Hubris.co.nz

The awesome side of having depression is that when you start to get better, it’s like, so fucking awesome. Yes, this is pretty obvious, but when things have been bad, and you take steps to make them better, and all of a sudden you feel good, you can feel this amazing sense of inner peace and feel like you’re glowing, and everything, just everything is fine, and it’s so fucking good. I’ve had this recently while watching the sun set at Lyall Bay, and when I had Lisa and Brad and Bart around the table for the flat dinenr roast on Tuesday night and my face was starting to ache from smiling, and today while floating in the ocean tryng to pretend that my toes weren’t going numb from the cold. And I know it won’t always be like this, that there are going to be more ups and downs all the time, but you know, let me have my moment in the sun. I deserve it.

And yes, there have of course been ups and downs. I had two days off work last week because I was dizzy and nauseous or just wanted to hide under the covers all day, but the good news is that my blood tests came back clean and when I went to the doctor’s to get a half-hour long blood pressure test, it turned out that I’m down to 118/74, so they didn’t even bother doing the whole half hour thing. Wahoo! I saw my counsellor for the first time on Thursday, and she’s going to make me an appointment with their career counsellor as well as she was quick to discover that I get depressed when I’m bored. She ventured a theory that I rely too much on other people to validate me, and I was like “well, since you said it, it must be true”. Heh. And then I cried when she asked me what I was good at, and what the ideal me would be like. One thing that I’m not good at is talking about what I’m good at without tagging on caveats to everything I say, like “I’m good at writing – but I don’t do it often enough”, “I have a tremendous capacity to love and be compassionate but there are many people that I think I have let down”. I like big buts and I cannot lie. And I talked a lot about feeling like I was 12 years old again and she implied that I was hanging out with a bad crowd and I laughed. The one way that I thought she wasn’t as good as Kalpana who I used to see in 2002/03 was that it was obvious she was looking at her watch all the time, wheras Kalpana had this tremendous ability to guide conversations perfectly in the available time without feeling like anything was rushed, and finding perfect ending places. But that’s okay, I’m sure it’s something I’ll get used to.

Just like I’ve got used to not drinking. Two weeks sober now! Who knew that was possible? Sure, dinner with my family on Friday night was a bit weird, but I’m going to blame that on the disappointly tiny portion of food that the vegetarian dish at the Manhattan Lounge was, and the fact that Horrible Gay Jonny was working behind the bar there, and that made my skin crawl so much that I got my parents to pay for my meal so that I wouldn’t have to talk to him. Brad brought over bubbly on Tuesday to celebrate him landing his first commercial, so I thought I’d have a half a glass to celebrate with him, but after a couple of sips Sebastian knocked my glass over, and so I figured that was a sign. And I tried to have a half glass of red wine tonight with my cumin gouda, but it just didn’t feel right. Of course, it might be that the wine’s oxidised or whatever it is that happens to wine that’s bad since I opened the bottle two weeks ago. I’m planning on drinking again when I get to Auckland, but until then, it’s a no. Did I mention that my doctor warned me to be careful if I do drink on the citalapram “because it lowers your inhibitions quicker, and then come the calls to your ex boyfriends” and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I’m now up to 3/4 pill a day, or I suppose 15mg. I was expecting to go from a half to a whole after a week but I think because I’ve been so nauseous she thought it would be better to take it slower with easing me on it.

I’ve been scatty and spaced out at work, but tonight I finished a thingie that I’ve been trying to work on, so I feel good about that. I also sanded down the other little bookshelf and spraypainted it gold. I bought magazine holders the other day, and sorted out my magazines today. My car is working again although I suspect a new alternator will be on the cards when I get my warrant in February. I found a new flatmate yesterday who I have a really really good vibe about – she works for the same ministry as me, loves Sebastian, wants a home not a house, said she was addicted to Buffy and smiled at my STD paintings. Now I’ve hung them, although they’re not straight. I feel like I’ve been achieving things, and that is good, even if it’s just doing the dishes, doing laundry, going swimming in the ocean. I found a headscarf to wear to the Big Day Out and I’m looking forward to coming in my pants at Dimmer the night before, and then again when Muse play, as long as they play ‘Hysteria’ which once featured in a dream of mine where I was making a porn movie with a guy who looked like Jesus, and we were timing our anal sex so that we’d both come right when this particularly impressive bit of guitar comes in in the song. And also I’m annoyed that I wrote two ‘in in’ together like that, because that’s so Danielle Steele with her bad writing skills being all about the “had had” and I fucking hate that. I also hate that I read two Danielle Steele books in a row, but I’m blaming that on the scattiness and blaaaaaaah of adjusting to my pills, like the proliferation of teen movies I’ve been watching. Much better are Jasper Fforde’s books about the Nursery Crime Division – The Big Over-Easy has Jack Spratt solving the case of who murdered Humpty Dumpty and the sequel The Fourth Bear speaks for itself. Sooo good. And full of word jokes which make me hot.

