Where have you been?!

Mmm.. well this is going to be a rubbish blog post because I have to get off any minute now and resume working myself to death (freelancing is awesome!) and I have no pictures to show you that I still have a life because I used ND's camera .. and that camera is floating somewhere now in Glebe.

So.

And last week was truly an FML type of week in which (descending order):

*My brakelight was kicked in on Monday
*On Wednesday I got into a discussion with my co-worker which resulted in me bursting into tears and then angrily flinging rocks everywhere (I realise that makes me sound like I've lost my marbles)
*And then to cap off Thursday, I got into a fight with my neighbour who proceeded to try and run me over (!) which ended up with the police being called.

Thus on Saturday, my hairdresser gave me a onceover with his observant eye and asked me if I was feeling a little tired... "you look a little worn out." - I feel like I want to sleep for the next twelve years, preferably in an apartment where I don't have to pay rent.

And somewhere in there I had a failed double date, time-out at the oxygen bar, a major family dinner, an anniversary and an interview. That move to the farm is starting to look realllllly good.

(I swear the next post will be a happy post. And that this week is going to be better. It has to be better. )

Tears redux

I haven't cried, really cried, for months and then one thing triggers you and you can't stop. The sheets are soaked and your head is dizzy from it and you realize you're not crying just for that one thing but for all the other little injustices and troubles and everything that you just can't help.

Self Destruct

He looks at me and says "don't judge me."
I just sigh and I am only half joking when I say,"I am judging the holy shit out of you right now"

He looks miserable and the guilt is eating him alive. He shouldn't be having an affair with his secretary and he's doing it in such a way that at any moment his girlfriend and the boyfriend are going to find out.

I can see and he can see that he's going to crush his girlfriends heart. He's walking towards inevitability and it's damn hard to watch.

I wind the window down, "God, why can't you just keep it in your pants?"
"I know I'm doing the wrong thing." Though neither of us can explain why he's doing it.

Sofa

"And my eyes are closed
And I’m way too tired
Hoody still smells of the beach bonfire
On the sofa, where we lay
I wanna stay inside all day
And it’s cold outside, again

And we’re both so high
We could fly to Berlin, Tokyo or Jamaica
We can go where you want
Say the word and I’ll take ya
But I’d rather stay on the sofa
On the sofa, with you"
- Sofa, Ed Sheeran

Bucket List: 1 down, 13 to go

You know how some people are born performers and just naturally like being on stage? I am not one of those people.

So just for kicks, I thought I'd put perform on stage on my bucket list and maybe I'd enjoy it. I guess I thought that eventually when I did it, talent would come pouring out of me like a slot machine jackpot, well that's what I was hoping. Yes, I know -come back down to earth, little one.

Anyway I dropped it on my things to do and I forgot about it. Until it occurred to me some time last week that I'm approaching thirty and I have done close to nothing on it. It was time to get a move on.

So the challenge was: perform live on stage and clearly there were certain limitations to go with it. Like as in, I'm not going to squeeze myself into a box vis a vis Cirque Du Soleil, I don't have time to audition for the community centre performance of Les Mis and I honestly have no ambitions to be a rockstar [if I became once incidentally that would be okay though]

So the easiest way to do this would be of course to participate in a live karaoke session. Instant audience, no rehearsals and pants-peeing terror. In my dreams, I could see people booing me off stage, I would become the Rebecca Black of Chinatown, shunned and reviled for my inability to keep pitch.

I recruited a whole bunch of my closest friends so they could fight off the tomato-throwing contingent and the scene was set.

Location: Covent Garden. Notorious live karaoke joint in Sydney. Full of space cadet-y bartenders and regulars with bad haircuts and big performances.

I had never been to Covent Garden and for some reason I was expecting it to be much bigger and full of talentless mumbos like me. Of course, I was wrong and it was not full of talentless mumbos. I started having my first panic attack at some lady's rendition of Rolling in the Deep and then I had my second one when an office worker belted out the operatic version of The Prayer complete with high notes. Uh huh, the italian version of The Prayer as originated from Andrea Bocelli. That one.

So I started tippling at the wine bottle (it's a wonder I didn't slug from the whole thing!) and the more nervous I got and the longer I waited, the more the room started to fill up with people. I had thought that Covent Garden would be quiet and uncrowded. Wrong Assumption no 2. Lady, next time do your research!

