A fake surprise wedding.

I have a beautiful accomplice. She is my partner in crime, the Robin to my Batman. I am the Kato to her Green Hornet. She is my aider and abettor, my co-conspirator, my support and the little voice that whispers mischief and “More beer!” in my ear.
Recently we were discussing her wedding. She’s not getting married soon, possibly not ever. She has an amazing partner who is kind and sweet and hilarious and who loves her very much, but it’s just not something they’re considering now. She has said to me though, should the occasion ever arise, that she would very much like for me to be her bridesmaid.
We’ve all watched those awards shows, when the interviewer asks “Do you think you’ll win?” and the actor says, “I don’t care. It’s just an honour to be nominated.” I used to call bullshit on that. I actually used to call bullshit on that loudly, emphatically and more often than not, repetitively. But I kind of see where they’re coming from now. I might never get to be her bridesmaid, because she may not ever get married, but it is an honour to be nominated for the position.
We were wondering whether, if we organised a surprise wedding and just sprung it on him, her partner would flip out and leave, or actually just kind of go along with it. I was betting on going along with it. Especially if we got him liquored up. And as responsible adults, that is, of course what we’d do.
It would be a great adventure. We’d plan tiny dessert treats, we’d go to a hundred different venues and demand to try their menu plans and then run away cackling into the night fuelled by voulevants and sugared almonds. We’d eat fancy layered cakes on the premise of research, and no one could judge us. I would help her plan her day if she wanted me to. I would vote for an icecream truck and a dress of French lace. I would vote for all the crazy shit she wanted to do, and agree with everything that made her happy for her big occasion.
I would say mean things about people who didn’t send back their RSVP cards. I’m pretty well versed in 4^th grade insults. Her cousin is a stupid mean jerky spite face until she sends back her RSVP. I will continue to say unpleasant things about her until she sends the card back, at which point I will immediately back flip and say how pretty and funny she is. But if she continues to be a snitty stupid head, I will continue to call her such.
I would endeavour to be a great bridesmaid for her. I would plan her the best damn hen’s night this country has ever seen! On her wedding day I would tweak her veil and give her 2 Valium and some expensive scotch and watch her be kind of smashed but still awesome at the same time.
I would make a killer speech at the reception, one that would make people cry and feel tender hearted. I wouldn’t even get that drunk til after the toasts. I would take off my shoes and be the first one on the dance floor. I would dance. Badly. To Vanilla Ice, and everyone would be like “That chick is fucking weird…” But she’d laugh. She’d smile indulgently, hike up her dress and dance badly too. We’d hug and I’d send her on her honeymoon, with some kind of awkward surprise in her hand luggage for airport security to pull out and question her about.
It’s what friends do.

Friends. No, not the TV show.

Friends are strange things.

I have a few of them. They’re spread all over the place; I collect a handful from every place I go. Some from school, some from work, and some from holidays I’ve been on or restaurants I’ve visited. Some come as a package deal, even though, sometimes you wish you could return half the package. Sometimes one friend will have other friends and then those other friends become your friends too.

I’ve had friends for such a long time that I don’t even know why we’re friends any more. It seems that the only things we have in common now are a multitude of shared trips to the bottle shop to buy orange Bacardi Breezers back in the early 2000’s.

I have friends who are kind, friends who are funny, friends who are giving, who are generous, and friends who dress well. Friends who are talented, humble, precarious, loud, friends who drink too much and friends who think too little. I have friends whose personalities seem far too big to fit into their small frames. I have straight friends, gay friends and friends who haven’t really decided yet.

Inside each one of my friends is a little piece of my heart, and a little piece of my soul. I’m never going to get those pieces back, but that’s ok, because living inside me is a part of them. That’s why, when someone hurts one of my friends, it hurts me too.

Sometimes though, you hold on to a friend for far too long and during those years, they change into something that is no longer your friend. They can be spiteful, and mean, they can be ignorant and cruel and stupid and stiflingly co-dependant, and in those moments, they’re no longer your friend. They’re just a person. A person that you have common experiences with, a shared past with, but not someone who is still looking after you. That’s when you need to stop shovelling their emotional shit and realise that although they once were your friend, maybe they’re not any more.

From time to time, I think about my friends, and it shocks me to realise that they’re separate. They’re apart from me and they have lives that they live outside of the context of our relationship. It might sound stupid, but I’m not always aware of this. But they’re just people. Things go wrong in their lives, just like they go wrong in yours, and sometimes they take it out on you. You need to remember that friends are people too and allow them to have their missteps and their quirks and forgive them when they need to be forgiven, especially when they least deserve it. But when it becomes like that all the time, when they’re pushing you away and telling you that it’s your fault the friendship isn’t the way it used to be, that your job is in the way, or your partner doesn’t fit in, or that your apartment isn’t cool enough for parties anymore, or you’re not accepting of them and their bad decisions that they continually make, without regard to decent advice and good sense and you need to change because “remember when you used to be cool?”, then you need to take a step back and look at them. Really look at them. They were your friend once… you all piled into their car and drove around and listened to bad music. You sat on their bed and cried about how unfair life was. You made pacts that on your 18^th birthday you’d get matching tattoos. You made them stupid drawings and wrote them thousands of emails. You stayed at each other’s houses when it was too hard at your own. You watched their heart break when relationships ended. You went on holidays, you had a million conversations over two million beers, and they did the same for you. But now? Now it might be time to let go, because friendships end. A lot of the time, they don’t end spectacularly with a Jerry Springer style fight (is that show even still on?) or with pistols at dawn. No one sleeps with the other ones baby mama, no one turns around and reveals that the other ones Mum was paying them $20 a month to hang out with them, and that they’ve put that money in a high interest savings account and now finally they can afford their own island, next to Richard Branson’s and they don’t need your stupid friendship anymore, and by the way your fringe always looked shit. A lot of the time you just aren’t the people you were anymore, and you know what? In the end, that’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t spend hours chewing it over, asking yourself, “What could I have done differently?” or “Was it all my fault, should I have sacrificed something for them?” or “Maybe my fringe was shit and I should never have tried to do that Cyndi Lauper look so far after the 80’s…” Sometimes you just need to let go. 

