Here we go again!- Or Mush, you are a fool.

Or maybe I'm a tool.

It's been six months and I'm doing that thing again, where I'm sitting by the goddamn phone waiting for that call.

And I don't mean to be.

But my eyes keep sliding towards it.

AND IT'S NOT RINGING.

Coconat and I were discussing it yesterday- how much smarter and emotionally acute I am than six months ago.

Apparently I know better- but she very coolly appraised me and said "You're going there again. You are running towards your impending doom. You're fighting it- but I can see it."

She was right- "and also you look like you want to run towards it."

Crap. I am so obviously transparent.

And so for the umpteenth time tonight, my eyes slide to the left. And I don't know why I can't just pick up the phone and call him. Oh God, what is it about him that reduces me to a rules-playing doormat?

Sick of black hair! Back to the ganguro style

Isn't she pretty? I do so want to look like her. Le sigh.


So I said to myself at the beginning of the year that I would not touch my hair for the rest of 2009 and I dyed my hair back to the colour black.

I have had black hair for four months, and you know what? I hate it.

I look sick and tired ALL the time. I have to overcompensate with piles and piles of makeup which in turn is making me break out.

I asked Red Bull the other day should I go back to blonde? and the resounding response has been nooooo.. black is so much more classy!

Well no-one is not accusing me of not being classy.. just less classy..

And in case anybody wants to throw around the snide "you wannabe ganguro girl"- I like looking like a ganguro girl. I like blonde hair and hair extensions and sparkly accessories and big socks. I only ever use white eyeliner anyway so suck on that. [Ironically, black eyeliner also makes me look exhausted.]I'm not fond of the orange tan thing but I'm kind of orange anyway so it naturally works.

I find it curious to have to defend how I look- that somehow the blondeness makes me less asian. I'm afraid that the pigment of my hair doesn't affect my ability to hold chopsticks people.

The most common judgment of all is that because I choose to go lighter, I am somehow trying to be more western. This really really annoys me. I am not wanting to model my look on Miley [although she Is pretty. And sixteen.] or Jessica Simpson, I am simply picking a hair colour which is more suitable for my complexion. That's it! It is that simple! There is no deeper sociological experiment going on. Also if I wanted to model my look on a western celebrity- I would certainly be shedding the big bucks on plastic surgery and not just hair bleach.

Of course I get the irony that I want to base my look on a Japanese subculture who want to look less Japanese because they want to rebel against traditional Asian beauty constructs such as white skin and black black hair. Here a construct, there a construct, everywhere a construct. Ha Di Ha.

Anyhow- next week I'm going back to being a blonde. They have more fun.

Itsumo Kawaii.

Burning down the house!

I have a really bad case of unpacking guilts. I see all these boxes and clothes and I don't want to touch them! So I look at them and I feel bad because I've never been so messy in my entire life. And thus a vicious cycle of looking and pretending not to see. It's a shame spiral.

Last night I almost burnt down the place. I turned on the stove and I turned on the wrong hotplate. I turned on the hotplate which the ricecooker lid was sitting on.

So I walked back to the kitchen wondering what was taking my kettle so long.

Oh Shit. The plastic handle of the rice cooker has begun to melt. I quickly pulled the melting handle off with the sleeve of my pyjamas and I thought well I guess I can still use the lid without a handle?

Not so.

I turned around and the glass lid exploded.

Shards of glass went everywhere. Luckily none of it into me. For hours afterward I could hear clinking noises of glass popping.

My ricecooker now doesn't have a lid.

I would take a picture but I can't find my camera in this mess of a flat.

Moving weekend in bits and pieces.

Friday night:

We're sitting around the dining table just shooting shit and he says to me:

You know I never thought the two of us would get to this point. It's utterly amazing that we've bypassed everything and come so far.

Saturday morning [no sleep and seven red bulls- two coffees and six cigarettes later:

Me: OMG. I have so much stuff. Why do I have so much stuff?

Friends[in a bizarrely simultaneous chorus]: You don't have any stuff! What stuff?? That's not stuff.

---

Mum: You have friends! Good friends!

Me: Why is that so amazing to you? I'm quite lovable.

---

Friend: Holy Shit. Is that Sb? Why did you ask Sb to help you move?

Me: Can you fuck off? He IS NOT SB. Just because he is CALLED Sb. Doesn't make him Sb.

Friend: Hahahahahaha.. so your criteria needs to be that he's from China and needs to be called Sb? Do you go around poking asian boys til you find one?

Me: I'm going to stop talking to you now.

---

Me: Is that a van? Omg. My mum hired a van instead of a truck.