And that was far too long a paragraph, wasn’t it? Now all I have to do is tax returns for 2005 and 2006 because apparently they owe me money from 2001 (which is odd since Nicky did my tax returns for 2002 and 2003 and they said nothing then), set up a term deposit account and get my stuff back from everyone who has it (my camera is at the Aro house – I’m hoping I can sweet-talk Lisa into retrieving it for me) and reply to people’s emails and I’ll be like, totally on top of my life. For now. And that’s nice.

Yesterday was pretty much the first summer day that I’ve had all summer holidays, and so of course it was also the day that felt like I didn’t need to go back on pills. Nevertheless I took my half, as I’m easing onto them for the first week and headed off to Newtown for blood tests, and was somewhat surprised that the woman in the clinic didn’t wear gloves while she was doing it. Granted, it does seem all very clean and stuff, and maybe she didn’t want to disturb her manicure, and she’d obviously done it before because I hardly felt the needle go in at all, but still, shouldn’t she have worn gloves? Anyone?

Afterwards I came back home and sanded down one of my small bookshelves and spray painted it golden. Then I went to the beach! Yes, that’s how hot it was. I had my first swim of the summer – if you don’t count the night that I finished up at CWA – and I realised as I was in the cold water at my special secret cove (okay, so there is a concreted path and a handrail down to it, so it’s not actually that secret, but it is the perfect place to swim and yet is often populated only by two other people) that it was a really good way to describe the physical manifestation of the anxiety I’ve been feeling – like you know how when you get in really really cold water your breathing becomes really shallow and your heart rate speeds up? It’s like being like that all the time.Other things going through my head nonstop is the line from The Killers’ newish album which I have been listening to despite my total hatred of Brandon Flowers, and I am much enamoured of ‘When you were young’, so I’m all about the “you sit alone in your heartache / waiting for some beautiful boy to save you”, because I am still 14 and still thinking that Nuno should have been there and busted in and saved me and consequently I will always be expecting someone to save me from myself. And I’ve been so with the trying to figure out exactly where everything went wrong with my life that on New Year’s Eve if I’d had her number I probably would have called up my form one teacher, Ms. Petz, and asked her why she didn’t like me. Because I am teh crazy after all, and all of this stuff keeps me up at night and can’t turn off in my head. Except not so much yesterday, because as I said the sun was shining and that meant that I actually got things done. I did two loads of washing, hung them on the line to dry and actually folded them and put them away afterwards. I changed my sheets. I sanded down a bookshelf and spraypainted it gold, and then put coats of spray-on varnish on it. I installed new shelves in the kitchen. It was fucking amazing how much of a positive effect the sun had.

Today of course, the sun wasn’t out and so I stayed in bed for a couple of hours reading Danielle Steele before I managed to get my shit together to go to the warehouse to buy frames for my art – via the Maranui Surf Cafe, of course. And then I realised that I shouldn’t have taken my half pill on an empty stomach because I got spacey and nauseous, and I spent what felt like hours in the Warehouse, eyes glazed over in the DVD section, fighting impulse buy urges – I want to watch Deadwood but they only had the second series, I probably wouldn’t be that in to 21 Jump Street now that I’m actually old enough to stay up past 8pm and would therefore be able to watch it if it was on TV now, and then I decided that I didn’t need to spend $85 on Beverly Hills 90210 (and got it for $25 US from Amazon instead, natch). I did, however, come across The Breakfast Club by itself for $14, but decided to get the triptich with Weird Science and Sixteen Candles instead. The eighties’ movie fest continues. I felt sick for a couple of hours and weak and kitten-like, so I’ve been hiding under my duvet on the couch since I got home, you know, just for a change. Lisa came over and we watched The Breakfast Club together and made really smutty dirty jokes about the movie and also about a choice selection of NZ musicians. You know, just for a change as well.