It's like fucking Woodstock up in here.

“Heeeey maaan! Wanna have a jaaaaaaaaaam sesh?”
Oh, Stoner Kid from Next Door, that’s lovely of you but, no. It’s 11 o’clock on a Sunday night. I would very much like it if you got the hell off my front step.
Stoner Kid has appeared on our doorstep on more than one occasion with a joint in his mouth wanting to chat and jam with us, usually quite late on a week night. Stoner Kid has also stuck his head over the fence to have awkward pot fuelled conversations with us regarding such subjects as why small boy dog “looks mental” and his upcoming trip to Vanuatu with his mother.
Stoner Kid from Next Door likes to play the drums in the early hours of the morning from his garage. He likes to smoke bongs and then throw the bongs over the fence into our yard. I don’t like this at all.
Stoner kid constructed a hot box in his back yard behind the garage against our fence, out of sight from his parents. Apparently, this was not a sufficient hangout space since recently he has moved into a caravan in the driveway. This caravan is parked directly opposite our bedroom and our front door, approximately 4 feet away in fact. Stoner Kid and Stoner Kids friends like to play drums in the caravan in the early hours of the morning. They like to play guitar and have parties and smoke bongs. I like this less than I like the garage antics.
They have also erected a shade gazebo in front of the caravan to hang out in front of before they sleep in the caravan.
While this is amusing on some level, it’s mostly just annoying. Since Husband and I are real people with real jobs that need to function like adults in the world, this is bothersome to us.
Husband and I wondered if he was allowed to live in the shared driveway so very close to us, so Husband asked the council if this was permitted.
The council did not know, so had to come and stare at the caravan in order to make a decision.
According to Stoner Kids mum (henceforth known as Shouting Woman) this is a grave crime. Apparently, we are not allowed to ask questions of the council. She decided to inform me of this one afternoon.
There was an energetic knocking on my door punctuated by some robust doorbell ringing.
I opened the door to a short, angry, profoundly peroxided woman. Unsurprisingly to you, dear reader, she was in fact Shouting Woman, the mother of Stoner Kid. She introduced herself and demanded to speak with me. I was not completely enamoured of this idea, since I had been about to get in the shower and had only thrown on a very long shirt. I always feel more comfortable being yelled at when I’m wearing a bra and some underwear. Call me crazy, but I do.
She proceeded to berate me for making an enquiry to the council in regards to the Stoner Van.
I was a bad neighbour. A bad, unfriendly neighbour. Lady… Last time I checked this wasn’t Ramsay Street.
Apparently Stoner Kid needs to live in the caravan. Not wants to, needs to. Why, you may ask? And you may, because I certainly did. Apparently, his bedroom has no windows. They’ve been living in a house for 7 years with a bedroom that has no windows. He is apparently, also schizophrenic. Now, while I completely understand that this is in no way his fault, and is a terrible and debilitating disease, I would like to suggest that the first step on the road to mental health is, oh, I don’t know, GETTING OFF THE FUCKING DRUGS, and is perhaps not moving into a caravan in the driveway.
Shouting Woman was true to her name and shouted a lot at me. She shouted that we were bad people. We were old before our time, stick in the mud bad people and if we didn’t withdraw our question to the council they would have to move. Apparently Shouting Lady was a comedian and was on tour a lot which is why we had not met her on any of the occasions Stoner Kid came visiting. I was hesitant to believe this claim as she clearly wasn’t very funny. She made lots of other claims that I also found hard to believe. She said that they were quiet neighbours who never made noise and never created problems.
I would beg to differ. I brought up the fact that Stoner Kid frequently has parties on Friday and Saturday nights that go on into the wee hours and never once had we made a noise complaint. The fact that they can’t put up like Christmas lights like everyone else, but have to put on a full on Poison-esque light display show for 2 months that never gets switched off, and shines directly into all of the windows in our house is apparently a “quiet neighbour” activity. Honestly, I expected Brett Michaels to appear on the roof last year instead of Santa. The fact that they leave all their blinds open all the time and stand in front of the windows staring at me while I wash up is apparently a friendly gesture and isn’t creepy at all. Not even when they’re apparently naked.
I mentioned that Stoner Kid frequently played his drums until 2 or 3 in the morning on week nights also. He similarly came over and knocked on the door wanting to chat when we were already asnooze in our beds.

The previous weekend, I had woken up on Sunday morning with a thumping hangover, as I tend to do. It took me a little while to work out that not all of the thumping was coming from my head, but some of it was coming from the drum kit set up next door.
I mentioned this to Shouting Woman when she said that I couldn’t possibly have heard drumming as Stoner Kid had left his drums in the forest.
Firstly, what? How in the name of all that is good and holy do you leave an entire drum kit in a forest? And secondly, no, I’m pretty sure I know what drums sound like.
She then told me that it was not Stoner Kids drums I had heard but the drums of one of the homeless kids currently also living in the caravan.
Apparently Stoner Kid has Stoner Homeless Kid friends that are now all living 4 feet from my bedroom. They also all play drums.
Fantastic.
This is where I tell Shouting Woman that she will need to leave now and stop shouting at me and calling me names because I have better things to do, like shove bamboo slivers under my nails.
Shouting Woman has come over to our house a lot since then. Banging on the door, demanding to talk to us. Writing us letters to tell us how mean we are…  She’s shouted over the fence to Husband numerous times as he’s been working in the garage. Once to tell him that if he didn’t withdraw the question to the council, she would complain about small boy dog, and small girl dog, then adding “It would be a shame if something happened to them.” She’s told us that we’re boring, that we don’t appreciate music, that we have no sense of fun. She’s told Husband that he’s a sad old man. As he’s at least 40 years younger than her, it’s kind of funny. Maybe she could be a comedian after all. 

