Hubris.co.nz

So, while I’m drunk enough and also happy enough, I might give you a brief heads up. I’m really tempted to not to though, because oh for fucks sake, can people misunderstand me just a little bit more? Am I really that obtuse? I’m considering shutting down Hubris once and for all. I thought I was clearer and easier to understand on paper, but apparently not. It just really fucking bugs me, eh.

BUT! Here’s another list:

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Thursday August 8th

Very very very much did not want to get out of bed today, as today is a Low Self Esteem Day. Or rather, a feeling that I am just very incompetant and untalented. Realising that there’s actually a boy in my class who’s kinda cute and intelligent made me perk up a little (I told Terri the other day that I’m currently at the stage where I’m almost developing crushes on Door Knobs and other inanimate objects). Plenary meetings brought me down again, just for a change, cos they’re so boring and frustrating and time wasting. Luckily this one ended twenty minutes early, so I was half an hour early to work, and I had Robyn’s zine to read on the bus on the way in, which was good. Choice even.

I bought donuts for Skew Terri and Bridget for our WIP meeting. No really this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that today I also did my application for Terri’s job. Actually it doesn’t really. I just have the feeling that Skew doesn’t like me and that I hassle him too much, and yeah, donuts seemed to be the easiest way to fix that. I had to make like 30 phonecalls too, checking contact details before we put out our second majorest publication, and mostly got people’s answerphones so I had to leave the same message over and over and over again. It made my head hurt a lot.

And then I was walking home across the Grafton Bridge and it was freezing cold when suddenly there was a girl yelling at me out of a car, and I was like ???? but it was Annoushka (I’m sorry, I can’t spell your name), of course. I mean, it’s just logical that my sister’s best friend would be in Auckland, when I haven’t seen her in years, since waaay before she got married. But anyways, her and her husband gave me a ride home, cos they were staying in the same street, and it was much warmer in their car. And it also gave me the chance to test out my hypothesis that it’s quicker to walk home than face traffic at that time’o day – verdict is that it’s slightly shorter in a car.

This evening I was moping at home alone cos my mind was just mush from too many meetings nad hten having to do horrible job applications and freaking out about the implications of me not getting the job (I am NOT going to have another bout of what I was like the last time I was on the dole, i am not i am not i am not (also, side note – I dreamt about K sometime last week, and in the dream she was telling me that she never gave up on me, i just got it wrong)). Bo was out babysitting and Clay was off filming some random short film somewhere (apparently our house is going to be taken over by vines tomorrow) and I was all Meh, so I was just parked on the couch, although there was nothing on TV and reading would have taken too much brain power. Anyways, BradC showed up, and I was like “clay’s not home” but then he pulled a piece of cable out of his pocket and was like “I can do your network now!” and looked all forlorn when I said that it was already done, so I invited him in anyways, and we had multiple cups of tea. So that filled in a couple of hours, and then he went, adn then I boiled kidney, haricot and pinto beans to make kickass chilli, and Bo came home and there was love and laughter again, and now I really should go to bed.

On Saturday night, I am going to go to a hotel room at the Duxton to have drinkies. I receieved the invitation via web-based txt and I had no idea who it was from, but I conditionally accepted anyways, then got very worried when the person who sent it identified themselves by their first name only, without any lastname initials or preceeding adjectives or abreviations, and I was like WHAT THE FUCK? cos I thought it was someone else, but then it was just Jezza, so that’s cool. And then on Sunday, I’m going to play dressups with Kyla – yay! i like makeup and clothes and stuff. Planning ahead, it’s Bo and Clay’s birthday on the 22nd, and so we’re gonna have party-type things on the 23rd so that I can go to Matakana on the 24th. And that’s that.

