two of us as we talk about the country and how he comes from where my Dad grew up...blah blah blah. I feel like I am speed dating but have only the length of the transaction to get to know this guy. Two minutes later he is gone and my manager is gushing that he "liked" me! There was definitely something I will grant her that.
Yet he doesn't return and that is a tad disappointing and I am not really sure how I went from pashing Adrien Brody to speed dating The Bush Tucker Man but no matter...a girl has to have options.
Kate eat your heart out.

Model Behaviour

I had an interesting question posed to me today and it got me to thinking. Let's say you like a guy and you think he likes you back and the courting phase is going along nicely and then bam you realise he has been hanging out with a model. Yes that's right not any ordinary girl but a model!
Every guy's dream it seems. They get to live the fantasy that graces all of our trashy mags. It is not just Leo or Johnny or The Edge that get to live the life of fabulousness with bikinis and beaches - suddenly this life now applies to the man you are having your own fantasies with (insert white dresses here).
So what do you tell your girlfriend who wants your "honest" opinion that the man she is making a 'how awesome do our babies look when I merge our faces in photoshop and I thought, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days was how woman should act' scrapbook asks if she stands a chance a model?
Now I am figuring she has called me because I have some experience with this kind of conundrum, given my future most certainly lies with Adrien Brody and he has had a plethora of model girlfriends that I will no doubt be compared to when we are married and after extensive therapy I am now okay with that (well sort of).
Yet if I am to be honest with my friend I have to say I am not so sure if she can compete with a model (not all guys are as amazing as my future husband) as it is like comparing apples with oranges. Not that I am sure who is the apple or who is the orange...hmmm...I digress.
I wonder what it must be like to be the model. If it is like picking candy from a candy store and having an unlimited supply of money. You get the biggest and best piece of candy because you are also the best piece of candy in the shop. No worrying if he likes me or wants to see me because the answer is HELL YEAH give me your number!
Yet like any piece of candy sometimes the cheapest 1 cent caramel bud is all you crave and desire because you tried the biggest and best piece of candy and it was actually a bit of a let down. (Maybe I should have used caramel buds instead of apples and oranges, so this model analogy wasn't so damn confusing...apologies, I am clearly hungry).
So I say to my friend that if the man that she is dating wants to leave her for a model then there is nothing she can do about it and lets face it, she could be a model, apple, orange, caramel bud or pizza (actually sorry there is NO comparing pizza because pizza will always win) but all my friend can do is be herself - cellulite and all.
If he wants to try the top shelf candy then so be it, and when he comes crawling back holding his tummy and complaining of diarrhea then she can either help him to the toilet or let him crawl in his own shit.
Either way I think she is a little bit stuffed actually.

Jazz Hands

I often wonder if we have a "type". Tall, dark and handsome. Short, custardy and pimply.
Mine is definitely small, reliable and old. It has always worked for me and I have had no reason to deviate - that is until today.
After over ten years together I had to say goodbye to my perfect "type". He was everything I ever needed or desired but then the relationship seemed to spiral out of control.
Reliability became "will he or won't he?" I never seemed to know if he would make it on time, let alone at all. Sure he was still small and old but this suddenly wasn't going to cut it if he couldn't be there if I needed him.
So I did what any other girl would do in the same dilemma. That's right I traded him in for a better model.
Sure it was hard to let him go and I did cry (a little) as I said goodbye but I realised I had a new type.
Tall, dark and handsome came to mind as I walked (in slow-mo) to my new vision.  I gazed over all of his new features that I was going to play with and I inhaled his new scent with glee.
Then I realised that in fact I actually still did have my original type in tact. I realised even though he felt big, he actually was small and as we picked up speed and reached our destination, I knew he would be realiable.
I had to let one thing go though, and that was the age difference. In with the new and out with the old. But hey who doesn't want to be a cougar.

Searching for Hope

I noticed an old lady in a wheelchair come into work the other day. As her carer pushed her around the store I couldn't help but watch her. She wasn't interested in the product or what was around her. Shopping was just something to do to fill the time. As she left I got to thinking.
At her age does she still have any hope? Is there something she still dreams of or desires? Is it ever to late? Or does she just wait for her days to be over now that she knows that day is close?
I thought about myself and how at my age I have already given up hope when I thought that hope would never fade. Life can scar you. So much so that when you put up a force field to protect yourself you forget to bring it down.
I am not old and I do not have death sitting nearby breathing in my ear. Yet I realised looking at that old lady that I may as well have been her.
When I watch a movie where the girl gets the guy I no longer think that will be me. When I see the guy chase after the girl I am happy for them but I do not think that will ever be me being chased.
I now watch life from afar where other people get to have a life with someone and I smile in the corner no longer even thinking that will be me.
I watched The Bridges of Madison County again the other day and I wondered what was better, to have loved and lost or to have never have loved at all? Or worse still to settle or stay because change is too hard. I still don't know the answer.
There was one line that stuck with me when Clint Eastwood's character said, "This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime."
I have had that certainty but what's interesting is when you have had that certainty it is still not enough. We still let it go.
And with it the hope that you thought was on endless supply.