Thank you two, I love you.

And so in the past couple of sessions, I mentioned to Kalpana that I’ve been having more down spells lately than I feel are right, given that I’m supposed to be on the mend, I’m swallowing my 20mg of cipramil every day, I’m getting my expensive therapy and I have a job that meets all the criteria that I realised through my sessions with her that I was looking for. I mention to her that maybe I should think about upping my meds, but then come up with a thousand reasons why I’ve been getting the down spells, and she defaults to my feelings, saying “well, we should keep an eye on it, definately”.

I ache. I ache all over, hollow and empty and just so fucking lonely, and it feels like nothing anyone should ever have to feel, but it’s very familiar to me, and it always keeps coming back, and I want to call out for help, but what can anyone do to plug the gap? Nothing. Nothing at all. And so I let myself sink lower and lower. I forget to fill my cipramil prescription and then it’s the weekend and my chemist with thelovely old chinese man who gets it faxed in for me is closed. I find myself on Saturday night sitting in the kitchen crying on Bopha and Allison’s shoulders, because even if this is PMS, I cannot go on feeling like this for a couple of days every month, and Allison agrees with me that I need to get my meds adjusted. I thought cipramil was great because it stopped me from feeling suicidal while still letting me have SOME feelings, unlike Fluoxtine, but then it came back. I could feel myself shutting down again as basic functions fell by the wayside. And each time I have one of these episodes, it comes on much much faster than the last.

Cue me today trapped in my room, crying my eyes out, unable to leave even to get tissues because that’s the form and shape that depression takes for me, trapping me, leaving me imobilised. I hate being fucked up I hate not being able to sleep I hate that when I do sleep all I have is nightmares I hate the whole body ache, I hate being the girl who always seems fucked up I hate relying on my friends I hate not trusting my friends I hate being unable to ask for help I hate having to ask for help I hate that most of the time it seems like no one is able to help me. And I hate that all I could think about was the codeine in my drawer. So I texted Tom, and told him I was scared. He called my landline immediately, and we talked for ages, me crying and blowing my nose intermittantly into a towel. He calmed me down some but at the same time, while i was making jokes about expired condoms, I was combing through my medicine drawer, making a tally.

The codeine would be enough to make me sleep almost instantly. The brufen and the voltarin would probably rip my stomach to shreds. Worse case scenario, I would down them all, and then wake up, crippled from damage to my internal organs. I just want to sleep, I just want it to stop, I don’t want to kill myself, but I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Maybe I want that cry for attention, the suicide attempt, I want the bed in the hospital for a few days, people by my side mending bridges and all that crap. I just want to not be me anymore, to not have to battle this goddam fucking disease which seems so totally incurable.

The afternoon stretches on and on and on and I desperately try to get ahold of Nikki. Of course, I have her cellphone and her new flat doesn’t have a phone. I call her mother because that’s where she said she was going to be. Her mother calls me back to ask for Nikki’s number. I call her friend Gina, whose number I find in Nikki’s phone. She tells me Nicola’s number. Nicola’s voicemail says her name is Hayley. I am trapped on the floor in the corner of my room by my door. I can hear Bopha walking around outside and I can’t call out to her, which is fucking pathetic. And then I hear her on the phone, dealing with her sister’s crisis. I definately can’t call out now. When she knocks on my door to ask if I want dinner I say I’m fine.

I have a sore throat coming on, and it’s dry from crying so I don’t know how I’m going to swallow the pills if I take them. Maybe if I wash them down with a bottle of something, they’ll be effective enough that I won’t wake up. But the only liquor in the house that I can think of is half a bottle of kristov. I might as well swallow a box of panadol. I don’t want to try and fail. I don’t want to leave my friends and family behind, I don’t want to hurt them in any way, I know that they love me, and if I could just reach out, they’d turn heaven and earth over to help me. But I don’t see how they can help, because I’m just too far gone, I don’t see any light at the tunnel,and I am so tired and so fucking weary of having to fight this all the time, I just want to live and be okay and not have to worry every fucking day if I’m going to go psycho again. I’m tired of inflicting that worry on the ones I love as well, I’m just so fucking tired. I don’t want to be fucked up, it’s not cool,it’s not glamourous, it’s just flat out fucking exhausting. I don’t see how I’ve been an awful enough person to deserve this. And I know that there are squillions of people out there who suffer a fuck load more than me.

There’s no razors in my room, and that doesn’t work anyway. If I was to try the hot knife on my leg again, that’d mean getting up, going into the kitchen, facing the world, and besides, there’s only so much relief that that amount of physical pain can give you. My new idea is to take the codeine. Six tablets won’t kill me, but it will knock me out. Then maybe I can wake up feeling better. But what if someone walks in, freaks out. That’s not fair to do to flatmates, it’s what has stopped me before. Two pills then. But if I take two, I’m going to take more. I can’t stop my teeth from shaking, I can’t fucking handle this, and I need Nikki to come and save me NOW. I am always waiting for the knight on a white horse, and it never shows up, and we can trace that back to being 14 again, and I am so tired of therapy and talking and crying and wondering what’s the root of what and I am so tired of thinking and I am so tired of trying to keep myself alive so maybe it’s the turn of someone else and I just want the pain to stop, and surely that’s what painkillers are for and I’m tipping the codeine out into my palm and putting them back in the bottle and tipping them out again and I’m terrified so I super selfishly call Tom.

He’s in Christchurch asking if I want him to fly up, because he’ll do that on a moment’s notice for me, but I can’t get him to do that. He says he’ll call me back on the landline and I say no, I can’t go out into the lounge to get it. What I can get him to do, and what I force myself to do is admit that I really need to see someone, maybe KateH, and I tell him that I can’t call her, because it’s too fucking hard to ask for help, and so he tells me that he’ll call her, and we get off the line and I sit here and shake and my teeth bang against each other and I try to keep my breathing at an okay rate and he texts me to say that KateH is on her way and I cry some more and rub my nose raw on the towel.

And 20 minutes later she comes in, and I’m still sitting on my bed in the dark, doors and windows open wide, shaking in cold and fear and sickness styles, and she’s brought me flowers and chocolate and throaties and so I cry some more, weird animal noises onto her shoulder and have a semi panic attack before I manage to breathe and blow my nose and hand her my box of pills and ask her to take them away and we talk about pill dosages and i reiterate everything I’ve written above, and it’s the first time that I have ever told anyone in so much detail – with the possible exception of Kalpana – about how suicidal I have been/am whatever tense you want to use, and so that’s fucking terrifying as well, even if I end up listing stupid reasons why I can’t kill myself (ie – we wouldn’t win at Quiz Night anymore and she’d have to give the QM one of her specialty letters saying “no Jo didn’t kill herself cos you have a g/f you pompous git” etc) and just when I’m starting to come down, Ammy comes in and I so don’t want to talk to her at that time, and so when I try to explain that basically, I need to have my meds upped, she says “well everyone has down patches”. Yes, everyone has down patches, true. I have good patches, sometimes. That’s the difference. That and bad patches should never ever feel this way. Luckily Ammy leaves pretty soon, and KateH says “she has good intentions” adn I know that, but I just can’t deal. KateH is wonderful and nice and calms me down, and we even get in a little gossiping before she has to go off to work, taking my pills with her – promising to return them to me at a later date, because really, codeine in one-pill-at-a-time is lovely, and she drops me off at the shops so I can buy dinner and avoid my flat.