Sunday the 14th of July, two thousand and two

I had a really random day yesterday, it was strange, but ended well, so all’s well that ends well, really. I have now managed to shake my bad mood, thanks probably entirely to the divine Ms. Hamlin (KATEH! heh). So yeah, day yesterday:

In the afternoon, after doing not much in the morning, I popped around to see KateM on my way to the supermarket, and made her get up. How cruel of me – it was only 3.45pm after all! And then I went to the supermarket, and found that Grower’s World has shut down or something, and it was all abandoned and I couldn’t get veges. Then there was a busker outside’o Foodtown playing a very bad rendition of “Lover, you should have come over” which made me remember a girl who mostly doesn’t remember me now, but it still made me smile. And then I laughed on the inside at the enchilladas in the deli case, until I worried that maybe people were giving me strange looks. It was so hot in the supermarket that I started spacing out, and I felt all funny, so as soon as I got home I shut myself up in my room so that I wouldn’t have to talk to Clayton. But later, I was out in the lounge, getting ready to watch The Goonies, and he came along and gave me big hugs and said I was a great person for putting away the dishes, and that he’d been feeling Meh too, so it was a nice bonding moment. I flicked through our flat bible, where random people write random things, and discovered that KateB generally writes “Snapshot Memories” in it the day after I’ve scored, so there were some interesting regressions. But I guess it makes sense, cos we’d be hungover and lying around unable to move, swapping stories, and that’s when she’s most likely to write. Anyways. At the back’o the Bible, there was a list of Dorks begun in early 2000, and also a list of people we give props to. The dorks included people like Dawson, and Brad’s old boss, and the girl who’d been grumpy in Global Sandwich, and the list of people we gave props to were generally flavour’o the moment celebrities, but also included on the list was Jason, which made me laugh cos obviously I’d had a crush on him when I first met him way back then. And if you know anything about the inner workings of our social circle, you’d find it funny too (Hi Jason, if you’re still reading).

Anyways, so yeah, like I said, weird things were amusing me, despite an overall feeling of Meh. I got to watch the Goonies though, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never stop loving Corey Feldman. Is it wrong to fancy a 14 year old boy? I’ve managed to outgrow finding Eddie Furlong in T2 attractive, but Corey is my forever. Then I was going to watch The Skulls, but luckily KateH rang and said that her plans had changed and did I feel like going out? Hmmmm… let’s see. So needless to say that I met up with her 20 minutes later. I wore a tiara out, because I am after all a princess, and I haven’t worn my tiara in a very long time. I met her at Caravan Serai where she was having dinner with her Disney friends, who are also in my class at school. They used the word “random” an awful lot, which was random to me since I was having a random day, and and and. Oh you get the picture. They went off to Globe, but Katie told me that i’d hate it, so we went to Deschlers instead, where we drank devine cocktails. Brad joined us a couple of hours later, which was very cool. I was talking about my pants, and he said they looked good on me, and just as I was about to go “aww thanks” he said “they’d look better on my floor in Whakatane” which I’d actually scripted for him in emails discussing me going down to visit him. Ha HA Hilarious. We bumped in Jason and Hamish which made me giggle quietly on the inside as well, cos’o the whole bible thing, and cos Hamish asked me if I was still hanging out at his old flat. And I got to meet Luke Casey and shake his hand! That was pretty exciting. Then Brad dropped me home and I found myself watching an Adam Sandler movie and actually laughing lots and lots, so maybe I was drunker than I thought. It was a really good night though, and it very much lifted my spirits.

Today I got up before noon to make sure I was clean and dressed by the time Maree and Brad showed up to see my rug. I gave Mazzy a copy of the last ever edition of the Evening Post, and also a first edition of the Dominion Post, and we went for ‘brunch’ at Box House. We sat outside cos it was sunny, but four hours later, my legs are still numb from the cold. Good food though. And then we went to Hamlin’s for Dawson’s, which was really boring. Yeah. Now I’m home, and I might find a duvet and watch The Breakfast Club, if our TV decides to be in colour, otherwise I will take Haruki Murakami to bed with me and be disappointed 20 times over cos I never like his endings and this is a book of short stories.

Also, i just noticed that my last webcam photo is of me with my mouth really really wide open cos I was belting out the dirty words in ‘Stagger Lee’ last night. Lovely.

Today I am dying of the flu. This is the reason that my body has been aching for days, not that all my limbs are atrophying and about to fall off. I guess it was kinda brought to fruitition by me staying up til 4am to finish an assignment. Sure, that probably wasn’t the smartest idea in the world, but I’d had to work for KateM in the afternoon before that, so I couldn’t have started it any earlier (and no, I couldn’t have started it before the day before it was due – what do you take me for?) And maybe I could have worked on it while at KateM’s work, but I was helping a boy send out posters and stuff, and answering the phones, and plus the couch in the staffroom was much more comfy. Etc etc. You know me, excuses are what I do best.

