Frustrations, ranting & fibbers.

Warning: this will be a bit of a vent session. This is your last chance to click away 🙂

Back in my post “Is it okay to eat the world?” you might remember me talking about the fact that my brother’s GF is now unexpectedly pregnant with their third child. As I mentioned in that post, neither of them have themselves together despite the fact my brother turns 30 in a couple of months and she is 26. Both are well aware that we are struggling with fertility and desperately want children and yet neither of them actually told us they were pregnant, they left it to my parents to tell us. My Dad told me the day they found out and the next day she came over and immediately (as if we had already been mid conversation) says, “Yeah, so M totally thinks the baby will be a girl” Umm… ‘scuse me? As far as you know I am not even aware you’re knocked up… what the hell girl? A little bit of sensitivity and thought that it might be hard for us would have been appreciated.

She went on about this crap for awhile and I nodded and messed around on FB trying to mostly ignore her. She went on about names for awhile and in the end I interrupted her (I know it’s rude and I wouldn’t normally, but I was totally over it you guys!) and said, “Honestly T, there is so much you need to think about before you even consider names. For starters, will 3 baby seats fit in the back of your car? If not you will need to sell your car and get one that will. Have you thought about the fact that you thought you were done with babies and so got rid of all the boys baby stuff including your maternity clothes and you don’t have any extra money? How are you going to pay for 3 children when you can’t even keep up with two? You need to stop J being such a clingy child, if you don’t do this before the baby comes he could hold it against the baby and hurt it by accident.” I listed a bunch of other things she needed to do before the baby arrives and then said, “ALL of that is so much more important than what you are going to call them. You need to start with a complete cleanout of your stuff and clean your house”. She looked at me like most of it had gone over her head then said, “Yeah I know, I just wish your brother would help out more. Did you know that I will get X amount of money per week from the government now we have three kids?” I just looked at her aghast. She had only found out she was pregnant the day before and she was already looking up what kind of benefits she could get out of it?!!!!!!!!! What. The. Hell!!!

I said something to the effect of “that is really not the kind of thing you should be relying on” and something about, “you might not be able to get all of that” to which she started spouting off about what she was ENTITLED to and made a joke she thought was SO funny along the lines of, ‘at least you know where your taxes are going’. I looked at her with what I thought was a withering stare and said, “Yes, I am SO glad that my hard earned tax dollars go towards paying my nieces and nephews mothers to stay home and not work. It’s almost like I am paying for the lives of my brothers and their children even though I have none of my own”. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get I was mad at her. She said (to be fair she said it quite genuinely), “I know, that totally sucks. I really want you to be able to have children soon”.

I spoke to my brother a bit later about this happening and he said he was deeply concerned because she had said the same thing to him about the money. He said he had tried to tell her that whilst the money would help that it wouldn’t cover all their needs and that she needed to not be so centered on it, but he couldn’t get through to her.

AND THEN… THE SAGA CONTINUES…

She came over yesterday talking about the baby shower (She had done this before and I tried to tell her that traditionally you really only had a baby shower for your first child and reminded her that she didn’t have one for her second. She ignored this obviously.) and apparently she asked my parents if she could have the baby shower at their house (remember it was only yesterday during her visit that she asked), my Dad said he was okay with it, but my Mum would have the final say. My Mum asked why they couldn’t have it at their place and she said it wouldn’t be big enough (umm what?), apparently Mum asked a bunch of other questions, but never actually said yes. Half an hour after this conversation she hands me an invite with Mum and Dad’s address as the location and Mum and Dad as one of the people you can RSVP too. WTF you guys?! WTF???!!!

Also it is halfway through September, she’ll be barely halfway through her pregnancy by that stage, she isn’t even 12 weeks yet, how stupid can she be sending this crap out? Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. It is also really hurtful and is pisses me off because even though she told my Mum she would come over the week before to clean Mum’s place and would do all the catering I know for SURE that come the day nothing will be prepared and it will be left up to me and Mum to do it. They are doing this party in the place where I live… there is nowhere for me to escape or hide from it when I become overwhelmed. I may be overreacting, but I find it terribly rude! I honestly feel like telling Hubby we need to go away that weekend except I don’t feel right leaving my Mum with all that crap.

Oh and then I realised that the invite was for both me and Hubby and was from my brother and his GF… uhh okay? What? It turns out that they are inviting over 50 FREAKING PEOPLE! That is HUGE! That is not a baby shower, that is a freaking rager! Personally I think they want an excuse for a party to take their mind off their issues and they don’t want to have it at theirs because they would be forced to clean their house!

