My life truly has become a maudlin country music song. Last week I wrote about my dad dying, now I had to have Spotty - our dog - put down, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Deborah Hill Cone's father passed away last week, and in light of that - she asks us to take a good look at what we're doing and ask if it's really worth it.

It rained all the way on the drive from Auckland to Hokianga; drenching and relentless. I only cried a little bit.

Lesley Elliott's received the Westpac Women of Influence Supreme Award - I wish I'd got her message when I was a teenager in schooll, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Deborah Hill Cone writes: Are you ready? It's September 29 and ta-dah! Today is the day! I've decided I'm going to be a better person.

This is a horrible column to write. (Gets up to make a cup of coffee. Instant coffee! De-activates Facebook page.

Deborah Hilll Cone writes: I'm neither right-wing nor left-wing: I just believe in rigour. Fair dooz? But this election I'm depressed and unimpressed.

Deborah Hill Cone writes: Can you all please stop being so mean to my friend Cathy Odgers! She is not some Machiavellian Cruella de Vil.

Deborah Hill Cone writes about living with depression and her hope that one day soon the tears will stop.

We're all just attachment junkies who desperately need love and connection, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

David Cunliffe's comments have reminded me.

Practically everything I got angry about this year - parking rules, bigots, uptight parenting - is really just about my fear of death, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

This is going to be an especially random column. I'm always haphazard, but this week has been more of a super-shambles than usual, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

I wish I could capture the eye-poking nature of the extreme torpor that permeates this show, but even the act of writing about it threatens to infuse it with some pizzazz, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

The day school camp ended, the day the pest exterminator came to deal with my rat infestation, the day I drank Earl Grey tea at Bambina.

I recently judged the blog of the year award for the Canon Media Awards and had to hold my nose to give it to Cameron Slater's Whale Oil blog, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

It was always better to be crazy than be boring. But now I wonder whether all my trouble-making behaviour is really just a defence mechanism, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

It is not just what you choose to say or not say online that counts, it is what can be deduced from micro-units of information when it is all mooshed up together.

School reunions would provide rich data for anthropologists studying human status-displaying behaviour, writes Deborah Hill Cone. I went to the Melville High School reunion last weekend.

The online world has made trying to be yourself, to be honest and ordinary and real, more risky and exposing than ever, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

My relationship with the roadworkers digging up my street is strangely intimate, writes Deborah Hill Cone. My front door opens right on to the pavement; so here I am, in my nightie.

I just sort of hitched my thoughts to her death; ill-advisedly, as it turned out, writes Deborah Hill Cone. I asked if it was presumptuous of me to do this. Now I know the answer. It was.

Finding we have lost our sexual currency can come as a blow to our self-esteem, even those of us who haven't relied on our looks to get attention, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

My children's school has just introduced a new rule: "wrap-free lunches."

I've had a few episodes of melancholia. One episode began after giving birth to my first child.

'Why didn't you get 116 per cent?" My dad didn't actually say this every single time I or my brother or sister got our exam results at school, but boy, the message sure got in.

Announcement: last week, after 10 years, I came out of solitary confinement. For the first time in a decade I went to work.

'Dear John...' Deborah hill Cone writes a letter to Prime Minister John Key about her holiday in the Hokianga.

So, rich fulla, enjoy your throbbing car, but also be aware that not being a dickhead takes constant, painstaking, vigilant effort, writes Deborah Hill Cone. Also: don't drive through zebra crossings.