Hubris.co.nz

The Yaz is gone, and I am me again. It is a glorious feeling. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t spend a large part of last night bawling my eyes out, but let’s get to that bit when we get to it.

I had a quiet week at work, which was well-needed because I’ve been working very hard and doing lots of things and stuff. Friday wasn’t so quiet, because we had All Rap All The Time Afternoon, and then we had a work cocktail challenge. I led the S&M team, although we were calling ourselves the Bucaneers (we’d had a pirate-themed week, because that’s what you do when you get sent funny pictures of your cow-orks dressed up at conferences), and we made a chargrilled pineapple margarita served in a pineapple, and then a Yo Ho Ho & a Damson Plum, which I based on my McKenzie training at Cupcakes & Cocktails. Turns out that was a mistake, and our drinks didn’t win because they were “too perfect” and “well-balanced”. What a travesty! An outrage! We also got called “middle of the road” which is probably the first and only time I’ll ever be called that. Luckily, we had to finish off all the rest of the ingredients, and so a very enjoyable night was spent playing Foozeball (We’ve started a Women’s Foozeball League, because we play slower, and squeal more), and sitting on bean bags on a balcony high above Courtenay Place. I ended up smoking cigarettes because people kept giving me theirs to hold while they went in for more beer, ugh. And my phone fell out of my bra and into the toilet. Whoops! Luckily Kim has given me her old one. I ended up going home via the Hawthorn Lounge to drop off their nomination in the TAWAs, and they knew who I was and gave us a discount. I am totally the Empress of the Internet.

The next afternoon I somehow managed to drag my rather under-the-weather ass into Monterey to eat their delicious brunch and gossip with Kelly. Once again, I had TAWA-business to take care of, and once again, knowing people paid off. We sat there for a couple of hours because we weren’t allowed to get pie until I had finished the sudoku, and I was seriously impaired. It took me approximately ten minutes to check in on Foursquare using Kelly’s phone because I was such a mess. The table squeaked like a kitten under my elbow and we giggled our heads off at that, and also at my ridiculous story of hilariousness, and also many other things.

I rediscovered this week how nice it is to kiss a boy, instead of the usual girls, and now I’m hoping for a groping. Someone feel me up, please?

Saturday night I spent at Lisa’s, making cheeseburgers in my slip because it was so very hot, and watching Community. She said I overhyped ‘Modern Warfare’. I don’t know how that’s even possible. Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant way to spend the evening. And then I came home to this:

Not the best picture, but suffice to say that the table on my porch had been knocked over, and there was blood ALL OVER the steps and dripping off the wall. My first thought was that it wasn’t blood, it was plum syrup, but the smell, it was intense and disgusting and terrifying. I actually was afraid to walk into the house, wondering if someone had decided to put a hit on me or something, and then I saw the cat fur all over the the place and started to panic. Sebastian usually comes running to meet me when I’ve been out for a while, but he wasn’t there. He was nowhere in the house, and didn’t come when I called and called. I totally freaked out and started bawling. I tried to call Karen since she was the nearest, but my phone wouldn’t connect the call. I started freaking out all over Twitter instead, until I heard a mewling, and Seb was at the front door. He was covered in blood and was acting really funny, so I tried to clean up his wounds as best as possible, and tried to calm down, after crying some more in relief that he appeared to be okay. But he was way lethargic, and was hyperventilating, and there was so much blood all over the porch. Some internet checking made me terrified he was going into shock, so I decided to take him to the after-hours vet – except of course I couldn’t call them. Luckily, Daniil was online and he rang them for me, so at 2am I loaded Seb into his cat cage and drove him out to Ngauranga. Seb didn’t meow once in the car, but I was crying enough for both of us.

The vet was grumpy with me, which seems a bit ridiculous, given that’s his actual job and heaven knows I paid enough. His computer wouldn’t start properly, and he wouldn’t even look at Seb until he’d filled in the form, so I stood in reception crying, Seb breathing way too fast under my hands, hoping he wasn’t going to die while the horrible man took his time with formalities. Finally we got into the examination room, where the vet put clothes pegs on Seb’s scruff to keep him calm, and we shaved off a bit of his fur so the vet could look at his chest wound. “He brought this on himself,” said the vet, “he clearly started this fight”. His bedside manner was somewhat lacking. It was 2.30am in the morning, I was clearly extremely upset and panicked, and I did NOT need to have my cat blamed for the fight. I tried to explain how much blood there was, but the vet was all “oh, it probably looked like a lot because it might have sprayed everywhere – an artery has been nicked, but it’s probably not very much at all”. Um, I cleaned up the clots of it, buddy, yeah, there was a lot of blood. Anyway, he gave Seb a shot of painkiller, and some antibiotics, and some pills for me to give to him for a week, and I paid $249. I was supposed to keep Seb inside for 24 hours but he slipped out while I was in the bathroom. I was awake til 6am worrying. Of course he’s fine today. I am never having kids.

Today I cleaned up the spare room cos Heather’s coming to stay, yay, and made righteous mac’n cheese and fuck yeah slaw and rhubarb pie for the LoveHawks. Kim gave me a recut of my Hubris necklace and wouldn’t let me pay her for it, proving once again that I win at life sometimes with the wonderful people I have met on the internet. We watched FoxFire which was DREADFUL, and kind of awesome at the same time. Jason claims he wrote it when he was 16. I’m so glad those crazy kids have moved to my neighbourhood. I love my weekend rituals.

