10 Things To Do or Avoid Doing on New Year's Eve So You Don't End Up Upside Down In A Garden Bed With Bleeding Shins And Short One Hoop Earring and A Victoria Secret Lipgloss

So it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. Everybody's favourite excuse to get drunk and end up either spewing in their hair or in their handbag. Or ending up upside down in a garden bed with bleeding shins and short one hoop earring and a Victoria Secret lipgloss.

That sure is a classy way to see in the New Year...

My 2012 New Year's Eve celebrations will probably involve a bottle of cheap wine and as many episodes of Offspring Season 2 I can squeese in before I pass out. I've either grown up or become boring. Maybe both.

But for those party-monsters among you, I thought I'd come up with a fail-safe list of 10 Things To Do or Avoid Doing on New Year's Eve So You Don't End Up Upside Down In A Garden Bed With Bleeding Shins And Short One Hoop Earring and A Victoria Secret Lipgloss.

Listen carefully. This is gospel.

1. Avoid quick and dangerous slides down the drunken slippery dip by avoiding vodka and ginger beer concoctions. This will, subsequently avoid any staring into the porcelain beyond.

2. Leave your camera in the capable hands of someone who will a) not lose it b) not damage it and c) remember to shoot your good side when your face-raping the man who looks a lot like your boss, but couldn't possibly be. Right? Right? No... wait.... oh dear....

3. Have a hearty meal before the madness. A crisp green salad does not count. You are not a sheep. In fact, why not eat some sheep instead? A good lamb kebab ought to set you up right.

4. The lamb kebab outlined in Item 3 is also good for during-the-madness munchies as well as post-madness munchies. The aluminum bag also proves useful on the cab ride home if anyone says they 'feel dizzy' or start to burp...

5. When deciding on New Year's Eve outfits consider the following - Can this flip over my head if I fall into a garden bed? Will these heels make cute flats if I have an unfortunate stumbling accident? Can I get this outfit off in rapid speed after waiting in line for two hours for the ladies toilets? In the event of a wardrobe malfunction, does this dress leave room for spontaneous re-designing? Will these earrings match the vomit in my hair?

6. If, after asking these questions, you decide to walk out of the house in a playsuit, be reassured you're in for an interesting night. Especially if the playsuit is black. However, a playsuit does not satisfy the criteria in Item 5 as a playsuit CAN NOT be removed in rapid speed. You failed. Go back to the wardrobe and start again.

7. In your clutch/purse/bag, be sure to pack the following items along with your standard clutch contents - safety pins, electrical tape, an Enviro bag which folds up into a small ball for easy storage but sure does come in handy when you're faced with a person about to vomit and you're caught without an aforementioned kebab packet, bandaids, gauze, perhaps an entire First Aid kit, a Please-Return-To card with your name and address in case you forget who you are and where you live, a laminated (very important) photo of yourself just in case you go missing but your clutch does not and finally, a muesli bar (in case you get peck-ish.)

8. When deciding who will be your midnight manic pash, remember this is how you're welcoming in the New Year. Think carefully - do you really want your first memory of 2012 to be with someone who's wearing an Ed Hardy t-shirt?

9. When faced with the horrendous and difficult task of getting a cab home, put yourself in the shoes of the taxi driver. Who would you pick up? The person who looks green or the person who is waving a few more notes of green than is necessary for a fare to Surry Hills. It may be wrong, but when it comes to snaffling transport on New Year's Eve, it's every man (and his money) for himself. And if you don't have any money? Walk. And if you can't walk? Pull out your Please-Return-To card and hope for the best.

10. And as the fireworks explode over the harbor or the paddock or the beach or just on the TV and the glorious 2012 presents itself in fine form, take a second to revel in the moment. A new beginning. A fresh start. A clean slate. Embrace it.

And then throw up.

KH.

All I Want For Christmas Is...