I’m starting to feel a bit like Osama Bin Laden here. I mean, apart from the bit where he fancies Whitney Houston and plots to kill people, of course. Just that me sitting here, sending journal entries out into the ether as proof of my continued existence instead of actually talking to people. I am still ducking the phone, and I have emails from some nice people I should reply to, but oh man, that just seems like so much effort. I should talk to people and find out about what’s going on in their lives instead of just thinking about mine. And I will. Soon. It’s going to be sunny tomorrow, right?

So today I had my doctor’s appointment and I thought it might be weird to have to tell someone new about my mental history, but as it turns out she’d googled me and had the citalapram waiting on her desk when I walked in.

Okay, so that’s not strictly true (or even vaguely true at all), but she did give me a prescription without me having to cry (much), and I get a subsidised script for citalapram because I told her I can’t take fluoxetine. Well, technically I could but the bourbon necessary to deal with that would probably not fit in too well with my plan to not drink for a while. She took my blood pressure and it turns out that it’s now 140/100 – remember how it was 131/99 last time and THAT was high? Yeah. So tomorrow I’m going for fasting blood tests and pee tests and all sorts of fun things like that in case my kidneys are packing up instead of it just being stressed. Apparently there’s also something that can send stress into your body if it’s fucked up, so that could be interesting to find out if maybe it’s my physical health that’s fucked instead of my mental health. While going over my depression history before I filled in the depression survey and discovered I was circling the 3s on almost every list, I told her that I wasn’t in as bad a condition as I have been the past when I’ve signed up for the crazy pills, and she was like “you don’t have to justify yourself to me”. Well, she didn’t say that, but then we talked about early intervention and blah blah, and she also warned me of the likelihood of increased anxiety in the early stages (wahoo!) and said that I needed to be on the lookout for suicidal feelings. This is why the modern world is so fucked – in order to avoid getting to the stage where I feel like I might want to harm myself I need to take a drug that comes with the risk of increasing the wanting-to-harm-myself impulses. But hey, I dealt with that okay when it happened in March 2003, and I’m sure I can do it again with Tom on speed dial and KateH just five minutes drive away. Oh no wait…

Ha, sorry, I suppose this sort of thing is inappropriate for me to be making jokes about, but come on, it’s me – when have I ever been appropriate? I have all the shiny knowledge, pamphlets, plans to call the work-provided counsellor on Monday and most importantly the motivation to not be like this anymore that I need to defend myself, which makes me practically Harry Potter. And also some Danielle Steele books and movies of the ’80s teen genre to fill in the time until I feel okay again. Plus, thanks to Lisa, I have new craft projects to fill my time. I’m not huge with the wanting to talk to people right now, because it makes my chest hurt thinking about it, so I’ve decided she doesn’t qualify as a person. Instead, she’s an Awesomeness. Last night she brought over milk and cookies and paint, and we made art inspired by magazines. Her piece, which has been called Oh Penelope is fucking awesome. My art talent? Not so much so hot. So instead I created a quadtich which is a celebration of celibacy.

HPV

Chlamydia

Gonorrhea

Genital Herpes

That’s so Jane. Heh. And if I hadn’t used up all our gig of bandwidth this month watching Dick in a box over and over again, I could download the photos that Lisa kindly took for me of my art, since of course I’m still cameraless and have yet to suggest to Brad that he hire a panda costume to go over to Aro and get it for me. If it’s even there and not in the taxi. If I did leave it in the taxi, it’s probably fair payment for me yelling at the driver after Chrisana got out about how the taxi driver two nights before had fucking groped me. And about how fucking angry that made me. New year’s resolution: only take blue taxis from now on.

Today Lisa and I went to op shops in Newtown to find frames and then tried to eat at the Medditereaneaneanean Warehouse, but the bastard was still shut, so we settled for Hell at her house, and I made myself feel better about my own life by watching House of Carters in absolute shock and disgust and confusion about why the fuck they could possibly ever want to put their lives on TV. Their father is so clearly a child molestererer. And yes, I laughed my ass off at one of the daughter’s stories about how her mother told her she was goign to horse-riding camp but then had her kidnapped and sent to Fat Camp because she couldn’t make any money for the family as a fat kid. Oh yes, Karma and I still need to have a cuddle and make up at some stage. Then we watched more bad TV, and came here to watch Say Anything, because really, who doesn’t want John Cusack standing under their window with a ghetto blaster? Exactly!

Now at some stage I might try to go to sleep, but to be honest, I’m waiting for City Life, because haha! And besides, everyone needs a late night TV addiction while they’re waiting for the drugs to start working. I had 90210 in 2001 (not to mention September 11 coverage), and then Buffy in 2002. At least I’m keeping it home-styles now. But tomorrow I will endevour to get up before noon, so I can get these blood tests out of the way. Wahoo, needles!