This week is going to be crazy. Last week I saw a huge part of my recent everything played out in a slideshow, and now on Friday is the Fifth The Annual Wellingtonista Awards. Woah! You’re coming along, right?

What is grape face, you ask? This is grape face:

Sir Ed gets his grape on

Oh fuck yes! For Lisa‘s 30th birthday, I got her the Red Panda experience at Wellington Zoo. This means you get to go into their enclosures, and feed the grapes and pears, stroke them and watch them tip their heads back to make sure they don’t spill any of the juice from the grapes on themselves. SO ADORABLE! I could flood this journal with pics, but perhaps you might just want to look at them in this set right here instead.

As for me, I’m doing okay. After 25 days I have finally stopped bleeding. I had a “the floor is lava” day yesterday, which really sucked, but I managed to jump from island to island long enough to repair my first fuse without having a breakdown about it, so I’m impressed with myself for that.

In 2004, I got an email from the girl who made my life a living hell at ASIJ saying sorry, she hadn’t realised how cruel she was being. I’d tried so hard to bury all those memories that hearing from her made me cry for hours, tucked away in my tiny little office up at Salient. I had a similar experience on Friday night, when someone who’d always said that there was no point in saying sorry now actually said sorry for things done many many years ago. I was completely thrown, and sort of drunk, and lonely, so naturally, I responded with smut. It’s just how I operate. But it did kind of shake me up a lot, and made me worry that they were dying or something. It still freaks me out when people demonstrate that they clearly care about me.

So yeah, clearly the Yaz is still coursing through my bloodstream and my brain, but I’m going to fight this thing, dammit! When I find the time. Oh my stars is my schedule ever busy for the next couple of months.

I can’t think of a proper way to finish this post, so here’s another picture instead!

Red Panda family chow time

Let’s go with some bullet-points really quickly.

• For the past couple of months, I have been working at my new permanent job. It’s in the private sector, at a web company, and I’m their writer. There is cereal in the cupboard, and chocolate biscuits and many kinds of beer on Fridays. I am supposed to use Oxford commas in the work that I do for them, but they’re not the boss of my journal, so I can write whatever the hell kinds of lists that I like. Such as: the things I like about my job include my lovely manager, the jovial atmosphere in my team, the way the marketing girl and I have declared Friday afternoons to be Cheesy Music Time, I have a laptop and another screen, almost all my work can be done remotely if I needed, it’s in a good part of town and I love what I do. Oh yes, I am listing the superficial things, but oh my god, I get so much done! It is immensely satisfying to be able to write things and have them take effect that week – or sometimes that day. Fuck the public service, man. I’m still serving the public, but this way I’m actually effective.
• Having such a great job has been very beneficial to me because the last month has been absolute shitballfuckinghell. You know how the week before my period it always seems a little bit like the world is ending, even if I’m taking my lexapro and being good and all? Well my counsellor suggested last year that I should talk to my GP about talking to a gyno about going on The Pill to stop that, so in May, when I had to go in to see my GP for a Lexapro extension, I asked her to refer me to the public health system, which gave me an appointment with a gyno in OCTOBER. You’ll remember (or not) that my whole depression thing actually was kickstarted when I was 19 and went on Femulen for birth control, but of course, that’s a bit chicken-egg, because was it the drug or was it the circumstances around my relationship with Thomas that made me depressed? Etc. And then there were the MIGRAINES OF HEAD EXPLOSION DEATH when I was 22 and on Estelle35 to sort out my PCOS. So naturally I was hesitant. But after the very nice lady doctor had gone elbow deep in me (my cunt was all “what’s this? Who’s touching me? Am I supposed to enjoy this?” while her pushing on my stomach made it ache like I’d swallowed a gallon of semen or something), we thought that maybe Yaz could help me get the PMS under control. Turns out, not so much. I was on it for a month, and the entire time I wanted to cry every day and kill the world Oh, and I’ve had my period for 21 days now. Luckily now I am in the gyno system, I  could call up and talk to a nurse who had all my notes, and stop taking the pill on her advice, but I’m just so angry that I made myself feel so terrible for a whole month. Like seriously, if I didn’t have such a great manager and the ability to work from home, I don’t know how I could have dealt with it all. It was like a big reoccurance of depression again, except I could see how clearly it wasn’t actually based on anything in my life at all except for that fucking pill. Now I’m hoping it will get flushed out of my body ASAP. I have to go in again in January for another internal ultrasound, but I don’t know if I’m going to risk any pills again. The nurse rang me today to see if I needed another form of birth control, and I was all “no no, I’m a condom girl anyway”. How sweet of her to actually think I had an actual sex life. For the record, even though I have a super comfy brand new bed, I don’t. Actually,  my bed is so damn comfy I am never sharing it again.
• As well as a new bed, I have a new house ALL TO MYSELF in Mt Vic. It is glorious. I call it Casa Sans Hosen. I can’t spell. I have a spare room so you should come and stay, like Heather and like Kat & Kane. I’ll wear pants for you if you’d like, providing you give me enough notice.
• Clearly I have sucked at keeping this journal updated, but we don’t need to go over each and every thought I’ve had. But to sum things up, the Yaz has made me angry all over again about that married man, even though that’s coming up on two years. And I’ve been hanging out to Thomas again lately which is really nice because it is reassuring to know that there are people who will always know you and it’s nice to see the ways you’ve grown. And I saw Good Tom the other day which was lovely although the circumstances were horrible, and holy crap I miss the fuck out of that boy.
• I will update more often with more pithy updates, okay? Yes.