Hubris.co.nz

I forgot how anal I get when I do quizes. Ohmigosh my team isn’t devoting their full energy to answering the questions? They’re disagreeing with me? THE WORLD IS ENDING! Still, it’s nice to dress up like a pirate every now and then, and then take photos from the 21st floor of your building:

I lost the momentum when we stopped at Jarrod’s apartment for him to get changed, so I ran away to take the bus home instead of going out to Karaoke, but I was also aware that I had a very big night planned for the following night and an early morning to deal with first.

So yes, Saturday, I got up before 11am so that Lani and I could move the fridge out from under the house and back to the kitchen so the repair man could put it back together. We were clever and decided not to lug it up the difficult steep kitchen stairs and around tiny corners, so instead we carried it al the way around the house and inside. And then the repairman was late, and later and latest, but Lani was kind enough to say that I should just leave her a cheque and go to the beach and she’d take care of it, so I went and swam between the flags for like the first time ever at Lyall Bay. There were only two other girls swimming because the water was powerfully cold, but damn it was nice, becasue it’d been ages (umm okay, since Tuesday) since I’d last been swimming. And then it was Jo Time brunch by myself, and I went for a hair cut and nearly purred/came/passed out when the lady gave me a very long, very thorough headrub. I wanted to ask for a happy ending, but I suppose settling for a nice haircut was happy ending enough for me.

6.20 had me pacing at the bus stop all dolled up for my big night out with the Wellingtonista, cursing Go Wellington for sending buses past me that didn’t stop, but 15 minutes later I made it in to Tupelo, to discover all the lights on, no one behind the bar, and all the sliding toilet doors off the rails. Spoooooooooooooooky! So I went and sat outside, and luckily was soon joined by Tom who was enough of a good reader to tell me that I looked smokin’ hott. Heh. While the bartender was still setting up the bar, we were joined by Hadyn and Amy and his mother, and shortly after that the lovely Miss Sue who was escourting Mr Brown and Ryan. Once James had joined us, we were interviewed about the Wellingtonista for Russell’s new radio show, me smirking behind my martini and trying to define again what it is that I hate about the word ‘blog’. And calling myself a wanker, and – according to James – using the word ‘anal’ four times in one minute to describe myself. After the gorgeous Martha bought me a surprisingly not-sweet gin sling, half of us set off for Scopa as the advanced party for our 13 person booking.

We decided that it’d be easiest if we just ordered pizza and wine for all of us, and so I interviewed about being dominant. I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to let people record me talking whilst drunk. It’s not like I make much sense whilst sober, and when I’m drinking I’m even more slurry. Still, I thought at the time that I was articulate and verbacious, so until I hear otherwise (possibly at 2pm on Saturday on Radio Live, or podcast later, or broadcast on another date), I will continue to believe that I give great soundbite. It was nice catching up with Ryan too, who I went to uni with, although he was part of the radio posse and I was with the multimedia geeks who weren’t nearly as bondy. Dinner was very very tasty, although I accidently got a piece of pizza with an anchovy on it, but I was able to wipe away that taste with our next destination:

Yes that’s right, PINEAPPLES AT IMBIBE!

Anyone would think that we’d pre-arranged them or something. But our visitors sure seemed to enjoy them, as did Martha and James:

More photos of the night can be see here on flickr.

It was around that time that I think I started to try to convince Russell that he needed to change Public Address to attract a better class of reader than some of the people who’ve stalked me through it or people that I may have hooked up with at the Great Blend. I suspect I didn’t have a very convincing argument. So instead when some girls asked me and Hadyn where we were off to next, I made fun of them and their taste. We said we were off to Mighty Mighty, and they said they were going to Jet, because the music at Mighty Mighty was shit. I was all “yeah I know, like the way they mix indie rock with rare hip hop tracks? What are they thinking, turning out fresh new mixes?” and said that my other favourite bar apart from Jet was Dockside. Well, it amused me anyway.