Jimmy Supergood asked me the other day why I wasn’t updating Hubris anymore, and I had to tell him that it wasn’t really intentional, but I’ve been waiting to finish writing about my American exploits, and those are such long stories that I haven’t felt up to writing them, and I haven’t wanted to update until I got myself up to date, and oh the vicious circleness of it. So here I am, updating. And I will tell American stories later.

Firstly, sorry to Shayne Carter for making him feel violated (or, apparently torn between violated and flattered). Secondly, The Wellingtonista of which I am of course part, have launched their First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence so it would be awesome if you would go and vote for them, and also if you should feel like it, join us for our awards ceremony on December 1, in a secret venue which we will inform you of when you vote. And it’s totally not secret just because we haven’t picked a place, oh no. That would suggest a level of casualness and uninformity of which we are not at.

Sentence construction is a little hard for me now as I have been sitting on the front steps all afternoon basking in the gorgeous sunshine, aided by one admittedly large vodka lime and soda and so I am more than a little dizzy – and also in need of a good neck massage but I suspect that’s on a different note. This weekend has been fairly low-key. On Friday, all our managers were away on a retreat, so we got an email about “when the cats are away…” which meant BYO food and drinks to our communal eating area. It was bucketing down with rain which meant I walked through Kirks on my way to Rumbles to buy booze, and was drawn into the chocolate and wine shop hoping for free samples of chocolate. Instead I was waylaid into doing a tasting, and when the man said “I make the wine..” I was like, oh, it’s the actual winemaker, I suppose I should buy a bottle then. And of course Kirks are too wanky to put visible prices on things (as I told someone later that night, the last time I actually went into Kirks proper instead of their related food shops was in sixth form to buy stay-up tights for the ball, and they looked down their noses at me so much that I resolved not to go back ever) so I ended up buying a $29 bottle of Tohu Pinot Noir when really I was after something for around $12 that I could leave behind. Stink. Of course, that meant I had to stay and drink it all, which was good in a way because it meant I talked to many people I’d never talked to before, and apart from people talkijng about my father (because where I work is a place that people work for for life, and so therefore even though Daddy hasn’t been there for ten years or something (someone asked me why he left and I know the answer is for Mum)) I learnt lots about other people. Still no rich husband prospects though. I guess I should expect that, working for the government and all.

Consequently, having drunk all but a glass of that tasty tasty pinot noir within an hour and a half (I shared the love), I was a trifle tipsy by the time I arrived at Tupelo to meet Karen and Dylan, but I think I managed not to come across as such too much. Karl and Amber joined us later and had the brilliant suggestion of going to umm Siam Reap (?) for dinner. They were full at the time, but took my number and said they’d call in a half hour or so, so I suggested we go grab a drink at Mighty Mighty, which I’d (of course) just found out about on Wellurban. Guess who I’m voting for as best Welly Web Writer? Mighty Mighty was very cool, and I got to wave to my old flatmate Justine from Newtown there. I like that they offer about four kinds of house wine named only by kind, and that you can also get cask wine for $5. And it’s so green and pretty! And the bathroom is painted the same cotton candy pink that the bathrooms at Occam are. Yes. And then we got the call from Siam Reap so Karen and I went to buy wine while the others finished their drinks, but motherfucking Starmart in Manners Mall had its locked-up screens down becasue the guy behind the counter looked younger than 18. That’s so fucking lame, and made me rully rully angry. Luckily the restaurant was licensed, and with an $8 per bottle corkage, it probably wasn’t much more expensive anyway. I’d never been before, but holy fuck it was tasty. My medium beef salad seemed much hotter, but my curry main was much easier eating. And so damn tasty, oh yes.