If I had been by myself I would have started edging quietly towards the door but as it so happens, eight or nine of my nearest and dearest were there and I wasn't going anywhere. Erk. ND was giving me a Rocky Balboa massage while the others were giving me words of encouragement and promising not to boo me (aww, you guys!).

So I mounted the stage and I saw a million pairs of eyes looking at me expectantly and as I made my dedication, I was drowned out by cheers. The cheers of my friends. Surveying the room, I could see Egg and St Mary off to the frontside videoing, and everyone else at the table making woo noises. ND had stood on his chair so I could see him the most clearly and he was beaming at me.

I closed my eyes and launched into a rendition of 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' (oh come on, what did you expect?) and it wasn't bad, it wasn't great and I certainly am never going to be the next .. Britney but it was kinda fun and when I finished the DJ whispered to me 'that was okay.' As I got off the stage, I was rushed by everyone for hugs and love and everyone told me how proud they were of me. And I was dazed, really dazed and all I could think of was 'fuck, how lucky am I? I really have the best friends in the world.'

Sometimes that kind of outpouring is a revelation in itself.

On a friendship implosion

I wasn't going to write about this because briefs and census forms stand in my way, but I guess I kind of want to document this because I'm learning a lesson from this- I'm not sure what kind of lesson exactly.

When she and I met, we were both extremely young pups. She was 19 and I was 21 and I guess we were kind of mismatched friends from the start. She was extremely glamorous and I was.. how I am now, a bit bumbling and goofy. If I look back in hindsight, we really didn't have that much in common other than that we were both isolated in what was a very very crap workplace.

And I think we were both disliked for completely diametrical reasons, she was maximumly confident and people resented her for it while I was the deer-in-the-headlights and someone had apparently pinned a kick me sign to my forehead, whatever it was, we bypassed that place and we've been friends ever since.

Through break-ups , career changes, birthdays and early twenties angst. We orbited around each other.

Until this year. This year it's been incredibly strained and I can't pinpoint why. Well I guess I can give a whole host of varied reasons from busy lifestyles to basic geography to just plain ol' growing apart but none of those things were the main reason or maybe they just combined to smush our relationship into the ground. I have no idea.

Two weeks ago, the entire friendship fell apart so fast that I gave myself whiplash watching it crumble. And the thing is? I don't know why [or how I contributed ] into making it happen. That's right- I have no idea what brought us together in the first place, what killed it or how I'm supposed to fix it. Essentially, this is a post full of giant question marks. Someone please buy me a clue.

And then I think if that's the end, it cannot have been that strong in the first place. That if no-one reaches out to the other, then no-one thinks that its worth saving. And ladies and gentlemen, thats one damn sad place to be.

I don't know about her, and I speak only for myself here, when I say, I am exhausted. I am really really tired of navigating relationships and when I think about all that time I spent in my misguided youth chasing around 'friends' who didn't want to actually be friends with me (not that I"m saying that she's one of those) but I want to slap my past self up in the head. Yeah, that's right past self, why the hell were you so damn needy?

I think I don't want to ruminate on this anymore after this because it just makes me too upset and there's no answer, I just keep going around in laps arriving at no conclusion at all.

Pantsless Cera and Schwartzman

Who knows why they're pantsless? It amuses me.

A different way of reminding yourself

"Carve your name into my arm.
Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed."
-Every You, Every Me, Placebo

He* has the words Love carved in several places on his arm, back when he and his-ex girlfriend used to be passionately madly in love with each other. You can't see it unless he rolls up his sleeve and twists his arm into a certain way in the light.

I gaped at it "Are you fucking crazy? That's crazy. Holy Crap." (Do you remember when I used to be open-minded? It feels like a loooong time ago)

He laughs, "yeah, it's crazy. It reminds me everyday that that kind of love? It fades."

*He prefers to stay anonymous. If you'd like to find out who this is- I suggest you start rolling up the sleeves of all my male acquaintances. I'm just kidding. Don't do that.

Short Pieces

Short pieces because I don't want to think so hard today.




--

Mystic Meg is reading ND's palm.
MM: You're going to have four kids.
ND slowly swivels to look at me.
Me: Not with me you're not.

