I Will Always Love You, Dolly.

I, like most people, have always known who Dolly Parton is. The sky is blue, the grass is green, Dolly Parton has humongous boobs.

My first encounter with her music, however, came in the 1990's, when I, like every other pre pubescent school girl became a fan of Australian band Frente, thanks to their catchy pop number Accidentally Kelly Street.

While I can't remember a single thing I learnt for my Year 12 Human Biology exam, I can still sing that song word for word.

Anyway I was given the single for Christmas that year, or perhaps it was my birthday? It was a tape of course in those days, and on the B side was a song called Here You Come Again. I loved that song even more than Accidentally Kelly Street and it got a fair amount of air time that summer at our holiday house.

While I explained to my parents how talented this Australian band Frente was, Dad did his usual job of raining on the parade. "They didn't write that song, Dolly Parton did. And she sung it well too, not like that woman with the nose ring."

(I think he would have like the cover better if Angie Hart didn't have a nose ring.)

This was a little bit of deja vu. A couple of years earlier I'd had a similar infatuation with Whitney Houston and what I thought was her song, I Will Always Love You.

On that occassion, Dad had been quick to point me in the right direction. "Dolly Parton wrote this and her version is far, far better."

After rifling through Mum and Dad's record collection,  I realised he was in fact right.  Dolly wasn't just all about the boobs.

And so begun my love affair with Dolly.

An affair helped along of course by statements Ms Parton made, like "Dumb blonde jokes don't offend me, because I know I'm not dumb. I also know I'm not blonde."

My kind of lady.

P.S Look how beautiful she was.

Giddy on...down.

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day.
I went shopping in the morning.  At 35 weeks I thought it was probably time I got a few things organised for the hospital. I bought All Bran cereal, absorbent pads for EVERYWHERE, nipple cream and ginormous undies.

As I was leaving the shop, two girls about my age dashed in, wearing gorgeous frocks, fabulous facinators and ridiculous but beautiful heels.

I looked at them, then looked in my shopping bag and before I knew it I could feel tears springing in my eyes. I raced to my car, well, waddled to my car, where I sat and sobbed for about ten minutes.

They were the first real tears I've cried since I got pregnant. Hormones are a funny thing. While husbands are given dire warnings about the emotional fragility of their wives during pregnancy, I for one have never felt more balanced. Gone is the monthly roller coaster of emotion and irritability. And tears, well I am struggling to remember crying even once over the last 9 months.

Mind you the bloke who tapped on my car window to ask if I was alright probably wouldn''t have believed that.

"Oh yes I'm fine, I'm just suffering severe back pain." was my reply.

Back pain, and heart break for a chapter in my life that's about to be closed.

I didn't dare tell him I was distressed because I'd traded bronzer for nipple cream, champagne for prune juice and stilettos for sneakers. And just as well.

"It's those shoes youse young girls wear these days, back breakers. Yer mad, all of youse."