my nude scene

There is no such thing as an annual physical in Australia. You go to the doctor and ask for it, and they look at you like you’re some overindulgent yahoo who wants her bones counted. Here, and in New Zealand, you are considered well until you come forward with a cough, lump, or plague to prove you’re not.

Or. You’re of that age and you get a letter.

I recently got a letter stating it was time for my health check. It opened with how as we get older, many of us become more vulnerable to disease and it ended with me. Their records showed I was within the “age rage” for a health check. A perfectly placed typo. Old me was furious. I didn't like being of that age. But if you add up all the cakes, I was. So I made an appointment. My bones couldn't wait to be counted.

Now I’ve been to my doctor here before for a sore this and a swollen that. The specifics of this and that or my incessant need to Google it all is not important. What is important is my doctor and I have a relationship. One based on respect, honesty, and both of us being fully dressed. 

That relationship changed on health check day. 

Things you should know at this point:

• No nurses at doctor’s offices here.
• None of the doctors I have encountered wear a white coat or drape a stethoscope around their necks like they do in the movies or America. 
• Most family doctors’ offices are in old repurposed buildings. Craftsman houses. Terrace apartments. Mine screams low-performing brothel. 

Things I didn't know at any point:

• NO PAPER OR FABRIC GOWNS?!

I was called into my doctor’s room by my doctor. Her office is old, wooden, creaky. There is no sink even though I (and all those girls before me) wished there was. An examining table is pushed up against one wall. A desk occupies the opposite one. In between the two, so much space you could twirl.

What happens next is what nightmares are made of. You know the ones where you show up to an exam, your in-laws’ house, your work four jobs ago and find you have no clothes on. This is that guy but with more gravity.      

Standing in the so much space, I twirl to face my doctor. In her floral dress. With no doctor’s coat. Or stethoscope. Or medical anything anywhere on her person. And this is when I realize that my doctor, as competent as she is, doesn’t look like a doctor. She looks like she could be anything. And this exchange we’re about to have? Well. It could be between me and just about anyone.

Doctor:  Okay, so I’m going to need you to take your clothes off.

Me:  Okay.

Anyone:  Down to your underwear.

Me:  Right. 

I wait for some sort of gown to be offered to me and privacy.

The bookstore clerk offers me nothing and waits.

I awkwardly take off my top. 

The accountant awkwardly watches me fold my top.

I hope a curtain will soon be pulled. But I notice there is no curtain for the off duty security guard to pull. 

I unbutton my denim.

The librarian doesn’t.

Confused but compliant, I pull my jeans down, all the way down, and step out of them. I try not to trip over my shoe as I trip over my shoe.  

The bus driver looks away to check her bus schedule as I discover I’M WEARING THE WRONG UNDERWEAR!

I am mortified.     

The florist looks up and sees my inappropriate thong. 

I apologize for my panty selection.

Astronaut:  No worries. 

Oh but I am worried. Because I am nearly naked! Just standing there. 

The CEO of a Fortune 500 company, also just standing there, reminds me:  Bra too.

Bra too? I think out loud with words.

The farmer nods.

I begrudgingly take off my bra. And, yep, there are my boobs. I am now super naked.  

Your sister:  Let’s get started. 

I cannot believe we’re not done. 

The very not naked human resources manager walks over to the examining table and pats the piece of hygienic paper covering it.

I want to Project Runway that piece of hygienic paper into a robe but it is too small to turn into anything besides a thong, which would be inappropriate and redundant, so instead I sit on it. 

Not Google:  Lie down so I can count your bones.

End scene.

I wish I could say the above word jumble was a one-time dealie, but it wasn't. It happened again weeks later at my mammogram and again at my mole check with varying degrees of me being nude in front of people who weren't nude and had no gown cover up drawer. But that's okay. With experience comes confidence. I now take off my bra before I'm even asked. And I can rattle off my chicken sausage pasta recipe with my pants off. Which is good because I am of that age.  

Tomorrow I go to the ophthalmologist.  

our tom cruise to tasmania (part two)

The Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania is interesting and fun and weird and shocking and unexpected and irreverent and special and very much like the HBO show "Girls."  You don't think you want to see Lena Dunham in a see-thru yellow mesh top with no bra on but then you do and there's something appealing about it all.  Her.  The show.  Even that top.