And here I am now, having eaten, and read half of Metro, and having had big long lovely cuddles with Sebastian. My eyes and nose are still stinging and my throat is still sore, but I’m a fuck load calmer, and have been rendered incapable of doing myself any harm tonight, even if I wanted to, which I don’t think I do. I’m seeing Kalpana on Tuesday, and I will try to see Dr White ASAP to get a new med script. Why did I write this up here? Attention seeking, some of you are saying. Sure, why not. Maybe. Maybe because I needed to write it. Maybe because I’d like you to know that if you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone. Joanna the altruist, yeah, that’s me. And yeah, I still ache, and I guess I always will.

After work on Tuesday, Karen and I went to jump into the ocean by the lagoon. Something went wrong with the way I was holding my head as I jumped off the plank though, and as I plunged into the water I felt as if I was receiving an enema through my nose. Not a pleasant feeling at all, I tell you. In fact, it made my throat and ears ache, and made me feel really sick. Add to that the teenage boys yelling “stingray!” at each other, and then the something solid that brushed my hand that made me swim and hide behind Kar, and when she saw a jellyfish I was well ready to get out. So I texted the divine Miss Fur and she came to pick me up and we went to the fish’n chip shop in Lyall Bay then drove out of the sun to go eat on the pier by my secret beach.

On Thursday Anji and I went to a pilates class at our gym for the first time. It seemed easy enough while we were doing it, although I got trembling holding my left leg in the air for so long, but afterwards, my abs were screaming. Oh yes, I apparently have abs. And for the rest of that night and all of Friday I felt like I was wearing a corset, I was so aware of them. I drove out to the airport to pick up Lani and three of her giggling friends who are staying with us, and then Lisa came to get me again for the Julia Deans (that’s her from Fur Patrol for those of you not in the know) solo accoustic gig at Happy. We got there shortly after 9pm, and were told it wasn’t on til 10 so we went to Karen’s house and made fun of her for a while before going back. Man oh man was I tired. Ryan Prebble didn’t start playing until after 11, and even though I’m sure he’s a lovely man and that some people were into his music, I started having fantasies about his guitar strings breaking as he was twanging them so hard and cutting him and him bleeding out and dying on stage so that Julia could start sooner. And then the taste in my mouth let me know that I’d actually fallen asleep for half a minute. But when Julia finally started singing, ti was all worthwhile. She did lots and lots of new stuff, no old Fur Patrol, and ‘Freak show’ and wow, her voice sure is stunning. The annoying part was that someone had brought along a baby, who cried. What the fuck? Yes, the baby was wearing ear muffs, and yes, apparently the mother was known to Julia who stopped and said “I know it’s not the volume cos that baby’s been to Shihad gigs!” but hi, you are not Gywneth, and this is not Live8 (and no one should ever aspire to be Gywneth anyways, because dude, could you pick a more bland milksoppy role model? Maybe Andie Mcdowell. But still.). I can put up with screaming kids at the beach because I suppose I do swim by the kids’ playground so I’m asking for it, but I don’t care if Happy was the first smokefree bar and it was fairly quiet, children are totally inappropriate in that context. Yes sir. But yes, apart from that, good times. I thought about how I can totally see the way I’m replacing you in the role that you used to have, and how even though I know what I’m doing is dumb it’s going to happen anyway, but meh, maybe I will go with this week’s counselling work whereby instead of being all “I should be doing this or that” or whatever, I can be all “I am making a choice to do blah blah blah”. I totally dig on how she gets my semantical issues.

Because Lani’s friends were sleeping in the lounge when I got home I couldn’t have my usual unwinding time with the television when I got home, so I couldn’t get to sleep for ages so Friday morning I was dreadfully dreadfully tired, but hopped up on excitement about the forthcoming weekend. After work I went to the ministry social club drinks where Lani introduced me to her friends – many of whom know my father, and I laughed at where a couple of the boys apparently thought my eyes were. I suppose the Mary-Kate and Ashley locket I was wearing that Martha made me buy at Craftwerk did help to draw the eye down to Mary-Kate and Ashley, which was of course totally the point. But it made me feel appreciated. Yes. I only stayed for one glass of wine though, because I ahd to go home to eagerly await the arrival of KateH and Shirley, hurrah! We had a couple of bottles of bubby while doing much gossip catch-up, and it was lovely. A couple of times I felt a bit weird, because I always used to be better friends with both of them than they were with each other, but of course now I live in Wellington and they don’t, so they have all these stories about people I don’t really know and tales to tell about nights together and I was just like “waah, left out”. But Shirley has just moved to Palmy now to finish her grad dip, so the balance will be restored again. Muahaha. We’d planned to go out to dinner but instead I fished bolognaise out of the freezer while they went for more wine. Then we went to Fia’s birthday party, and I didn’t check the address so we wandered around the top of Ghuznee St for ages trying to find a number that didn’t exist, being invited to student parties playing Metallica before I checked my phone and saw I had two digits wrong. So we got there in the end. Mostly I just talked to Karl and Amber, and laughed at the very very drunk very very young lady who tried to hit on both Shirley and KateH because she was missing her girlfriend. When we were in the taxi home I rang Lisa and decided to go to her house to panda-dance, so the girls went home to watch taped Daily Shows which Shirley didn’t like and is therefore off my weddding guest list.

It was a Saturday the next day, strangely enough, but much like last weekend when I didn’t get to sleep in because I went to the Petone fair with Shayne and Lani to see the wonderful Sue and Martha, I had to get up early to make the most of the day. This meant Shirley, KateH and I taking the bus in to the Cuba St Carnival, leaving like before 11am! I know right, haaaaaaaaaardcore. We were as awake as lemurs. Even though I’m sure it got much more crowded as the day went along, Cuba St was buzzing, and I was so fucking proud to be a Wellingtonian. I was also stoked that all of my “I am the boss of the weather and it will be sunny tomorrow!” blustering had paid off and it was still and baking. We wandered around for an hour or so, People’s Coffee from Plum in hand (I actually don’t really like it. Stink), and KateH bought a top, I found a hat that actually fit my huge head in Frutti so I bought that, and Shirley got a hat too. We also popped into Slowboat to see Ev, and now she probably thinks I am insane. Nevermind. Then it was just after 12 and we’d seen everything so I decided we should go home to get my car and go to my secret beach. So we did. KateH and Shirls were all “oooh eeek arrrgh too cold!” so they sat on the beach and read “Next (heh), while I had a bloody nice swim.

