I am a martyr for the cause, where the cause involves chocolate biscuits

I can't find my post-it notes. I need them. To write scathing comments on.

My new job, where I get to correct spelling errors and point out stupidity and get paid for it, is pretty good. Unfortunately, the constant supply of chocolate biscuits is proving to be not so good for the squeezing of bottom into the very short skirt that Ratty talked me into. The work trip to Malaysia where I ate non-stop and drank cocktails by the pool was also not good for this purpose. But sacrifices must be made sometimes, and a resort in Malaysia is a good place to start making those sacrifices.

Rant of the week - bleeding from the lady bits. In my previous job I worked with almost 90% women. And yet we were all furtive about the lady bleeding. Because somehow, and I'm yet to work out exactly how and why this is, letting people know that your body is 'flushing' stuff out in a less than sophisticated manner is humiliating and shameful. And it just gets more awkward when you work in an office with lots of men folk - what if they realise you are ... bleeding? I suspect women's secretive attitudes towards periods might have something to do with men also being awkward about the topic - something I learned yet again in the UK when talking to a female workmate about a particularly nasty round of period cramps I was enduring by scoffing Neurofen like licorice allsorts - a male workmate asked what we were talking about and I told him. They both looked horrified - but I think I was forgiven because it is a truth universally accepted that Kiwis are brash and incapable of understanding the delicate line between enough and too much information.

And, yes, I realise many men couldn't care less and don't think periods are something to be afraid of, even if the women they know do turn into fire-breathing chocolate scoffing teary nutters who alternate between being nymphos and shrieking 'Don't touch me' during that time. Women's attitudes towards periods are a bit shit, really. Even in front of other women. In an office of predominantly women, why the need to hide tampons/mooncups/various other feminine hygiene products in our clenched fists as though we are desperately ashamed of ourselves? Not that I'm any better at announcing this, but I have on occasion felt the urge to traipse through the office juggling tampons shouting 'I am bleeding from my vagina and it is normal'.

Aha! I have just remembered where my post-it notes are. I threw them at Dave last week. Which means they're probably on his side of the office.

Nat - I would love to sniff your baby's head. Do we have to put her in a brown paper bag first and loiter about looking suspicious whilst wearing daggy clothes and hiding said bag from the pigs?

Scenting me, scenting you

Smell, like many things, is a bit personal, no? One man's rubbish heap of slowing rotting compost is another man's personal pile of gardening heaven - sniff that! That's the promise of vegetables sprouting, pretty flowers for the bees to caress in a sexual manner and hell, some people just like compost. Others like soap.

So, here's a list of things I don't much like the reek of:

Me after yoga
The tea cupboard at work
Toilets with air freshener.

Me after yoga seems obvious - I'm a barely moving, sweat glistening shiny lump of pink flesh that's dripping with all sorts of toxins I've just forced out of my skin. YUM.

The hot beverage cupboard at work is a mixture of teas: earl grey, English breakfast, herbal (mostly green and citrus flavours), and pretend sugar for those who can't quite give the stuff up but wish to at least make an effort towards their trousers being less tight. This cupboard is directly underneath the chocolate biscuit cupboard, which seems a bit cruel if you're one of the aforementioned fake sugar users. But back to the smell - all the teas are competing for olfactory dominance and the end result is a most unpleasant, almost musty combo of green, lemon and black tea and something else I can't quite distinguish but it's distressing me because, being the tea whore that I am, I'm opening that cupboard at least seven times a day. Is perhaps a little pathetic but I'm sensitive like that sometimes.

Toilets that have air freshener. Look, I get why there's air freshener - I think we all can appreciate that at some time we've used a toilet and thought, 'hmm, that's not so easy on the nostrils,' but trying to cover up the often robust reek of faecal matter with 'jasmine and avocado spring fling' does not make for a better scent. The two smells wage war on one another, neither dominating, both eventually doomed (thankfully) to fade but in the mean time, treating other loo users to the hideousness that is their unhappy marriage.

Good smells:

Me when clean (despite being told by several people that my perfume is a spot old fashioned and I smell like their mum - I'm catering for a special brand of man who fancies older women, obviously)
Chilli and garlic - what's not to like? Even if this combo might lead to you making a visit to the bathroom, resulting in use of the lavender and broccoli air freshener residing there. Totally worth it.
The beach. I walk along one every day. Envy me, bitches.

Other stuff: Travis and Una pass through. We eat a lot of cheese. So much cheese. I try to convince them to move here. You should too.
Nat and Georgia have a baby that at some point I'll get round to investigating and perhaps I'll return those books I borrowed off them six months ago. Maybe.
I have a barbeque. Where I make other people get the barbeque going. I was otherwise occupied with baking dessert. And Nic and Adrian quite obviously weren't doing anything - and I knew Nic was most like to want to eat most of what we cooked so it seemed only fair he make the darn firey apparatus go.

New job goes well - the nerd factor is HIGH.