Hubris.co.nz

So tomorrow, or sort of todayish, it will have been a year since I cried and I screamed and I hoped and I begged and I cried some more in joy and Obama was voted in as president. There are plenty of people who will write about the political implications of all that, and about the terrible puppy-eating thing that happened a few days later in NZ when my hair looked all amazing and I was pretending to be Joan Holloway, but I will pretend that night never happened. And I suppose that’s where it would be easy to start the fantasies, to pretend that the things never happened, but lately and for very little reason other than maybe getting my period and the associated END OF THE WORLD right before it, I am reminded of all these things and all these touches, and I react funny, and I cry in strange places and contact people that I shoudn’t because I just want some kind of attention and I know that mostly this is me, not you, and yet I have come to the conclusion that it’s not that I am still in love with you, but rather that it has gone out the other side and I hate you for what you have done to me, and for what I let myself become and that maybe it is easier if I loathe every single thing about you. But of course, that’s not actually that much easier. It just took me by surprise a couple of nights ago when I was just totally overcome with thoughts of the things that briefly were things, but not for very long and anyways, let’s end this paragraph. I am not good at dealing with anniversaries of things that are teh sux0r.

Now I have a a toss-up between good or bad. Let’s go with the bad, then the good.

I will try to keep this paragraph relatively spoiler-free, but I have been watching a certain show set in 1963 on torrents, and so yes, you can expect that Mad Men WILL deal with the assassination of JFK (oh, spoiler alert, apparently the president got assasinated in November 1963..) and I was watching that episode last night and because of course, much like you, my moment of “This is history happening right now” was 9/11, and so it was all played out in flashback sequences last night, the starting on Fluox, the Buffy episode at 3am, the flicking to the news channel, the “oh wow, what movie is this?”, the text messages to Kateh and Thomas, the wondering whether or not to wake Clayton, and then the flatmate hunt in the weeks after, but most relevantly, EM’s letters about what he told his son about the bad men when his son’s cartoons were taken off the air. It’s 2009, EM, shouldn’t you be emailing me right now?

But oh, the happy anniversaries! They can wipe out all the badness. And this is where the glee comes in, with going to Christchurch for one night for Harvestbird and Ned’s wedding. I feel very tongue-tied and inadequate and actually quite useless in recording such a lovely mellow event (although I can say that some dumbass Kwikimart clerk gave me terrible directions and it took me 30 minutes to walk to the bar instead of two), but what I can do instead is embed a drunken video for you that I took of the crazy lights in my crazy hotel room:

Apart from that, Christchurch was AWESOME! There was the girl on the plane who recognised me from a rollerderby match (“you’re Jo from Pretty Pretty aren’t you?”) who gave me a tour around the city to my hotel and an adventurous trip back to the airport the next day. There were hungover drinks with Emma Hart who managed to make ME blush which is practically as unheard of as the word “squozen” and the brunch the next day with Kebabette at C1.

I know Kebabette from PPP, so this is a good time to say how awesome the Pretty Pretty Party was. Also awesome? The Pride & Prejudice & Zombies ball. There are great pics on that link, by the way. I do so really love to dance, and the girls and boys at that dance swept me off my feet and all over the floor and I really should have hitched up my skirt better so I wouldn’t have slipped over so much. The fact that I ended up crying behind my (Theresa’s) fan at Motel later that night and sending texts to inappropriate people because I wanted some attention is clearly irrelevant. Honest!

I had a period for like, almost two weeks or something? Which was annoying but at least it kind of made my body make sense. Now I’ve got a three-week contract working from home but all I seem to want to do is take naps, so my hours are a little sporadic and off the standard chart. I have Fridays in the office to ground me however, and I feel really good and confident about the work I am doing. It is very much aligned with my skill set and close to my heart. Someone commented to me on Facebook the other day about how they can’t believe that I still don’t have a job yet and I feel pretty much the same way that they do, only more so.

El moved out but a lovely girl from Twitter who is on Brutal Pagaent (boo!) at Roller Derby (yay!) will be moving in. Brent’s going to move in with his girlfriend so I still need another flatmate. My social calendar is insanely busy. Hubris wasn’t updated for a while, but now it is. Good. Gossip Girl time now, right?

Except Lisa has me watching a Pearl Jam clip where they’re singing ‘Black’ and I expect him to start singing “We…belong…together” like he does in the Unplugged video, not altogether too different from Campbell Scott (that’s right, isn’t it Jessie? I get the two confused) in Singles but then he sings lines from ‘Good Woman’ instead about how he’s lying when he says he doesn’t love me no more, and oh, they’re too much like a text message when someone said that they were going to say that they were over me because they were weak, and oh, fuck you Obama, I am holding you entirely responsible for this, apart from the parts that are Guy Fawke’s fucking doings..

Because I have been severely premenstrual and hating everything and feeling like I am a worthless piece of shit, I have spent a bit of time contemplating telling everyone everything about everything, burning every single bridge I have and being herded out of town by an angry group of people with pitchforks and torches. But then the lovely Tash sent me a twitter making me promise never to leave Wellington and also wrote me a 140 character poem about how awesome I am, and then there was a vague bit of blood in my gusset and then I felt better.

