Why isn't my life a romantic comedy?

I was raised by my dad and my brother so I've not really done many girly girl things. As the only female in the family, I kind of felt I needed to assimilate or die. So I am more comfortable driving a manual car than baking a cake. I've changed my own oil in my car but I have never changed a baby's nappy. I'm deadly accurate with a gun but I fail miserably at make up. These masculine tendencies extend to my film habits. I've honestly never seen 'Dirty Dancing' but I did cry at the end of 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day'. That pretty much sums up what I'm saying here.

I've never been one for romantic comedies. But now I have a sister (in-law) and I'm starting to feel a bit more at peace with the fact that I am a girl and it's ok to hope a man will sweep me off my feet, despite my awkward, unlucky-in-love nature. I'm allowed to think Vivian Ward (Pretty Woman) is just as awesome as John McClane (Die Hard). (But I will never, ever accept the message that Sandy Olsen sells females! Honestly, do women actually watch 'Grease' and realise how she gets the man in the end? By stultifying herself and smoking!)

Tonight my sister and I watched a movie called 'New in Town' starring the super gorgeous chick flick staple, Renée Zellweger. She moves to a new town for some work and some guy who she seems to fight with more than she flirts with ends up being the love of her life. And it got me thinking, why doesn't that happen to me?

I'm a waitress just like Julia Sullivan (The Wedding Singer) but no oddly handsome singer who lacks self-confidence but makes up for it with a guitar has ever serenaded me on a plane. A guy did write a song for me once. But he recorded it onto CD, with a piano-keyboard backing track and him playing guitar... It was called 'Fire' but I didn't really get the lyrics. It wasn't on a plane. And Billy Idol wasn't there.

In high school, I may not have worn glasses and a ponytail and had *gasp* paint on my overalls, like Laney Boggs (She's All That) but I did wear pigtails every day for a year and weird cartoon character socks. I also made my own jewellery out of wool and beads, which is kind of like making my own prom dress, à la Andy Walsh in Pretty in Pink. The dreamy quarterback never realised I was actually quirky and pretty with a beautiful soul... Maybe it's because I went to school in Australia and there was no quarterback (and I'm not sure I'd describe any guy I went to school with as 'dreamy' anyway.) Or maybe it's because my life isn't a romantic comedy.

I have been a journalist just like Rebecca Bloomwood (Confessions of a Shopaholic), Andie Anderson (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary), Jenna Rink (Suddenly 30), Josie Geller (Never Been Kissed) and the poster girl for journalism and love, Carrie Bradshaw (Sex & The City). But I have not had even one date thanks to my journalism. Not one. Let alone met the love of my life in hilariously unlikely circumstances.

I currently have blue hair like Ramona Flowers (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World). It's not a stretch to compare my scooter to Ramona's rollerblades. I could probably even muster up seven exes, if I included high school and despite the fact that I did break up with most (if not all) of them, I don't think they'd fight some guy so he could prove his love for me. They've moved on. And in the interim, no adorably dorky geek has had a prophetic dream about the awesomeness that is me. Though honestly, I'd prefer if Young Neil fell in love with me anyway.

I'm comically accident-prone, just like Cam Wexler in 'Good Luck Chuck' but no gorgeous Dane Cook look-alike has ever suddenly declared me his one true love. Remember my most recent first non-date? If you've not read this post, you can't possibly understand just how unlucky and clumsy I really am. But rather than being endearingly cute and charming, I fear I am seen as a hazard and threat to life and limb.

Why, oh why can't my life be like a romantic comedy? My life can and does often resemble a comedy. Perhaps a comedy slash tragedy. But it's not romantic. There's no romantic comedy that my life mirrors or holds parallels with.

Oh, wait. Yes there is. 'He's Just Not That Into You'. And I'm Gigi.

"Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. 

But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. 

Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope."

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• Does your life, or the life of someone you know, resemble a romantic comedy?
• If you're life was a movie, which one would it be?

Of hot pink scooters & teal blue hair

So here's a fun fact. I've been to England three times in my life. In that time, I managed to visit the Accident and Emergency department before Saint Paul's Cathedral. That has to be some kind of record. Albeit, not one I deserve any sort of kudos for.

So I moved to London three weeks ago. No big surprise there. Back in Australia, I used to injure myself a lot. Maybe a small part of me had hoped that this was something about air pressure, my relative position in correlation to the sea level or my distance from the equator. Or maybe just the amount of football I played. Apparently it's not. It's just me.