Sexual Chocolate

Spray tans are fucking retarded. This is not the first time I’ve said this. Anyone who had anything to do with my wedding will know that I hate spray tans. I tried to install someone with a squirt gun of tan remover at every entrance to politely mist all of the orange people. I think people who get spray tans are stupid. However, I also think that people who sunbake are stupid and people who go to solariums are stupid. Just be the colour you are.
This being said, I have a big night of dance performances tomorrow, and everyone else would be a nice shade of terracotta. I decided that I would give the lightest colour of spray tan a shot, just so that my translucent thighs wouldn’t reflect the spot lights.
My friend is bridesmaid in a wedding tomorrow and she is the same caspery see through white that I am. I convinced her to join me in a spray tanning escapade. We discussed it and decided we would feel weird about having a perky leathery painted lady see our bits in all their naked floppy glory, and then apply a coat of varnish to them, so we would go to the automated booth and hope no one had cut a spy hole in it to laugh at us.
My friend went in first and came out looking relatively unscathed. She said it wasn’t bad, just noisy and hot. I was second to go for the privilege. I stripped down in the hot little room after the man explained to me that you have to put the barrier cream over your hands and on the tops of your feet. I stepped into the booth and placed my left foot on the number 1 and my right foot on the number 3 and held my arms like I was a dingle dangle scarecrow. I got sprayed from top to bottom and rotated, then bottom to top and rotate, then put my left hand in and took my left hand out and then put my left hand in and shook it all about. I felt like I was in the person version of Pimp My Ride.
I then towelled off and got back into my loose fitting dark clothing and no bra. It was a uniquely awkward experience. When I arrived home, I grabbed my book and set myself up on the sofa to read for a while. Then I decided to paint my nails. Painting my nails is very relaxing to me. As I had just finished putting the final coat on of a colour I like to call “Who the fuck makes nail polish in this colour green?” I happened to look down. I was sitting cross legged and happy in my own little bubble of nail painting glory, and what do I see? Actually, I have no idea.
I stare at my feet a little longer and still can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. Why are the bottoms of my feet the colour of Tim Tams? I don’t understand. Some days I’m a little slow. Then, I realise... The fucking spray tan. It’s on the floor of the booth. The booth I was standing in with my feet. Now, at this point I am sitting on my sofa and laughing. I am staring at my feet and laughing, like a baby, or a numpty. Tears are running down my cheeks I’m laughing so hard. I go to look in the mirror to see if all of me is a sexy sensual chocolate delight and realise that no, I am still white. I’m white everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except the bottom of my feet. I am in fact, a reverse black person. I’m like Oprah in the negative, a turned about Whoopi Goldberg... It’s always been a secret dream of mine to be black, and now, through the bottom of my feet, I’m finally living that dream.

My heart is made of puppies.

I have dogs. A small boy dog came into my life in August of last year. He’s a snorting, snoring, snuffling little flat face. I mean, the poor guy looks like he’s struggling to live.

 He could never survive in the wild. He has dainty little cat feet and is pretty much the strangest dog ever. He’s incredibly sweet and almost freakishly devoted to me, he loves everyone and I can count the number of times he’s barked on my hands. He sits and licks his paws and wipes his face with them. He will sit like a human and scratch his poor empty ball sack with a tiny paw. I think possibly he learned this behaviour from watching Husband do it. He also tries to wee in the toilet if we ever leave the door open, but being 9 inches off the ground, it doesn’t really work out for him. I taught him a bunch of tricks and I make everyone who comes over watch him. He can sit, shake with both hands, drop, crawl, and if you put your fists up and say “FIGHT!” he will box with you. Husband found out that if you lay on the floor with him, he will lick your face for 15 minutes without a break. The dog that is, not Husband. Boy dog has a curly piggy tail and most of the time, is pretty unaware of it. However, if you straighten it out and show it to him, he will chase it madly until it curls up again and he promptly forgets it ever existed.
He loves me more than husband, which makes me incredibly happy. He’s pleasant and fuzzy and warm and is perfectly content to sleep on my stomach while I read. He follows me from room to room and will guard my feet from his position directly on top of them. I don’t ever have to clean up after him, because he’s particular about where he goes to the toilet. He didn’t wee for the whole drive from Melbourne to Sydney, even when we stopped every hour and walked him through grass. When we finally hit our destination, and put down newspaper, you could almost see the look of relief on his little squashed face.

Small girl dog is not so particular. She came into my life in March of this year. She has been nicknamed many things, among them fart-face, little vom-vom and ninja pooper. She is honestly, the most disgusting dog I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She burps, she farts noxious gases that can clear a room in 10 seconds, poops more frequently than a binge eater with laxatives and eats her food so fast, it makes her sick, so she throws up and then eats it too fast again, so throws it up and then finally manages to eat it the third time. She has been known to eat poop, both her own and that of the small boy dog. You don’t want kisses from small girl dog. She’s lucky she’s so damn cute, or I’d have sold her ages ago. When the dogs took sides, small girl dog took Husbands side, which is ok with me. My special muffin headed dog is elevently three million times better behaved and a whomping great forty seven bajillion times cleaner and less stinky than she is. She’s also stubborn. Oh, is she stubborn! You can call her til your voice gives up and she won’t come unless she wants to. She’ll sit if she thinks there’s food involved. She can shake, but only with one hand and again, only when she wants to and when there’s a possibility of food. You have to tap her leg all the time and say “SHAKE!” but most of the time she tilts her head up and away and ignores you perfectly.

She has an incredible sense of smell and I have found her more than once licking containers inside the recycling basket. She can hear a packet open from the end of the back yard. She’s hard headed and trundley. She’s the boss and she knows it. In the mornings when I wake up and go see them and let them outside she wags her little nubby tail and jumps all over me. If I’m ever sick, she scratches and whines at the door and shoves her head in the gap trying to get to me because she worries. Husband won’t hold my hair back or pat me, but small girl dog will curl up on my lap and  cock her head and give conciliatory licks on the shin.

I love those tiny weird little creatures with my whole heart. I want to squeeze them so hard their little eyes pop out more than they already do. They make every single bad day okay again. When you feel like the world is a shitty place and that you’re struggling just to achieve basic tasks because people seem to be put in your way just to fuck with you, go and get sneezed on by a flat faced dog, watch it chase it’s curly piggy tail. Be jumped on with such joy and excitement it’s barely containable and watch a stocky little bitch wag her nub at you. Cuddle them, get covered in hair and licks and paw prints. Chase them around the yard, teach them a trick, blow raspberries on their warm hairless puppy bellies. Love them, because they love you and I guarantee that if you have something broken inside you, they’ll fix it. 