Afterwards Karl and Amber went home and Karen, Dylan and I went back to Mighty Mighty where we found a wide windowsill to sit on and proceeded to make fun of people for what felt like a couple of hours. He was all “it’s so funny how nasty girls get as soon as they see another girl in a miniskirt” so we took the time to explain to him that it wasn’t just that this girl’s skirt was so short we could see out her nostrils, but also that it looked like a pillowcase and that it had obviously been a really nice knee-length frock that she’d tacked up inside it. So it wasn’t just the tartiness of it, it was also the ugliness. We were less chastised for making fun of an older lady who was pulling people onto the floor with her scarf and making them dance with her. I was rather inclined to tap one hipster on the shoulder and say “dude, you’re going home to a sweeeeet threesome!” when his girlfriend was kidnapped away from him, but I was afraid he would think I was including myself in the equation. I also saw James who edited Salient this year, who with a couple of bear hugs made me feel much better about whoever the anonymous person posting nasty comments about my skills as an ad manager being responsible for VUWSA’s financial difficulities on another website (because yes, I never said I was a good salesperson, but seriously, if you’re going to write something like that then get enough fucking balls to put your name to it, lamer), and tried very hard to avoid the attention of The Mime, although it was amusing to see him as it inspired a whole round of “help me, I’m trapped in a box!” type posing. Then we spotted a guy with a German flag badge on each shoulder and for some reason that just really got my goat, so I encouraged Karen to teach Dylan the phrase “Do you have an old washing machine?” in German to ask the boy, in some kind of “Ha! You’re like, not even German!” cheekiness. I didn’t hink Dyl was actually going to get around to asking him, but he did, making the boy even more confused by miming a cigarette while asking. The boy was like “Huh?” and brushed him aside. Ten minutes later on our way out I decided to repeat the experiment, without the cigarette, and was rewarded with a “oh, Deustch, nien!!!” combined with much miming and pointing to his flags and shaking of his head. He he he! Oh II adore the fact that I can now often keep a straight face even whilst doing very silly prank type things.

On Saturday I had brunch with Anji and Delwin at Mojo, and then for dinner Lisa and I went to the Mediterranean warehouse where she became obsessed with the Pinnochio figures. We watched Thirteen and I didn’t blub nearly as much as I did the first time, although there are still many many things about that movie that hit home with me. Today I have sat in the sun and read Q, and did two lots of washing. Yes, it’s big time excitement around here indeedy. But I must wholeheartedly recommend Neil Jordan’s Shade to you – as a reviewer says “Why does he bother writing movies when he can write books this well?”, and just as another example of how late to the party I am (have you heard about this awesome new band called the Arcade Fire?), I also loved The Great Gatsby as well. And that’s all.

Little things that make me happy

1. My kitchen is all sorted out now. This was a bigger task than you might think, given that we are now officially (OFFICIALLY) the coolest flat in town with two fridges and a full-length freezer. Badoom Chish.

2. My books, also, are all sorted out on a new tall black bookshelf that Briar brought with her but won’t be using because she said she’s not really in to books. And they’re all alphabetical, and chronological by author, and it makes me happy. Except when they’re all sorted out like that I can tell instantly how many of my Douglas Couplands have been appropriated by evil borrowing fiends, and that makes me sad.

3. The leaving beads around my neck (three more sleeps!) go really well with my black and white striped top. An emo is I!

4. Now I don’t have to worry about any more job interviews, I can finally get my hair striped blue-black/aubergine. But I need to get it cut first, since while Anji’s trim looked good at the time, the bluntness of those scissors has left me more split-ended than ever.

Big things that make me happy

1. It’s less than a month until I go to America. Fuck Yeah! Suggestions for what to do with myself in New York and San Francisco will be gratefully accepted.

2. It’s five sleeps until I start my new job!* I’m going to be Helping People. Or at least the government body that I will be working for will be. I will be its web coordinator for six months. And I will make more money than here. I will, however, be far away from Contours so I might have to join a gym down that end of town. Any suggestions?

*Contingent on my passing security clearence, that is. The form was about 30 pages long, and wanted to know such things as addresses of where I’d lived overseas, details about where everyone in my family works and where they were born and their nationalities, stuff about my flatmates, everywhere I’ve been overseas, my religious affiliations if my ties

Mostly I like to bitch and moan about my own life, and only use links to other things on my site or my friends, to show you how cool/deep/SHRN/So No Longer Hott Right Now/whatever I am, because that’s what I think the interweb needs – fewer links. But today I’m going to spend a paragraph talking about Critic’s drug rape story. And no, I’m not going to take this opportunity to talk about how Salient uses comic sans non ironically, so you can see that this is like, totally serious. The scandalous article in question is actually really quite good. Sure, it’s vaguely stomach churning, but come on – I’ve read at least three books by Brett Easton Ellis that are much much much worse. Not to mention Blindness or an assortment of other Nobel Prize for Literature winners. When I was at Debate, for our first issue we published a guide to safety, which the International Student Coordinator type person loved, but we got no other feedback on. Cosmo seems to run a drug rape story every other month, as do squillions of other magazines, but they really are all the same, and with anything that’s all samey, you stop paying attention. The Critic piece is different. I think it was valid, and justified. Just because within student media rape is sometimes described as “surprise sex” (thanks to letter writers) doesn’t mean that it’s not understood to be a real issue. And Holly was certainly very very articulate in defending the article, as the media links from Critic’s weblog will show you, if you care. Thank god it wasn’t someone from Craccum trying to justify themselves (and not just because this way there were pictures of Shiny Shiny all over the news from the ad on the page). I think we all (by which I mean me) remember Honest Colin’s mumbleness.

