roger federer broke down last night after winning the australian open, as he did in 2003 after the wimbledon final.

this is masculinity. this is what men shouldn't be afraid to do. this is emotion and it's real and it's beautiful.

alix <3 roger federer 4eva

last week i learnt to hold a pool cue in a way that makes me look stupid and then miss balls with it, which of course makes me look even more stupid. i learnt that i like pool and i like sucking at it and i love playing it with bel and grant and dave who laugh with me and let me have extra turns when i'm extra EXTRA sucky. last week i learnt that there's nothing like 3am conversations with someone who used to be one of your best friends. there's nothing like not underestimating them. there's nothing like seeing them cry because sadness is giving way to happiness. there's nothing like admitting that we're all as scared and uncertain as each other. there's nothing like rolling out of bed the next morning knowing that you would stay up late with them fifty times over and never regret it, no matter how much your eyes were glued together with sleep, how much you stumble to the bathroom, how much you can't concentrate for the rest of the day. last week i had a good time without architecture in helsinki, shopping and thai food. who knew?
last week i fell in love with four people, mostly all over again.

when i'm being all awesome and internet nerdy and pretending i am cool because i know how to add links to my blog ooooooh i'm so technologically savvy, sitting at home in my room with the door closed singing along with uber-vibrato to muse...when that happens, as it often does, i'm usually wearing a dirty over-sized band tshirt and crudely patterned pajama pants slung even lower than is fashionable. i know, is that even possible? and my hair is all knotted into a high eighties bun perched on the top of my head like something ugly. and my pimples are all look at me no me i'm redder than you are look at meeee! and my glasses are smudged up and sort of crooked, caught up in my hair on one side. and i'm barefoot. AND i'm not even wearing my fake pearls.

just thought you'd like to know.

this girl
is nothing short of stunning.
i feel like i could not live if she did not.
she is not only my sister
my best friend
my partner in crime
but my hero.
not to mention
that she's the hottest thing ever with those new purple glasses of hers.
and yes,
we are twins.
i was just born six years before her.

i HATE dating.

because it's sososososo hard to get out of his car when we arrive at the front of my house. and then because he's not right next to me every minute and it's JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH LIKE FAR OUT. life is all how many sleeps left etc.

(that's me hating dating)

"so, how has your year been?"
i see my cousins, and my aunt and uncle, once a year, at christmas.
all they know about me is my appearance.

"so, how was your first year at uni?"
i can't be myself around them and they can't be themselves around me.
fake smiles and high-pitched giggles, polite and mild-mannered.
silencing personality and disguising passions.

pre
ten
ding.

"do you have a boyfriend now, alix?"
this is the first time i've been able to answer yes at christmastime.
amy's boyfriend and lyndal's fiance came and my two cousins ignored my sisters and i for the rest of the night.
wrapped up in show-offy cheek kisses and firmly gripped hands and too-loud laughter.

there are only a few people with whom i can maintain a good relationship even if i don't see them for months. but overall if you don't see people very often you end up a shell of small talk. most of the time i couldn't be bothered to hold up the pretense, so i end up whispering with lara and messaging my real friends. i turn quiet. i stiffen my back and i suppress my sense of humour. i avert my eyes.

on the way home in the car, i made a pact with my sisters not to ever let our children experience the awkwardness of yesterday. i never want to turn to one of my sisters and ask, like auntie sylvia did of my dad, her little brother, "so how has this year been for you?"

imagine if inanimate objects perspired!
so on really hot days sitting on a train the walls start dripping and your seat becomes a puddle
and when you put your clothes out on the line in the heat of the day they dry, but then they start dripping again...
sweating sweatshirts!

i thought that was sufficiently icky enough to be the content of my one hundredth post on this blog. (happy milestone y'all.)

a love letter to my laptop:

oh dear, dear computer. how i love you. you heat my room up and my heart also. you hum quietly in such a delightful way. you keep all my photos safe and you house little msn messenger-shaped versions of my friends. you fix my spellnig i mean spelling. you are incredibly good-looking, ever-stylish in your silver all-seasons coat.

when you wake up you make a 'beBEEP' sound that sends shivers down my spine and makes stuff go all rainbowy and butterflyed.

you are selfless. sometimes you write blog entries for me, and though i take credit for them you know that the sharpened wit and superior vocabulary of your linguistic efforts blow my pathetic entries away, and your monitor glows a little brighter with contented pride.

sometimes the caps lock key jams but that's just one of your little quirks, and it endears you to me all the more.

what can i say? i devote myself to you. my love is manifest in instant messages and internet idling. i give you my time, my days and nights. i give you my finger muscles and i give you my glazed eyes.