Today I got up around half past eight to finish off my assignment. I’m not really sure what exactly I wrote, only that I was dying while I was doing it, and then I went into my 10am class to give some stuff to Jinan for it. But I was just about to throw up/pass out/something else bad, so I had to walk out midclass to go home. I managed to sleep for a couple more hours after that, until Ben got up and played Linkin Park so loud that all the windows in the apartment were rattling. Thank FUCK he’s gone tomorrow. Bopa’s having her bed delivered at 9.30am, although I’m guessing he won’t be out quite by then. The house is a pigstye but I can’t really clean cos when I stand up I feel faint. I’m chewing airwaves gum like it’s going out of style, popping brufen cos my wrists are hurting from essay writing, and wondering if I can doubledose on my day/night tablets. I hate being sick! Especially when there’s no one to take care of me. I wish someone would bring me lemsips and soup and stroke my forehead – am I asking too much? Clay just got home from work now (11pm) but when I told him I was sick, he hugged me holding me at arm’s length. He’s mean.

What else? Sick sick sick sick sick. I miss Tom who I haven’t talk to in weeks like mad. I miss KatieB. I was getting random text messages yesterday from someone calling me “Spunkrat” and “Babycakes” and I had no idea who they were from until they demanded gossip and used name-abbreviations so I figured out it was Andee, and so that was cool, but still, I miss my friends! Oh sure, I spent an hour at KateM’s last night drinking red wine with her after I dropped off her work keys, and I saw KateH every day in the weekend, but is that really enough? No, I don’t think so! Not when I need nursing it’s not.

Bopa was gonna call the Welly Massive to see if they were coming up this weekend, so I dunno if they are or not. I hope I’m better tomorrow, although if I’m playing Welly games, I will probably just end up semidying again. It’s hard to keep up with some people’s lifestyles!

I was in the high demand section of the AUT library (oh yeah, there’s a huge demand for me, baby) yesterday when my landlady rang to tell em she was shocked at how often our rent autopayments had failed. I tried to explain to her that I’d already told her that, and that it was Ben’s fault and why we were kicking him out, but I got all worried and told her that I’d have to call her back when I got home with dates from when I’d put money through manually. I was completely freaked out and stressed, because I know that I’ve always paid the rent, although admittedly sometimes it’s been nearly two weeks late, plus I hate anything to do with banks. I was just about in tears stressing about it when she left a message on my cellphone saying that she’d noticed that there were lots of anonymous deposits going in and that she figured that was probably me, she was sure I was reliable and not to panic. PHEW!

Tomorrow night Pluto are playing at Leftfield and EyeTV are playing at The Classic, so it would be a dilemna except that there’s no way in hell I would go to Leftfield. The last time I saw EyeTV play was at the Static launch party nearly two years ago when Clay and I won the dance contest, and they were excellent, so I may go to see them. Then again, it’s Bopa’s first night in the flat and all, so I’ll probably just stay home; that works for me too, especially if I’m still sick, which I will no doubt be.

IGSTJKD was on Monday, without ceremony. Yesterday was textfiles inside the covers of cds that people make for me. Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow is Anzac Day. In the lounge right now, Clay is being all chatty with Ben, which makes me laugh cos I think that’s really hypocritical considering how much he goes on about Ben behind his back. At least I’m just flat out grumpy with him all the time since we decided we didn’t like him. This is honour and intergrity, really! And it is also zfree not connecting, despite being on its 83rd dialling attempt.

I sat down to write a review of sorts of this year, then I just suddenly got hit by this big patch’o blue, which I am taking as a good sign, because while I feel like shit right now, this means that my period won’t be due for a couple’o days. I’d forgotton about how ridiculously low I always get for no reason beforehand. Once again, I feel like i am two seperate people – there’s Joanna who wants to curl up on the couch and cry, and there’s Joanna who knows that the other Joanna just needs to balance out her hormones a little, which is the same Joanna who’s been absolutely fantastic for the rest of the day.