Stupid Removalist: We need to do two trips!

Me: Oh really. You think so. I think I hate you and your stupid van.

---

Saturday Afternoon [everything is done]:

I'm so tired that I'm microsleeping as I drive- I'm also swearing at all the bad drivers, of which there are many.

Me: *&^*&^*&$#%$

SB v3.0 [who is utterly baffled that I'm not the sweet cookie that I am at the office]: Why are you swearing so much? Why are you complaining?? Do you think it might be your driving...


Me: [rears up and kills him dead on the spot] I AM TIRED! I AM A GOOD DRIVER! AND IF YOU COULD DRIVE- YOU WOULD BE SWEARING TOO.

SB v3.0: .....

---

Donnie: You have a hello kitty tattoo?? Since whennn?

Ms Smith: You have seen it 17,000 times and you ask her about it everytime.

Me: Yes, I have a hello kitty tattoo.

Donnie: Really?

Me: Yes.

[My mum decides to walk past]

Me: Also my mum doesn't know about it. And now I think she does!

---

Saturday Night:

I'm exhausted and about to fall asleep. I hear a crashing noise from my teeny weeny carpark.

Stranger: Fuck! fuck! [Gets out of car] Fuck! Look what you did, you moron... [mumble, mumble]

It's a testament to how small the carpark is, that there's a crash on the first night.

---

Sunday Morning:

[talking to Betty on the phone]

Me: I forgot to pull the ceiling stars down after all that talk! and now I have no chairs to take them down. So now not only is it going to be emotionally hard- it's going to be physically hard! Maybe Staph-face can give me a boost.

Betty: Haha.

[Later on]

Staph-face: [pulling the stars off by standing on a ladder, not my shoulders]Um. Mush? These stars are taking off your... paint..

Me: FUCK! they are! fuckfuckfuck!

Staph-face: How much were those stars?

Me: Probably ten dollars??

Staph-face: And how much is your bond?

Me: one thousand and something...

Staph-face: ten dollar stars for a thousand bucks.. nice.

Me: Shuttup. *Wail. It looks like my ceiling has the measles!! Stupid ceiling stars.


Sunday Night:

Me: It's so quiet. Why is it so quiet here? I can't hear anything! What if I screamed?? Would it be sucked up into a vacuum?? Am I talking to myself??

Packing Blues 2.0

If it's a broken part. Replace it.
If it's a broken arm, then brace it.
If it's a broken heart then face it.

Details in the Fabric- Jason Mraz

I'm sifting through more things. And I'm starting to have a panic attack. Which parts of me should I bring with me? Should I bring photo albums? Will I miss them? Which birthday presents do I take? Which ones mean more to me? Which mean less?

My breathing starts to get a bit hitched and good ol' Jason Mraz is not making life that much easier.

And I put my hands under a side table and pull out this.



I seem to find stars everytime I really really need it. I take a deep breath and I keep packing. I wish this wasn't so hard.

Another reason why I don't want to be a man.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5694913/Man-uses-nail-clippers-in-DIY-circumcision.html

I have my legs crossed just reading this.

Queen Bees.

So I wasn't going to talk about this but I had some time to think it through.

There's this girl at my work called Kyra, she is just so very very self entitled and therefore everyone hates her. I've tried being nice to her and we'll do okay for a while and then she'll give me attitude again and then we're back to square one.
My nerves are not taking all these damn teenagers very well lately. Anyway point. She's burnt all her bridges in our bar.


So in his quest to turn the casino from a pseudo brothel into an actual one, the new CEO decided that hospitality should be filled with nubile young eighteen year olds fresh out of high school. There's seriously not an overweight one among them. You'd be hard pressed to find a pimple if you lined them up against a wall. I'm supposing that in the future he'll draw up a new menu- fresh coffee- optional with sugar and blow jobs. [Where are the guys in this? Oh, we're not hiring them anymore. They don't look good in skirts. Good call.]

Among those, we have a new girl called Wifey. At first she seemed nice and amiable. And then her colours showed. She was tres bitchy. And none of this vitriol was directed at me, it was directed at Kyra.

She would pull faces at her back. Talk about how cheap she is. And just bitch about her constantly. Just a never ending barrage of insults when she left the room. This was to the point where it wasn't funny and I didn't want to talk about Kyra anymore, I wanted to talk about anything but. Politics. Hawaii. Rat Balls. Can we talk about anything else?? But I didn't stop her and I just nodded or mumbled something unhelpful. Thinking about possibly taking a shower in some aura cleaning crystals from just standing there soaking all of this up.