Of course, all that said, as the woman from Rape Crisis pointed out, drug rape may be all the hot topic right now, but the big issue generally is still alcohol.

On a completely new subject, tonight is Go Out Drinking Night. Hurrah! Okay, that was a bad topic juxtaposition, but you know that it was intentional. It’s 24 Hour Party People tonight, hurrah. Before that there are leaving drinks at work for one of the many computer people who all have the same name. I wonder what his replacement will be like. Hopefully oggleworthy, although of course, after a conversation with Anne I have given up on all boys ever. In fact, I was tempted to call our quiz team last night “Death to the Y Chromosone” but then I couldn’t remember which were boys and which were girls. I think I remember Xander saying “your double Xs don’t look too bad in that dress either” to Willow (when of course they did, because Anya’s bridesmaid dresses were pretty hidi), but I’d like to think that everything I learnt about science didn’t actually come from a Buffy episode, so we went with “The McLeod” instead. Anji was going for “The McLeod’s Daughters” but I was like NO NO NO NO NO. We got 7/10 in Sports. Huh? What the hell? That was our average score for every round. We NEVER get that high in Sport. Very very strange. Nevermind.

Oh yes, but tonight. I need a new outfit. I always wear the same thing to Indigo it seems. Could a bar be bored of my boobs? Surely not. But there must be a new way to showcase them. Surely? Surely? Yeah. There, I mentioned boobs. That’ll be a good steady stream of shots for you all. Err, that’s shots as in drinking shots. Not photos. Thanks to Heather for being the only one to come up with any things for my drinking game, by the way. I hate the rest of you and I’ve flicked you all back to level one. Oh no wait, I haven’t cos I am lazy.

Work has become more amusing with the advent of having colleague (singular, and still spelt wrong, probably) on my MSN list. I am still loving being over with the young’n hips. I’m also doing more work that I’ve done before too. I have create a new style guide for us, compiling three together. Comic sans for Africa, I say! Oh no wait, no I don’t. Speaking of MSN, can I get a great big BOO HISS for Martha for putting a photo of the winner of Rockstar: INXS on her site without a cut, or hiding it or anything? AAAAAAAArgh. Stupid Internet.

Social plans for the week: 24 Hour Party People tonight, Home & Away omnibus on Sunday for Alf’s 60th, perhaps Jess’s picnic in the park. Coming up: Brad in some child’s play (I have been promised people in animal costumes), and also Brad in drag for his Caberet show. Hurrah! Also: I really must get my act together and plan my birthday party for some time.

Tuesday, July 16th 2002

Last night I was reading The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami in bed. Have you read it? I’m not sure if it’s out yet – I have a publisher’s copy of it from my book pimp Karen. Well, it’s short stories, and it seemed like every single story made me want to write a response to it, each story related to something I’ve had or experienced or felt. And I didn’t write any of it down, because i figured if I started doing that then I’d never sleep, but I have to put at least one down, and it’s about ‘The Kangaroo Communique’. A department store worker writes a letter to a customer he’s never met because of her complaint letter, and he tells her all these really random things and makes her an audio tape of him saying even more random things, and it totally made me think of you and your twenty three page letter that you sent me. He was crazy, and you were dorky and self concious, but I’m really glad that you did act “so out of character that the audience would be booing if this was a film because it wasn’t realistic” to paraphrase you badly. And yeah, that was it, basically.