Kitty Limerance is at None Of Your Business with No One Of Your Concern.

The noise of people determined to have a good time is almost deafening. I'm waiting for dinner at eleven o'clock on a Friday night, which, I'll grant you is late for dinner, but I'm a very busy person. Far too busy to have dinner at a reasonable hour. Just down the road is a pub bar night club type thing and the screams and whistles are pretty much at the level of a grand final football match. Looking around tonight I've seen a lot of people trying really hard to have fun, but very few who actually are. I've seen a lot of girls with blistered feet who can't seem to walk in their shoes, like wounded baby giraffes. All spindly legs and awkward skinny necks. I've seen a lot of guys freezing in their douche bag level v neck tees and no jacket and a whole bunch of people sitting around taking photos of themselves and updating on Facebook about what a great time they're having but not actually talking to the people they're supposed to be having the good time with.

One of my friends posted a photo to Facebook recently, a photo she had taken of herself. In the background, was another friend wholly absorbed in her iPhone. Is she tweeting? Texting? Facebooking? Playing Angry Birds? Updating her Period Planner? Who fucking knows. There were 5 people at that table. 2 of them were taking photos of themselves and the others were tapping away on their phones.

I would like to issue a challenge to the people going out this weekend. Put your Goddamned iPhones and cameras away! Stop checking in at every fucking place you go! I don't care if you've gone from Robarta to Big Mouth to The Saint, to The Metropol to Veludo, then back to Robarta and then to The Vineyard. And for Christ's sake, don't check in at home! Especially not every night.

Stop taking photos of yourselves! Nobody wants to see 106 photos uploaded every Sunday morning that are all of you pulling various stupid faces and saying how ugly you are. If you thought you looked bad, here's a tip: DON'T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET.

People have bemoaned long and loud about how hard it is to meet a guy now days. "Why don't guys approach me? I really want a boyfriend!" How do you expect guys to approach you when you're always taking photos of yourself, or texting the people next to you to say "I love this song!" People who sit in the corner pointing a camera at themselves and clicking away while trying to prove how funny and quirky they are don't make friends. People who get outrageously drunk and cry in the toilets don't make friends. Do I need to explain why?

This doesn't just go for girls either... It applies to guys. And those in between. (7 foot tall drag queen on my tram, twittering, I'm looking at you.)

I don't know why it's so hard to put down your phone, to put down your camera, to put down your fake tan and 7 inch shoes, to put down your check ins and status updates and 140 character limits, and actually go and live your life. I don't know why it's hard to pick up a book, pick up a real conversation or pick up a quiet beer with friends without broadcasting it, but it is.

No man is an island... We're so worried that we're not connecting to people that we're spending so much time reaching out via the internet and our phones that we're actually failing to engage with people in real life and are going the way of Gondwanaland.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to update my Facebook about this sick blog post. 

KISSES!

Jeans

Don’t talk to me about jeans. I cannot find jeans that fit all of me. I can find ones that fit around the waist, but are so baggy around my bum and legs, it sort of looks like I’m wearing pilchers with windsocks attached... Even the skinny leg jeans. I can find jeans that fit my bum and legs nicely, but almost cut me in half when I try to button them.

I’m just not the right shape for jeans. Or pants in general, really. I saw a lady at the shops who was wearing jeans that looked like they were made for her, or perhaps she was in some sort of nuclear accident and they became fused to her and are now part of her awesome super hero nature. I wanted to punch her in the face.

Where do you get jeans to fit you like that? How do you make them fit so well everywhere?
Do you wear them in the pool and then sit in the sun? Wear them in the microwave so they shrink like a crisp packet, but your body is there, so it goes to that exact shape? Grow cotton on your waist, so it will trail down your legs like they're some sort of splint and then fashion them into jeans?

Or on your ankles, because cotton probably grows up, not down? I don’t know. I’m not a farmer.

Maybe I should design my own pair of jeans and have someone make them. But they would be an unattractive shape. Like pregnant lady jeans. But without the cute baby bump section. Just a tummy pouch. OH GOD THAT IS THE WORST IDEA EVER. Just forget I said anything.

I know! I’ll get Apple Bottom jeans and turn them around! They’ll be Apple Belly jeans! For those that have no junk in their trunk, but some jelly in the belly.

Bad Hair Day

CLICK ME TO MAKE ME NORMAL SIZED!

Waiting for Spiderman.

I am scared of spiders setting up home in my nostrils while I sleep, which is why I have been sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor in the non-Bat Cave bedroom for about 2 weeks now.
Part of our ceiling has decided to make a run for it this last month and is slowly coming away from the rest of the ceiling.
This means there’s about a one inch gap that goes directly into the roof space.
You know what lives in the roof space? Spiders. Spiders live in the roof space. Did you guess spiders?
Shortly after I discovered the gap in the ceiling, I discovered the spiders traipsing through it.
I’m not phobic of them; I would just prefer that they not crawl on my face.
Husband called the nice real estate people and they said that they would send a man to look at the spiderhole.
I thought the Spiderman would come fairly quickly since, you know, there are spiders coming through my roof, but no.  He’s apparently a very busy Spiderman.
He’s probably running around New York City kissing girls upside down and other weird shit like that while I’m sleeping on the floor.
He came to look at the spiderhole one day, but I didn’t see him. Presumably he swung in on a web, stuck to the ceiling and put his face near the hole to see in. Possibly he heard me coming home and scuttled in under the fridge so I wouldn’t see him. You know how spiders are. They’re shy little creatures until they bite you in the eyeball.
He’s due back to fix the spiderhole soon. As early as tomorrow I’m told. I hope he’s happy to seal his furry little 8 legged brethren back into the roof space so they can no longer come through and try to mate with my eyelashes because while husband seems to be enjoying it, like it’s a camping holiday, it also seems as though I’m camping which is probably why I hate it so much.
I’m pretty much ready to move back in to The Spiderman Room regardless of my tiny arachnid friends. I’m tired and sore and I have weird dreams. Perhaps I’ve already been bitten by one of them and this I’m experiencing the radioactive blood change over? I hope not because I look terrible in Lycra.