--

Jamais vu: the opposite to deja vu. you've done this before but for some reason you have the sensation that you haven't.

--

"All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You'd better run, better run, outrun my gun"
- Pumped Up Kicks, Foster the People

It's rather highly disturbing that commercial radio is releasing this song so close to the aftermath of the Oslo massacre. On the other hand, it's a ridiculously fun song to dance around to and quite possibly no-one is paying attention to the lyrics. I mean it sounds like 'run faster than my brother' rather than 'run faster than my bullet'.

--

Dyl: They do the Greek thing,
Me: What are you talking about. What Greek thing?
Dyl: ............ what did the Greeks invent?
MD: Wine?
Me: Math?
Dyl: Rear Entry.
Me: ...............................now you're just making stuff up!

--
--

And he said: My boyfriend works in a catholic school and he can't tell them he's gay. They might suspect, but there's this don't ask, don't tell policy happening.

I said: What does he do there? (and why is this still an issue in Sydney 2011?!)

He said: He's a religion teacher. A theologian.

The irony. It's killing me oh so hard.

--

Oh.. they've decapitated her... I don't know how to feel about that. I wish for those brushes though.

Bad Habit.

I have two bad habits:

The first is that I somehow chronically always get the bathroom floor wet after I shower. It doesnt matter how dry I am, I manage to leave puddles everywhere. I get that it must be irritating for lovers/families/flatmates.

The second is that I don't do well in phone fighting and so if you exasperate me enough, I will hang up on you without fail. There'll be a brief tense silence on the phone and then you'll just hear a click. You may think that my hang-up is silent but deadly but often its just because if I don't hang up on you, I'm going to say something that I'm never going to be able to take back. Don't worry, you'll have enraged me to the point that after I throw my mobile across the room, I'm still going to head outside and kick something small and fluffy.

I recall that SB used to call back to yell at me for hanging up on him and I would just pitch the phone into the freezer for a good three hours. My phone has been remarkably ice-free for the past few years.

At any rate, ND and I had our first fight tonight, and it wasn't anything too serious but it was enough for my finger to reach for that little red button and end it pretty damn abruptly [don't tell me to grow up! what the hell!] and so now I'm sitting here mulling over history repeating and my inability to break old bad habits.

And the thing is right, that that is the way that I fight. I slam doors and I hang up phones and I wave my arms around like a windmill. I'm a ridiculously melodramatic drama queen. And I am who I am. What remains to be seen is if he will be okay with that.

Mugs 2#

LA Noire. Ever so slightly boring.

• Team Bondi took seven years to make it- with over 100 creatives involved.
  
  
• They've mapped out the entire 1940's city of LA including hotels, landmarks, train tracks, suburbs..
  
  
• The graphics are without a doubt phenomenal (and you can run people over! It's awesome!)
  
  
• IGN has given it a rating of 8.5
  
  
• I've spent something like a year waiting for it to come out
  
  
• Plus paid 90 big ones to own a copy (at a time when I am not rolling around in disposable money)

And still the entire thing puts me to sleep faster than dropping a 40kg mallet on my head in a doorway. At first, I was afraid to say it out loud-because I had waited so long and paid so much money and it was clear that so much effort had been put into it - that voicing it would be kind of a sacrilege.

But here I said it first: LA Noire is boring. It's boring. It bores me to tears. Pretty graphics do not a game make. You actually have to have gameplay that involves more than walking around and waiting til the controller shakes. Hell even my beloved Mario steps on Goombas from time to time in the 64 version.

And yet I have to finish it. I have to finish it because I already spent 8 hours of my life trying not to doze through it [and according to reviewers.. it's 30 hours of gameplay so I only have.. 22 hours of not-dozing left] and I just keep hoping it gets better. Maybe something interesting will happen. Maybe some zombies will show up and eat Cole Phelps. That might be too much to ask.

Whatever. I'm going to get through to the end and then sell it on eBay lauding it as the best game I ever played. And then take the money I get from that and spend it on shoes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you haven't bought it and you're interested, I have a very high boredom threshold. You would probably misunderestimate the time I spend playing spider solitaire in my spare time. So if I think it's boring and you still decide to go ahead, don't say I didn't give you fair warning.

It really is a spectacular looking game though.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm going on about, don't worry it's nothing- Here's a picture of cakepops.

