Especially vulnerable around movies about animals.

I cry really easily. I remember when I was six or seven I used to love watching the movie Homeward Bound about two dogs and a cat whose family leaves them in the care of a relative who owns a ranch while they go on holiday. The animals think they've been abandoned and run away from the ranch and try to find their way home through the wilderness. What happens in the end? Hint: it's got the word "Home" in the title.

There is one part of this movie where something happens and the cat falls over a waterfall. Every time I watched this movie, I cried so hard at this part that my mum threatened to take the thing away from me. But the cat! Went over the waterfall! How could you not be sad??? But in my mum's world, you're only allowed to cry the first time, when you don't know the ending yet.

But it's not just movies, which I seem to have become a bit more immune to in recent years. It's any kind of emotional conversation about anything, and it makes it difficult for me to talk about things I really care about without looking like a case of female hysteria from the 1800s. I HATE IT.

I went to look on the internet forums to see if anyone had found a solution to this problem. (I love the internet so much. I was watching Sleepless in Seattle the other day with Les and suddenly I realised, wait, the people in this movie DID NOT HAVE INTERNET. How did they live? How did they find out stuff? I love finding out stuff, but I really don't think I would have bothered going to the library every time I needed to know something. Internet-connected world, we no longer have an excuse to be stupid.) And of course there were loads of other people online who claimed to suffer the same thing I did, as there are for virtually any condition, imagined or real, on the internet. Hooray!

Admittedly, some of their cases were a bit more serious than mine. One confessed to crying whenever he turned the radio on. Naturally, no one in the pages of comments that followed suggested that he just don't turn the radio on. Huh. There was also a forum that simply asked: "Do you cry really easily?" to which people replied: "Yes, I do."

Thanks guys, super helpful!

But I did find my solution. Someone posted that it is impossible to cry if you tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue, and it actually works. Anyway, I managed to talk to my father about getting married without dissolving, so hooray for me.

Deciding what to do with our Friday night.

Claire: What about District 9?
Holly: What's it about?
Claire: Reads off imdb "An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology."

Pause.

Holly: It doesn't sound very interesting.
Claire: But it was nominated for Best Oscar!
Holly: ... where all the directors forget about making good movies and instead polish their statuettes to be the shiniest of all?

while inventing Harry Potter monopoly with Holly...

Holly: What about Platform 9 3/4s?
Me: We can use it as the transport space! No wait, let's use the Hogwarts Express!
Holly: Okay! *starts writing
Me: Hogwarts Express, the Firebolt, the Ford Anglia... and what else?
Holly: Evaporation!

FINE.

Okay, I have promised a few people that I will try to write something and so I shall, just so the next time you check this website when you're dead bored and desperate for excitement, I will be able to say IN YOUR FACE.

*Happily watches Project Runway for the next hour.

Hooray for pretty dresses! Okay. Project Runway always makes me want to rush out and start sewing, just as, I suppose, Next Top Model makes me want to rush out and start exercising, and The Bachelor makes me want to rush out full stop. But really, about the sewing, does anyone know how to sew well? Or do you know anyone else who knows how to sew well? Because I want to be taught, you know, having so much free time to boast what with 4 part time jobs and school and piano and driving.

I wonder if it really is possible to achieve everything you could possible want to achieve. I think not, really, although I have achieved many things I used to think would never happen, like sitting at Les' place writing in my journal while he composed music in the next room, and actually making good money for writing. If you do read this, dear friend several months away, please comment and tell me 5 things you'd like to achieve by the end of your life, and then maybe call me and offer to buy me lunch. That would be nice.

I would like to be able to 1) play music in front of other people without having a nervous breakdown, 2) have one boy and one girl child without having to have 10 boys in a row first, 3) sew my own clothes, 4) live in a house overlooking many, many trees, and 5) er, play golf well? Not sure about 5.

My mum keeps asking questions out loud to people, and I keep thinking she means me, only to find that she's talking to someone else. It's very off-putting and embarrassing, considering I always respond like so:

Mum: Hey, you want some bread?
Me :YES!
Holly: She was talking to me.

Mum: Hey, you want some apple -
Me: YES!
Mum: - Holly?