Then we left to go to Mighty Mighty and some boys outside smoking asked me if I was wearing my flower behind my ear on the single side. I told them it was an umbrella, not a flower, and asked them to figure out the symbolism in that, before skipping off. We were at Mighty Mighty for a while but everyone seemed to be peeling off, so I decided that I would go for a swim, just to live up to my reputation. I was a tiny bit more wussy though, and jumped off the lower dock rather than the high plank cos I didn’t want to hurt my nose, ears and throat again. James came in too, and Ryan got his shoes wet interviewing us about it. That’s dedicated journalism! I don’t think anyone would contradict me if I said that a good time was had by all, although apparently many people felt a little under the weather the next day. But not me! That’s the great thing about swimming.

The next morning I went and picked up Brad who was in town and we had big delicious fresh fish burgers at Maranui and hung out for a while. Good times. Monday Bart came over for flat dinner (green curry with fresh coriander from our herb garden) and to play Cluedo DVD. Monday night flat dinner and games is totally on every week that Smoo’s not working. You can come if you bring wine and/or wash the dishes after. Tuesday was meh. Today I went to the doctor and asked her to up my prescription, and to give me the medical certificate that work asked me to give them to show that I need to only work four days a week. I don’t have much to say about that today. I did before, but then I felt like throwing up all afternoon,and was gagging on the bus (and threw up at home. Mmmm biley). I am somewhat disappointed in myself for needing more meds despite all the hard work that I’ve been doing, but I’m looking forward to the increased dosage euphoria. And looking forward to doing more projects. Yes. And also looking forward to coming to Auckland for the Bloc Party gig on August 8. Woo woo. I am so so in love with A Weekend in the City, and also Neon Bible. ‘Sunday’ is now officially my new walking down the aisle song (“I love you in the morning / when you’re still hung over”). Now I just need someone to marry.

Do you ever get the impression that I spend most of my life looking for either my camera or my camera cables? Yeah? Me too. Right now it’s my cables, so I can show you photos of my pre-Saturday night. But instead I will have to talk to you about it. Oh the pain.

Luckily I have a darling friend who carries her camera almost everywhere with her, so I can steal her photos and say “this is what I was doing around midnight on Friday night”:
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Yes, that’s right, I was encouraging boys to jump off the plank with me. Lisa also took a photo of me, but come on, you think I’m going to put a photo of me in my togs online when it’s quite possibly the least flattering but most awesome shot ever? I even jumped off the plank a second time in order to facilitate that photo, because it turned out the tide was high enough that the bottom rung of the ladder was under water so I could actually climb out and back up again. Lisa made a new friend while Dyl and I swam, in the form of some random emo guy who wandered down to the lower dock where she was and stood there smoking cigarettes, it was a little strange.

Earlier we’d been at Tupelo, and there was a boy who rubbed me up the wrong way with some of his comments about how when he found out a guy at his work was gay he was very not keen to go to the bathroom at the same time. I was like “Do you think I’m hitting on you right now?” and he was like “Huh?” and I was like, “well, I like boys, so obviously I want to fuck you right now, right?” and my friend started cracking up because he could see that his friend was going to dig himself deeper and deeper. I was kind of bored, so I really dived right in with the logic. He tried to excuse himself with a “but in the bathroom there are penises” and I was all “well I like girls but when I’m at the gym, I’m not all “oooh I can see your vagina, I am so aroused right now”" and he tried the “well after I found out I still talked to him, I still invited him to parties” and I was like “OH MY GOD! i take it all back. You found out he was gay and yet you still treated him like a human being. You deserve a fucking medal, buddy”. Then Dave started playing porn on his laptop and when I got up, I leant on the far end of the table, and the other end came flying up and beer went all over his lap, and so he ran away. I would feel worse about it, because I really really hadn’t meant to spill the beer – but the total and utter glee and smiles on Lisa’s face when she came into the bathroom to high-five me made me so happy that I don’t feel as bad about it as I should. My other lesson from the night is that you shouldn’t let the new waitress at Harem try to make you cocktails because they will taste like Raro.

