Premenstrual Mindfulness

I need to meditate, like right NOW. Meditating in my house is called ‘hiding from the family’. They’re like sniffer dogs, they always find me. Sitting in the garden and having a smoke used to work well in the past but now I have two building sites on either side of my house - the plants are covered in plaster dust and the citrus trees are covered in stink bugs. So the garden is out.

I need a new place to mediate… I’ve been fantastising about a cave, or a bunker... a special Meditation Bunker bored into the sandstone where I can escape to defrag my brain. It would also come in handy for the zombie apocalypse, or for when global warming melts the ice caps and the oceans turn acidic and the supermarket shelves are suddenly empty like they are in Russia and hungry people start hunting possums…

I don’t have a bunker yet so instead I just went to bed really early. I turned the light out and hoped that I’d wake up early before my family when the house is dark and silent. I had lots of dreams, one where I was in an elevator that kept getting smaller and I didn’t know how to get out of it, and then another where I was kissing my husband for a long time until I woke up gasping for air because the doona was over my face.

But as soon as I was awake all this shit started piling into my head - bits of broken ‘to do’ lists and things coming up in the calendar that I hadn’t written down yet, my brain started saying I should do yoga or walk the dogs to clear my head, then I started feeling guilty about not walking the dogs... Then I remembered I hadn’t bought soy milk so I’d have to use cow’s milk and maybe that was better for the environment anyway because cow’s milk doesn’t come in tetra packs which are supposed to be really bad for the environment, but worse for the cow of course…

And then I PANICKED because I remembered my period was 6 DAYS LATE!! Did that mean the unthinkable… and that I was going to be taught a lesson for always secretly believing that people who said they were using condoms when they fell pregnant were liars, or did that mean that I was approaching menopause which was also shit because then I’d have to worry about my hair thinning and bones turning into sawdust like in those Egyptian mummy movies…

And then I told myself I was thinking too much and that I was really just a bag of hormones and all my problems - the crazy dreams and overthinking and the feeling like I wanted to punch through sheets of Gyprock karate style - just boiled down to PMT. And that maybe when the sun came up I’d go to the park and just lie down in the middle of the grass and think about all the living creatures underneath and around me and the magic of the plants capturing the sun’s energy with chlorophyll in a way that human’s were nowhere near doing yet and how tiny and insignificant I really am, just a minuscule multi-celled creature no better than bacteria in a blip of time space lying on the face of a huge rock spinning around a star.


Do you have a Meditation Bunker or secret place you go to escape? 

Cockadoodledoo! Richie Strahan & the Man Flu

I confess, I’ve started watching The Bachelor.

But first, let me tell you how this came to be... 

Last week Tim picked Hunter up from preschool, ‘Give me some skin brother!’ he said. Our three year old looked alarmed. If vampires take blood and zombies take brains… what sort of monster takes skin?

Tim hastily demonstrated the special handshake and then, because he’s a Dad he took it one step further and taught Hunter how to spit on his hand to ‘seal’ a handshake.

Tim started showing symptoms of ‘man flu’ within 6hrs of the ‘special handshake’ demonstration. Within 24hrs it had spread through the household - the toxic toddler saliva, plastered into the petri dish of germs on each small sweaty palm had produced an explosion of virulent microbial life. Tom came down with a fever, Charlotte started complaining of stomach cramps, Hunter’s chest sounded like an emphysema ward.

I worried that it would be a repeat of the great stomach flu of 2015, the highlight of which was hosing vomit off bedsheets on the driveway at 2am. Luckily, the epidemic didn’t turn out to be that memorable, but it did result in an awful lot of TV watching - the trashier the better.

And so this is how I came to find The Bachelor on my screen…

“What’s that garbage you’re watching Kate?” Tim asks scornfully. He’s better now, all recovered from the man flu, it’s only me who’s left on the couch, clutching the last remaining box of tissues.

“I’m doing research, for my blog,” I mumble, my head so blocked up I sound like I’m speaking through a gas mask.

I’ve channel swapped my way to The Bachelor by a process of elimination - no cooking shows, no renovating, definitely no weight loss shows… and yet, even without these staple television formats I’m surprised to find that The Bachelor is still a competition. A competition of love!