Lies I tell you!

Am I being unreasonable? Is it wrong for me to be mad about this being thrown on not just us, but my parents too?

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Sneaky Hobitses!!! They stoles it from me!!!

So, recently (meaning last Friday) IT did a “PC upgrade”. Now being that it was called a “PC upgrade” I honestly took the dictionary meaning of “upgrade,” which for Oxford is, “raise (something) to a higher standard, in particular improve (equipment or machinery) by adding or replacing components”… in short… better than what I had before, right?

Well, apparently the IT guys have a different definition because I now get random programs that are set to start when I turn on my computer that are completely useless to me and have nothing to do with my work and Internet Explorer… well the version I have now is 2 less that what I had on my old PC. I used to have IE11… back to 9 now. GRRR.

So this afternoon after having a very long day with a lot of annoying things happening that just kinda made me do this…

I truly do love my job, but these days happen to all of us 🙂

I kept getting this thing pop up (one of those auto start programs that I cannot uninstall because I do not have freaking admin access ARGH!) whilst I was trying to wrap up for the day… ended up being there til an hour after I was supposed to finish… like I said, one of those days. This thing shouldn’t really have annoyed me as much as it did, but hopefully they wll see the funny side of it as well as get that I am annoyed about it.

The email had the subject, “Sneaky Hobbitses” – yup, seriously. Then it went like this…

~

IT…

What is this thing that always comes up on my computer now?

 

 

 

 

 

Is the whole point of this thing to tell me that I have spent $18 on printing since the inception of my account? Is that the whole function of this annoying ass program?

If so, how do I get it off? What a waste of time and space when there is no reason for me to know this information. Ain’t nobody got time for this 🙂

Here I was thinking I was getting an upgraded computer… sneaky Hobbitses, my nice computer with IE11 and no annoying random programs… they stoles it from me and replaced it with something… less. Upgrade… pfft… I call shenanigans!!!

Kind regards,

DTB

~

Hmm… yeah. Reading that over now, I am thinking I really shouldn’t have pressed send. But come on, at least I didn’t send them pictures or something too, I could have made it a lot worse by adding the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or this one… I like this one…

This works too…

So you see, it could have been worse.

Have you ever sent an email and wondered if maybe you should have saved the draft and re-read it tomorrow?

 

Dr. Evil

*Warning: we are still talking about lady parts 🙂

Who would have thought that my girl junk would give me posting fodder? You all seemed to enjoy my post from yesterday so I thought I would share with you what happened last night.

Yesterday the issue raised its Hulk-like head again, queue huge sigh from me because I knew I should probably go to the Docs, but I finished work at 6pm and as much as I know it is a natural part of life I really didn’t want to go and talk about my baby cannon with some random person. So I spent some time talking myself into it and off I went armed only with my somewhat rehearsed speech for the Doc and an ebook recommended to me by a really great blogger (I don’t know if she would be happy to be pinged in a post about pink bits so I will leave her alone for now LOL).

I asked for first available and silently promised myself that whoever it was I wouldn’t see them again. Husby came along for moral support… seriously I need to buy that guy a cape! Aaannnd I waited.

*Side note: waiting is not overly fun in general, but it is so much worse when you really don’t want to do whatever it is you are waiting for.

My name gets called and off went to the room. I stroll in as casually as I can, it was a pretty awesome performance if I do say so myself. All is going well, the Doc asks how he can help me and I start my speech… all good, I didn’t even stammer, I noticed a strange reaction when I said the word “vagina” his eyes slightly widened and he was blinking rapidly. I think back over what I had said, no everything was fine, why is he looking like a deer in headlights? The dude would easily be over 50… surely this is not his first cave of wonders expedition.

He wrote me out a script for a broad spectrum antibiotic, I have had this antibiotic before… for ear infections, so I was quite aware of just how broad it was. He then gave me a prescription for an over the counter cream, here I was thinking over the counter meant you didn’t need a prescription, but apparently I was mistaken. Then he asked if there was anything else he could help me with.

Umm… wait a minute… did we miss a pretty big step here? How about a physical examination? You have just prescribed me medication and aren’t even sure what the issue is. So instead of being a good little girl and running to the pharmacy with my little pieces of paper I decided to ask,

“Uhh are you going to give me a physical examination at all?” he held both hands up as if warding me off, dude wtf? My growler isn’t going to attack you.