1. To star in a Christmas movie with Olivia Newton John

2. Cleaning fairies. You know, to clean stuff

3. Ryan Gosling

4. A puppy that's cuter than Ryan Gosling.

5. A never ending packet of Tim Tams

6. A never expanding waist-line for my never ending packet of Tim Tams

7. A carrier pigeon, so I have another communicative device to compulsively check

8. A Quick-Quotes Quill in which to write my resume

9. The Secrets To The Universe

10. The Secrets to Lara Bingle's success as a celebrity

11. One ring to rule them all

12. Snow

13. A worm-hole between my bedroom and the USA, which by-passes border control and issues you a green-card and a 'Party in the USA' singing telegram upon arrival

14. A non-toxic-to-humans bomb which when it explodes, smells like warm cookies while killing all the little black ants in a 100 metre radius. Then the cleaning fairies, mentioned in Item 2, will come and disspose of their repulsively minty carcasses

15. An iPhone which turns into a Transformer. An iPhonebot, not a Decepticon

16.  George Clooney in a Santa suit. Acceptable alternatives to this include Robert Redford, Kevin Costner and Dr. Chris Havel in Offspring

17. A puppy that is cuter than Ryan Gosling and George Clooney in a Santa suit

18. To be Where The Wild Things Are

19. Someone to scrub my foot calluses

20. Someone to employ me

And in return...

Merry Christmas!

KH.

Itsy-Bitsy-Spider is not so itsy-bitsy when he's the member of an army

How's this for irony?

After watching Spiderman the other night, I decided to take myself off to bed. Because I was tired but mostly because the special effects back in 2002 leave much to be desired. While I was pulling back the sheets, I noticed three little spiders crawling on the wall near my bed.

'Huh,' I thought to myself. 'Maybe they are superspiders and I am about to become the next Spiderwoman, with my own slew of comic books and poorly made blockbuster films?' But, deciding that I hate the sensation of blowing my nose let alone having spiderwebs shooting out from my wrists, maybe I am better off as I am.

So I squished the possible superspiders with my plugger.

But then I saw some more of them climbing up my wall. And then I looked up at the ceiling.

The ceiling was covered in an army of itsy-bitsy spiders. Hundreds of them. It was like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but in my bedroom rather than the Forbidden Forest. And without Harry. They were all scuttling together and at any second, they were going to swarm me and carry me away to their hovel in my back garden.

So I promptly screamed like a little girl and ran out of the room.

What does one do when their ceiling becomes the set of a horror movie?

One goes to town with a jumbo can of Mortein. Then they have a shower just in case any fell in their hair. And then they sleep in the spare bedroom.

But after you've gassed a hundred-odd superspiders and inhailed enough fumes to make yourself high, some stupid thoughts start running through your head as you're lying in bed trying to go to sleep.

Like, what if all the itsy-bitsy superspiders who's carcasses are now lying on your bedroom floor suddenly come back to life and come looking for revenge? It's not like you can just shut the bedroom door and rest easy. They're superspiders. They'll find a way. Probably under the little gap between the door and the floor.

Or what if there are more of them? And they come crawling through the cracks of the house and down the airconditioning vents and I wake up to their little faces looking at me greedily?

Or I wake up and they've taken over the house? And instead of living in a normal four-bedroom Australian dream-home, I have to live in a spider hovel, kept hostage by the superspiders. And over time, I start to develop evil spider senses and then I terrorise the town folk like the nemises do on Smallville.

Or what if when I went on my Mortein-rampage, some of them fell in my hair and are now making nests in my eardrums? And I'll end up on a squeamish episode of Medical Marvels alongside the man who has tree roots growing out of his foot calluses.

Or what if they're under my skin laying eggs? And I wake up covered in boils which explode with spider spawn?

You get the idea...

I finally did fall asleep, with the Mortein can in one hand and my plugger in the other. And when I woke up, I wasn't living in the spider hovel nor was I sporting any strange skin boils about to explode with spider spawn.

Nope, I was your everyday 24-year-old girl. There were no side effects.

Except the sudden craving I have for insects. Not sure what that's about...