Lani and her friends were on salad duty, which cut down on my prep work for Country Club: Australia rather substantially. I went to the supermarket for beer (VB) and assorted snarlers and charcoal and ice and so on and so forth while Shirley and KateH did the dishes. We made dips, filled up a tub with ice and beer and then I turned our washing line into a pavilion in the style of Spiceworld (remember? In the grounds of the big old spooky house and they’re all wearing different coloured bathrobes, sucking chuppa chups and planning how to set up Debra and Clifford) with the help of a large couch cover, some pegs, some lime green netting curtains and assorted mattresses, pillows and lanterns. It looked bloody marvellous by the time I was done, even if it didn’t provide quite as much shade as I’d hoped. The absolutely fantastic Jimmy turned up and for a very long time it looked like he was going to be the only boy there, so he had to Make Fire by himself, although I stood around and fetched beer. Luckily Dave showed up to be manly with him. I had a period of total Hostess Anxiety because the bbq was going slowly so we thought we might have to cook some things indoors, and I didn’t know what, or when or how, and Lani’s friends were in the house so I thought if we took the food outside they might not get anything, and my friends Anne and Frances were in the kitchen preparing respectfully shrimp and falafel and I wanted to talk to everyone at once and make sure that everythign was going okay and the ghetto blaster on the stairs kept skipping on the mix CD Lisa brought (AC/DC and Powderfinger and Icehouse and Midnight Oil and the Vines and Jebidiah etc) aaaaaaaaargh freak out! So I made a choice to just sit down and have another beer. And things got much easier from then on in. I grilled some venison burgers indoors and the shrimp and falafel were fried, and people ate, and the boys tended the bbq most faithfully and more people came adn the sun went down, and ahhhh bliss. Lisa left for a while to go see the Phoenix Foundation play, and Lani and her friends took off, so it was just my posse hanging out. Instead of eating the pavlova I’d bought to be controversial, we toasted marshmallows and pears over the coals and the sugar cominded with the mango margaritas once the beer ran out made me incredibly fucking hypo. I jumped around and danced in the garden to CDs that reminded me of Volcanic and also the Pulp Fiction soundtrack that soundtracked my first-ever pash, and was just very very amped to go back into town to meet up with Shirls and KateH who’d left earlier and see the Battacuda Sound System, or whatever the correct spelling is.

We managed to squeeze six of us into Miss Lisa’s car so we could drop Frances home, and so Kar and Dyl and I were dropped off by Manners Mall to head up to Swan Lane to the big stage and crowds. I was still VERY VERY HYPER and yes, I am writing much like I was talking and jittering. It was fun. While we were waiting for the band to start the boy from the Great Blend showed up, so we chatted for a bit and it was nice to see that contrary to the stoogling results I’d turned up, he is actually just a secret ginga. Heh. Battacuda were SO MUCH FUN! I danced like a crazy person and so my calves are still aching today, because apparently dancing on concrete is not as soft and accomodating as you might think it could be. If you were stupid. I was all very hyped up so we went to Havana after, and danced some more. KateH and Shirley went home but Dyl was all let’s stay out! so I did, and then after one more drink both him and Kar were like “tired now, let’s go” and I was like you guys are DICKS. But there was a taxi right outside the door, and so that was handy. I told Karen to remember it was a black’n gold one, and texted her when I got home fine. I wasn’t that drunk, but I’m trying to form good habits in case of insane drunkenness at a later date. Ahh taking care of myself, nice work.

When I woke up on Sunday I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, what with the calves, and the pimple just inside my nose, and the cut on my foot and the scratches from Sebby who was a little unnerved by the masses of people at the BBQ – so much so that he almost didn’t want to eat steak – but he dragged it away to eat in private and emerged much calmer – and all, but I still managed to get showered and dressed and to take the girls to the Maranui Surf Cafe for breakfast. We had to wait for aaaaaaaaaaaaages to get a table and then for our food but it was well worth it because dude, Wellington is so fucking rad. I dropped KateH in town after that and said sad goodbyes to Shirley who had to return to Palmy for her first day of school today. I spent the afternoon lying in the pavillion reading Prep (so good! although I expected more sex and panties from a book set in a boarding school) and then bonding with my couch and HDD once the wind got too strong. I did a mountain of dishes and threw away salads and prawn heads, but cleanup wasn’t too bad thanks to the wonders of disposable plates. I discovered that Smoo wasn’t actually dead in a gutter but had instead gone to Hammy with Bart for the weekend. When they got back they came over to bbq up the leftovers. But it turns out that Jimmy is teh BBQ King and they can’t even touch him. Much like Hammer. While Bart trying to catch flaming pieces of paper with his bare hands was somewhat entertaining, we resorted to cooking on the stove instead. Smoo ate about a thousand chops, so KateH and I were looking forward to seeing Bart polish off a whole pavlova, but that didn’t happen, sadly. So there is still some passionfruit pav with Kiwiberries (so weird!) in our fridge if you are hungry. Okay? Okay.

Today I got up early to take KateH to the airport, but she fetched me coffee while I was in the shower so I love her for that. And that’s about all I have to say for now, I think.

I can’t remember what else I wanted to write about. Things I talked about today included how worked up I got when we talked about the thing that I don’t like to talk about, and later when we talked about something else she was like “your hands seem to have calmed down now” and we laughed, which was important because of course I am still trying to keep her entertained, even if she doesn’t actually exist outside of that room, as she said. We talked about things that do or don’t define me, and my homework is to try and come up with a definition of myself(*). I told Lani that when I got home today and talked to her for way too long despite the soreness of my jaw (more about that later) and was like “Oh man, if only I could stand the word, because then I could be all “Joanna McLeod, Blogger”. Lani said she thought I was creative and inspiring because of the cake I made my mother and the story I wrote and illustrated to explain her present, and apaprently also because of the curry I made for Flat Dinner last night. Well, the curry’s not hugely creative, although it had cabbage in it for the first time ever, but the bathroom sure is clean and sparkling, as is the kitchen, and I bought a new shower curtain with gardenias on it. It’s clear, which is rad cos it lets in more light. And isn’t mouldy (and yes, I am still celebrating small achievements). When I showed it to Smoo he was like “well, I kind of wish you’d got one with dragons on it.” Smoo makes me laugh a lot. When I asked him what the proper ettiquite was when gentlemen callers have left their panties (okay, perhaps just underwear, but panties is so much more of a fun word, and wouldn’t it be amusing to think that I did someone who was wearing women’s underwear who wasn’t a woman? Yes) behind and you don’t think you will be seeing them again, he suggested starting a trophy wall. I could hang them between the pictures of STDs hanging on the lounge wall. Heh. What do YOU think the correct thing to do would be?