“No, no, no” he said, “if you want a physical examination you must come in when a female doctor or nurse is on duty” pretty sure my jaw dropped open a little bit at this statement. I won’t lie I was pretty shocked and kind of annoyed because I had prepped down there as if I was visiting the gyno.

“You are not going to give me a physical examination because I am female?”

“No, you must be examined by a female doctor or nurse, I cannot examine you”

Why the hell not? WTF am I paying you for Dr. Evil? I have been examined by males at this practice previously, what changed? This is total gender discrimination. If my Husband’s balls were swollen I bet you would be all eager to get up in his shit.

 

No, I did not say any of that, I sooooo wanted to, but I didn’t. I said okay and took my little slips of paper to the chemist and got the prescriptions filled, including the cream which the chemist informed me I didn’t need a prescription for… oh fancy that. I then had to stand there in front of other customers while she gave me a lecture on how to properly administer cream to my front-butt. Awesome… because this night hasn’t been embarrassing enough.

I was quietly simmering away about Dr. Evil’s refusal to provide me with proper medical treatment because I am a woman. Husby was not trying to engage me in conversation so I guess the look on my face said everything – I should mention that it didn’t help Dr. Evil’s case that he also told me I should try to lose weight. Oh really? Because I don’t think that anytime I catch a glance of myself in the mirror, truly quality Doctoring right there matey.

It’s not like this happens dude, I know what I look like!

On the way back through the surgery I suddenly stopped and said to Hubby, “I am just going to talk to the receptionist quickly”,

“Hun just leave it alone, we’ll go to another Doctor”

“No I won’t I want to confirm that is the rule of the practice because if it is I won’t be coming back and I will be spreading the news to all my local friends too” I approached the receptionist who is always completely lovely, I did feel a little bad that I had to put her in an awkward position.

“Hi, I have a bit of a sensitive question for you, one of your Doctors just informed me that male Doctors of this practice are not able to provide females with physical examinations and I just wanted to check the accuracy of that” she was already shaking her head by the time I was halfway through the sentence.

“No, that is not correct, that is a personal choice by the Doctor not a rule of the practice” ahh so Dr. Evil is just a douche (hahaha douche get it).

I did suggest that they have a sign up or just not send female patients to this “Doctor” because I felt discriminated against and horrible about myself and I certainly felt that I received sub-standard treatment. She apologised and I quickly assured her that it was not her problem.

Let me be very opinionated for a second here… I do not care what his reasoning was for denying me half decent medical attention (even a cursory glance would have been passable). I don’t want to hear his reasons because as far as I am concerned there should be no reason that any Doctor should ever refuse someone medical attention. If he doesn’t want to examine women then he has two choices…

1. He market himself as only taking male patients
2. He gives up his profession and takes on something more suitable

If your personal opinions or beliefs or whatever are going to impede your ability to do your job in a significant way then you should not be in your profession. 

52 Books in 52 weeks – June

Some different books this month including one I was quite surprised to like.

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
23 – Jun 2-8	False Impressions Stamping Sisters mystery #3	Thayer, Terri
24 – Jun 9-15	City of Dark Magic	Flyte, Magnus
25 – Jun 16-22	City of Lost Dreams	Flyte, Magnus
26 – Jun 23-29	Darkfever	Moning, Karen Marie

 

Continuing on my path of aiming to read books I wouldn’t normally I went to the Library and grabbed a couple of books by authors I had never read – I will neither confirm or deny that part of my choice was based on alluring covers 🙂

False Impressions: Stamping Sisters mystery #3 – Terri Thayer

This was an oops, I didn’t realise it was number three until I got it home… damn fine print 🙂 Luckily this series is one of those that does not have to be read sequentially so we got along fine. I found the characters interesting and the story overall was quite good. I liked that the book was different from your typical mystery and there were character/economic points that I felt really fit with real life situations, for example the main character April has to live in her fathers restored barn with his partners parents because she does historical stamping for restoration projects for a living and there is not much call for that so she has no money – so there are those kind of side stories that make the characters more “real” and relatable which is great. I am definitely considering going back to read the other two – although I am hoping the villain is better hidden because I figured out who it was really quickly and everything after that just confirmed my thoughts until the big reveal and I was kind of sitting there going, ‘oh come one April, you are not this stupid!’