Nan

My Nan passed away earlier this year.
I grew up surrounded by her love and strength and buttered toast fingers.
This weekend just gone, she would have turned 91. I have missed her every day since she's been gone, so I thought I would put up something that I wrote for her and read at her funeral, though if you were there, doubtless you wouldn't have been able to understand me through all the crying.

To Nan,

I want people to know how wonderful you were, how brave, how strong. I want you to know how much I loved you, how much I still love you even now that you’re gone. I respected and admired you so much.

You used to mind me when Mum went out.
You taught me to always sift flour twice when making cakes. I’m too lazy to do that. Maybe that’s why your cakes always turned out better than mine.
You made me scrambled eggs for tea when I was sick.
You listened to my new CD’s with me and pretended you liked them.
You made the best sponge cake out of any of us so we all gave up trying.
You and I used to go to church with Mum. I remember one Sunday we went and you scratched your leg for the whole hour because you felt tickly... even when we got up to get communion. On the way to the car you realised the thing that was tickling you was a grasshopper that had gotten tangled in your petticoat. You set it free and laughed.
We used to play games together until I moved away. You tried to teach me poker, but I could never remember the rules. You used to bet with Anticols and their wrappers, which were worth less. We would play dominos for hours and you never once let me win, because there was no lesson in that. Since you, I’ve never found anyone that could beat me at it.
I’ll never know how you fit such spirit into your small frame. You saw so much, lost so many. Friends, brothers, sisters, your husband, your daughter, but were still the kindest and most patient person I knew.
I’m sorry I wasn’t with you more towards the end, Nan. I let other things get in the way. But I always loved you. Will always love you, and will forever carry a part of you in my heart.

Rest in peace.



Queen of CBF

I do 99% of all the cooking in our house. I’m not complaining about it, I love it. I love to cook and I love to bake. My Grandma is an amazing cook and my Mum can decorate a cake like nobody’s business, so I guess I picked it up from them. My Nan made the best sponge cake in the world and no one can prove differently. I have recipes from my great great grandmother that would stun your tastebuds. They were and still are hardworking women who cook with care and devotion.
I never had a bought cake for my birthdays. My Mum would stay up all hours of the day and night crafting her wonderful creations and my Grandma is notorious for over catering every event and making it all from scratch. Packet cakes were a thing of myth and legend in our house.
While the food we ate was not necessarily gourmet or in line to win any pressure tests in the Master Chef kitchen, it was good food. Proper food made with love and care and potatoes.
Cooking for your loved ones is in my blood. I mean there’s not as much space, what with all the alcohol and stuff, but it squeezes in.
All of that being said, I have lazy weeks. I feel I’m entitled. I work full time, and I have hobbies and, you know... interests and stuff. They take up time. Sometimes, I declare myself the Queen of Can’t Be Fucked, and it’s on those nights when I’m cooking dinner that I find myself thinking of all the things I would rather be eating.

Thing I cooked: Slow cooked char siu pork.

Thing I would have rather eaten: Cereal.
Cereal in the morning is boring. There are 4000 things better to eat in the morning than cereal. But, cereal at night? GENIUS!  I love cereal at night! There is nothing tastier. It’s so easy and convenient! No bowl? No milk? No worries! Grab the box, park yourself on the sofa, and stuff handfuls of it into your mouth.

Thing I cooked: Crispy skin chicken with yellow noodle.

Thing I would have rather eaten: Popcorn.
Oh popcorn, there are no words to describe how much I love your crunchy buttery salty flavours of joy. I love you at the movies, I love you at home, and sometimes I love you in the middle of the night on the way back from the toilet. I especially love you as a meal replacement. When Husband was away on his snow trip, I ate popcorn for dinner 2 nights in a row and was so content, I went to bed with a huge fake butter smeared smile.

Thing I made: Vietnamese caramel chicken.

Thing I would have rather of eaten: An entire loaf of garlic bread.
There are instructions on garlic bread packets. They tell you that you can cook it in the oven or in the microwave. In the oven? For 15 minutes? Bitch, please. That shit is going in the microwave for a minute on high. I will then tear into the scalding first piece and burn my tongue. I will continue eating until the garlic butter can no longer be mistaken for anything other than frozen. Back in the microwave it goes while I hover near the door jiggling in anticipation. Also, it’s Italian. That makes it automatically fancy.

Thing I made: Wantons

Thing I would have rather eaten: Corn chips or pretty much anything that can go straight from the packet and into my open mouth.
Things that can be transferred from packet to mouth with no effing about have got to be the God of lazy foods. Open the packet, pour into mouth. It shits all over hand folding 40 fucking dumplings to impress dinner guests. Next time I have people over, everyone is getting a large bag of some form of crisp. If I like them, they’ll get Red Rock Deli. If I don’t like them, they get Homebrand. You want an entree? Here’s a fun sized bag of Twisties. Knock yourself out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s dinner time and there’s a PopTart with my name on it.

Guilty Shame Spiral

I feel guilty about a lot of things.
Husband attributes this to my family’s Catholicness. Catholics are like the Olympic gold medallists of guilt. And not the Winter Olympics either, the real Olympics.
He seems to find it amusing as he does not possess such an emotion.
Let me give you an example... We will have something delicious. Husband will want my delicious thing. He will ask if he can have it. I will say no. Husband will sit in silence and wait. I will begin to feel guilt. I will feel anger at feeling guilt. Then I will feel shame. Then I will give Husband the thing he wanted.

Husband will be gleeful and will laugh at me. He will point and emphatically declare “It’s because you’re CATHOLIC!” I will feel a sense of loss of my delicious thing.
The guilt is not limited to Husband and delicious things though.
I feel guilty about drinking anything fizzy before midday. I think my Grandma instilled that rule in my head, and now, 6 years after I moved out of home, I will still feel guilty for wanting Coke Zero before lunch.