Anyways, today I felt bleh and also nauseous and then full of mysterious stomach pain, and then the buses didn’t happen, but finally I made it out to O’Bay, and had a swim with Karen out to the raft. Afterwards I sat dripping water on the decking and debated about whether to go home to my house like I really really wanted to do, or to go back to Karen’s to try on the dress she’s altering for me so that I have something to wear on Friday to the Tiki Tiki Party. The sewing won out in the end, via the supermarket so that we could have steak sandwiches with spinach pesto. I cooked the porterhouses rare, so they were succulent but soooooo chewy, and Karen made a mountain of super crunchy coleslaw, and so I chewed and chewed and chewed. Then when she was sewing, she told me to sing to her, trying to distract me from Q, and when I asked what, she said “Ten Green Bottles”. So I did. And she didbn’t ask me to stop, so I kept on going, for about 20 minutes. People should know not to have that kind of stand-off with me, because oh yes, I will be calling your bluff on that. So now both my jaw and my throat hurt. At least the muscle in the inside of my thigh has stopped aching, because man my sisters laughed at me as I limped around on Saturday. I told my parents it was a swimming injury, but it might actually have been a gym thing. Perhaps.

Fuck, I am exhausted. I had big ideas about what I wanted to write about, but mostly now I just want the cord so I can get online, post this and then lie down and vege. It’s 11pm already. Where did the time go?

Upcoming events: Craftwerk on Thursday, Tiki Tiki on Friday, Harvestbird on Saturday, then Fia’s birthday next Friday and Country Club: Australia on Saturday 24, not to mention Shirley and KateH both going to be in town next weekend. And then it’s Peti’s the week after and Bic Runga, and then two weeks after that we’re going to Martinborough and then it’s practically my birthday and Dead Rockstars, and then I must get out of town for New Year’s Eve…

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!

Speaking of the twins, I got my hair cut on Saturday but no one noticed that night at Germany because I was dressed like a German beer-hall girl (or my closest approximation anyway). On Tuesday night before I went to The Postures’ debut gig at San Frindigo, Anji and Karen came over and painted my hair in stripes of purple and blue-black. It’s unfortunate that the haircolour change has coincided with Period Skin, so I feel like it looks really crappy. I’m sure it doesn’t though.

I have yet to pack, but I have a large bag with nine kilos of Kate’s winter clothes to take with me. I also have an extensive list about what I want to take, so I figure that’s most of the battle. Unfortunately my camera seems to have vanished – I’m going to blame Smoo not wanting me to publish the photos of him and Blair playing Gay Chicken after they showed up incredibly drunk in the middle of Germany, sporting duct tape Hitler moustaches, SS armbands and babbling abotu their Brokeback bike ride that they’d just had. My camera also had pictures of the Black Forest Cherry Cake I made, which was truly an awesome thing of beauty and awe. I hope I can find it before I go away.

What else? Yesterday I caught up with an ex cow-orker who’s been in Australia making babies. Her tummy looks fake, but not as fake at Katie Holmes’s. Tonight I’m going for a couple of quiets. Today at lunch we went up to Finc, which I wasn’t impressed with. I had a steak sandwich, and it really disagreed with me – so much so that two bathroom stops were required on my way back to work strolling down the gorgeous waterfront. I <3 Wellington on a sunny day. And now I get to go and heart two new cities, the luminous Kate and the gorgeous Olivia (and s5, who is perhaps the best human on the planet ever). I am a lucky lucky girl.

I'm sure there'll be internet accessing at some stage over the next two and a half weeks, so stay in touch. And if I get eaten by a snake, or killed by OH MY GOD THE TERRORISTS ARE EVERYWHERE, well then at least I didn't live my life so ginormously fat that I couldn't even leave the house and had to wash myself with a rag on a stick.

xojo

EDIT:

This of course meant that Saturday was spent in cleaning the house and decorating the lounge with said balloons which had been blown up by me and the boys with the aid of a balloon pump the night before while they watched the Steel Mill and I tried not to get beaten up for making derogatory remarks about metal, and green and black streamers, and rasturbated banners that said “Pledge Eta Beta Pi!!!” and “Pledge Gamma Gamma Gamma!”. The boys, meanwhile, went to Bunnings and apparently had long discussions with one of the men there and spent $38 and came home and built Liz the Funnel with valves and all. Why Liz? Because apparently all funnels are supposed to be named for whores. Bart said “Liz Phair!” and I would have growled at him except that I knew he meant L** S*** instead. Smoo was like “Liz Phair’s still a whore” and I was like “hush your mouth! She’s a boring suburbanite mom now. I miss the blowjob queen!”.

The keg was delivered in the afternoon, and we had many long discussions about where to put it – if we left it on the front doorstep, would ferals come up and steal it? But if we put it inside the dining room, would it make a mess? Eventually we compromised by closing off the kitchen door at the end of the hallway and putting it there. I dressed myself up in the university colours

This pic was actually taken at the end of the night, so imagine how fantastic I must have looked sober. And yes, I do appreciate that anyone who knows me probably has very little idea of what I actually look like sober…

and was just about to go and pick up Brad and Karen when I got a voice mail on my phone from some guy saying “I got a link to your blog from Public Address, and it sounds like you’re inviting all and sundry to your party, and I don’t know anyone in Wellington so if I ask politely, can I come?”. I was like “huh? I don’t write a blog” but since the guy had left his number twice, after he took my interogation questions in good stead (“1. Gilby or Izzy? 2. Who would win in a fight between a pirate and a ninja? 3. What word did you use wrongly in regards to talking about my website?”), despite him giving all the wrong answers I texted him my address, warning that the party would be fairly small – around 16 people or so, and that he would stand out.

It turned out that at first, the party was very split, with Bart’s Eta Beta Pi clustered in the dining room, while us Sorority sisters were in the lounge. Ash or perhaps Kristen even said when Sebastian came running in “Sebastian, what are you doing in here? You’re a boy!” and I was like, ummm, what about Brad? But we mixed it up more when people went outside to do funnels:

Bart sucks it down

LisaB takes in her own body-weight in beer, while Kristen is caught in the act of being so very 2006 with her camera-phone

Eventually, having laughed at the boys enough, Gamma Gamma Gamma were also persuaded to do keg stands.

LisaB fearlessly went first, and achieved full verticalness. She is our hero

Ash loved it so much she went twice

KateH showed up late for the party but hurried to make up for lost time

I was worried that they wouldn’t be able to hold me, but they assured me they could, and so I did a couple as well. The first time my arm slipped and hit against the keg which wasn’t fantastic, but holy crap, keg stands are my new favourite thing in the entire world ever. EVAH. Except that I am so fucking sore today, or at least I was until I took a lengthy spa at the gym in my lunchbreak instead of doing a proper workout. I am naughty. My arm also got hurt when we jumped Smoo as soon as he came home from work and forced him into a kegstand while Bart paddled his ass with a cricket bat, except that he got my wrist a lot more than Smoo’s ass, and Smoo kicked out, and knocked Kart over, but to be honest, I’m not sure if she even realised. Even Karen did a keg stand when we agreed to let her put a plastic cup of daquiri and straws down on top of the keg so she wouldn’t have to have beer.