i am taking the time to set down my feelings for you in order to prevent any misunderstandings.
because there have been things said in your presence that you may have found hurtful. things that, dare i say, may have inspired you to open windows a little slower and to skip a couple of beats during my favourite songs and, even, to refuse to block flashing pornographic pop-ups and spam email promising free medication and instant university degrees.

but i didn't mean it. i swear it.

i don't really worry that my love is turning into an obsession.
i don't really worry about the fact that i automatically turn you on as soon as i enter my room, regardless of whether i miss you or want to see you, or not.
i don't really resent the hours you eat up.
i don't really feel any back pain because of you.
nor do i believe that i will soon be chair-shaped for eternity.
i don't really wonder if you are a blessing or a curse.

and most importantly, i feel i must ally what is surely your greatest fear.

i am not, definitely not, enjoying turning the pages of the books stacked next to you more than i am enjoying clicking your links of infinite delight. i am not re-discovering my love of reading words on paper. i am not sick of eye-tiring text on your elegant screen.

please don't be jealous, my love.

i am ever faithful.

sincerely yours,
alix.

last night i got all domestic and put rice and water in the rice cooker. and then--and this is the best bit--i cooked it!! AND i heated up the lamb casserole thing mum cooked on friday. i might as well have put on an apron and like done ten loads of washing and dusted the whole house, i was so housewivesque.

then lara DOMINATED in monopoly, thus ending this thing i used to do where i won every time because i owned the top half of the board and made all my opponents cry by building enormous structures on my property and just generally becoming a capitalist corporate giant.

did you know that the devil put tonnes of chocolate in my dining room and then left me at home alone to stare at it? plus he put a large amount of it in my mouth and I SWEAR i had NO CHOICE but to eat it.

except not really.

i feel like i'm getting so enormous that when i go back to uni and unavoidably run into old school friends they'll walk off thinking MAN alix has put on WEIGHT, she's really LET HERSELF GO and she's only twenty imagine what she'll be like when she's OLD like thirty even!!

i didn't think i'd end up one of those "eugwhuhu i'm soooo fat" girls, but i totally have.

AND OH MY DAWG WHAT WITH ALL THE ANGSTY POSTS I ALMOST FORGOT!!!

!!!!

on saturday the boy came to my house and la and i made him play 'pretty pretty princess' with us because well we're ridiculously cool
(pretty pretty princess is a game where you all acquire pieces of plastic jewellery as you go around the board and the person who has ring bracelet necklace two earrings AND the crown BUT NOT the black ring is the prettiest pretty pretty princess)
of course lara was the prettiest but the boy was a close second.
and yes that means i'm the ugliest pretty pretty princess.

BUT THE FUNNIEST PART WHICH TOTALLY DESERVES CAPITALS was that la and i packed the game away but the boy forgot to put his lovely necklace back.
and we didn't feel the need to tell him that he was still wearing it til a bajillion minutes later.

once upon an ever there was a little girl who had two brains. these two brains could function simultaneously, but most of the time their contents were incompatible. sometimes the little girl's head looked a little too big for her body. headtoobigforbody syndrome occurred when her two brains were having a particularly fierce argument, because each brain expanded and throbbed and pressed up against the other, trying to coerce and convince.

when this happened, the girl got neck cramps from the extra weight of her enlarged head.

she also got very confused.

the little girl had a daddy who knew everything and who could fix everything. you know how when you were small you thought your dad possessed boundless knowledge? well, this was the case for the little girl with the two brains. but her belief in her parents' virtual omnipotence was founded in reality. her daddy really did know everything. her daddy really could fix everything.

but
there
was
a
problem.

the little girl was both stubborn and weak. she wanted to reconcile her two brains herself, or at least choose between their competing thoughts. (perhaps, even, there was a certain comfort found in deliberating and dissecting the two brains' arguments, a pattern to self-pity and angst and over-thinking.) however, her weakness was a more potent setback in dealing with headtoobigforbody syndrome. the little girl didn't know how to talk to her father. how to open up. sometimes she bowed her head and tiptoed to his door but her voice was never more than a rattled, nervous whimper.

it was illogical! she knew he would listen and she knew he would understand even if she choked out gibberish and she knew that he knew her two brains better than she did and she knew he could sew them together and relieve her tired neck muscles. she knew. but her foot tripped at his door and her voice faltered at his ear.

everything and nothing has happened.

i've eaten gourmet pizza in manly and i've sat on a train seat for two and a half hours.
i've flattened the battery on my dad's mobile phone calling the boy and i've sat on the sand with lara.
i've been as honest as i always am and i've been hotter than i've ever been.
i've been given a beautiful bracelet and i've gone to a theme park and barely touched the rides.
i've caught a maxi taxi for the first time and i've stayed home on new years eve.
i've read half of umberto eco's the name of the rose and i've watched bad television shows on nickelodeon all afternoon.
i've woken up early and i've woken up late.