Today I meant to get up at a decent hour, but I was dreaming that I was posessed and it was rather traumatic and I hope it wasn’t supposed to be my religious ephiphamy, because I can’t even spell the world, let alone believe in it. Also, I could see my breath from above the duvet, and I have lime green sheets and a pink duvet cover, so I was in no hurry to get out of bed. But eventually I did make it up, and I was domesticated and cleaned the kitchen. And then later KateH on MSN told me to go and meet her for coffee, so I unloaded the freezer and unplugged it and left it wide open to defrost, and went ot Parnell to meet her. We sat in the courtyard of Strawberry Alarm Clock and she ate my mushrooms on toast cos if you give her an inch she takes a mile, and discussed friends of hers that this audience hasn’t heard about and decided we should go and beat them up. And we made tentative plans to go to Fu on Friday, which’ll be kickass. Also on Friday night, I’m picking Bopha up at the airport, so YAY, i will have my darling flatmate back. I’m grumpy at Clay tonight cos he didn’t say anything about the amazing transformation of our freezer from a tiny icey hole into the ice free environment that it is now. I even scraped the ice off all the containers in there with food he’s cooked and squirreled away like a rodent so that you can tell what they are. He has NEVER cleaned out the freezer. Grrr. If he doesn’t clean the fridge sometime real soon, I will spit tacks. Either that or just sulk at him all the time. That’s always real effective. Not.

My books have gone slightly mouldy from being stacked in my wardrobe, lovely. I might go and alphabetise them right now cos there’s no one to talk to online. I want to go out! Tomorrow is my last ever day of holidays, really, since in Septmeber I will probably be working full time cos Bridget is going away for a conference for three weeks and Teri will be leaving soon after. Shit, last ever day of holidays – maybe I should get up at 9am and then get drunk all day long, by myself, like the misery guts that i am. That sounds like a solid idea. Either that, or I could stay in bed.

I got to use my first green sticker in my Vinne’s Know Your Flow Journal today. Exciting! I want to buy a stereo and so I’m tossing up between that or new glasses. The glasses are probably more important, right? Of course, both are dependant on me finding the cheque from Oma. I wonder if it would be wrong to write her an email saying that I need to go to San Francisco. Yeah, it probably would, eh?

Ooh kickass, I found the cheque buried in my wardrobe. Excellent. She wrote on the envelope “always be loved” and that’s just so lovely, it’d be worth so much more than the cheque to know that I would always be loved.

Arrrgh, so much stuff in my closet that needs to be cleaned of mould. My boots are all spotty – luckily it wipes off. And so many lists of memories, and also, the original Safekeeping letter, and that’s weird. But! I found two of my favourite necklaces, and some lipgloss. Kickass.

Add to that my pipes, a tiara, a copy of 6000 word version of ‘Intimacy’ that I thought I’d lost (you can read the 3000 word version in four parts on Swinney if you haven’t already (and you’re into extended short semi-fictional stories’o angst). I discovered a huge big box’o mixed stuff, so I’m retrieving stuff I want from it, throwing some things out and putting everything that I can’t be bothered dealing with for now back in it. Is it normal to get enthusiastic about cleaning your room only at 1am?

Hmmm, i just read through the 6000 word version and I’m not sure if I like it better or worse. It’s funny in reflection, cos when I wrote it at the start’o 2001, I got accused of just wanking on paper but then there’s things that have happened since then that reminded me at the time of the story, and it’s like I was writing my own foreshadowing – or my own wishlist, or whatever. Okay, I’m rambling. I’m going to install Wolfenstien 3D now cos i found the disk for it, even though I should go to bed with Murakami again. Night!

Sunday, July 7th

My grandmother has this game that she likes to make us play when we go visit her that’s called “Putting stickers on the stuff you want”, so that by the time she moves into a resthome or dies, all of her antiques and ornaments will have already been claimed. I’ve taken a more practical approach and only labeled her fridge and her 17 inch computer monitor. When I told her those were the things I was after, she offered me a thousand dollars os I could buy myself a bigger monitor, which I managed to wrangle out of, and then told me that my fridge was a germ breeding ground and i must buy a new one and send the bill to her. Unfortunately, much as I hate our fridge, I can’t do that either. I felt much better when she was talking about how the Catholic doctor gave her a diaphram after she had Mum to use instead of condoms. It was a weird conversation. She also told me that she stopped getting migraines after she had a hystorectomy, but I don’t think I’ll be trying that one for quite a while yet, thank you very much. I do want to have children, like not just in a “oh that kid on TV is so cute, I want a baby NOW” or a “hey, if i had a kid then I wouldn’t have to worry about my future” kinda way. Having children is very definitely a part of my life plan, even if it may eventually mean using one of Anji’s eggs. But we’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, i guess.