And of course, because it was Country Club we passed around our pieces of trivia, and I made everyone hot dogs (which were fucking good) and also oatmeal cookies (I really should remember to bake more often) and assorted other snack foods. Eventually most of the people had left (*), so me and Karen and KateH and Bart and Smoo just sat around the dining room table eating apple pie and vodka jelly. Bart was falling-off-his-chair drunk, and incredibly entertaining. He decided to call up everyone in his phone who wasn’t at the party, and even though it was 3am, we let him. Yes, we are enablers. And we laughed our heads off. Then Karen left, and KateH and I decided that it was time to watch Mischa Barton die, so we did, even though the boys were dividing their time between bitching about it and falling asleep. I am so so so so glad I got an Auckland friend to attend a Wellington friend and Country Club event, and that it all went well. We only made $85 back on a $200 keg, which sucks, cos obviously not everyone who drank it chipped in, but meh, I generally spend about $100 on each Country Club anyway, by the time I add up all the costs.

In the morning KateH and I went and had coffee (She was like “I didn’t think I’d stay, but of course I did – when have I never stayed after one of your parties?” and I racked my brains trying to think of an answer), then I spent the day doing laundry and watching videos, dozing, and avoiding the large pile of dishes in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ve been done now…

September’s Country Club will be Morocco, after we realised that we have totally neglected Africa, and then there’ll be a German Octoberfest in October, strangely enough. Then when I come back from San Fran, we’ll do a Mexican Day of the Dead, and that’ll be all of North America polished off…

Before I get on with the usual recounting of everything, let me just announce Canadia at the Country Club, 5pm Saturday May 6 – don’t worry, it’s planned so that you can come to this and still go to the Phoenix Foundation gig. We’re going to eat pancakes and maple syrup and bacon (if you’re that way inclined) and fries with cheese, and Chocolate Mooooooooooooooousse, and listen to the Arcade Fire and other goodness, and learn facts about Canadia, and end all our sentences with ‘Eh’ and I might plan another few activities, and it’d be rad if you could come.

And now let me get on with Friday night, which saw me leaving work on the dot of five and declining to go out for a drink (holy fucking shit, I know) in favour of going home and doing a mountain of dishes and prepping for my Spanishy potato dish which I’m hereby going to call Papas Garbanzo. Prepping means a mountain of agria potatos cubed and boiled, and cans of chickpeas rinsed and drained, and numerous garlic cloves crushed and roughly chopped and placed in a bowl with diced red onions, and feta crumbled and paired with chopped parsley and a little basil, and spring onions cut into pretty little loops, and chorizo sausages defrosted, diced and fried till crispy and put into yet another bowl. After that there was just time to set the table and get changed before I had to go and pick up Jisa for wacky one-way driving adventures in Brooklyn trying to find Jimmy, and then to Mount Vic for Jessie and Jane. I threw open the invitation to everyone else with a J in my phonebook, but to little avail. Boo-urns. But that’s okay, because we sat in the glowing atmosphere, and drank good red wine, and not so good red wine, and stuffed our faces with the papas garbanzo, and the green beans almondine, and then coconut cream and apple cake with caramelised peaches and raspberry strawberry SORBET (which you must yell like “Ole!”) and Jessie told us rock’n roll stories and we annoyed her with a lot of usage of the phrase “like throwing a sausage down a hallway” and its many variations. It was a geniusly good time.

On Saturday my head hurt, but I had to get up early to gossip to Heather and confirm that it was indeed her who had been drunkenly texting me the night before. Then there were an awful lot of dishes to do. Nevertheless I did them, and napped, and made myself pretty in time to meet the divine KateH, or Popular Kate as you may remember her, for dinner at Arashi. It was so nice to go out just with her – we tried to think of when the last time we’d done that may have been, and the best we could come up with was like, July 2002. We followed that with a drink at Harem, which was wacky crazy cool and I wish we’d eaten dinner there cos the menu looked yum, but as it was, we had to knock our cocktails back quickly in order to make it to Dylan Moran on time. He was genius, wonderful, excellent, angry drunken belligerant hott Irishman. His onstage persona was much like Bernard Black, but a little more articulate. Hott. I laughed lots, and I also laughed a bit because my friends who saw the show in Auckland said that there were many curvy bookish type women in the audience there, and so it was in Wellington. Afterwards we went to Good Luck for a drink, and meant to go to Bodega for the A Low Hum, but the cocktails were just too good and we didn’t want to get up. Eventually though with KateB in tow we decided we wanted food and headed back to Harem which was shut, so we went to Tupelo instead, where stupid boys tired to impress us with their asses, drank from our wine bottle and tried to offend us with videos on a cellphone of a girl who ejaculated semen out of her very hemaroided bottom. It’s probably not the kind of thing you want to see every day, but if you’re introduced to it with the “this is so offensive, this is totally going to offend you” type introduction, there is no way in hell that you’re going to be offended. Except by the guy’s total stupidity. KateB disappeared, and Tupelo shut down, so KateH and I were forced to sit outside in the alleyway with KateB’s coat and bag for LITERALLY half an hour since KateB’s phone was in her bag, and we were not overly impressed by that.

On Sunday I slept in late, and then later I picked up KateH and she came over for dinner, and surprise surprise, she knew people that Bart’s mum knew. And we watched the Garland video, and looked at photos, and read the bible, and oh, how long ago Uni was and how young and full of hope we were all then.

And now Sebby has been missing for 24 hours, and I am worrrrrrrrrrrrrrieeeed. Today I had lunch with Amy and Andeee but they had friends and sisters there and so we didn’t really gossip, and I haven’t seen them since 2004, and it was strange. And no one is upstairs at work today, and I had to log on downstairs in the morning and the boy’s computer that I was using was sticky and eww. And blah blah. I hope Sebby comes home when I get home today after PAYING FOR MY FLIGHTS. Wahoo!

Come to Canadia. What’s that all about eh?

EDIT: He wasn’t there when I got home, even after I called and called him so I went to my room and bawled and bawled, and then I heard him mewling and he came in and I cuddled him and cried some more, and he was like “sheesh, what’s the big idea, it’s only been 30 hours but can I have some extra food please?”

I had about a thousand cocktails at Katy’s cocktail party, and when I say “about” I probably mean “maybe 20″. My feet are cold. This is very important that you know this. We’ve been listening to Ghostplane and now we are listening to the Phoenix Foundation. I was worried when Ghostplane finished and the cd player spun around because I’m not often very down with Bart’s taste in music which tends towards the yelling, but it seems that I still have background music for entertaining to in the player.