 

 

City of Dark Magic – Magnus Flyte

This book held surprise for me, here I was thinking I was getting a paranormal suspense novel with a female protagonist (Sarah Weston) who is a music student working a summer at Prague Castle Cataloguing Beethoven’s manuscripts (hello! I am a Librarian and a muso – like that wasn’t going to catch my attention haha). What I wasn’t expecting was a sexual element – which at first was really strange and to be honest whilst I now understand why she had a high libido I am not entirely sure it needed to be talked about so much, but I suppose danger, magic and sex kind of go hand in hand. Once the sexual element came in I really wasn’t expecting to like the book, I admit… I judged. I figured it was going to be literary porn masked as a serious novel, but I was pleasantly surprised and indeed rather swept away with the twists and turns in the book. It hooked me and I really, really enjoyed it – it certainly was not porn and as you got into the story you came to understand what that first shock had been about. There is a book two and I am hot on the trail to finding it 🙂

 

 

City of Lost Dreams – Magnus Flyte

I found book two! 🙂 Hooray! I do hate when you start reading a series and have to wait forever for the next book *cough cough* George R. R. Martin *cough*. Slight spoilers, but not really.

This book did have a different feel from the first one, the story was split between Prague and Venice so whilst the main protagonist was still Sarah you spent more time than in the previous book seeing the story unfold from others points of view. I really enjoyed these books for their uniqueness, it was a really different concept that not only challenged the way you looked at the world, but also in the end looked at how people choose to spend their lives. Two different immortals; one who spent their life trying to achieve and brought science and medicine forward in leaps and bounds and one who spent their time frivolously searching for a way to end it all – don’t worry they are not Vampires 🙂 Just humans.

 

 

Darkfever  – Karen Marie Moning – SOME SPOILERS

This one I just grabbed from Overdrive because I had nothing to read and it sounded interesting and had a pretty cover. Turns out I was right with my earlier assumption… danger and magic mean that at some point or other in a book you’re going to end up with sex… why is that? Whilst the whole book was not a sexual tone the couple of times it was it was kind of a shock.

I found the story okay, you have no clue who is bad and who isn’t for the entire book. The female protagonist kind of grows on you, but she spends a lot of the book insisting she is not a bimbo, but whining about her looks and nail polish… I get the impression that the fact is at the beginning she WAS a shallow bimbo, but she is supposed to be slowly changing into someone of depth due to what is happening around her. I have no clue what is going on with the character of Barrons, if I was living in that place I would be spending my days (when he is not around) going through his house from top to bottom searching for ways to protect myself from him – he seems like a psycho and throws Mac around – it’s very strange!!!

One thing that really annoyed me was that I didn’t feel like the ending was an ending, I thought it was the end of the chapter, turned the page and there was the glossary… umm wtf? I google the title… dammit it is a series and nowhere has the second book, this annoyed me because the book had no kind of conclusion, seriously… the narration is done from some point in the future as though she is telling the story of how she got there… naturally I figured the end of the book would at least get me to the point the narrator was up to, but no… nothing. It was really weird, but it also drew you in so I kind of want to read the others, although admittedly that could be my love of closure 🙂 Don’t even get me started on how Mac magically transformed into Buffy TVS after one lesson on where to stick the pointy end… just… don’t.

And so we go into July… so many books… so little time. What are you reading at the moment? I am open to suggestions 🙂

Standing on my soapbox

So I was trawling around the web this morning and came across two things that bugged me. The first was this video:

I have to say I loved how this dude talked about it. I have never actually seen either show before, but he is completely right about the double standard it is apparently not at all a moral issue that she welcomed half naked strippers onto her set that she then kissed, but it is a moral issue for two men to kiss on television. This woman has issues, honestly I have no problem with either, although to be fair I do not know when her show airs – if it airs at a time where young children are watching then I do have an issue with them parading strippers around because I find that kind of blatant sexual imagery unnecessary on general programming that children watch.

Here is what I have an issue with… did this man do a brave thing? Yes, he did and in my opinion that is the problem! I believe there is something seriously wrong in our society when in order for this man to speaking openly about his sexuality he had to be brave.

Then I saw this video:

I made it to 4 mins, honestly I wanted to turn it off way earlier than that, but I persisted… until I saw the ignorant bigot couple that popped up around 3:45, I got so upset I stopped the video. Prior to posting it I have now watched the entire thing and I did find a beautiful beacon of hope in there at the end, all the other people in this video need to be sent to tolerance school!