At some point, I asked Wifey exhaustedly "Why do you hate her so much? What did she ever do to you?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. She's a bitch."

"Oh."

OK, so she's young and thinks that nothing is a legit reason for bullying behaviour. Gotcha. Oh my God. Larry Mullins? I beg you. Please stop hiring people straight out of high school. If that's too much for you- consider declawing them first.

Anyway I mentioned to Ms Smith my concerns. If I don't solve the problem- am I part of the problem? Am I a bully?? and if I am- how the heck did I get here? I was bullied in high school. That was no fun time and I would never want to be part of something, anything even remotely like that.

In my fantasies, I am a perfectly morally upright person and would have told Wifey to shut the fuck up. Crusader for the underdog. Diplomatic yet flexible. Alas it's real life and I am not as ethical as I like to think I am. Sigh. I'm trying to be a good person.

And so I wrestled with my guilt a bit and I put it aside. Til Monday.

And this is when the tables turned and I knew the vitriol was now aimed squarely at my bystander-y head.

Chrissy came in and when she's in a mood, she will literally come in and call you a spastic, a whore, the c-word. Pick a nasty name. I was in no mood on Monday to be called anything so when she came in and said "What are you fucking doing, you spastic?" [in which I am supposed to reply "None of your business, you stupid ho"]I could only just roll my eyes and keep wiping the benchtop.

Well that didn't go down very well.

Needless to say, Chrissy and I were short with each other and then Wifey got involved.

Now when Chrissy and I have been short with each other in the past. We both just kind of got over it after a little while. But there was none of that, that day.

And then Wifey stopped talking to me and I knew what was going on.

Since Kyra wasn't there, I had taken the much wanted role of staff target practice. There were the freezeouts and the faces when they thought I wasn't looking.

And I thought "Jesus Christ. How is it that I'm twenty six- eight years out of high school and somehow I'm still there???"

It really was the world's longest shift. I missed Campbell. I missed Lighto. and RedBull and everyone who didn't make me feel like I had a bullseye attached to my head. Heck, I even missed Lucifer.

When it was all over, I remembered that I had left my keys upstairs. Shitshitshitshitshitshitfuckfuckfuck. I went back to get them and as I came upstairs, a silence descended. Yeah, I know. I've never had one of those before- I wonder if I should feel important about it.

I bypassed the stone faces of Chrissy and Wifey and as I walked back out again, Gelato gave me a 'I'm very sorry but I know that you know that they were talking about you and I have to listen to it otherwise they'll take me and use me as tomato sauce and I've only just started here so I can't really afford to offend anyone...'smile. Or I guess I could just be projecting.

Here it is: That really really was a long shift.And I was in no way fond of it. But I guess I'm not as mad about it as say I would be when I was seventeen or nineteen? If I was very pissed off about it- you would've heard about it on Monday night as opposed to four days later. And I've had some time to mull on it.

I deserve some of this cake because I didn't tell Wifey to shut the fuck up when I had the chance to and so thus let her it think it's ok to go around mauling everyone behind their backs. On the other hand, if I had told her to close her yapper [I'm running out of expressions] I think that it would've hastened my way up to the head of the line, but regardless I would still be in that queue!

So I guess that in one form or another, it was coming.

I realise that is how some people make friends- they have no proper social skills and so they form allegiances against other people to create stronger bonds [I don't know if this is worded right- anthropology is not my strongest suit] It's all very Queen Bees and Wannabes. I don't hate Wifey, in all honesty I feel really sorry for her if thats the way she chooses to make friends in this bar. Actually I feel worse for her if that's the way she makes friends, period.

You can't see me shrugging but I'm shrugging. Next roster I'm working mostly with Campbell and Wifey. I don't think she can pull this kind of shit when Campbell is around, well she can try. I'd like to see her try. I'm curious to see what she'll do when there is no-one around to play bitches with her.

Watching this space I guess. Going back to packing.

A day full of surprises.

As I was pulling things apart, I opened this plastic box in my closet and I saw this cocktail ring that I had forgotten about it.

I used to think it was ugly and but now I kind of think it's pretty. We used to make fun of it.

I then knocked over a little box as I moved and stars spilled everywhere. I thought I had destroyed them all in my bonfire.




I had to have a little cry. What I thought was gone was still here. It gave me a little hope.

In and out of my life.

So there are some guys who are fairly constant in my life like SB and Dylmah.

And there are some guys who are in and out of my life like a revolving door like Lighto and Teddy.

Two weeks ago, I got an sms.

"Hey Miss Hottie, Miss Stripper! How have you been??"