So yeah, that’s what today was spent doing; visiting Oma with Anji. When I got home, I went to bed to avoid talking to Mum and Neil, cos they just reaaaaaaaally bug me. I HATE being in Wellington, this town is making me fucking miserable this time around. It just seems like there’s ghosts everywhere, and I dunno, it’s sucking lots. On Friday night, KateB and I had a really nice dinner at Saffron with two bottles of wine, and then we went and had cocktails at Jet Lounge (downstairs of course, although they weren’t admittign the general public). Double Fudge Martinis from there are my new favourite Mmmmmmm. But it’s such a fucking long expensive cab ride home that I was forced to call my paretns aroudn 10.30pm to get them to pick us up – that saved $25 taxi, plus however much more I would have spent on drink. I was absolutely trollied at that stage, and I tell you, there is nothing worse than being drunk in your parents’ house waiting desperately for them to fuck off to bed so you can raid their liquor cabinet – unless it’s waking up with a hangover the next day and them asking you all sorts of stupid questions. So Saturday was spent running away to lunch with Anji and Karen and hten watching videos with Anji.

Mlaaaaaaargh. At least I’m going fora long leisurely day’o shopping by myself tomorrow. I need some cool pants, and hopefully maybe a skirt, and a top. And i will gaze wistfully at the makeup in Napolean and try not to give into temptation. I’m also gonna get some new innersoles for my Birkis and have lunch with Karen. Kickass. In three more sleeps, I get to go home to Auckland YAY. Right now I’m reading ‘The Vinter’s Luck’ and I don’t really like it. Sodomising an angel just doesn’t sit right with me. Plus, yeah, I don’t like the characters, adn I don’t believe that the basic premise behind the whole thing is believeable, and the writing style seems a little off. So HA! Take that all you NZ literary snobs. Also, did I mention how I’d given up on reading ‘Posession’ cos it bored me stupid? I saw a promo for the movie of it – not suprisingly, the characters in it have miraculously become young and goodlooking. It makes em happy though, cos horrible Gwenyth is in it, so HOPEFULLY, I got it wrogn when I thought that she was going to be in “The Passion” and hopefully no one is making that into a movie, cos if they try, I will just fucking cry and cry. Posession, Passion – they’re pretty similar, right? Not that I’ve felt either for a little while. Well, passion, yes. Possession, not for years, and I think maybe I really really miss it.

Sunday June 9th

Last night I finally managed to get out of bed and run away from my house that’s annoying me (HMG had her cousin come over, then went out, leaving her cousin just here with Clayton – grrr!) to KateH’s. We debated whether to watch ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Empire Records’ but the trash won, because really, who wants to be thinking?

But I have done some thinking and now I have a list that’s four names long of people that I need to sort out my feelings for. Nothing like spreading the load! (and to you folks counting on your fingers – don’t).

Today I woke up around one and stayed in bed for half an hour, plowing through “Possesion; a Romance” some more. I’m not entirely sure I like it, circumstances aside, it really doesn’t move me. But then I got out of bed to a phone message from KateH telling me to go over there again for Dawson’s, and so of course I did. I think I’m liking this new series, although it’s not like the old days when everyone would come over for Dinner&Dawsons before our Friday Nights began. Ahh nostalgia. Anyways, where was I? Describing the rest of my boring day, I believe. Right. So KateH had to go grocery shopping after that (and txted me to say that she saw KellyHJT buying brocoli, and that made me laugh because it’s cool that i have that kinda friend who knows that trivia like that is great). I borrowed her Moulin Rouge video, went to Mercury for pad thai (she accused me of being afraid to go back since the lady didn’t recognise me last time) and settled down at home for a nice lax-out afternoon.

I was just near the end of Moulin Rouge when Clay’s friend BradC turned up, so I turned it off right after Christian and Satine said they loved each other, and so hey presto, happy ending! BradC had just dropped by “because he was in the neighbourhood” but I suspect he’s doing an early KateM, who always used to come over “to see BradM” whenever he was going out so she’d end up hanging out iwth me instead, cos Clay was on his way out to dinner and shook his head at leaving BradC with me. But I made him cups of tea, we abused one another (read: flirted (just for a change)) and watched Mexico-Ecuador. I picked Mexico 2-1, and of course I was right. I’m so clever and witty. My god, the Ecuadorian coach was funny; so Australian Westie Trash. Eeek, I swear, I’m not one of those clever sports people, really. Perish the thought.

Anyways, I have exams coming up in eleven days time, and I need to get my wrists into shape by then, because there’s no way I can sit exams with my right hand paining me as much as it does now, so I’m gonna try and cut my usage of computer back to one hour a day, as well as doing other constructive & useful things like the exercises the physio taught me (and if anyone wants to give me a wrist massage, I will be wellhappy to accept it). To that end, I’m gonna wrap this up and go and read or something. Ciao!.

I accomplished a great deal today.