Please do not take this post as a stance against faith; I think faith is an amazing thing to have. Faith is beautiful, it is belief, it is love and it is hope. However, I believe there is a huge difference between someone who has faith and someone who has religion. Some people use religion as a shield to hide behind in an attempt to hide their discriminations, this is not acceptable, you cannot blame religion for making you a bigot, that’s just not fair and it’s not right. It is actually incredibly offensive to those that do have faith to see people twist the messages of love, support and acceptance that having faith should provide.

http://pixels.com/featured/trees-of-faith-hope-love-triptic-cindy-micklos.html

This debate is not something I usually talk about because my opinions aren’t others and I don’t like people preaching at me about what the bible says. I know what the bible says guys; I went to a Catholic school… I’ve read it. But the bible says a lot of kinda crazy things that pretty much everyone ignores; how about don’t cut your hair or beard? Or, no eating or touching pig carcasses? No tattoos, no divorce, no braids, no gold, no pearls, no shellfish… the list goes on. Unfortunately with Tony Abbott now in “power” in Australia this is a conversation that is in everyone’s face almost daily… so here is my 2 cents worth… this is what I believe:

I believe every human on Earth has the right to love, they have a right to happiness and as long as they are not hurting others in the process (to be clear I mean going all crazy stalker) they should be allowed to revel in that love peacefully.

There is so much hate and hurt in our world already… why as a species are we so insistent on adding to it?

What a hot mess!

You hope for many things when you go through those first stages of setting up your blog, you hope it is a spicy hot roaring success, you hope no one boos you and you desperately hope that you don’t suck at it! Let’s be honest here… you want Tucker Max level fame. You want a blook, you want your blook turned into a movie… you pretty much wish for the stars because, well… why wouldn’t you?!

I am always interested in who visits my blog and how they find me so I check out my stats page generally once a day. So today as per normal I head on over to my stats page, generally my viewings don’t go up until later in the day as most of my readers are still asleep when it is lunchtime in Australia 🙂 so I wasn’t really expecting much… I was actually going to look at yesterday’s results. But before I could click on yesterday’s stats I got a little shock that I found under the “Search engine terms” area, please see screen shot below:

Umm… sorry… WHAT?!

What the… WHAT?!?!

First of all… YUCK! Why is someone looking for that? Who wants to look at anything cut open.

Second of all… Wait… how the hell did they get to my blog by Googling that?!?!

So you know what I had to do right?

Seriously, it had to be done

I had to! I had to know how and more importantly WHY that search brought them to my blog as I know I have not written about “smelly cysts” in… well… EVER!

So I hit the search button because at this point I certainly was not feeling lucky and held my breath. The results came back – 669,000 okay so that is not that high for a Google search, but maybe it was a fluke and I am buried way back in the results somewhere. Skim page one… SAFE! YES! Skim page two… SAaaa…oh shit. There I am… smack in the middle of page two.

Oh my god you guys!

The title that comes up really does not make things any better, no silver lining to be found in that unfortunate title at all. Just so I am quite clear… I do not roll with “grungy smelly cysts”. Grungy, smelly musicians… yes, but the smell is created by a fun day at a festival – not cysts.

What a hot (apparently smelly) mess! I am pretty much freaking out and thinking

http://moonflowerlights.tumblr.com/

So what do I do? I mean I am not about to delete all that content (which ranges across a few different posts) because I was happy with that content, so what should I do?

Then I realised that the only reason someone would be Googling “grungy smelly cysts” is probably if you had one and if you did have one you would probably be a bit sad.

So the only appropriate thing to do would be to write a post with a bunch of references to “grungy smelly cysts” so that my blog hopefully makes it to page one of the results next time someone Googles it 🙂 Let me know if I succeed if you dare to try it haha.

 

Loosely inspired by The Daily Post’s Ring of Fire challenge. I happened to be reading it just before I found this and got inspired 🙂

Baby names

In the past friends have randomly hailed me a baby psychic due to my uncanny ability to guess when people close to me are pregnant before they have told anyone – and in a couple of cases before the person themselves knew. I also seem to have a pretty good hit rate on guessing the sex of the baby. I don’t know why… no I do not think I am psychic and no I will not be able to do it for you. It only works with people I am really close to, I just know! So weird, but anyway I digress…

