On to the next letter, soon I’ll be finished and then will have nothing to try and wheedle positive thoughts out of my depressed and drug fucked little brain…. so it’ll be back to Borys and her normal sunny disposition!

Okay… maybe not.

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “S….

1.   Soft days – some days I wake up and my skin feels ultrasoft it’s fantastic
2.   Snakes Alive – love lolly snakes and the yellow ones are the best
3.   Scrabble – but hardly anyone will play with me
4.   Sadler teapots – they’re so gaudy they’re fabulous… it’s inexplicable
5.   Sex – wait… should I have put that at the top of the list?*
6.   Swing Dancing – aerobics without the sweat junkies and gym clothes
7.   Stirring the pot – I know I shouldn’t but sometimes I can’t help myself
8.   Sopranos – woke up this morning… got yourself a gun…
9.   Schadenfreude – it was always thus:  ‘pain + distance = humour’
10. Super Glue – good for fixing broken nails, sticking fiddly accoutrements down on the Small Child’s toys so they don’t come apart and end up underfoot.  Also handy for sealing cuts in the kitchen and all sorts of other useful stuff.

*wonders what that says about you… putting teapots before sex!!

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “S”

1.   Side effects – sometimes the side effects seem worse than the symptoms
2.   Spam email – like every other sensible human on the planet, I don’t like it
3.   Spiderwebs – hate walking into one, but at 5’ it rarely happens anyway
4.   Sales people – real estate agents, car salesman and tupperware nazis
5.   Sport tragics – couldn’t give a shit Jones
6.   Sunscreen- greasy, slimy and disgusting goop that suffocates your skin
7.   Snow – it’s ok to look at and fun to play in… for about 10 minutes
8.   Shrinks – for some reason competency isn’t a job requirement
9.   Snakes – but in my defence Australia has way too many deadly snakes
10. Shoddy workmanship – my Dad had a cliche for every working occasion: ‘If it’s worth doing… it’s worth doing right’, ‘If you want something done properly you got to do it yourself’, ‘Out by an inch might as well be out by a mile’… and the beat goes on… la di da di da di da… la di da di da di dee
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I kinda went off list for a few weeks.  Well quite a few weeks actually.  I was working on my “R”s and quite literally could not come up with ANYTHING that I liked or found positive that started with “R”.  No doubt this is due to the rather less than stable state of my back over the last few weeks and subsequent emotional disquiet over same.

But… I’ve tried really hard to think positive which is often very difficult for one so naturally pessimistic as myself and this is what I’ve finally come up with:

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “R”….

1.   Respect – people who respect themselves and other have my vote
2.   Rail travel – there’s something ridiculously erotic about trains
3.   Rammstein – two CDs got me from CBR to BNE
4.   Risotto – am a sucker for interesting risottos on a menu
5.   RACQ – so I never have to risk breaking a nail
6.   Reality Bites – No one can eat 50 eggs
7.   Red – must be growing up and leaving my pink phase behind
8.   Ruins – this series of small walls was where they plucked pigeons
9.   Rapunzel Barbie – she always had such beautiful hair*
10. Remember whens – there’s nothing quite like spending time getting together with a group of good friends and reminiscing over old times.  Laughing over shared experiences, shared opinions, shared innocence, shared humiliations perhaps.  Fondly remembering common acquaintances or perhaps not so fondly remembering common acquaintances as the case may be.  Good friends, good wine, good conversation – it’s the best.

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “R”
1.   Relatives – you can’t pick your relatives carefully enough
2.   Random – current propensity for overuse of the term is irksome
3.   Road kill – especially when it looks like road puree 🙁
4.   Risk the board game – Noooooo!
5.   Roger, I’m frightened! – I’m a terrible passenger, so slow down.
6.   Roses – personally I prefer tulips (just not orange ones)
7.   Rats – in Mi kitchen… what am I gonna do? (not really)
8.   Ronald McDonald – creepy clown bearing food for children? hello?
9.   Roundabouts – no one seems to know the damned rules
10. Religion – it is impossible to calculate the heinous crimes and permanent damage done around the world throughout history in the name of religion… and unfortunately it follows us every day and likely will continue to do so.