Poison Pens

And I'm clickclacking away when my phone beeps and I stop working for a minute to see that it's a facebook message.

I was expecting.. a haiku, a question, an events notice.. what I wasn't expecting was a poison pen letter.

A ten paragraph epistle on why this person didn't want to be my friend and I was to put it short, a little stunned. [I'm still a little stunned actually, it might explain why I'm typing in such stunted sentences]

The reasons being:

She was uncomfortable around me. (And couldn't wait til I wasn't around)
I sucked all the fun out of the room?!
I'm too negative to be friends with and that being friends with me is such an effort
She feels sorry for me
No-one wants to hang around me someone like me

This is a girl who I haven't seen for months. So if we had a beef, I didn't know it.

I could tell by the way she wrote- that she was looking for a fight. That she wanted me to slang back at her. That if I just returned that volley, I would be giving her permission to be out and out vicious towards one another, that what she wanted was a leeway to tear each other to bits.

And then I looked at my work, my 1000 word article on car radiators -which I know I have to finish tonight and I just felt tired. We are not in high school, I am not in high school and this is not the way that I deal with things when I am twenty eight. I don't facebook message fight- And truly I think that way of behaving is just.. pathetic.

But maybe if there was one thing she was right about, it's that there are some things in life that we just don't need. Right on? Right on.

So I clicked delete. All gone.

Fortune 2#

Sunshine on a winters day, dumplings, good friends, hand in hand with the amazing ND. So who me worry?
Shut up stupid fortune cookie.

A pink room.

My perfect house has a library with bookcase with several ladders that move back and forward on wheels. It has high ceilings and wooden floors and lots of natural lighting. I have an open courtyard and in this courtyard, in the middle is a large oak tree which has a little rope swing, which I can sit upon on summer days.

But sometimes (and this will never happen) I dream of a pink room with a big old Hello Kitty mirror with chequered walls. Uninterrupted and unfettered girliness- you could never be miserable in a room like that.

We all need a little change

I haven't seen Speedy in three months

Speedy: What happened to you? Where have you been? Why didn't you call me?
Me: I thought you were mad at me ................
Speedy: Wait, what. So if I didn't call you, you wouldn't have called me?
Me: You were mad!
Speedy: No, I wasn't! What happened to your hair?!
Me: Oh, you just noticed it? It's a little darker than before.
Speedy: It looks nice. You look like a grown up.
Me: Oh, thank you.
Speedy: Let's go for a coffee and cake.
Me: Cool!
Speedy: (horrified) I was just kidding. Coffee? Cake? It's a Friday! What happened to you?? What happened to my party girl friend? I miss her.
Me: .................... I got old. Real old.
Speedy: Do you blog anymore?
Me:...... Not much.
Speedy: You better blog about this. About how you almost abandoned your Mexican friend and about how you changed.
Me: Were you really kidding about coffee and cake?

Ba-dump

And when he thought I wasn't looking, he starts to dance to Edge of Glory, I spotted him on the outer edges of my mirror and it was probably the cutest thing I have ever seen.

I straightened up, turned around and grinned at him. "Baby, what are you doing?"

He stops mid-motion "Uh. Nothing! I have an itch. Itchy back."

"I believe that you were just dancing to Lady Gaga"

He starts to blush and laugh. "No, I wasn't. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go be manly and play LA Noire."

I corner him "yeah you were! Do it again!"

And in that moment, it occurs to me that I love him. He's so charming and goofy and he makes my heart go ba-dump at unexpected moments. And help me God, he secretly dances to Top 40.

I don't know quite how to say this to him, those three words that I throw around so easily with other people.

He gives me an aggrieved look before throwing himself facedown on the bed: You're still grinning at me. It never happened.

And I can't say it still, my throat closes over and so I substitute instead with"I think you're the greatest".

Too Much

"Do you like your new job?"
"Meh. It's okay. It's probably temporary."
"What? You just started."
"Well it's not what I want to do."
"..... What exactly do you want?"
"I want to love the job"
"You ask for too much lady."

Goodbye Card

My work presented me with a giant goodbye card today. It's funny the things you remember about people.

Edge of Glory

Dancing around madly in my apartment to this. Toothbrush doubling up as a microphone. I fucking love it. I'M ON THE EDGE WITH YOU!