I woke up with Bieber-fever and it won't go away

A few days ago I woke with Bieber fever.

I have no idea how this happened, I was under the impression that I had been denied the boy-band-worship neurons that the girls I grew up around all seemed to possess in abundance. I remember whole heartedly lying through my teeth about how enthused I was as I learnt a dance to a Backstreet Boys song with my primary school best friend, Anna.

I'd always skip to song 11 because it was the only one I liked well enough to remember the words to and after a while it became abundantly obvious that I was really bad at dances. 'Let's make up a dance!' was a slogan that was frequently thrown around at my primary school and for the life of me I still have no idea why it was so popular. I remember my mother rolling her eyes and distractedly looking at something far to my left when I forced her one day to watch a dance I had choreographed myself.

When I confronted her about her lack of enthusiasm she said to me 'Natalija, it would be much more interesting if your dance was creative and didn't look like it was a mime for the deaf. You needn't spin around when the song says 'spinning around' and pointing at your eyes whenever someone says 'I' is unnecessary.'

I was crushed and decided that I would create a dance so spectacular that the popular girls at school would be jealous and my scornful mother would eat her words and applaud my choreographic creativity. I can't remember the song my fabulous dance was to be created around but it never eventuated. My appaling lack of any musical ability meant that I couldn't remember the routine despite me being the creator and the 'moves' being painfully simple didn't help either.

The highlight of the entire fiasco was when a girl I didn't like very much asked if she could join in and learn the dance. I told her no, because my mum was knitting us all matching costumes and she didn't have enough wool to make her a costume also.

MY MOTHER. KNITTING. Oh the hilarity, I was a child genius. It sustains me that in a parallel universe, 15 years ago a young Nani was tearing up the d-floor in a costume that is entirely crochet.

I also managed to survive the Hanson hysteria that took over school and I think this is because by that stage I'd ditched Anna as my best friend and had befriended (and fallen in love with) a friendly red-haired kid, Aaron.

Later it would break my heart when he started going out with a girl from grade 5, a hard truth he broke to me by writing in our joint diary that we kept at my house. Yes. A joint diary. Just another fact that made me a child-genius. For the love of god I wish I still had that diary. I would give up on this blog and on The Letter Drop and just publish the work of art that was my grade 6 journal.

So, despite my many years of being immune to boy-band love I woke up the other morning - quite suddenly and before I even opened my eyes I had the song Boyfriend stuck in my head and seared into the back of my eyelids was the image of Justin Biebers pristine face. I listened to it on repeat that morning for 2 hours while I got ready for school and today I clicked on my youtube history and this is what I saw.

I am clearly obsessed. There you see me listening to many different versions of Boyfriend, then, more recently you see me stalking his girlfriend Selena Gomez so I could judge if I was better than her (which I am, in pretty much every way). The 'Genuine' and 'Peaches and Cream' are thrown into the mix because though I am a duller version, I am still the same kind of genius I was as a child.

I am definately a belieber now and I'm not sure there is any turning back. At work I said 'Hells yeah! I'd totes tap that, he's legal in the US now mother fuckerrrrrrs'. I was greeted with blank stares until someone said with disbelief in their voice 'Did you just say, 'tap that'?'.

What makes me sweat a little is that I don't actually know how old Justin is but I remain confident in the belief that I could make him a man if he wasn't already one.

Oh my god. That is officially the creepiest and most pedo-friendly thing I've ever said. Let's all forget I said that until I google how old he is.

...

JUST TURNED 18! That was in capitals because I thought it was an epiphany and I was now cured of all Bieber-fever symptoms, false alarm everyone, the shouting was in fact relief that he is technically legal. In Australia anyway.

Love Nani
x

Cleaning my room and wondering 'Why the hell is he still my boyfriend?'

I am aware that I owe you all a post about Women of Letters, Le Gateau Chocolat and my turban experience. However I don't feel like doing any of those things right now, so i'm going to write the blog that feels like being written.

Last week I let myself into Fabians house, walked straight passed him and fell, plank like, onto his bed. When he came in and sat down next to me I started crying. 'What in earth is wrong?' he asked me.

In a voice muffled by pillow I responded 'I've run out of underwear.'

'Are you wearing any right now?''

I nodded, smudging my mascara into his pillow case, 'I'm wearing some of yours.'

This is the sort of thing that happens when I am busy 6 days a week and spend my 1 day off frantically trying to catch up with friends. I lose the time to even do my laundry and my upstairs slowly becomes a den.

Of course, because Fabian is amazing his response to the fact that i'd thieved his underwear, after sighing and stroking my head, was 'let's spend all of Sunday just cleaning your upstairs and doing your laundry.'

So Sunday morning arrived and after what seemed to be my first sleep in for what felt like forever I turned on my phone and learned that it was 8:09am. Fabian was awake and was watching me in a totally non-creepy adoring sort of way which he tends to do most mornings leading me to question if he is normal. I shimmied over to where he was and spent the next while listenng simultaneously to his heart beat and to his voice reassuringly tell me all the things that, in his mind, make up my identity,

Now may be an appropriate time to explain that this is a relatively normal morning for us, we usually like to get the identity crisis issues along with the 'I'm-fat' crying sessions out of the way before breakfast.

'...you are so strong willed, almost too much so but that is something I love most about you. You also love being arou- Natalija. I think there is a worm on your ceiling.'.

I looked up to where his gaze was fixed and couldn't see anything but the great white expanse that was ceiling. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and snuggled back into my former position.

'There is another one' he says, pointing.

Annoyed that our morning discussion had been interrupted by invisible worms, I distangled myself from him and groped around for my glasses. I found them, wedged between my matress and bed frame where they night after night reside and yet somehow manage to stay intact. I crammed them onto my nose and saw the ceiling with sudden 20-20 clarity.

'Those are maggots, Fabian. Not worms.'

This is the point in the story where I could explain the perfectly good reason behind me having maggots in my room but i've been warned that '...you sound immensly crazy when you try and justify something like that Natalija.', and so I won't bother. I will however admit that it was a GOOD CALL to spend Sunday cleaning my room.

I would also like to take this moment in time to reassure you all that the source of maggots has been removed, every inch of my room vacuumed and thoroughly cleaned to such an extent that even the insides of all of my sets of drawers recieved a clean.

Mum, there really is no need to keep calling the CAT team, I am quite alright now. What I like to refer to as my maggot-driven-cleaning-hysteria passed at the point when I threw out half of my possesions whilst screaming 'it's all unclean!'.

I will no longer be neglecting my household duties in order to cram in seeing friends, work and uni. Emptying a bin with a piece of fruit in it should not be a mammoth task for which I have no time, neither should making sure I have enough clean undies for every day of the week.

If I am too busy to spend my time with y'all, please rest assured it's because I'm battling maggots, doing laundry, watching transexual opera, enjoying the company of my books and doing whatever else it takes to keep me sane this year. A year in which I will aim to stay healthy, keep blogging, earn some money and finish my degree. I'm proud of me for putting myself first, it's all I could wish for anyone to do. Hopefully you're cheering me on and not being a hater.


Love Nani x