Last night at China-at-the-Country-Club I had eleven people for dinner. Everyone else ate the Chinese food that was delivered. My hexagonal table has two inserts that can be inserted into it (oh really?) to make it longer, so we did that. I only have six dining room chairs though, so we had to use a computer chair and a wicker couch and also pull up my sea-chest to it. I drank Tsing Tao beer and stuck candles in their empty bottles. Jeremy wasn’t there when we ordered the food and made disparaging remarks about vegetarians, so we didn’t know he was one and therefore all he got to eat was some brocoli and plain rice. I felt bad. We all read our chinese horrorscopes and suddenly Jessie’s metal monkey stamp made sense. Ash’s horrorscope made her out to be totally like Hitler. Both Bart and Angie are rats, with a twelve year age difference. I think I needed to sleep more last night, this is all very disjointed. Everyone shared facts about China, although Kate mostly shared facts about the Kaori Sanctuary and the fish ladder. Did you know, for example that Anji, Karen and I are all half Chinese? We must be, because Mum was born in Hong Kong. Then again, Karen and Anji were born in Japan, so their eyes must be all crazy slanty. Ahh the country club, allowing for cliches from all around the world. We had sparklers afterwards cos of the Chinese rocking the fireworks and I made fun of people coughing at the sparkler smoke and then got caught in it myself and coughed for the rest of the night. We watched Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan to round off our cultural experience, but it was disappointly mostly unporny. But it was still fantastic. The next Country Club is likely to be Canadia Eh, and we will eat chips with cheese and gravy. Without the gravy. And watch ice hockey porn. And listen to the Arcade Fire. I know I am late to the Arcade Party, but I am still madly in love with them.

Then we went to Katy’s cocktail party where I stood in the kitchen for much of the night nice and close to the blenders so that I pretty much always had a drink in my hands. The guy that I had a crush on in 2001 was staring at my boobs all night. You’re like, five years too late buddy, I don’t do drugs anymore. I was wearing a sequined shrug and it glittered all over the place. I was dazzling. It gave me an arm rash though and I felt a little bit like a human disco ball, which is possibly not the greatest thing to feel like. We put our hands on our hearts to sing that we belonged to the night, we belonged to the thunder, and people salsaed to Gloria Estefan. Lisa kept making eyes at my sister. I kept throwing goats. My group of friends is awesome. Katy’s flatmate refused to marry me. I like her kitchen despite the big hole in the roof. One of my fondest memories of New Year’s Eve was dancing around it to MIA waving a big serving spoon. As you do. Or rather, as I did.

I was going to go up to my parents’ house this weekend to say hi to Pixie and watch their big TV, but I don’t know if I can be bothered. Maybe I should. Oh I don’t know. Maybe I should just stay here and plan what I am going to cook for Jessie when she comes down next weekend. I’m very looking forward to seeing her. It’s also awesome that I have an excuse to not go out with my workmates on Friday night and be a dick and end up crying in the toilets at Boulot and then running off to Lisa’s house and sitting on her footstool and falling off because it’s just all soft again. It’s important not to do these things more than once. And then the night after that KateH will be down and we’re going to go see Dylan Moran, and I’m going to marry him and we’re going to open a bookstore together and always be drunk and rude. Hurrah!

But we can scoot backwards in time, to Thursday morning and I’m leaving the backdoor key out for our downstairs neighbour Eve so that she can look after Sebastian that night since Anji had already flown to Auckland for work, and loading my bags into Lisa Fur’s car boot and folding myself into the backseat because Fran was in the front. And then it’s a week later, and I’m switching from present tense into past, because I’m not a choose-your-own adventure book, as much as I’d like to be. A quick study guide to the BDO was playing on the stereo, and there was a monkey to show the country to. Goats were thrown at first sightings of mountains, which resulted in the people in front of us pulling aside to let us pass. The toilets in Tirau are still the best place in the country to stop, and driving into Auckland still sort of feels like a kick in the guts six years later. Lisa’s car made it on one tank of petrol though, which is incredible.

Heather wasn’t home for Fran to be dropped off to, so we headed to the place that Lisa and I were staying, the Comfort Inn on Newton Road. We’d scored ourselves a big two bedroom apartment with parking for only $65 a night each, sweet sweet accomodation candy. Heather showed up and had some beers, and we headed up the road to Gina’s for dinner. If you’re not familiar with Auckland, Gina’s is (in)famous for its ridiculously hot and over-the-top waiters. The food’s pretty good too, but it’s insanely busy, and took a long time, and it was very very crowded. We went back to the apartment and had more wine. I love the litre bottles of Banrock.

The next day it was Friday and therefore bdoing day. Lisa and I went to meet up with Heather and Fran at Roasted, and then I called an incredibly incompetant taxi driver who took half an hour to find us and kept calling me on my cellie. We got there just before Pluto started. I forgot how many people go to the Big Day Out. There were a lot of people there. Pluto were okay. They played some new songs which was nice, and drums were pounded very heartily, but I just don’t know if their heart is in it anymore. Then I put my earplugs back in (hurray for being a grown-up!) and waded through the crowd trying to get out of the stupid (but I’m sure it’s important when the stadium is actually full) D-Barrier. Texts to Lisa found her again, and we went and got our passes for the Immortals Lounge, courtesy of a wonderful friend.

I felt special as we got to ride the big glass elevator up to the sky. We got to use cleanish bathrooms, and the bar queue was short and there was a better selection (but only Lion Red or Steinie, so I saw that it would be a beer-free day for me). The view was very choice. Then it was time to skootch back down to the Green stage for Sleater Kinney. I wish I knew their music better. If ever there was going to be a replacement for Hole in my “strong women make me feel strong” listening, it could very well be them.

Breaks Coop were playing next, and I’m not a repetitive old woman so I decided to run away quickly to a clean bathroom up in the Immortals Lounge again. I checked the time on my cellphone while I was up there, and bought a drink, and then discovered that my phone was gone. Rad. I went through my bag and looked on the floor by the bar. No phone. Excellent. Then Lisa showed up, luckily, and after asking at the bar after my phone, we went down to see the Go! Team. It made me feel very grumpy though, losing phones sucks. I was going to try calling it from Lisa’s phone but realised I’d never hear it.

Then the Go! Team started, and they were fantastic, and I had a boogie, despite my knees being already like “hey lady, remember us? We don’t like this kind of behaviour one little bit”. I wish I could shake my bottom like Ninja. Fuck it – I wish I was Ninja. Their album is definitely going on my ‘to buy’ list.

I can’t remember when it was that the Brunettes started to play, but I took a photo of all the people on stage.

Someone said that there were 20 people in the orchestra (You don’t expect me to actually try and count do you?). Their rider can’t go very far. I wish I’d stayed for them, but I’d already realised that I am much too old for the Big Day Out.