Over the past year people have changed (or evolved) that opinion of me – they now think I am a stork or something. I think last year was just a huge baby year, but it seemed that a huge majority of the people I regularly spend time with fell pregnant. Out of 12 pregnancies only 1 was planned! And in 3 cases the fact they are pregnant is a miracle in itself, one has had 4 miscarriages – she is now 6 months pregnant, one has cystic fibrosis and was told she wouldn’t be able to have children – she is expecting a baby girl in a few months and the third my maid of honour who found out she was pregnant the morning of my wedding was told she would probably not be able to have children due to being very ill with Anorexia for years. She and her husband have now been married 5 years and they have never fallen pregnant. It does seem a little bit more than coincidence really, you might think 12 pregnancies out of all the friends and family I have might not be much… my hubby and I each had 4 attendants. 2 of his groomsmen’s wives popped not long before the wedding, one of my bridesmaids popped just 2 months before the wedding and another found out she was pregnant the day of the wedding (meanwhile if you count back – she got pregnant after my hens night haha). So half of our attendants had babies in the lead up to the wedding… my 2 brothers gf’s had babies and one is pregnant for the second time now too… crazy stuff.

So obviously I have been exposed to a lot of baby name talk… bit more than I can handle sometimes. My first nephew is named Hendrix (yes his father is a muso),

Hendrix

they are about to have another boy and want another music related name for him (well my brother does at least). So I tried to think of some not-to-freaky ones for them to consider… here’s what I came up with:

• “Lyric” is kinda cool.
• “Dorian” is a music node also known as Russian minor.
• “Reed” like for a sax is cute, but would probably spell it “Reid”.
• “Cash” like Johnny Cash – not the biggest fan of the name Cash though.
• “Travis” as in Barker.
• “Coda” could be another good one.
• “Harper” is Harp player.
• “Chord”.
• “Halen” like Van Halen

Most recent discussions have hailed “Zakk” as in Wylde as the most popular on their current list. I love them and all, but why complicate things by messing with a name like “Zack”? I could take ‘Zac’ or even ‘Zak’ but why is there an extra ‘k’?

Zakk Wylde

Some people are so cruel when they name their children, my Aunt’s partner for example is named Richard Edward Bloggs [surname changed for protection from embarrassment]. Therefore all his life he has been called, ‘Dick-Ed’, he is now 60… poor bloke… mean name award to his parents.

The worst I have EVER heard was from my friend at flight centre (she showed me proof so this is not a story) she had a lady come in to book a flight. Van asked for her name, the lady replied, “Ladasha”, Van questioned the spelling as she wrote, “so is that L-A-D-A…” the lady interrupted, “No, no, no La-Dash-A”. Van asked her to spell it for her, the lady replied, “L-A-DASH-A”, Van gave up and asked her to write her name down… her name was quite seriously and literally spelt “La-a”. Mean name award to her parents.

And don’t even get me started on the bloody celebrities naming their children, Apple, Astronaut, Blue, Sunday, what’s next? Banana?

Hi my name's Banana

I remember a friend telling me that her husband was rejected from filing their son’s birth papers, their name is Walker, they named their son Luke and the father decided to change the middle name to Skye between leaving his wife in the hospital and getting to Births, Deaths and Marriages. Apparently the lady looked at the sheet, looked at him and said, “your wife doesn’t know about this does she?” she shamed him into leaving! Good human award to her!!!

Rule of thumb people, if you would be embarrassed to have the name as an adult… don’t give to your children. Age old rule of think before you act!

No time for siesta!

I was reading a blog post this morning where someone described just having a sit down on their patio and being still, being in the moment, I suddenly realised that whilst reading this post I had been jiggling my leg and attempting to skim through the post. I froze trying to figure out what on earth was going on here, reading about someone being still and taking time to enjoy a moment of silence was making me feel restless… are you kidding?! Am I that far gone that even reading about relaxation makes me jittery now? Whoa! Not good!

My mind raced trying to ascertain the reason for this restlessness and the leg jiggling that had alerted me to it, why was I uncomfortable with someone I have never met living god knows where having a sit down on a Sunday afternoon? This makes no sense! Did I think they were lazy? No. Could it be jealousy? I don’t know, perhaps… hmm maybe.

green eyed monster

Jealousy?! Really?! Wow haven’t felt a real bout of that in what 10 years? Crazy! But then I thought she probably worked damn hard for that afternoon of sitting – the green beast replied, ‘any harder than you? Look at you!’. So I did, I took a good hard look at myself and realised that I am a bit of a mess, not on the outside because I am pretty good at maintaining facades it seems. On the outside I am the picture of organised, efficient, insightful, blah blah blah all those words. Inside the whole balance of mind, body and spirit… well right now I don’t think they have even met each other before… they are truly estranged!!! My life over the past 6 months has been crazy and I know I have abused every aspect of myself in attempt to soldier on and get everything done.