Week one of my new life in London found me with a double barrel shotgun in my hands for the very first time. This would give people who knew me cause to seek cover or flatten themselves in an attempt to preserve life and limb. But you see, I'm not uncoordinated, just unfortunate. Only I came off injured from my first ever attempt at clay pigeon shooting. That means the target is not only small, but moving through the air at a very fast rate. I shot 11 of my 12 targets before retiring with recoil injury. The trainers were stunned into shock and awe, I'm not exaggerating. My military trained brother only shot five from 12 so, you know, I think I can say I am a natural with a shotgun - as long as I don't have to shoot it any more than eight times or I am in severe pain for days.

Week two started on a positive note! I got a job at a lovely pub! I was so full of energy I went home and washed the dishes from last night's dinner - and promptly sliced my pinkie finger open across the knuckle on broken glass. My brother was very ill and I like to think he would have taken me to get stitches if he wasn't a mere shadow of a corpse. Instead, he cleaned the wound and patched me up while I put on my brave face (read: cried & curled up on the couch in the foetal position).

I did not let a minor flesh wound dampen my spirits however and sought a mode of transport. I took this task very seriously. After all, I am 27 years old. I am a published author. I have new employment in a prestigious pub on top of the second highest hill in London. So how did I choose to get to work?

On this.

Don't worry, it's made for adults. Or kids that weigh up to 100kg. Whatever, I fit on it, ok?!

And this was fine for my first few shifts. It was better than fine, it was fun. It was a conversation starter with my new coworkers and the patrons at the pub. Oh, and the feeling of flying down the second highest hill in London, daring myself to hold off on the brakes, feeling the wind in my (now blonde, purple and blue) hair was simply breath-taking.

Going home on Friday night / Saturday morning at around 2am and realising as I neared terminal velocity that I had no brakes thanks to a light dampness on the ground was breath-taking in a completely different way. In a split second, maybe even less, I had to decide whether to chance it with actually reaching terminal velocity before careering out on to the busy road this hill intersects with and hoping I could control the corner at full speed (if I made it over the speed bump alive, that is) and that no cars, trucks or buses would be wearing their usual path down that main road - or abandon all faith in a safe passage and simply abort the mission there and then.

Well I made my decision and I stand by it.

Ok, so I didn't stand for long.

My feet couldn't keep up as I tried to run at the speed my body mass was travelling at. Basic physics. Or gravity. Whatever, I stumbled and hit the bitumen. Hard. I ripped open my new shoes, tore three holes in my woollen tights (and the skin underneath on my knee and my ass cheek), grazed the heels of my palms and the pièce de résistance, smashed my entire shoulder into the ground as the lower half of my body collapsed. My skin was saved by my work shirt and Edgar Allan Poe hoodie.

Aptly, my iPod played "Goodbye yellow brick road" and Sarah Blasko mourned her own sad story about a painful road through my headphones. I sat in the gutter and cried. My hot pink scooter lay abandoned and skewif in the middle of the road. My hair, once free and windswept, started to matt to my face in a mixture of tears, sweat and light misty rain. Finally, with all the dignity I could muster, I picked myself and my scooter up and limped back to work.

My coworkers haven't known me long but even without my expressive face, it's not hard to tell when a girl hobbles in, mascara streaked down her face, hair a mess, holes in the uniform that minutes ago was pristine and dinosaur backpack hanging askew, something went wrong. As Wayne, the head chef put it to my boss, "Evel Knievel here didn't make her jump."

No Wayne, she did not.

I haven't been back on the scooter yet, but I will. It's too much fun. I will however, be purchasing a helmet. My mind boggles at the lack of laws here that allowed me to ride legally without a helmet. I also marvel at my own stupidity that I thought I was too cool or too invincible to wear one.

For the last four days I've been throwing up and at times, fighting in and out of consciousness. I've been in a lot of pain. I had to go A&E to get X-Rays. Thankfully and miraculously, nothing is broken. I have done severe muscle damage to my shoulder, will still be in a sling at the end of the week and have only today (Wednesday) managed the admirable feat of typing with two hands. Obviously, I haven't been able to work, thus haven't been able to get paid. I've relied on the generosity of my brother and future sister-in-law to keep me fed and looked after - including fetching my spew bucket and washing my dinosaur PJs for me when the fevers have rendered them unwearable.

In conclusion:

Expectation!

Reality.

And I'm going to Saint Paul's Cathedral before I kill myself!

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• What's the worst accident you've been in?
• Do you remember the slow and painful process in a blow by blow, second by second account?
• Have you ever been sick or injured in a foreign country?

Surviving cooking 101

My cooking skills are legendary. I have had moments of sheer brilliance that have gone down in history.