I feel guilty about calling in sick to work, even when I’m legitimately sick. Especially when I’m legitimately sick... I agonise over the decision. Then I have to ask Husband what he thinks I should do. He usually tells me to go to work. So I struggle around the house, flopping from one room to another trying to get ready until I feel so awful all I can do is lay on the floor. Then I get all torn up inside and have to debate the issue a thousand times again in my head. Logically I know it’s not the end of the world, but my conscience seems to think it is.

I feel guilty about buying anything that’s just for me. If it can’t be used for the house or if Husband can’t share it, down the spiral I go.

I feel guilty about not holding the lift doors open for people even if they’re really far away and I’m running late.

The guilt doesn’t go away within the day though. Sometimes not even in the week... Sometimes it lives in my soul for close to two decades.
When I was a little girl, I was playing out the front of my house. I found a little worm and I put him on my hand. I held him there, and he bit me. I pulled him off and threw him into the gutter and sort of stomped on him. He started to bleed. I felt so bad. My grandfather explained to me that he was a leech and that it wasn’t his blood I was seeing. It was most likely my own.

To this day I think about that little leech and wonder where he went after he got hosed away. Maybe he was a Catholic leech. Maybe he feels guilty about biting me and is wondering where I am today and what happened to me. Probably not though, because leeches are almost certainly smarter than that.

I have a strange memory.

I can be counted on to forget anything that may be relevant to my job and in high school I was never able to remember anything that related to my subjects.
I once turned up to an HSC exam holding only a pen and said “Community and Family Studies? I do that? Shit. Well... What’s it on?”
Ask me to recall the name of the Premier of Victoria and at best you’ll get a confused face and perhaps a mumbled “Errr... Bob Carr?”
But then, there are song lyrics and random trivia facts. You want to know all of the words to an Abba song? I’m your girl. You’re confused about the second verse in the Puretones 1998 hit, Addicted to Bass? No need for Wikipedia, just give me a call.
It’s practically a fucking superpower.
This seems strange to anyone who has known my relatives for any length of time. My Grandma is kind of infamous within the family for getting song lyrics wrong. You know the line in I Will Survive, where Gloria Gaynor belts out “Weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye?” For a solid section of time my Grandma thought it was “Weren’t you the one who tried to rape me with your eyes?”
Now, I’ve never been one to stand in the way of a good eye fuck, but I could never work out if that was what she meant or if she thought they would somehow detach their eyeballs from their optic nerve and try to penetrate someone with them.
There was a song released in 1980 that said “Oh Vienna...” and for a while my lovely Grandma thought it was “Old Piano.” Now, lest you think my Grandma is old and deaf and senile, when Ultravox released Vienna, she was only 36.
You can see why it’s so astounding that not only do I get the lyrics right, but I can somehow store them in my brain, sometimes laying dormant for a decade, and then pull them out and start singing them like it’s still the year 2000 and Faith Hill is coaching her boyfriend on basic respiratory technique.
And believe me; you want me on your trivia team. It won me a hat on my honeymoon. What is an Alligator Pear? Which country produces Panama Hats? How many calories do you consume while licking a stamp? Put down your iPhone, people, I’m here to save the day.
Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t sleep on a mountain of encyclopaedias, like mythical dragons sleep on huge treasure piles. I don’t get up at 3am to log onto the net and click through 47 pages of OMG Facts either. Well, not often...
There’s just something in my brain that retains all sorts of useless information about the bathing habits of Gypsies.
I don’t know why that is, but perhaps it will save me from some embarrassing social faux pas when next I meet a Romany woman standing downstream from a horse.  

Pancetta is just snobby bacon. It's snacon.

Sometimes I draw things for no reason.

The Toilet Incident

I wake up in the middle of the night a lot and Husband very rarely does.

On one such occasion I woke up to go to the bathroom. As I’ve said, our house is a very old house.
The toilet used to be an outhouse, but is now encased within the main part of the house. To get there, you need to walk out of our bedroom, past the spare room, past the lounge room, past the bathroom proper, through the kitchen, past the laundry and then into the toilet. It is a long, arduous and dark journey. Frequently on the way back, I have to stop in the kitchen for supplies of soda water or Waterfords Portello.

This night I had noticed Husband sleeping all wrapped up in the sheet as he normally does, and gotten up to start the trek to the toilet.

I was so tired. There was drool dried to the side of my face and one of my eyes was stuck together.

I noticed that the toilet light had been left on. Husband has a habit of doing this. He always leaves lights on. He will turn on every light in the house and leave it that way. He will turn on the heater in a room that no one is in and leave it on for 5 hours to “pre-heat”. So, nothing was too unusual about the light being on so I flipped it off and didn’t think much of anything else about it. Then, I got closer to the door.

It seemed as though someone was in there. But that couldn’t be possible. Husband was sleeping in bed. I had seen him all tucked up in the sheet! While I was standing there staring at the door, I picked up small boy dog. Small girl dog didn’t exist then. I don’t know what help I thought a 6 month old pug puppy with a nervous disposition would be, but there you go. I looked at the small boy dog and went to put my hand on the door knob when I heard the toilet flush.

Going through my head was something to this effect: OhholyChristthetoiletjustflushed. It’s ok. Calm down. It was probably just automatic. Probably just a plumbing thing. Probably just did it by itself. It’s fine.

As I’m thinking this I’m squeezing small boy dog very tightly, like a shedding, wheezing, useless security blanket with eye snot.

Then I noticed I was kind of hiding behind a very small dog. Ok, not kind of... I was definitely hiding behind a very small dog. After deciding to be a motherfucking adult about the situation, I grabbed the handle of the door and held it closed so no one could get out, for there was decidedly someone in there.

I gave myself a pep talk.

“Man up!” I said inside my head. “Just open the door! Open the door! What are you? Scared? What’s the worst that could happen? OPEN THE DOOR! There’s nothing for it! You’ll just have to open the door.”

So I opened the door, just a little...

OH HOLY FUCKING JESUS CHRIST THERE IS SOMEONE IN THERE. WHY IS THERE SOMEONE IN THERE? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?

Then I looked properly... It was Husband. He was confused as to why I had turned the light off on him and appeared to be wielding a small tired dog.