Mum: Hey, you want some dessert?
Me: YES, DAMNIT!
Mum: *Continues looking at Papa expectantly.

I am sensing a pattern!

Speak up, young 'un!

Happy Christmas! It is so cold I am wearing my sweater, coat, two pairs of trousers and my ugg boots even though I'm indoors. And gloves. And I'm still cold.

On Christmas eve we went for Midnight Mass, which started at 11.30pm, go figure. At the last minute for some mysterious reason we decided to chuck the original plan of going to the bigger church in Pulborough and go to our little village church instead. We arrived at 11.15pm, ready to impress everyone with our Christian punctuality only to discover small villages celebrate midnight the proper way, at 11pm. And boy, was everyone staring at us! It was just like those dreams where you're naked, except it was worse because the only free seats were right smack in front.

The whole church was FULL of incense. After practically every paragraph or verse or whatever, a guy would walk by with the incense-swinger and there'd be more incense. We were up to our eyeballs in incense, with incense, breathing incense, and to prove my point, an enormous fly landed on the floor next to my foot after the second hymn and proceeded to die very noisily of incense poisoning, God rest its soul.

During communion, we stayed in our seats while the confirmed Catholics went up to take the bread and wine. Everyone else who stayed had their head meekly bowed with expressions of peace and reverence on their faces as they reflected on the year or dropped off to sleep, but my step-grandfather decided this was an ideal time for a good chat, and at the volume that slightly deaf people hold so dear to their hearts.

WELL WHAT'S THAT AWFUL SMELL THEN? he shouted over me to my grandma, also partially deaf.

I DON'T KNOW I SUPPOSE IT'S THE INCENSE. she yelled back.

IT SMELLS PRETTY AWFUL, DON'T IT? WHY DO THEY KEEP BLOWING IT ABOUT LIKE THAT?

It took a long time to adjust to being the only one with normal hearing in the house, but I've finally learnt to turn off the speakers before I load up the computer, so I don't get blown away by the Windows start-up music jacked up as loud as it gets.

I am a bit at my wits end as the time of my homecoming draws nearer. THREE. DAYS. MORE.

Tally ho!

I've just been treated to the delight of watching my dad watch a travel program about London on TV. A travel program with an American commentator. Joy joy!

My father went through being totally disinterested, however retribution was near as he made regular scoffing sounds, began barking out corrections with increasing disbelief (TV: Fish and Chips eateries here are more common than even *dramatic pause* McDonalds! Papa: WHAT? WHERE DID THEY GET THIS PERSON FROM?), and a final culmination of outrage when the "old pal" the commentator called upon to tell her more about London turned out to be an Australian. An American and an Australian sitting in a London pub drinking pimms (TV "old pal" guy: Cheers! English people always say cheers! Cheers again! Papa: Real men don't drink pimms.) and educating us plebians on London culture turned out to be just too much for papa, i'm afraid. I don't think Discovery Travel and Living will get another hit from us for the next three decades or so.

I have finished saving the background of my painting exploit and it's full steam ahead - or whatever successful artists say! Huzzah!

RETURN OF THE LAST UNICORN!

I watched The Last Unicorn again today with bro db, mel, pam, prisc and michelle. While here I imply that we watched it together, it was more like me gawping at the screen while everyone said "Claire... Claire.... It's your turn...." in varying degrees of patience and loudness, because we were all playing the Game of Life. I don't know why it still has such an impact on me, I keep seeing new things in it. Today it was the part where the unicorn, now human, begs the magician not to turn her back, because she wants to marry Lir, but she is changed back anyway, and at that moment when she is encased with the light of his magic, she looks so frail and lost, caught up in the inevitability of her own existence, like all of us actually. It was so awful i wanted to cry - there are so many things i wish i didn't have to be too, but somehow i always get changed back to the default.

I have yet to find anyone to love that movie as much as i do, which is a bit sad, because unlike star wars and lotr (mel is my fellow buff) or weird stuff like edward scissorhands (vivienne and ling!) i cannot gush about it with anyone, and any opportunity to do some indulgent gushing over something you really like halves some of the joy.

my sister is going to secondary school tomorrow! i feel mixed pride and surprise and lots of other sisterly things.