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a big castle on top of the hill. The princess lived all alone, although the kitchen was fully stocked and she had a fleet of vehicles at her disposal. The princess spent her time dancing around the house in her underwear, and taking many showers, practicing breathing, napping on the couch and calling her friends because she could.

I was watching myself dance today, because I am a pervert, and I was just really really happy. It’s possible that I’ll be hanging out with people in Taupo that I met five years ago, and haven’t seen since then, and it just amuses me how much I’ve changed, thinking about the shy quiet girl I used to be. I mean, I am still shy now, but I try not to let people know that, and I do dance, I don’t sit in corners. I could almost drop into the Year in Review now, but I think I want to sit somewhere beautiful by myself and write it into my faithful red book rather than type it into Notepad straight off. Plus with half of me being all melencholic right now, it just wouldn’t sound the way it should be, now that I am mellower.

But in case I don’t write again this year, I should probably put in some thank yous. I oooooooooh i’m still alive yeaaaaah I ooooh I’m still alive. Etc. Tech friends – you’re wonderful. Sydney Crew – you’re the reason I’m still sane. Also a huge ta very much to all that listened to me whining and whinging and crying and laughing and smiling. Thanks to those that made me realise just how strong I actually am. Everyone else, well, thanks for reading. I perform best with an audience.

This is dumb, I’m so annoyed by my womanly functions. Grr. There’s this battle going on in my head, and quite frankly, I’m a little tired of it. Fuck you, Downside! I’m beating you! Muhahahaha. Okay, I’m going to go watch some telly. If i don’t come back – have a fantastic new years. I intend to.

xoxox

So how are we all then? I’m fantastic. I’ve had a brilliant day. My cellphone’s been beeping constantly, and I’ve just talked to all these wonderful fantastic people and it’s just been ace. Yeah. Sorry, when I get all happy sometimes I just can’t express it very well. I think I’m better at expressing sadness or longing, which is dumb. So I will try and just explain how at peace I am right now, how mellow I seem, and how secure I feel, but I can’t really. It’s kind of like waking up every day to the sun shining on a spiritual level, but that sounds too hippy.

So I got presents that made me happy (wok! toolkit! lots and lots of books! big day out ticket!), and I gave presents that made me happy because they made the receivers so happy, and that was fantastic. And then the Bentons came over, and that was ace too, because surrogate parents and all. Hayley came over for lunch, and she was sweetness and light and just lovely. I rang Olivia and told her we were having Tuna steaks for dinner, and that it made me think of her. She said “every girl should think of me when they’re eating tuna”. I talked to Kini and told her we ate eggplant which made me think of her. I talked to Leigh last night and that was choice. And there was phone calls to Kate B and Maree and texts with Shirley, and then there was an email from Justine which said she was in Wellington. Oma came over for dinner , and I got feisty with her and threatened to kick her ass if she didn’t do our dishes. But it’s never polite to beat up your grandmother, so after she went, I went and met Justine.

Hi, I’m Joanna, I’m studying Anthropology with Justine at Canterbury – I’m originally from Wellington, but my boyfriend wanted to do his masters in engineering which is why we moved down. We’ve moved around a bit, but we mostly live in Fendalton. I took her on a drive-through tour of the city, and probably bored her to tears, but hopefully i was more entertaining that family watching Notting Hill. I haven’t met anyone off the ‘net in aaaaages. The last person I met was umm well apart from that, it was the fabulous Leigh. Meeting people is easy. Now.

Karen and I just watched the end of a very odd movie staring the Pet Shop Boys. Spiceworld was much better. Meatloaf has had a very diverse range of movie roles, hasn’t he? Dances with Wolves is on now, but I’m not paying any attention – I just like the sound on to cover the ticking of the lounge clock. Tick tick tick tick tick. Does it make me paranoid that I can’t stand to hear it?

I really really wanna watch Last of the Mohicans now, cos we were playing the music from it before, but no, it’s a goddam Kevin Costner Injun movie on, innit? I didn’t get any cds for Xmas, but I really cannot complain. In fact, what I can do is be absolutely stoked with life in general and I am.