Suddenly I was transported back to my primary school years when boys made their first bleep on the radar... Dusty memories resurfaced - the time I clumsily let the cake knife touch the bottom and was forced to deliver an awkward kiss to a younger brother amidst a gloating circle of carnivorous girls. Another memory... a bottle spinning on carpet and the resulting wet claustrophobic embrace, shut in a cupboard with a boy, who happened to be the only boy at the party - he spent a lot of time in the cupboard.

That day I found out by a convoluted chain of Chinese whispers that a boy liked me. “Do you like him?” I shrugged, giggles and whispers made their way back to the boy - we were going out by morning tea, by lunch time we’d split up. 

A little older and things became more serious, the girls, as cunning as velociraptors, began to hunt in packs, marking out their kill and threatening to scratch the eyes out of anyone that came within a ten foot radius of their prize.

Mesmerised by the television, I watched the show unfold. Ten stunningly beautiful women, each sacrificing their dignity and self respect, blithely throwing candles to the wind of the feminist movement with every utterance of “Will you accept this rose?”.

By the time I was over the flu my romance with the show was waning. I was feeling better, starting to shout and throw things at the television, fed up with the flimsy conversations and formulaic saliva swapping. “Ask each other some REAL questions for fuck’s sake!” I shouted.

The truth is, now I’m well, I’d like to be able to stop watching the show, but I can’t. It’s so awful I can’t tear my eyes away. I’m hooked - line and sinker. I just wish they’d ask each other some REAL QUESTIONS!!

For example…

Ask him if he irons his own shirts!

Ask her what she looks like without make up!

Ask him to recite his times tables!

Ask her if she’s on medication!

Ask him if he can name all the parts of the female anatomy!

Ask her if she voted for One Nation!

Ask him what he thinks of off-shore detention!

Ask her if she shoplifts!

Ask him if he’s circumcised!



What questions would you have them ask?

Aye Aye Captain!

It occurred to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a penis other than my husband's...

This week there were photos bouncing around the internet of Orlando Bloom “COMPLETELY NAKED” paddle boarding with Katy Perry. The photo was censored with a black box over his privates, which was fine by me actually, because the photo itself was hilarious with Katy Perry sitting up front seemingly oblivious, looking towards the horizon, which is where I would look too if I knew there was a naked man standing at half mast directly behind me… I mean, where would you look in that situation?

There was much discussion online about the ‘shadow’ on Orlando’s leg... Looking at the photo in such detail felt like a creepy version of ‘Spot The Difference’. I was happy just seeing that photo, I didn't need to see anymore.

But then the uncensored photo came out… To be honest when I clicked on it, it was more like a dare - I thought, “They don’t show nipples on Instagram, surely they won’t show a naked wiener…” and then my jaw hit the keyboard.

That’s when my husband walked in and said, “Jesus Kate, what are you looking at?”

“I’m just doing research,” I stammered, “For my blog…”

“Mmm-hmmm.” He cocked an eyebrow and left me to it, but I didn’t want to look at the internet anymore, I couldn’t un-see what I had just seen. It reminded me of other awful things I’d been exposed to because of the internet like Miley Cyrus twerking and Minion dildos, and it reminded me of the time I let Tom and Charlotte look at pictures with Google Images on my work computer to keep them still for a minute or two while I mopped the floor upstairs. 

Charlotte was too young to type so she told Tom what to look for and he typed them in one finger at a time…

“Put in ‘unicorn’…

“Put in ‘fairy queen’…

“Put in ‘cute pussy’…

A shriek left my throat, the mop clattered to the ground, I stumbled down the stairs three and four at a time, “Right! That’s it! OFF my computer! Everyone off!” Tom gave Charlotte that look to say ‘Mum’s lost her marbles again, c’mon….’

I’m still feeling squeamish, serves me right for taking the click-bait, I’ve seen one too many penises… Would I look at the picture again? Who knows, as Bob Dylan says: "The answer is blowin’ in the wind."

Here's the link to the uncensored photo on mirror.co.uk pervey friends!

Tell me: What have you seen that you wish you could un-see?