Today Anji came over because she had the day off, and it was sunny, and she weeded my garden, and I did two loads of washing, and cleaned out the tiki shack, and the mouldy towels and mats and cardboard boxes and other sundry rubbish from the garden, and hiffed loads and loads of weeds over the fence into the nothingness. It was hard work, I tell you. So I am very tired. It was great hanging out with Anji though because I could talk about the things that I can’t talk to anyone else in Wellington about, and this makes me feel all Barbara Kruger like, and all altruistic and stuff, because my silence is other people’s comfort and all that, but also, again, pitchforks and torches. But we had a lengthy discussion about my tendency to sleep with people that I have no risk of falling for after I’ve had my heart broken (see this and this and this (although that one backfired) etc) in an attempt to safeguard myself again. Etc.

And then to continue on that note, I went for a drink with the girl from Saturday night tonight,  and we were having a grand old time, and then boy #2 from that night also showed up and I found that hilarious because they were all not talking much and I was talking lots, and I adore Johnnie at Hooch so much. But I was very sober, so I took off to bus home and be talked to by strange women on the street surprising me out of my loud Interpol head noise. Tonight I’ll rest my chemistry instead.

The good:

• I had to go to the doctor yesterday morning to get a new prescription, as, like I think I have mentioned before, my shrink has gone AWOL. The new GP I’d seen once or twice before wasn’t available, so I had to see another female doctor at the practice, because there’s no way I’m going to see the male doctor there again, after his “Oh, do you think you’re depressed because you have low self esteem because you’re fat?” performance. Anyways, the fear of having to go through my entire history of depression again kept me up most of the night, but as it turns out, she just wanted some clarifications, and to give me a smear, which I pointed out I’d actually had done in May. She gave me a three month script for the lexapro! And ticked the “okay to represcribe without an appointment” box for the next time! I don’t have to schlep around begging for drugs for at least six months! Do you have any fricking idea what a relief that is? Hurrah!
• In other brief moments of awesome, a job that I really want was advertised on one of the twitterstreams that I follow, so I promptly applied for it. Hurrah for social media!

The bad:

• I was at my parents’ house yesterday hanging out with Pixie and doing my laundry. When I left, carrying two baskets of laundry stacked on top of each other, my satchel and a bag of shopping, she came around to the front door and was darting around, so I was wondering if she wanted to get back in. My parents have recently extended the front of their house, and changed the levels of steps, and put new ones in. Their outside light didn’t go on automatically. You can see where this is going, right? A misstep, my ankle twists, my baskets of laundry go flying, groceries roll down their hill, I have time to think “I’m falling” before my hands hit the speckled pebbled ground, my right thigh and right side of my body make contact with the concrete too, my shoulders jar, my wrists scream in protest and I want to stay on the ground and bawl, but I don’t want to freak the neighbours out, so I have to gingerly pick myself up and then pick up all my crap that has gone everywhere. I am covered in invisible boo-boos now and want kisses to make them better.

The scary:

• I was lying in bed at around 1.40am when I heard someone coming up the path. At first I thought it was our steps, but then I realised it was the path of the house next door, which I thought was a little odd, because they’re not normally late night people. But Smoo was home anyway, so it wouldn’t have been our path anyway. I didn’t hear next door’s front door, but I thought maybe they were just super quiet. Then I heard some thrashing around in the bushes by my window that I’d left open for Sebastian and I was like “oh crap, he’s chasing a rat, he’s not normally that loud”. And then I thought I heard someone whispering my name, so I sat up and saw a figure silhouetted against my blinds, with an arm reaching in, and I was very confused. I said “What the hell are you doing?” and the figure seemed to disappear. I reached for my light, not entirely sure if I’d just seen what I’d seen, and then reached for my phone and tweeted about it (yes, lame, I know) before wrapping my duvet around myself, getting out of bed and going for the main light in my room. I pulled up my blinds, and saw that the window that was open but latched was now unlatched. I shut it, dropped the blinds and went and got Smoo, who was luckily awake. We had a prowl around the house, and he looked out the front door, but we couldn’t see anything, so I called Sebastian in, and he snuggled me to keep me safe. Took me another hour to get to sleep though, and yes, I spent some of that time debating who out of the four or so people that I’ve shared a bed with this year would have been the best to respond if someone had actually climbed in. I think it would have been the girl first, because she can be scary and intense, and then the married man, because maybe he could have been manly but would be afraid of  being identified. Then the duck, because he  might have slept through it, then Tingle, who probably would have just been too drunk . I suppose I should call the community constable now or something and report it, in case there’s a pattern happening around town. Weeiiiiiiiiird.