Today I went to go read the thing I’d sent to my mailing list about the scratches on my arm, but then it turns out I didn’t actually send anything to my mailing list at all. I did write about some bushes on Swinney.org though, and I guess that’s like the same thing, kinda. Last night I was sitting around crying after the season finale of Shortland Street, so I rang up Penny and asked her if she wanted to come around and get drunk. Of course she did. Jeremy came to the bottle store with us too, so we decided to have a cocktail night.

Sparing you all the details, we drank and laughed a lot. Penny and I reminisced a great deal. We gossiped. We danced on the front terrace. I rang Kini&Olivia and was terribly hurt that neither of them want to live with me. We took a series of dumbass photos which you can view here. We rang random people from Penny’s cellphone list that she wasn’t sure she knew, and had very amusing conversations. One guy had just been fined $13,000 for reckless driving. Jeremy gave us random numbers to call too, and then his friend kept calling him back. I bit Penny but didn’t leave any bruise marks, to our deepest regret. Around 2am we decided we’d go be larrikans out in the streets. I refused to go the park around the corner, so we walked up to Shell instead, then walked back playing Pringle Soccer. I had my camera so we took a succession of fantastic supermodel pose shots. We poll danced. Jeremy climbed a tree. I found myself unable to balance walk along a wall without holding onto Penny on one side, which made me mad cos I was really really good at the Beam in Primary school. Penny jumped into a bush which looked like fun, so I did the same, except it wasn’t all boingy like I was thinking it would be, in fact it was sharp and ouchy and I have deep gashes from it.

Today I woke up to say bye bye to Penny (also cos her phone with a goddam novelty ring kept going off in my room) but then went back to sleep, which is always fun to do cos the heat makes me have dirty dreams. I got up much much later then, and spent an hour reading the herald and stuff. My saturdays are so so cruisy. In the evening we did a tremendously huge heap’o dishes and cleaned up the kitchen proper, which was good. I did laundry. Stuff like that. At night, Jeremy and I were watching “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (I LOVE TV3 for deciding to screen 80s teen flicks every Saturday) but Kara kept ringing for Clay who’d gone to bed with an infected foot. She was going to bus over, but I told her I’d go pick her up from work, cos she’s much too nice to take a bus home at 11.30 at night. It’s just as well I did pick her up actually, cos there were literally hundreds of people waiting for buses in Newmarket cos of Christmas in the Park. Ick. “Order! Order!”

I have never taken my pants off while driving before today, and I must admit it was kinda fun. It’s fucking hot coming home in the late afternoons, and traffic moves slow enough to allow you to do things like that – if you’re wearing a skirt over pants as usual anyways, that is. I wanted to take my shirt off and just be in my sparkly singlet as well, but as my singlet was on over the shirt, that might have been a bit too much of a mission.

No driving today except for the commute which seems to get more and more annoying every day. I did make lots of phone calls and send out lots of official emails and stuff. I write up my every move on my task list in Outlook and it’s way too satisfying to be able to tick things off. I also emailed my dad and he called me an Angel. I thought that was so very sweet you can see it here. Yes, new page section alert. It’s kinda sparse right now. Kini gets it though, so she rocks.

Shopping in The’Puna at lunchtime, I came across a store called “Between the Sheets” and so I’d just like to actively encourage you all to spend $429 and buy me the duvet cover set on the first bed in the store. Thank you. I found what I wanna get Clay – a book on under $15 wines (Or maybe i should get him a book on under 15 girls), and we’re getting Jeremy one of those barking flipping dogs (don’t ask) but I could not find a book about Bears anywhere. Well admittedly I only went into two book shops. So instead I rang Karen in Welly since she does work for the best bookshop in the country, and told her to find me one. You know, more people should write books about bears. In fact, I think that all you people out there planning on writing novels should just flag that idea and write bear books instead. If you’re too poor to actually photograph bears, get your friends to dress up in animal costumes and photograph them instead. IN FACT, do both animals and animal suits if you can. That’d be great. “Bears and Bear Costumes” – how good does that sound?