Turns out that the bundle in bed that I thought was Husband, was just the sheet rolled up in a distinctly Husband type shape and I had absolutely shat myself worried for nothing.
Upon commencing the trek back to bed with Husband, he asked me why I hadn’t thought to wake him up to tell him a maniac murderer or burglar of some description had broken in and was weeing in our toilet. He also pondered on the fact that I hadn’t walked the 3 feet back into the kitchen to get a very large, very sharp knife to wave at the urinating intruder.
What can I say? This was the closest thing I had at the time... Tell me you wouldn’t be scared.

Motherfucking Batman

I live in an old house. It has lots of wood panelling. At some point in history this was considered attractive. Maybe around the time copious amounts of hallucinogenic drugs were being taken. Maybe not. But probably.
This, combined with the outside shutters makes the bedroom quite dark. We have blinds that cover most of the window, as blinds are supposed to.
However, the sun is a cheeky bastard. A sneaky, cheeky, ninja bastard.
The sun will shimmy on in through the tiny spaces that the blinds leave between the windows and the blinds and shine its evil light directly into my eyes at absurd times of the morning. It’s like it’s aiming for me with tiny sniper lasers of brightness.

This is unacceptable to me. It so happens, also, that across the road from my house is a store. A very big store that sells vacuum cleaners. It has lights all over its awning that flash on and off at regular intervals all night. It’s like there’s a really lame disco in my bedroom and no one is having fun.
One night lying in bed amid the awkward strobing of 47 light bulbs, an idea came to me.

Motherfucking Batman!

I would turn this room into my very own Batcave. I would be motherfucking Batman! Just without the homoerotic subtext. Or the saving people bit. Or the billions of dollars. Or the butler. Or the outfit. Or the nemesis’s (nemesi?). But apart from all that, just like Batman!
I leapt out of bed and ran to the study to snatch up some tape. Returning to the bedroom, I turned on the light and began to tape the edges of the blinds to the wood panelling that the windows are set in.
Husband was understandably confused. He was even more so when I would only answer his increasingly puzzled questions with “Motherfucking Batman!”
My taping duty complete, I climbed back into bed and turned off the light. Total and complete blackness, pure and unrelieved dark abounded. It was black as pitch and scary as shit. It was perfect.
When visitors come over, I like to put them in there with the lights off and close the door. Sometimes I even let them come out again.

Abandonment

Husband recently went away for a week to the snow with a couple of friends and his Dad.
It was a boy’s week where they would ski and pour schnapps on fresh snow for some reason. As a girl my very essence would ruin such a week. I’d infect their schnapps with my oestrogen and presumably my vagina would get in the way of everyone’s skis, so I was left at home.

I’ve spent nights away from Husband before, but I haven’t spent a night alone in an empty house for 5 years or so. It was a strange experience.

Night 1 of abandonment: Ate frosting out of can for breakfast with spoon. Husband not here to be judgey with his judging eyes. Did lots of things to be busy today. Stayed up as late as I could so I would sleep well. Bed feels like whole empty continent. So much space! Might be bed agoraphobic... afraid of too much bed space. Scary noises seem scarier. Sniff pillow to see if it smells like husband like they do in movies. Immediately regret decision because, in fact, pillow does smell like husband. Husband not smell great. Have strange empty feeling all day like have maybe lost limb or possibly really need to poop, discern feeling is loneliness.

Miss husband 11 out of 15.

Night 2 of abandonment: Bed still feels strangely empty. Like small island rather than whole continent. Bed feels like empty Tasmania but with less apples and inbreds. Enjoyed sleeping and facing left last night without being breathed on. Awoke this morning to all the covers still on me. Noises not so scary tonight. Annoyed at loud stompy neighbours. Wish for someone to complain loudly to. Whole house smells like fresh baked soda bread. Feel superior to almost everyone. Laugh to self about husband being cold in snow while self is warm and smelling of bread. Tell self that husband is most likely warm inside also. Tell self that that’s not as funny and imagine husband in snow with one missing sock and one missing glove. Realise I am talking to self like crazy person.

Miss husband 6 out of 15.

Night 3 of abandonment: Bed is size of medium city. Like Melbourne. Only not so cold. Feeling very independent. Did same regular activities but by self. Got given lots of compliments today. Made self feel floaty and light. Feel am strong independent woman. Sing Destiny’s Child songs in head. Think “Fuck it!” and sing them out loud. Too tired to notice scary noises.

Miss husband 1 out of 15.

Night 4 of abandonment: Went to first aid course today. Learned how to save peoples’ lives and distribute band aids. Feel is noble cause. Go home and consider practicing bandages on small girl dog. Small girl dog gives self small dog glare. Consider practicing bandages on small boy dog as substitute. Small boy dog looks suspicious and frightened. Cuddle small dogs instead. Go to Coles to buy supplies for dinner party tomorrow night. Get rained on. Get rescued by friends husband who sees self walking in the rain and offers self ride home. Self gratefully accepts. Consider stealing other husband. Not for nefarious sexual purpose, but light in lounge room is flickering and self is too short to change globe.  Marinate pork belly and clean house til early hours of the morning. Dance around to music a lot. Dance badly. Bed seems to be size of small country town. Perhaps Broken Hill. But with less miners.

Miss husband 3 out of 15.

Night 5 of abandonment: Had dinner party tonight. But less fancy. Ate on sofa with plates on laps. Tell self I am classy person. Girls from work came over and played Wii and watched Masterchef. We laughed lots and cuddled dogs. There was a doggy visitor for my small dogs. He was even smaller. I wanted to steal him and his softness and keep him in my pocket. After friends went home self turned music on and danced around house again. Feel this is becoming habit. Tried to rap along with Snoop Dogg but am too white. Tried to shake booty, but lack of booty made this task difficult. Tidied house and fell into bed which is size of Elsternwick but with less bagel shops.

Miss husband 1 out of 15.