When I read this. I said to Polish "Excuse me, wtf. Who the hell calls me a stripper? When I find out who this is, I'm going to kick his ass so hard that he's going to create a hole in the time space continuum.And also I don't strip!"

I smsed back very politely. "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong person. Who is this?"

There was no reply. So I went on a hunt. I went around waving my phone in everyone's faces. "Did you send this? Did you?" and when they laughed and said no, I eyed them suspiciously, just in case.

Anyway I let it go, thinking no-one was going to fess up and if it was someone who I couldn't even remember he/she couldn't be that important right??

I saw Teddy online tonight and I had never seen him online before. I hadn't seen him since he left the casino and I missed sharing the craziness with him. It's still crazy there but it's also a little more bitchy there- which is what happens when you start hiring 18 year old girls who haven't finished sharpening their claws from high school.

Further in the conversation- I found out that he was studying to be a designer! and I didn't know what to say because that revelation just blew my brain away. I am surrounded by would-be should-be designers! [And while I like the idea, in theory I don't really need more competition. I really don't. Stop competing with me for jobs, people.]


So while I'm reeling from this sudden change [he really couldn't have surprised me more if he had told me he wanted to open an opium den in Bondi.]. I mentioned that I lost my phone and therefore his number.

Oh, he said, you have my number.

I do not.

Yeah, you do! I msged you last week.

You did n... THAT WAS YOU! WHY DID YOU CALL ME A STRIPPER??

---

Packing Blues

I'm starting to pack. My bedroom is the first to go. This entire process is making me ridiculously sad. Everything is covered in memory. I look up and there are still stars on my ceiling. I really don't want to pull them down.

The unhappy business of being an ex.

"Why the fuck would you want me back?
Maybe it's because you don't know me at all"
- You Don't Know Me. Ben Folds.

A friend of SB's frequents the casino every couple of months. He doesn't see SB very much because they run on different time schedules- so I actually see him more than SB does.

He still thinks that we're together.

No-one has told him.

So he'll come up to me and say "Mush! Where's SB?? Let's get together and have dinner!"

Me: ... I don't know where he is.....

Him: It's a public holiday! Isn't it his day off?

Me: .. I don't know... It should be..

Him: *looks at me like I'm the ditziest person on earth for somehow managing to lose a live person. Right. We'll catch up later!

I was on the phone with SB a little while later and I complained. COMPLAINED.

Me: It's fucking embarrassing. He thinks I'm the worst girlfriend ever. Why haven't you told him?? TELL HIM.

SB: ..... I don't go around announcing to everybody that we've split up. Hello! How are you? Mush and I are not together anymore!

----

I was talking with some girlfriends the other day about missing ex-es. And I said [thinking this would get a laugh by the way] that when I feel really lonely at night, I sleep with my back against the wall and pretend that it's him. So when I didn't get mocking and I got agreement- I was flabbergasted.

One friend said that she hugged a pillow as a boy substitute

And another said that she wrapped herself really tight in a blanket to pretend that they were arms.

I really thought I was the only one, but it turns out exes everywhere do the same thing. Who knew?

---

Staph-face royally pissed his ex off on Friday night, and so on Saturday night she had cut me from her facebook friends. I had nothing to do with their fight and I cannot for the life of me see how I am involved.

Here it is, deleting me from facebook and not actually talking to me about what your problem is, makes you a child. And also quite possibly makes you a social retard.

Generation Y and their passive-aggressive ways. Mouths are helpful little things- use them.

---

I joined Lighto outside smoking a cigarette, we were quiet for a minute.

and then he said "My girlfriend and I just broke up."

I didn't know what to say, partly because whatever I say would just sound like soothing nonsense and partly because I saw it coming and was not feeling like it was what he wanted to hear.

"Oh, your call or hers?"

"Hers."

"Will you get back together? What were her reasons?"

"She said I don't care about her enough, I never have time for her, and we've been together for a year but it feels like eighty."

*Can I just interject here.That eighty year comment is ridiculously harsh! And makes her out to be a complete bitch. On the other hand, if you feel that time is dragging when you're hanging around that person then... let go? I don't know. I have never/ would never date someone who makes me feel like time is going backwards. Life is short but you want it to feel longer? That's just weird. I hope she returns that Louis Vuitton he bought her. Carry on.

"And then she hung up on me."

I could tell he was trying to be cheery about it, but wasn't really succeeding. I'm supposing that the reality of it will hit him harder when he's alone.

I patted him on the shoulder and left him sitting there still smoking. A picture of the unhappy business of being an ex.

Feel better soon

Everything will be ok. You'll get through this! Trust me.