I got my final results today – straight A’s, unsuprisingly. Well, an ‘A’ in Instructional Design, a slightly disappointing A- in Multimedia Project, and an A+ in Multimedia Broadcasting. I got an ‘A’ in Multimedia Production last semester, and I should have got an A in Graphics only I fucked up the exam and got a B+ so I did pretty well. (We just won’t mention the B- in 3D modeling, cos that was to be expected, as was the C in Mass Comm). Who’s a little girlie swat? Who’s a little girlie swat?

I’m applying for more jobs already now. I think an eight page cv/portfolio was waay too excessive though. I must learn to be more abrupt. “Order! Order!”

So I’ve been online for like 30 minutes and I still haven’t managed to read a single one of my emails yet. I really must change email accounts.

I bought two heads of brocoli today at 15 cents a head each. This is a good thing. I got them in Northcote, if you’re interested. Today again I was driving around the Shore investigating venues. It’s great. I like Rob in the car division – he gave me a manual drive car today when I told him about the stupid things I did with the automatic last week (I was wondering why the car braked so damn jerky when I was being super gentle until I realised that I was using my left foot on the brake, which as we all know is wrong). There’s a couple’o pajs parked down in amongst the company car pool too – I’ve promised Brad and Clay I’m going to try my hardest to get to take a paj out for the day and I’ll come and pick them up and we’ll drive through Remmers darling. Anyways. So yeah, Northcote/Birkenhead in the morning, then Devenport and Albany in the afternoon.

I had a meeting with the PR Consultant lady I’m working with who’s only in 2 days a week and gave my report and she said I was going well, and that I have full authority to go ahead and book the venues and start drawing up a timetable. Scaaary! I’d much rather someone was checking me every step of the way, but I just don’t have that at work – they leave me up to my own devices. I’m very good at looking busy. I have email at work now, finally my own key and login, but so far I’ve only given my email address to essential contacts (read: Kini and Olivia). I’m trying to be good. I don’t want to fuck this all up. I’m alredy worried about finding a job in February, because I know I have a tendancy not to be very good at seeking things out because basically everything i ever need falls in my lap. Except for my paycheque – grrr! I don’t get paid for a fortnight, and I’m in malls and shopping areas for half the morning – all my xmas shopping could be done by now if I had a cent left in the bank. Ahh well. Tomorrow I’m going to be in a working party conference anyways. Have I mentioned that I get business cards?

Wank wank wank wank wank. I actually am often left without anything to do, so I call Shirley, and since I’m in an open planned office, the people around me would hear
“Hi, it’s Joanna here from *, is that you Shirley? How are you?…….. Right, I’m calling in regards to the communication briefing I received the other day……….. No no, that’s fine……..yes I was in contact yesterday but we decided to not pursue that avenue any further for a while…. yes of course it’s re-occuring….I appreciate that…. absolutely, I’ll just make a note of that…….. yes…. yes….. well would you have some time free for a meeting?…….. how’s today for you?…..alright well we’ll scheduale something for next week then” and then my boss will come back and I’ll want to ask her something so I’ll hang up on Shirley really abruptly going “Great, well thank you very much for your time”. I’m SO a kid in heels and pearls. Nevermind the fact that the rest of the office spends their lives on the phone having really boring conversations with their car insurance and real estate agent places that I can’t help but evesdrop on. Or maybe they’re all speaking in a secret code too. Hmmmmmmm, intriguing!

Because I spent so much time driving today, I came up with a list of memorable car moments that I jotted down because I was bored. You know how I like my lists. Sheesh, anyone would think that I was incapable of stringing together anything more cohesive. And ha! I’m going to alphabetize them by the first letter in the sentence:

• A memory from Primary School; the greatest day of my life ever at that stage was when I got to sit squashed up next to my Crush – Andrew Carnegie – to and from a netball tournament
• Amy and Andee taking me over the harbour bridge by mistake, playing the Spice Girls and bumping the car to cheer me up
• Anji and Greg taking me up to Auckland for Pearl Jam when I was 14, determined to corrupt me and we picked up a dumb hitchhiker who said “Youse guys”
• Countless Welly/Auck drives with Kate B, listening to Cat Stevens, blowing bubbles and taking mad photos left right and centre
• Driving myself to Wellington thinking so hard that later I wrote a 7 page essay on the appropriate course of action to take as a consequence of that thought process
• Driving to Welly with Simon and Matt Sawkill in the backseat, me giggling away to myself like the cat that’s got the cream and is mixing its metaphors like a DJ with religion.
• Going to Waiuku for Kate H’s goodbye party, Justin putting the car in neutral going down a hill and it kept going, freefalling
• Kim speeding along Greenlane West at 3am in the fog when we were on a mad sugar rush and couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of us
• Kini in my rear view mirror, the magical drive into the Coramandel
• MM in the MR2, subwoofer under my seat, lost in Remuera at 4am trying to find food cos we’d been up arguing all night
• Pajero pulling up outside my house in Mount Roskill, Shirley and Dee Cavalry coming to be with me when I found out that Opa died
• Pixie’s friend Sam’s orange pumpkin car, tinnie house in Te Atatu right next to a primary school and I thought we’d be beaten up by protective westie parents
• Roadtripping to Waihi with Shirley, her doing crazy overtaking manouvers and making Trudie scream when I dared her to drive down a bank
• Sung Song association all the way to St. Heliers with Brad in the stereoless Grey Ghost
• the other night in Jeremy’s car, cold from swimming, falling asleep on Clayton’s shoulder

I warned you that i have full stationary cupboard rights – notepads are perfect for lists.

“I think you’re crazy, maybe, I think you’re crazy.”

Sleep in goooooooood. Boring day, reading Herald nice and relaxing. Lying back in bed after shower even nicer, listening to the CD I bought in Sydney even better. I love Kini.

Eventually Clayt, Jeremy Renee and I headed off to Long Bay – or is it Long Beach and are we ganstas? – for Jody’s bbq gettogether. Long drive, but it was in Jeremy’s car, which has red plush on the backseats, so that was cool. Actually, it reminded me heaps of Craccum Gareth’s car, so that was entertaining.

Jody’s friends are a little ummm – cliquey – but she’s still one of the coolest people I know. We called Shirley and got her and Richard to come from section 2 to section 13. While the boys were trying to barbeque, her and I went wading, me carrying my jeans above my skirt, and it was really cool. We had the best talk too. She said something about how it’s been cool for her to watch me change over the years and to see me growing stronger, and I agree. Yeah, good good good talk, an and I feel nice afterwards. BBQ’ed sausages were actually super nice, despite the fact that they’d seemed a little dubious. Jody etc packed up and left cos the park shut its gate at 9pm (Shirley and Jeremy had the good sense to move their cars out of the gate earlier). We’d just finished eating when Shirley and I started yelling at each other, baiting to go swimming, so I had to, stripping off to a slip and knickers knickers knickers behind a bush. We’d been drinking bubbly from plastic cups and it was getting dark which made it easier. Swinning was absolutely lovely. The water was warm and really really real, and I was with Shirley, who I love to pieces. My boobs would occasionally pop outta my slip, but generally when I was under water, and like she said -s he’s seen it all before anyways. We pledged to go Orgasm Shopping together. Heh.

It was dark and stuff, so I put my clothes back on – comando actually in my jeans, and I was bitching about it, so Clay was like “oooohkay” so i got mad and yelled “if you guys can hear in detail about how to give head, you can damn well listen to how uncomfortable I am that I’m not wearing underwear” and he conceeded I was right, so I chuckled lots and probably clutched at him to stay upright. Then, walking back to the car, we came across a children’s play area, so we had to stop and play. I freaked out totally over teh flying fox, because I was never a fan, even as a kid, but I was drunk enough to try it out, figuring the grass was soft enough to fall onto, and it was sooooo cool. I was screaming and laughing the whole way down, of course. And then we were playing in the fort, which was a bubbley structure pretty much like they have at every Burger King. As I’m a little larger than your average kid, I managed to get semi stuck in one part of it, but luckily my legs bend in all sorts of ways so I could untangle myself and go down the tunnel slide, shrieking all the way. It was cool. The drive home I spent going “Hurry up! Hurry up!” because I really needed to pee. Jeremy’s boycotting Shell becasue of their actions in Nigeria – good on him. I wish I followed all the No Logo ethics.

Anyways, back at home, Brad was all grumpy, so Clay and I decided to go without him. I changed my clothes and stuff, and paid Jeremy $5 to drive us (skinfl