Night 6 of abandonment: Slept strange last night. Have given self sore neck.  Decide to treat self with pamper day. Go and get massaged by Thai lady who stretches legs very far back. Decide to get facial too. Thai lady squishes cut up bits of orange on face. Strange feeling. Go and get manicure and pedicure. Decide to go and get wax. Request eyebrow and Brazilian wax. Waxing lady very vicious. Everything finished in 8 minutes though. Can’t quite walk properly due to trauma caused to vagina by hair being forcibly removed by lady who seems to have personal vendetta against said hair. Go home and realise self has weird bits of orange stuck in eyebrows. Feel awkward. Turn on music and dance around house again. Bed is perfect size for sleeping in. Stretch out lots and can touch the sides.

Miss husband 0 out of 15.

Night 7 - Last night of freedom: Didn’t leave house all day. Stayed in pyjamas on sofa most of day and read book. Small girl dog and small boy dog slept on sofa next to me. Very content in own company. Watched bad television without huffing noises from husband. Enjoyed self enormously. Bed is still perfect size. Sleep on stomach like star fish. Make ocean noises to self and pretend am starfish. Stop making ocean noises because thought of water makes bladder feel extremely full.

Miss husband 0 out of 15.

Night 8 – Return of husband: Have to wake up early to achieve things today. Take self to dance on tram, where am confused for stripper. Enjoy dance class immensely. Feel that perhaps self dances like spastic who is deaf and devoid of rhythm. Return home to clean house properly for husbands return. Do washing up. Give up on cleaning house and read book. Hear husband putting key in door lock and stupid smile spreads involuntarily on face. Husband comes in and puts dirty things all over mostly clean house. Get mad at husband and wish he would go skiing again and take his dirty clothes and washing up with him so house not smell like boy. Bed feels entirely too small. Like am sleeping in child's racing car bed with Bigfoot.

Wish husband would go away 11 out of 15.

I find myself being confused for a prostitute more than is normal.

I find myself getting confused for a prostitute more than is normal.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been mistaken for a prostitute three times, a drug dealer twice and a stripper once.

I’m not entirely sure why this is.
I think perhaps, it may have something to do with the fact that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time waiting on street corners outside of public toilets. Not for the purposes of selling drugs, lap dances or 15 minutes in the back of a 1986 Holden Calais. Usually just for Husband to finish pottering about and drive me home.

I don’t feel that I dress particularly prostitutey. I will freely admit that I have never known a prostitute, so am not the highest authority in prostitute couture and therefore may unwittingly be at the cutting edge of fille de joie fashion.

I was on the tram one Saturday and a man sat next to me and asked where I was going. I told him I was going to dance.
He looked at me sideways and said “Perhaps I’ll come and watch. I’ll have to go to the ATM first though. What’s the minimum amount for a dance?”

I had to tell him that he’d be sorely disappointed as it wasn’t that kind of dancing.

He gave me sad eyes and moved seats.

I don’t know the motivation behind walking up to a woman and asking if she accepts money for sex. Especially not in the way that I was approached by one particular gentleman.

“Ay... How much?” he said...

“For what?” I asked.

“Sex.” Said he. “Or drugs. Either. I have cash.”

“Oh... Well... I don’t have any drugs. I believe if you just follow this street down here though there’s some people leaning against the wall that might be able to help you out. As for the sex, I’m not a prostitute, but thank you for the enquiry.”

“Not even for...” he paused dramatically here, and whipped a note out of his pocket with a flourish. “... a fifty?”

As tempting as his offer was, I still had to decline.

When approached another time, I also declined the offer on the basis that I was not in fact a prostitute. I was looked up and down and asked in a skeptical tone “Ya sure?”

This last Saturday just gone, at around 11:30 in the morning, a man wandered over to me and said, not unkindly “You working this corner? The day shift ones are usually really desperate and manky looking... you look pretty clean though.”

I’m not sure what response he was after. Thank you? Actually, I am quite desperate and a little manky, but I just hide it well?

I don’t know why people confuse me for a sex worker and why they seem to be reluctant to believe that I’m not one, not even for a fifty.

Kebabavan

I am from the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Say what you want about them, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that better kebabs are to be had anywhere else in Australia.

No matter what time of the day or night the urge strikes you, you can always venture out and find a kebab stuffed full of tabbouli and happiness.

My friends and I used to drive to Granville at 3 in the morning for baklava and hookahs, and you could always get a kebab.

I live in Melbourne now, and while the souvlaki is wonderful and the gyros are a revelation, I am yet to find the perfect kebab.

I have had strange pocket bread, a whole parsley plant masquerading as tabouli, smiling red headed English girls cooking chicken on a George Formanesque grill, but nothing to compare to my beloved kebabs of the West.

Where are your balding hairy knuckled Lebanese guys swearing at wall mounted televisions? Where are your polite old brown skinned men saying “Habibti, for you, no worries about extra 50c for cheese. You married? I have sons!”

I found myself, on a Monday night just passed, standing on a street corner in St Kilda outside of a kebabavan. A kebabavan, for those of you not in the know, is a caravan from which kebabs are sold.

Husband and I had just finished dancing in Richmond at 8:30 and were going to go to the imaginatively named Richmond Kebab House which we had spotted on the way in to the studio. However when we had finished, it was closed for kebabs. The giant skewers with unnatural meat stuck to them had been taken down. I was devastated.

Undeterred though, we decided that we would venture forth into the world to find a kebab shop and sate our cravings for creepy shaved meat stuffed into rolled up bread.

3 closed kebab shops later, we ended up at the car wash kebabavan. Yes. It is a caravan selling kebabs inside a car wash located next to a gay bar. No. I don’t know why.

Inside the kebabavan was a very nice man who was from none of the countries where kebabs are from, who did a noble job, considering what he was working with. My heart was still sad with the results though.

Husband said to me, “What’s with you? Why do you care so much? They still taste good. Who cares if they’re like the Sydney ones?”

“I do.” I said to him. “I’m from the west! I need kebabs like people from the Northern Beaches need racism and the colour beige! I need kebabs like people from Newtown need vegetarianism and dreadlocks! I need kebabs like people on Oxford Street need short shorts for men and closed toed shoes!”

Coming from the Northern Beaches originally though, maybe he was too busy being racist and wearing beige to understand the importance of decent kebabs.