Katy Klein Has a Chat

So I was reading the local paper which is chock full of stories to interest community minded individuals and there was a story on the local Freemasons.  Turns out the Freemasons seemed a little put out by the conspiracy theories in Dan Brown’s latest book and thought they needed to set the record straight about whether they rode goats and secretly controlled the world (not true according to The Leader’s article). They also seem to be having problems recruiting new members which is one problem with your ’secret’ society, very hard to market.

So they had organised an open night at the grand puba masonic lodge and all were welcome to come along. I figured that this chance wouldn’t come up too often so off we went on a Friday night (I know, I know, my social life is sadly lacking).

I have to admit that the open night was pretty interesting. ‘Merv’  was a witty and informative speaker who explained what the Freemasons were all about, the symbology they used and what happens at lodge meetings (apparently a lot of singing and acting out plays to learn about a suitable moral code).  The overall values espoused and their commitment to the community and charitable works was lovely. One sentence in their Freemasonry Victoria newsletter put it as “so that he may live respected and die regretted”. The only Freemason benefits seemed to be 10% off at a certain plumbing company advertised in their newsletter.

I was also impressed by the use of the ceremonial aprons at the meetings. The aprons are less about baking cookies and more about protection of clothing for your working masons, which may be less necessary nowadays. The ceremonial aprons do look marvellous in the photos, although I suspect they would never have been seen in your medieval quarry.

The only disappointing aspect of the evening for me was that women were quite pointedly excluded throughout the night. Quite honestly the fact that women can’t join the Freemasons doesn’t worry me at all since singing and play-acting isn’t really my thing. It was more the fact that the ways in which they left the female attendees out were just unnecessary. They shook hands with my partner but not with me, the information packs were for the male guests and how many male guests were there here tonight? All a tad Grade 6 for me (maybe scared of girl germs?). Which for a society that prides itself on the inclusion of all creeds, faiths and occupations just seemed a little bit false. After all women have been out in the workforce for at least a couple of years now.

I suspect that in there is one good reason that women are excluded though.  Most likely it’s because meetings would never get anywhere because the women would be laughing so hard seeing men wearing aprons and saying that it would be nice if the men could wear them a bit more at home. That and the possibility of women telling each other about the secret handshakes is fairly high.

A little while ago it occurred to me that it seemed like I had to trim my toe nails fairly frequently. But just how often was I trimming them?  Were my toe nails growing more profusely than others? Was I a contender for some Toe Nail Growing Competition?

To answer these important questions I decided I needed to do a bit of an every day scientific experiment. At 6 pm on Sunday I cut my toe nails. Then I forgot about it for two weeks. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that within this time my toe nails had grown an impressive 1 mm, or 0.5 mm/week. No wonder I felt like I was always trimming them, I am probably averaging a trim every 3-4 weeks.

So I did a bit of research (i.e. I checked at least four websites) to check on toe nail growth rates in case I needed to get onto a certain Book of Records. Turns out that fingernails grow about 3mm a month and take 3-6 months to grow out. Toe nails take a lot longer to grow out at 12-18 months. Growth rates are dependent on age, gender, season (summer being the season for toenail growth), exercise level, diet and hereditary factors.

So it doesn’t seem like I will be crowned Miss Toenail 2009 which is a little disappointing. I’ll just have to settle for being  impressed by my own toe nail growth rates in the off-season (winter). Apparently cutting your nails encourages growth so if I give up exercise and regular nail maintenance I should be able to at least slow down their enthusiasm.

So last week I got TB which came as a big surprise to me. I had gone for my new job medical which I hadn’t been at all worried about since I had one ten months ago. The staff health nurse had told me I wouldn’t need to come back for the results. So when I got a letter telling me to come back to the clinic I was fairly sure that it was a bad thing. 

Sure enough the next morning I was told I had TB. I was also told ‘not to worry’ which just wasn’t going to happen since I was freaking out. How had I been healthy ten months ago and then suddenly caught a case of the TB’s? Where does one even catch TB these days? Was I consumptive and should I feature in my own opera La BohemeKaty?

To make matters worse I had checked the test information which assured me that the test was very specific and very rarely wrong. Although the doctor said that he had seen three false positive results in three years so I had some hope.  So either my last test was wrong, this new test result was wrong or somehow I had caught TB walking past someone in the hallway. Usually you need to live with someone with the active disease but I was pulling the immaculate infection.