Here’s a story I didn’t tell you about Saturday night. Except that in order to tell it, I have to go back a couple of months. So, we’re in the time machine, right? Cool. And so now I’m lying in bed, and it’s like 3am or something, and I get a text message going “Hey Jo, if you hear a loud banging noise, it’s because I’m locked in the toilet and am trying to find a solution” from Smoo. So I got up to see if I could help him, and let him in the back door (if you know what I mean) and then we took off the lock with a screwdriver, and he kicked it open, yelling “L.A.P.D!” as he did it. Awesome. We still had the locking latch, so we were perfectly fine without the doorknob.

However, when we had a flat inspection, I thought I would mention the story of the doorknob and so I got an email or some kind of message from the landlady saying she’d talk to the owners about it. Then nothing happened, and we were like, oh well no biggie. Then, about a week or so ago – maybe two – I got a call from some repairmanguy who said that he was going to come over and fix the doorknob. He showed up late, and had a friend, and they hummed and harred for a long time, then went away. When they came back, it took the two of them like an hour or maybe more – I don’t know, my bladder was hurting – to put the knob on, and then they went away. The new knob had a twisty lock on it as well, but it did seem to be a little bit loose, Oh well, a knob’s a knob, right?

Then on Saturday, after I was exhausted from Strip Club antics the night before, and much much waiting around for the Cuba Street Carnival, I came home totally exhausted with Lisa. I took my sleeping pills and after we watched Skins, she left. I mention this because I was going to pee while she waited for her taxi, but decided to just chat to her instead. Anyways, so she left, and I went to the toilet, read some of the new Idealog and did my business. Then I went to open the toilet door. It was locked. Hmm, odd, I locked the latch but not the twirly bit, right? So I twirled it, and it still didn’t open. I wriggled it, and jiggled it, and it still didn’t open. WHAT THE FUCK?

Oh, did I mention the part where noone was home? Where El and Smoo were both in Australia (apparently not together, but where’s the rumour-starting fun in that?) and that George was out, and frequently is out until like 4am and this was only about midnight? So strangely enough, banging on the door with my fists didn’t help much. I thought about climbing out the window, but peering out into the spiderwebs and the drop and the long bushes and stuff, I luckily remembered that there were no windows open in the house, or any chance of getting them open. I contemplated jumping out anyway and breaking into the Tiki Shack to sleep there, but really, that mattress is for getting lei’d on, not for sleeping on, and plus, I was so tired, I just wanted my own bed so much. So, what to do?

With a lot of wriggling, I managed to get the screws on the knob a little bit loose, and then using the zipper on my hoodie as a screwdriver, I managed to pull them out, but of course the knob on the other side of the door fell off before I could grab its axle. Fucking buggity bugger. I banged on the door some more, and thought about crying, but instead I fastened Ze Frank’s song to combat anxiety in my head, and tried to think logically. I pulled the toilet roll holder apart, and tried to jam its point in the axle-hole and to make it click around, but it wouldn’t fit properly, partly because of the other end, which scratched a circle around it like a compass. I’m very good with these intense mechanical descriptions, right?

Because the guys who’d installed the doorknob had done such a bad job, and because the door is thin-ish plywoodish stuff, I realised that there were broken bits around the hole in which the knob should be, and through those broken bits, I could see the latchy mechanism. I decided that I needed to get in at that mechanism, even if it meant tearing the door apart, so I started hammering away at the hole with the side of the knob that I had left. I kept doing that for a while before I started alternating it with levering the toilet roll spoke into the hole, and breaking bits off. It was a long, long long slow process, and I was cold and tired and about to fall asleep from the zopiclone. Eventually though, my combined hammering and levering had broken off enough plywood to expose the latching system, and I tried fiddling with that for a bit before I realised that it was totally fucked, I had to lever bits of that off as well, metal bending before my awesome might. Fuck I am glad that our toilet roll holder wasn’t made of plastic! Shoving my fingers into the hole, I managed to find a tiny littlle trigger, and with an amazing CLICK, I was free. OMG OMG OMG! Checking Twitter, I saw that I’d been in there for a whole hour. Not how I wanted to end my night at all!

Turns out that George didn’t get home until 5am, so I’m very glad that I got all Mcguyver all up in it, and released myself. It makes me kinda proud at my resourcefulness, even. When George came home, he saw something was up with the lock, and so he tried shutting it – and locked himself out. He raced to get up in the morning to open the door when I got up to pee, and climbed in the window for me, and I pointed out where the trigger was. The latch is now duct-taped open (or shut) so that these incidences can’t happen again, although I have yet to email the landlady and tell her what muppets the “handy”men were. I really should do that now, eh?

Also on a mac note: I made lots of mac’n cheese yesterday, and then beat Good Tom at Trivial Pursuit. That part’s not so related, but I like to boast. In other success stories, I found a new flatmate as well, and also rang up Philips to ask them where I could buy a new remote contrl for my stupid DVR, and they’re apparently sending me a new one, and aren’t charging me for it. HURRAH! If only I’d asked for one a year ago, how many broken nails would I have avoided? And also, I made cupcakes for all the lovely people who organised Webstock and they liked them and that makes me happy. And I think that’s about it, for now,

xojo

PS: the title of this post would be much more awesomer if my last name was ‘Macleod’. But that’s okay.