But, I am really starting to feel the effects of working full time, studying Uni at night, organising a wedding and being heavily involved with the pre-birth, birth and life of my baby sis’ surprise bub (first baby in the family since my brother 22yrs ago and she was misdiagnosed with digestive problems until 4 months before she was due).

The last week or so I have felt 75 or 80 rather than 21 (ok 28), everything is far more sluggish and my desperate need for sleep and rest screams at me from every pore. I am so grateful to pour myself into bed at the end of the day. I think the only thing keeping me going is healthy eating, coffee and a dream of the honeymoon just over the horizon.

I think my body is beginning to revolt against me the last two days I have had fevers and shocking headaches, which has forced me to spend more time at home, but still I did not rest as much as I should.

My mother finds this disgusting, but my time to myself where no one could get at me was going to the gym, I could turn on MY music and be totally alone in my little sphere for a while. When I was done I felt like I had done something good for my body, regained a little sanity and my thoughts were more in order and at the end I rewarded myself with a long shower (I never do this at home due to water and electricity costs). But with everything going on there hasn’t even been time for me to do this, last time I did a pilates class I almost fell asleep. I find solice in the fact that the major project I have been doing for work will be completed by the end of this week which should hopefully give me a little breathing space and less sleepless nights.

This is not enjoying life… this is spending my life working and my work to life balance is completely out of synch. I have managed to finish all my Uni assessments for the year ahead of time which is one less thing to worry about. This is really nice because now I am able to enjoy more of the wedding stuff rather than it feeling like a chore. And in 5 weeks time the wedding will be over and we will be on a tropical island with no mobile phones, laptops or internet and nothing to do but recreational activities… ohhh the joy!

I almost got expelled at the age of 6!

I almost got kicked out of a Catholic Primary School, not for fighting or swearing, but because they declared me to be a blasphemous child. I find this rather strange because I had no idea what that meant at the time as I was 6 years old an obviously a total angel!

How did I upset the forgiving Catholics so much? Well I was brought up to ask questions and to enjoy learning (yes yes my mother is a teacher), so I was looking forward to Primary School even though I chucked the required tanty on the first day when I was dropped off.

I digress, back to the story… one bright sunny morning our teacher began teaching us about dinosaurs and when they roamed the earth (I thought dinosaurs were the bomb) then after lunch we had bible study. Here is where I got confused… ‘if god created the earth in seven days then when were there dinosaurs? I thought you said they came before man’. Apparently you can’t question what is in the bible, I was given an answer I don’t remember possibly because it didn’t answer my question, because I didn’t get an answer I kept asking the question. Then I started being ignored, I don’t know who on earth taught teachers that ignoring children will make them go away – what morons they were. My response was to go and ask other teachers, when they couldn’t answer me I went to the boss, I took myself to the Principals office because she must know everything because she is a Nun and a Principal, she told me some garble about how perhaps when the bible says seven days it didn’t mean days, perhaps back then days could mean many years. Ahh ok so why didn’t they just write that it took many years to create the earth, that’s a lie, why did God lie to make himself sound good. THAT was when they called my parents! Apparently I was a horrid child who taught the other student bad behaviour and they believed I was a devil child who was turning children away from God and the church with my incessant questioning. I don’t think it helped that they sat me at a table in the Principal’s office with paper and crayons during this meeting and I promptly began drawing dinosaurs, thinking I was being nice I signed it and told her I had made her a present and gave her the drawing. Oops! But when you are a kid you get obsessed with these things until you get what you need and then you move on.

Teaching evolution and creationism in the same school just does not work (especially an extremely strict Catholic one)… it messes with kids heads! When I was 8 I one day asked the Priest why there were only altar-boys not altar-girls, he said that women shouldn’t touch things of God. I said that God was a meanie and should learn manners because we are supposed to share and why didn’t God’s Mummy teach him how to share? And maybe God needed a time out. THAT’s when my parents were called again. Luckily my mother is quite into equality and so she took on the Priest and the Headmistress and said how dare they cast God in such an unfavourable light for her child. Women and men should be held as equals by God blah blah blah, I think I then ruined her tirade by interrupting and saying I didn’t want to be Catholic anymore because their God was naughty and I wanted to find a God that would let me play with his stuff!