My knees led me over to the fence by the beer area and I sat down for the Magic Numbers and took some Nurofen Plus. Mmm codeieney. But people don’t look at the ground when they’re walking, and they kept kicking or tripping over my legs – despite the fact that there were people sitting all the way along against the fence, and it was just pissing me off too much so I decided to pop up to the Immortals Lounge again. More liquor and more codeine was taken, and I pulled an armchair up to the window at the back of the lounge and settled down for Shihad:

They played their standard fare. If I hadn’t been so doped up, I might have been a little sad that I wasn’t in the mosh, but then again, if I had been, I wouldn’t have been able to see how fantastic the crowd’s arms looked when they did ‘Pacifier’. But I was, so that was okay. When I felt lonely I had another drink. Haha excellent. Then a guy who was Kateb’s brother’s best friend growing up who’s now in a band that I interviewed for Pulp a while ago came over and hugged me, and tried to introduce me to his fiance, but given that she was a friend of Kateb’s at uni, I already knew her. And that was the only people at the Big Day Out who I bumped in to, apart from Jessie. That was strange, cos I am used to seeing so many people I know there, and I was actually a little bit afraid of who I might bump in to.

Franz Ferdinand played, and they were pretty average, and my arm chair was very comfortable. Then Iggy started, and I was like “what the fuck am I doing? This is the Big Day Out and I’m sitting up here like those wankers that I hate at gigs who only go because they get in free, and they don’t even like music”, and plus the BDO book talked about a cocktail bar in Lilyworld, so I went off to find that. Apparently, the cockails are only in Australia. I also couldn’t find the Krishna food stall, so I had a $9 kebab instead because I realised that I’d had one TEN YEARS AGO at my first Big Day Out, and washed it down with a Lion Red, Mate. I contemplated having a dance, but I was too chicken/sober to dance by myself with the models. Did I bitch about the girl carrying the Nova bag yet? I mean, hi, you’re wearing high heels and an expensive looking dress, and you’re stick thin and gorgeous. We get the point. You’re a model. You don’t need to tell us what agency you’re with. If I was to bitch about the other 30,000 people there though it would take far too long. I’m too old and jaded. And I was also kind of lonely. It’s fine to be by yourself at the Big Day Out if it’s your choice, but if you’re just a lost puppy who can’t contact people cos no one has handed your phone in, then it sucks.

I sat at the back of the stadium and took photos of the human lightening people, who could have been a lot more impressive than they actually are:

Then the White Stripes started.

They looked kind of cool, but the sound was craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy at the back there, and I couldn’t stomach going up closer.

I went to go and wait at the rendevouz spot that I’d (phew!) arranged with Lisa earlier in the day, and then Jessie was there, and I was like YAY and hugged her and felt a bit like I did that one time at the Gathering when I found Katy and Anji after I’d been lost for a couple of hours and thought tents were frozen bodies from Titanic and that there were Jim Henson creatures walking around me and I’d lost the ability to speak, except, you know, without the acid. And Lisa showed up, and Fran, and we got told off for walking on the road by a policeman, and we took a taxi and we went home, hurray! It was strange to leave a Big Day Out and still be able to walk and not have my ears ringing,and I wasn’t too badly sunburnt except for my nose. I am no longer hardcore. I miss being hardcore.

On Saturday Lisa and I met Heather and Jamie from NZM at Benediction. I’ve decided that avocado on turkish bread is quite possibly one of the best breakfasts ever. Then I made Heather come to St Lukes with me, and I used a Farmers voucher leftover from Xmas to get myself a new phone. Then, of course, I went back to her house to charge my phone and check my email, because that’s the only reason I’m friends with her. I also got to watch Alt TV, and I wet my pants in delight at seeing a Guns’n Roses video that I’d forgotten even existed. Awesome.

I went home and had a bath and tried to nap but it was too hot so I read magazines and texted people back going “who is this?” because of the lack of numbers. Exciting, yes, I know. Luckily my social secretary KateH had booked us all for a dinner at 8pm at Canton. Holy crap I love the food there, it’s soooooo good. And for $16 each, we certainly ate plenty. Then people came back for some more drinks, and someone called me trying to arrange a booty-call for the morning (*) and I was metaphorically speechless.

This is Shirley and KateH and her boyfriend Andrew:

This is Maree, who was up from Hamilton for the weekend:

This is J.C and Nigel, who is doing his best J.D Fortune look, while claiming never to have watched ‘INXS: Rockstar’:
.

What’s more interesting than looking at photos of people you don’t know? Relating dialogue from the night? Yeah, so I’ll stop this now. On Sunday Lisa and I drove back down to Wellington. I like visiting my friends in Auckland. I love the Arcade Fire. The end.

Please note: I will gradually update this over the course of the day, so if I’m still not back in Wellington in the account, keep coming back.

My flight to Auckland was pretty bog standard, the only thing that made it slightly more interesting was that the main road out to Wellington Airport was closed, so the shuttle driver had to go a different way and it made me realise that if it had been me driving I would have been stuffed. On the plane I started reading Star Man, which is a biography of Michael Francis. You’re like, “who?” and I’m like “omg, you mean you don’t know?” and then I explain that he served as a security bodyguard type person for Led Zepplin, and Bon Jovi, and Cher and an assortment of others, and then you say “ahhh Jo, when will you stop reading those rockstar biographies and return to real literature?” and I punch you in the head.

The airport bus driver in Auckland was also head-punching worthy with the way that he threw away my perfectly valid ticket that i’d purchased from a machine when I got back from Fiji for a bus that had never shown up, and made me buy a new one. Grr. I should write a letter, but you know, that would be too constructive when instead I could just sit here and bitch about it. But at least the bus dropped me off right outside the Pulp offices, where I could go up to meet the new editor, and struggle to call her by her real name instead of Carla. I don’t think I’ve ever really chatted with someone who’s been on Shortland St for a significant period of time for a significant period of time before (ha ha, do you like what I did there with that sentence?), hence why it was so damn difficult. But she was very complimentary, and said that she hoped I would continue to write for them, and blah blah, and I said I want to, it’s just that i’ve had no ideas and I’ve been really busy. But I will continue to do the music reviews cos they’re easy enough to pop out.

After that, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone who wanted to play with me, so I went down to Queen St and parked my ass in front of Crash and proceeded to cry lots, of course. Some of it was a little predictable, and some seemed a little cliched, but the way that every character was given depth, and that everyone was a villan at one time or another was really interesting. I can think of lots of people who should go and see it (you know who I’m thinking of if you read NZm). I also find it vaguely amusing that on IMDB there’s a big thread abotu how black people talk too much at the movies. Ha ha, it seems like someone wasn’t paying attention…

Then it was back on the bus to Ponsonby and to my hotel via the liquor store on Williamson Ave. I stayed at the Quest on Ponsonby, and it immediately endeared itself to me when I didn’t have to give them a cash bond in lieu of a credit card imprint. I was less impressed by how warm it was in the room, but after a conversation with reception, I figured out (read: was told) that if I turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows (which I didn’t realise were openable) and that was choice. Of course, the water feature in the courtyard was pee-making, but the bathroom was black and shiny and great, and reminded me of the bathroom in Olivia’s old Living Cube ™. Plus, halogen lights! How rad does my hair and skin look under halogen? Much radder than in real life anyways, that’s for sure.