There was the time I set fire to a frying pan. I don't know what I was cooking but it wasn't being deep fried, that's for sure. But somehow I started a grease fire. I screamed, Dad came running into the kitchen and I think threw the flaming oil into the sink or something.

One time with my mum, I was making popcorn. I wasn't used to her gas stove because Dad has... the other type... and I somehow set fire to a tea towel. Mum was on the phone as I ran screaming into the loungeroom waving a flaming tea towel.

The other running joke at my mum's place is blue food. "Mum, I'll cook dinner, don't worry." A few hours later, after using every dish in the kitchen I proudly presented a meat pie with peas, potatoes and carrots followed by Mum and my stepdad looking warily at each other. "Sam... why are the potatoes blue?" Because mashed potatoes are boring and I thought it would be fun to dye them blue, that's why! Apparently nobody else agrees with me. I have gone through so much blue dye at my mum's place because now anything that can be can be dyed blue, is dyed blue.

If nothing else, at least my meals are adventurous. When Dad told me I could add anything I wanted to a stew, I chose grapes and pineapple. Again, not my finest moment.

My brother is born on St Patrick's Day. He loves rum. So one year I baked a cake from a box that I promptly dyed green and added copious amounts of rum to. I mean, I made the icing with the packet mix and rum - no butter, no water, no milk. Just rum. It was foul.

I've made lamingtons that looked like brownies and tasted like raw pancake mix. I've made biscuits that could break teeth, cupcakes that were inedible, a damper that could be fired from a cannon and through walls and undercooked meals that if consumed would have been deadly.

Then of course we have my legendary attempt at burritos that resulted in a night spent in hospital, much intravenous morphine, second degree burns and three months as an outpatient.

But all that aside, sometimes I get something right! So without further ado, I'd like to present you with my patented recipe for

'Leftover Nachos'.

Step 1

Sit on the couch and watch Family Guy reruns and play around on Twitter while your Dad cooks a stew. This is actually really hard because the stew takes about four hours to prepare and cook but will start smelling awesome almost immediately. Try to avoid whining and demanding to know when dinner will be ready because you're hungry nooooooooow...

Step 2

Dad is one of those people who refuses to waste food so the giant pot of stew will actually last about a week. By the seventh night, you are really bored of stew with rice and stew with mashed potato. You will be so desperate for something other than stew but because you're saving money for England and swore you'd only eat out once a week with your best guy friend Simon, you have to finish the stew.

Step 3

Look in the cupboard wistfully. It is at this point you will find Doritos and develop a sudden and insatiable craving for nachos. Fear not because you are now poised to soon be devouring 'Leftover Nachos'.

Step 4

Preheat the oven. This step is optional right now. I sometimes do it somewhere between step 5 and putting the food into a cold oven.

Step 5

Spread a bed of nachos over a baking tray covered in al foil. Don't eat the al foil. It hurts. Just trust me on this one. On top of the nachos, drop dollops of leftover stew. Try not to make the blobs of stew too big or they might end up cold and uncooked. But I haven't killed myself yet, so you should be right.

Step 6

Spread some grated cheese over the top. If you don't have any, grate some block cheese instead. I'm too lazy to wash another plate later so I grate the cheese right over the baking tray. So I always end up missing and clumsily smashing my grater into my nachos. My food ends up delicious, so this probably adds to the flavour. Do this.

Step 7

Put the baking tray into the oven. Discover the oven is cold and realise you've forgotten to preheat the oven. Again. Do this now. Wait about two minutes. This isn't long enough to preheat an oven, but damn it, I'm hungry now.

Step 8

After... some amount of time... take the food out of the oven. It could be anywhere between slightly melted cheese and cold bits of carrot to black doritos and burnt cheese. Be sure to use the super, heavy duty, industrial strength cooking glove your family got you for Christmas after the last cooking incident.

'Leftover Nachos'

Step 9

Put the weekend's newspaper on the coffee table in front of the TV so you don't burn the wood and eat straight from the tray with your fingers. Burn your fingers on the hot tray at least once. Ta-daaahh! Leftover Nachos!

Step 10 Gentleman, I am single so if you could all form an orderly queue this would save some time.

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions

• What's your go to meal at home?
• What's the most creative thing you've done with leftovers?

What would you sacrifice to do something you love?

I am accident prone. This is no secret. I have blogged about this in my post, "And try not to hurt yourself".

Since then, my relationship broke up and my football season started up again. The football part is great news for me because I love my football - both playing and watching. It's terrible news for my boss because since the season started, I've limped into work almost every Monday morning. He's told me that if I was in the army, I would have been sanctioned for self-inflicting these wounds.