*Until you let a 7yr old at it with a pair of scissors…

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I’m getting old tomorrow… it’s all down hill from here. Keeping up the spirits by keeping up my lists. As per usual the ‘Dislikes’ are easier to come up with then the ‘Likes’.  I wonder why it’s so hard to come up with a list of things I like – I must be such a negative person… or maybe being in pain all day just makes you into a crotchey old bitch so being irritable and picking fault with everything around you just becomes second nature.  🙁  Gotta work on that.

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With "P"….

1.   Ptbtbtbtbtbt!!! – blowing raspberries by MSN or email  🙂
2.   Pizzaland Pizza – especially their Supreme Seafood pizza
3.   Pens – nothing like a nicely weighted pen to write with
4.   Perfume – Amor Amor is scent of choice these days
5.   Perez Prado – Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
6.   Pashmina – a girl can never have too many
7.   Photoshop – God bless Photoshop remover of wrinkles and pimples.
8.   Pavarotti – goose bumps… so glad I saw his farewell tour show
9.   Pate – really nice pate on melba toast… yum
10. Polyamory – Restricting yourself to loving just one person and putting your entire life’s happiness into that one person’s hands because society or religion tells us to, seems unnatural and unrealistic to me.  Is any one person ever really able to be all and everything for another?

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With "P"

1.   Public BBQs – take your life into your hands if you use them.
2.   Politics – interested… just not passionate.
3.   PIA – ‘Inshallah we will be arriving at Islamabad airport at 5pm’  K
4.   Passwords – help!  I’m covered in passwords!
5.   Peppers – jalepenos, capsicums, chillis… not my thing.
6.   PCOS – harbinger of the slowest metabolism known to woman
7.   Pokemon – annoying little fuckers – hate they way they talk/squeal
8.   Pope – needs to get with the times… we still like him on a rope though
9.   Pop Tarts – have figuratively burned them in effigy numerous times
10.  Progesterone Poisoning – extreme nausea that is caused by spiking progesterone levels.  I had the seemingly benign and euphemistically named "Morning Sickness" when I was pregnant with the Small Child from week 7 right through to week 29.  Upchucked roughly about 3-7 times a day at any time of day.  It wasn’t "Morning Sickness" it was fucking Progesterone Poisoning!!!

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I went off my lists over the last few weeks… got too busy doing Christmas and New Year stuff I guess.  Seeing as I last did the "N" list I’m picking back up with the "O"s this week…. which by the way has been "O" so difficult even though I tried "O" so hard to think of things..

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With "O"….

1.   Opera – unfashionable I know but I love going to the opera
2.   Oakely Frogskins – sunnies circa 1989… still my favs
3.   Otters – they’re so much fun to watch even if they are stinky
4.   Oysters Kilpatrick – I makes some mean Oysters Kilpatrick J
5.   Off beat news articles – the weirder the better
6.   Oscar Wilde – there’s no one as pithy as he
7.   Omnisexuality – different strokes for different folks
8.   Ombudsmen – nothing gets stuff done like pulling out this word
9.   Oil painting –  wish I had even a smidgeon of talent in this dept
10. Open-mindedness – it behooves us all (thank you Ms Swanson) to be willing to consider new ideas and respect other people’s opinions though they may differ wildly from our own.  We are none of us the same and shouldn’t expect everyone to hold the same morals, values, ideas and opinions as we do. (errr… do I sound like I’m preaching?… me?  how weird is that?!?!?)

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With "O"

1.   Officialese – speak plainly and to the point Sir!
2.   Ouzo – Athens… lots of ouzo… shudder… bad memories
3.   One night stands – never did that.  never wanted to
4.   Opals – not sure why I just don’t find them very appealing
5.   Olives – normally love savoury foods but not fond of olives
6.   Oprah – I don’t watch… she just annoys me
7.   Oenophiles –  wine snobs are annoying. Drink, enjoy, all good.
8.   Orange – totally not one of my colours…
9.   Obsessiveness – it’s exhausting to be bothered by every little thing
10.  Offshore Call Centres – nothing worse than trying to explain your convoluted technical problem or your excruciatingly tedious banking issues with someone for whom English is a second language… the only thing worse is having to the VIR before being transferred to someone offshore who can’t understand your problem anyway.