MONA's just like that.

Located in Hobart, MONA is Australia's largest private museum owned by David Walsh.  His bio says that his mother named him Glen at birth but then found God and changed his name to David.  He has a dog named Bruce and a cat named Christ.  And he is, he says, a prick. Glen/David came up with some sort of mathematical gambling equation that he applied to poker and ponies and made millions.  With this money and that backstory and no allegiance to God, he built a museum.

It is free for locals and $20 for me.

But.  Beware, socially conservative toddlers.  It's not for everyone or children or my dad, as it does dabble in the disgusting and inappropriate, but it is so incredibly amazing and not many things are these days.

Lena Dunham should definitely put a bra on and go.

http://www.mona.net.au/

You can take a bus or ferry there.
Take the ferry.   

The three-level, cliff-face museum, carved out of the very sandstone it sits in, starts here.

An artist buying stories on the street for a dollar bought this one.

A dark room with one light.
And the blurry, hard-to-articulate/impossible-to-photograph, mesmerizing aura that surrounded it.

This is a scalp.  And that is a bullet hole. 

I loved this painting.

Of tiny little things that I couldn't or wouldn't stop looking at.

Choreographed rain.

Erect bubbles in rubbish bins that moved when you blew on them but just stood there when you didn't.

The human digestion system in machine form.
Food scraps go in, number twos come out.

A socioeconomic statement with backs.

The ones that I thought were the happy rich backs were actually the sad poor ones.

God's mistress drives a really nice car.

The entrance and tennis court and view.

One of the cottages on the grounds you can rent if your name is Brett.
It comes with a peacock, Brett.

Go.

our tom cruise to tasmania (part one)

Does Tom cruise?  Who knows.  But we do.  And just did. 

It was an eight-night cruise.  Sydney to Melbourne to Tasmania.  It was beautiful.  I saw a lot of fat people.  I became a fat people.  I had no choice.  Sydney then sea then Melbourne then more sea then two days in Hobart then a whole lot of sea back.  I ate the entire time.  Never because I was hungry; mostly because it was there and free; once because I had to see what kanga tasted like.

Gamey.

The point is, there were freestanding automated hand sanitizers everywhere.  Purell® is no dummy.  If you entered a dining room, one of the many bars, the casino, or stood in line at the buffet at Windjammer's, you had to sanitize.  If you stopped by the gym, the spa, or contemplated climbing the rock wall and then kept walking, you had to sanitize.  If you had to go to the bathroom, thought about going to the bathroom, or actually went to the bathroom, you had to sanitize.  This coupled with the army of railing and button wipers that Princess employed meant that if you were hoping a gastrointestinal illness might do you some swimsuit favors, you were on the wrong cruise.

Still.  It was super fun.  Even if I didn't climb that rock wall.  The boys gave us a preview of the teenage years and spent all of their non-eating hours at kids' club.  I got to have peace and quiet and read Joan Didion's lovely little sad perfect memoir about her year of magical thinking, and eat bacon.  American bacon.  My husband played basketball and didn't comment on me eating American bacon.  And my in-laws, who were in the cabin right next to ours, were just there. After a couple of years of no relatives anywhere, it was really nice to have the opposite.

And American bacon.

Nine days and an unmentionable amount of extra pounds later, I was back home.  With 99.9% germ-free hands, some nice mid-summer abominable squish, zero Tasmanian Devil sightings, and my new found museum crush:  MONA!

To be continued whether any of us likes it or not.

Passengers.

My boys, some ferries, and that Opera House I can't stop taking pictures of.

Friends who happened to be loitering nearby the day we left.
From tiny left to tiny right:  Sheila, Claire, Bob, Coops, Dave, Nikki, Sally, Tyler, Fin, Toby.
Possibly not in that order at all.

 The other angle:  Me, at the top, between the golf balls, arms up, pre-bacon.

Goodbye, you.

Unsolicited cop face.

Boys who love lanyards.

Port Melbourne.

Puffing Billy aka a really old steam train in Melbourne.

Our VW camper van/cabin #3558.

Our bed's POV.

This is not a time out even though it looks like one.

Tassie.

Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden is a place.

Our ride back to Sydney.

The reason why I do anything ever.