Eventually Penny showed up to show me her wedding photos and we had a glass of wine together:

Anyways, so then it was time for dinner at Sawadee which the lovely KateH had arranged for me:

Both KateH and Jessie had managed to secure a plethora of spare tickets to The Mountain Goats, so we tried to convince the Triple As to come too, but they declined, so the rest of us went back up to my hotel room for some more drinks before the gig. It was so choice just to have some of my favouritist people in the whole wide world piled on my bed.

Apart from a couple of post AUT bar beers in 2003, I don’t think I’ve been to Shadows since the olden days of 1999, so it was strange to be going back there, but amusing to be actually asked for ID and being able to show valid ones, instead of doctored birth certificates and fake ISSIC cards. Also, dya know what’s great about Shadows? JUGS! I’d already dancing a jiggling jug jig for my friends back at the hotel, so I am of course referring to large amounts of beer for a mere $6.20 a pop. Hurray liquor!

Also, let’s have some hurrays for Interweb people coming to introduce themselves, like Chris who was absolutely lovely, and looked like Kayleigh from Firefly and then later Calum who is like, the definition of SHRN. I was very excited to meet them. Also Sam was at the gig and was texting to find us, but he couldn’t, and we could see him calling us, and it was very amusing for a while until I told him where we were. And Amanda was there too (and while I’m all happy with the pics, I wanted to cuddle up to her bosoms like this again, but didn’t, cos I’m sure that would have been inappropriate)

For reasons unknown or unremembered (*), Heather and I decided to go to Rakino’s, and so the lovely KateH dropped us off there. Rakino’s was packed full to the brim of hipsters, but we managed to find a spot on the balconey to sit and drink even more beer and try to find our friend via text who turned out to be at a strip club. But there were so many hipsters though. Perhaps it was the official after party? I don’t know, I wasn’t that aware of much at the time.

In fact, it took Heather reminding me the next day for me to remember that after Rakino’s we went and had a couple of cocktails in Deschlers. Ahhh Deschlers. The cocktails were still really excellent, and because it was who knows when in the morning, we got a booth and lovely service, and no one was watching the rugby, unlike the last time I was there which was just so wrong wrong wrong. I hate to think of how many cocktails I have had there – or more specifically, what else I could have done with the money. Oh the memories. I didn’t put my hand on her leg under the table though, because I am not that type of girl any more. And then we shared a taxi to drop me off in Ponsonby and her back at her house. It was an awesome awesome night(*).

I woke up on Saturday to a cacophany of noise, and I wondered who the hell was in my room, and then I wondered where the hell I was, and what the hell I was wearing. Sometimes it’s terribly difficult being me. Once I figured out the answers (1. The window was open and overlooking the cafe in the courtyard 2. I was in a hotel room in Auckland and 3. Pajamas. I must have fallen asleep before I had a chance to take them off) I felt a lot better. So much so that I got up and took a shower and texted Heather to see if she wanted to get brunch. She was still in bed so I went back to sleep and woke up feeling much much crappier. I wandered up and down Ponsonby Road for ages, clutching the Thai doggybag in my hand looking for a cab because thinking was hard, and the sun was shining, and oh my, my stomach had felt happier on other days. But eventually I managed to snag one, and smile and nod my way over to Heather’s, and collapse on her floor. She was in much of a similar condition.

I begged and I begged her to come out to a cafe with me, but they were so very far away (read: 100 metres or so) that we just couldn’t do it. She kept offering me eggs, because apparently she doesn’t realise that I am like DEATH TO ALL EGGS, but eventually she decided to go and buy some bacon and some coke and some potato chips. I puked and checked my email while waiting forher to come back. The lovely girl went and got coffee too! And orange juice. And ready salted chips AND salt and vinegar delisimo chips. Have you tried delisimo chips yet? They are very much the shit even if most of their flavours (like tzaiki) just end up tasting like sour cream & chives. It was the best breakfast ever. So we sat around listening to music, watching tv, chatting to people on the interweb and just generally chilling (*).

Eventually it got to be around 6ish, so I texted Shirley and she very kindly came and picked me up and I took her to dinner. We were going to go to Roasted, but couldn’t find a park so we ended up at Occam. The waiter was snooty, and they had Celine Dion turned up at levels that must surely have been intended to piss off the kitchen staff, so I yelled out my order. The hint wasn’t taken though. I thought about asking them to turn it down but decided just to bitch instead. My eye fillet was goooooooood though. Then it was to the supermarket for chocolate, and wine and a birthday present for Justin – I found him a magic eight ball. Excellent. I napped for half an hour back at my hotel room, and then walked to Shirley’s, via a little knee wobbling as I walked past a place where many years ago, I had received a most unexpected but very very wanted pash. Oh *IV! Oh the get the fuck over it!

Anyways, Shirley lives in a very cool big old villa near Ponsonby Road, and her flatmates have filled it with ex pantomime sets, including a light-up Sky Tower. Her bathroom is bigger than many people’s bedrooms. It’s pretty rad. So we had a drink – or at least I did, she had a half glass, and headed out to find Justin’s party. It was very much like First Year Uni, with Shirley driving, and me drunk in the front seat hanging on for dear life. Except that I wasn’t at all drunk cos of the hangover, but you know, close enough.

For Justin’s 30th, he and his friend decided to throw themselves a Howick themed party, since that was where they grew up (ha ha!). Luckily, they had it in Mt Albert instead of Howick. However, they did still come in costume:

At the King’s Arms I was greeted with a “Hey Wellington!” by Matthew Crawley, who seems to always be everywhere (it was he who did a raid on Garland resulting in smoke bombs and Tom Jones posters in the toilet, although I was too busy sex0ring the skankiest guy in teh world at the time to realise. Actually, looking back, that’s a lie. It actually happened at Justin’s 25th, so I was busy doing something that is not ever refered to). Gareth was also there, strangely enough, given that he was playing. We went outside for Heather to have a cigarette, and then when we went back inside, Calum came up and talked to us.

This is where I go a bit squee and wax lyrical about the adoreableness of Calum. I’m not alone in doing it, Heather and Shirley too are members of his fan club. And now you’re about to be:

And one taken on an angle because apparently that’s what hipsters do:

That’s what I love about these (metaphorical) high school boys – I get older, they stay the same age….Ha ha ha, we are dirty old women.

The Ruby Suns were also very very awesome, and I enjoyed them immensely. If you’re not familiar with them, I will say that they’re from Lil Chief Records, which is also home to The Brunettes, so they’re vaguely similar, in the cute Americanisms xylophone instrument swapping kinda way. Yeah. How long has the I need to hurry up and get one of my own before every damn hipster in town has one installed. Also, since I had my handbag with me, and therefore a pen, I grafittied two stalls in the women’s toilets. First person to email me and tell me what I wrote gets a prize. But all good things come to an end, and when everyone else left to go to Die! Die! Die!, Shirley took me and Heather home via junk food. Hurrah.