The doctor seemed quite bemused that I was so worried since I only had the latent form of the infection. Which has a 1% chance of becoming an active infection in your lifetime (he left out just how hard it is to treat once it’s activated). You can treat the latent infection but since I had just turned 35 there was a fair chance I would get liver damage from the drugs (after 40 the chance is so good they don’t treat you at all). Awesome, I had become Typhoid Mary. I couldn’t even talk to my friends in case they thought I had the cooties. Although I did manage to trump one mate who told me he had gout, that’s nothing I said I’ve got the TB’s!

Anyway the doctor said that we would test again in two months time since there was nothing I could really do about it. I said we would test again right now. He thought I was being pushy. I thought I was removing two months of extra worry from my life. It was bad enough for the one week I was TB positive since every time I coughed I thought ‘that’s it, it’s started’!

Turns out I was right to be pushy, my next test came back negative. I’m not sure if I was relieved or angry. What I do know is that the test possibly shouldn’t be marketed as very specific and very rarey wrong, it’s obviously pretty crap. The lesson to be learned here is to always demand a recount and only worry once its absolutely positively undeniably true.

So a lot of us never take the time to think about how our pets are dealing with ageing.  We are so caught up with our wrinkle creams, tautening and toning and doing our best to dress as lamb instead of mutton that we don’t consider why we are the only species that seems overly concerned about it all.

My favourite chicken, Clucksy, recently underwent ‘the change’. She went from a four egg a week girl, to an every 3 day girl, to a really can’t be bothered but I will sit on the nest anyway because I like to have a nap girl. Whilst she was laying, Clucksy was looking a little threadbare.  Then when she hit menopause she was completely miserable.  She wouldn’t even move for treats which are usually Clucksy’s main purpose in life.  She was so listless that I became concerned that she was ’shell-stuck’.  This is a nasty chicken ailment that is exactly what it sounds like.  My 1940’s chicken book recommended an oiled finger to the vent to remove the offending egg shell. It was singularly the most gruesome thing I have ever done. Strangely Clucksy didn’t seem to mind at all, in fact she seemed quite pleased with the attention.  She even strutted around a little afterwards like she had just got lucky. Turns out she wasn’t shell stuck at all but getting a bit of loving does seem to have helped her turn the corner.

Anway the moral of the story is that although Clucksy was a fairly sad chicken for a week she is now back to her usual treat-pecking ways.  And she has regained her former plumeage.  In fact she has never looked better, glossy, sleek and full of feathers. I can only hope that the very same happens for me, without the feathers though, there’s no cream for that.

Every once in a while I like to hit a proper runway fashion show to feel like I still have a chance at being fashionable and Melbourne’s Spring Fashion Week always has a good vibe to it. Whilst being quite stylish, everyone is still welcome, from 16-year old wannabee models to 50- year old wannabee fashionistas.   

There is something so bemusing about catwalk shows.  Twiggy little models, with boobies I would have been disappointed with as a 12-year old, do that weird runway walk. It sort of looks like they are being dragged down the runway by their pelvis whilst simultaneously falling backwards off their high high heels. The boys get to walk fairly normally since non-surprisingly there is no high-heel male shoe to cause them to lope along like newly born foals.  So they just stride on down like they are late for the pub. The boys do seem to fall prey to a little known muscular problem however, which may result from their super big hair. Some of their necks struggle to support the weight of product required for big hair which leads to a hunched look. One of the male models also looked exactly like a pig-faced bat which is very cute on bats, less so on boys.

In some ways attending fashion shows is kind of like car racing, you go because you might see a crash.  I am always expecting one of the super skinny lasses to snap a fetlock .  To date none have, which hasn’t stopped me believing that it’s possible.  We did see a fall last night, there was a collective gasp from the crowd but the model pulled through without any knickers being displayed at all.

The highlight of the night for me was of course the goodie-bag.  We even paid extra for the ‘good’ setas to get one.  Goodie-bags are the adult version of show bags, full of stuff you didn’t really need but is still really cool to have.  The bags had a good range of product sachets which I absolutely love.  There’s something about nice products in teeny tiny containers that just pleases me.

Anyway, I didn’t see any clothes that were for me but since most of the items are unlikely to feature at Target, that’s not surprising. I also think that designing clothes for walking clothes hangers shows very little imagination.  It’s sort of like sticking cut out clothes on paper dolls, it’s two dimensional. Designing clothes that enhance regular women and camouflage their life-trophy flaws on the other hand strikes me as a much better challenge.  And with obesity on the rise, the size 6 figure may be becoming extinct and then what will the designers do?