Now, to clarify, my boss is also my uncle. So he's kidding. Same as when he tells me I'm not the accident waiting to happen, I'm the accident that keeps on happening. He loves me dearly, I know that. And he only wants what is best for me - both personally and professionally. As my uncle he has, on numerous occasions, urged me to give up football. My aunty has insisted I do girl things. She wrote it on my whiteboard at work. "Sammy is a girl and must only do girlie things!" And upon hearing last week that both my knees were injured (strained ACL on my left and a bruise on my right) Mum's exact words were "You have to give up the football, kiddo." Where are these sentiments coming from?

Well today I didn't limp into the office. No, no. My dad drove me to work & carried my laptop in while I hobbled in on crutches. My team was 1-0 with only a few minutes to go in our game on Saturday. Desperate to not concede a goal, I went in for a challenge and while I did dispossess the attacker, I came off second best. I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow and I imagine I will be sent for an X-Ray &/or an MRI.

For months my uncle has insisted I will regret my decision to continue playing football. Now you can't be a Mawdsley without being passionate about football, so you must understand he has had a long involvement with the game - he and my dad were even foundation members of a local club, Rochedale Rovers. He played with my dad for many, many years. He was goalkeeper and he hurt his knee and back on numerous occasions. He continued to play. He regrets it now. He believes I will too.

My uncle has a lot of constant and very severe back and knee pain. It robs him of sleep, physical mobility, the ability to do much of the work he is capable of doing around his house and being able to play all rough and tumble with his granddaughter - the light of his life.

On the other hand, there is my dad. Now granted, he is a couple of years younger than my uncle, but only a couple. He plays football on Monday nights with a big group of men (& I play with him). On Wednesday nights he plays in a huge 35+ comp. I'm not old enough to play there. On Thursdays, he trains my team. Now when I say train, I don't mean stands around and yells instructions, I means gets in there and does everything we do. He plays in the game at the end of training and has been brought down in tackles on numerous occasions. He has had surgery on both knees, two shattered wrists, a broken ankle, a shattered cheek, numerous broken toes, memory loss and more strains, sprains and muscle tears than he could possibly count. But he still plays, he still loves it and he regrets absolutely nothing. He loves football - the light of his life.

So what do I do? I love football. I am still on a high from our 1-0 win on Saturday. In a way, I wear my knee bandage as a badge of honour. The only reason I got hurt is because I went in for a hard tackle to stop a goal. The only reason I cared so much about the result is because I love my football team. And the only reason I love my football team so much is because I have never met a group of 16 girls who are as accepting, fun-loving and supportive as my team.

Samantha, football star.

I played football when I was about six but I hated getting up early (see 'Ambition > Talent') so I gave it up for gymnastics which was on a weekday afternoon. I started up again when I was 12 and played on the boys team with three other girls. Those girls were all friends and were horrible to me. Absolutely horrible. At the end of the season, QSF told me I couldn't play with the boys anymore and would have to join a women's team. With those three bitches. So I quit again. In high school I wouldn't join the football teams because none of my friends would. I finally sucked it up and joined by myself in grade 11 and 12. I enjoyed it but the girls weren't that nice to me. Dad came to every single game when no other parent showed up to even a single one. That's just what football means to my family. At this time, I also played on a men's commercial league team with my dad. Each Friday night I would lace up my boots and march out there to play - the only girl - small for my age & inevitably with blonde pigtails. My team sent me out as captain. The general consensus was you had to be 17 and a male to play. I was 15 and a girl. But when someone finally challenged this, no definitive rule could be found & I was allowed to continue playing. I've played on men's six-a-side comps, men's indoor football comps and in other tournaments.

Last year, my cousin mentioned she was signing up for another season with her football team. She asked me why I didn't play with her. I told her I categorically refused to play with girls after my recent experiences. I was hesitant but she insisted they were absolutely lovely. Finally, I caved. Dad - ever the football fan - came to my first training session. By the end of the hour he'd been asked to be assistant coach. My cousin was right. The group of girls was amazing. Breathtaking. Lovely. Funny. Warm. There aren't enough adjectives. I love those girls - every one of them. As someone who has been judged, treated poorly and deemed 'weird' her whole life, I feel accepted. I've made friends. And I get to play football every week with my friends. And my dad. He's now our coach.

I think I just answered my own question, didn't I? I love my football team too much to quit. I love the time I spend each Monday night with my dad. I don't see me ever giving up the sport I love so much. Even if it means I won't be able to walk in 25 years time.

I have a football team.

I have friends.

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• What do you love most in the world?
• What would you sacrifice to do that thing?