Not long after this I had my long hair all cut off because I spent a lot of time at the beach and HATED knots, until it grew out the Principal always made comments about me being a boy – man she hated me!!! My parents never believed me enough to go down to the school about it though.

You have to be careful what you teach children, because you honestly do confuse them. When the parents demanded the inclusion of sexual education (this was spurred by the fact that there had been a sexual predator in our area trying to get kids into his car – they wanted us to learn what no meant) they really shouldn’t have held that after bible study. Many of us kids went home and asked their parents why God didn’t really ask Mary’s permission and if Mary had said no. They changed the sex ed classes after that, they then consisted of the girls and boys being separated… the girls were shown what happens when you put a tampon into a water glass – I have no idea what the guys were shown.

Is there a point to this? Hmmm wait let me make one up… ok here it it…

1/ Don’t teach your kids to question and learn unless you mean it

2/ Don’t teach evolution and creationism in the same school

3/ Try not to confuse God figures (whichever you may embrace) in kids heads

4/ Kids do get bullied by teachers, if your kid says something like they hate their teacher, find out why! I know a lot of kids say it, but sometimes there is a good reason.

5/ Don’t punish children for being smart enough to see that what they are being told does not add up! It makes them want to stop learning because they feel punished for it.

Tree of Knowledge

My pet peeves… there are a lot – consider yourself warned

SO… today is one of those days where things that usually only peeve you a little all happen at once and all of a sudden you can’t stand them and you can literally feel yourself filling with rage – seriously! I could actually feel it creeping up my neck! Panic set in because once it reaches your head you are full up and the excess has to go somewhere and you just know that one of two things are going to happen… you are going to scream bloody murder at someone or you are going to have that crazy ugly angry cry – if someone witnesses you doing the latter you have no respect points left whatsoever, you have been shamed and you need to move immediately. So I took a deep breath, thought about the fact that 2 months from today I will be flying to Vanuatu for a 2 week honeymoon (this is a HUGE deal as I am 28 and have not had a break from work for longer than 1 week since I was 18!!!), got a coffee (NO IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU MORE ON EDGE!!!!!) even hummed a couple of tunes of that hula song, but then realised that’s for Hawaii. Eventually I started to feel normal again and then as I sipped my coffee I started to ponder my pet peeves, do I really have that many? Hmm turns out I do, is it unusual to be annoyed by these things? Here are some of the things that peeve me… feel free to comment on or share yours – mainly because it will make me feel better for my psychotic episode this morning, but also because it will be fun!

Peeve list

• Women that wear tank tops showing off underarm hair you could braid if the need somehow possessed you.
• People who spit on the ground – seriously?! What is the need for that, life is not a game of football – keep it on the field.
• People who scream obscenities at their children – this is just wrong, it makes me both angry and sad. The child of someone I know started talking a couple of months back… mumma, dada, nanna, mopmop (can’t say pop pop) but she can say shit and fuck!!! What the hell! What a fabulous thing to teach your child, very colourful vocabulary there, good job at giving them the best start to life possible.
• People who abuse animals!!!!! There is no excuse! I have had many rescue dogs, cats, birds and guinea pigs in my life and someone treated each one of them badly. These people belong in jail!
• People who park in the middle of two car spots – I don’t get it… are you blind and can’t see the lines? Do you not know how to park? Or do you just perceive that you are so important that you deserve two spots? How does this happen?
• People that queue jump! Everyone else standing in line had to do their time waiting, so should you. You are not better than anyone else in this line!
• Racism! It’s just not cool! I don’t get it and I don’t want to! This seems to be another case of someone thinking they are above someone else. This is amusing to me because in fact if you are racist I perceive you as being below everyone else that isn’t as you obviously have not evolved enough as a human being to see the beauty of a multicultural world.
• People that cut in front of you in their cars so that your only choice is to hit them or slam on your brakes and hope you don’t hit them. It is your fault you are running late to whatever you’re on your way too, please don’t cause a fatality because of your mistake!
• People who take off their shoes in a public place and have foot odour so bad that you gag!
• People who hit parked cars and don’t leave a note!
• Halitosis!
• BO!
• Talking with your mouth full! Oh god please, please don’t!
• People that do not wear underwear, then wear attire that show this fact off – you are not a celebrity, no one is going to take a photo of it, please put it away!!!

Oh my god! I am stopping now, writing this list is just fuelling my rant! Must stop! Quick press publish!!!