I was going to make Saturday Jo Day, but then I had leftover pizza to eat from Wednesday and Scar tissue to read (I’m no RHCP fan, but you know how I do so love the rockstar bio), so I didn’t go out for brunch. Instead, because Lani’s golf game got cancelled, I went out to PIRATE MINI GOLF with her since it was such a gorgeous day. We thought about waking up Smoo to make him come with us, but I don’t think he would have appreciated that. I ended up beating Lani by two points, because I got a hole-in-one on the second-to-last hole which she took six to get. Hurrah! I took lots of photos, but on my disposable camera, which is weeeeeeeeeeeeird because you can’t see what you’re doing! It’s like, all random luck! Strange! It was like using a rotary telephone. Then we went to Kaizen at Pataka Museum for coffee, and planned out our herb garden. But it was so fucking hot that we went to Lyall Bay instead of the garden centre, and I floated on the very very calm ocean until I touched a jellyfish and felt icky.

Back at home we decided to have a blind tasting session of the four kinds of Coruba Gold RTDs that I’d received a coupon for in the mail (see, there are some rewards for suggesting the most awesome Pirate Party that $50,000 would buy even if you didn’t get anyone to vote for it). The ginger ale was the most drinkable, and the energy drink was disguuuuuuuuuusting. But we wrote very wanky wine-style notes on each, which I’d replicate here if it didn’t involve getting up to find the piece of paper. As Lani got drunker, she became more and more convinced that Coruba should hire us to work for them. She also became more and more Adam Ant that we needed to play Cluedo. Since there were only two of us, because we’d ascertained that Smoo wasn’t actually still sleeping, we couldkn’t play her new video version, but at her insistence I slipped the magnetic travel version into my handbag when we set off for a party on Webb st her workmate was having.

I didn’t find the party very interesting, but there was very tasty caramel slice. Lani tried to pressgang everyone into playing Cluedo, and eventually we found a couple of willing Americans. Turns out it was Mrs. Peacock in the lounge with the dagger. Who knew? Lani did. We left the party, and debated going to Havana, but decided that what we really wanted to do was go home and have an encore of dinner (spaghetti with garlic, chilli and parsley) and watch Buffy. I should stress that it was her idea, not mine!

Today I woke up at 10.30am and spent two hours finishing off Scar Tissue before heading in to town for a slightly disappointing brunch at Ernesto consisting of fennel & carrot gluten-free toast, hash browns, bacon, mushrooms and black beans. I had to ask for butter for the toast, the hash browns were a little gluggy and the beans weren’t all that warm, but the coffee was great. I know they can do better, so hopefully it was just a once-off kitchen lapse. Then I went to Plastic Box (heh) for crates to tidy up our hallway with, and ended up spending $100 on a CD rack. But it is the KING of CD racks, let me assure you. It’s more like a full-on bookshelf. All my CDs will fit on it, and they’ll look all pretty and neat rahter than being scattered around in various vessels as they are now, and there’s room to grow, and oh, I just know that if my CDs are all neat and ordered and arranged to perfection then people will like me better and I will regain the control over my life that I felt has slipped a bit this week. And so of course then I went to Real Groovy to spend some vouchers. I was very very tempted to buy The Gossip, partly because of the awesomeness of the cover artwork, and partly because I like to think that I look like Beth Ditto does in the ‘Standing in the way of control’ video when I’m dancing, although I’m sure I don’t. But in the end, I got what I’d gone in for – the new Bloc Party, and the Cold War Kids, and also I found a really cheap American Music Club, all on CD and not vinyl, for a change. And I asked at the counter after the new Arcade Fire, and they told me how awesome it was and then ran all over the shop trying to find it, and eventually they did, and I was like, hurrah!

I was supposed to go to the garden centre with Lani then, but I felt very very Uggggggggh all of a sudden, so I ran (drove) to the ocean instead to try and shake it out. Lyall Bay was very shallow today, but the waves were big (and filled with black-legged jellyfish, dammit) so I got some good dunks. Then I floated for a while and eventually realised I was out of my depth and paniced briefly, and swam against the current back to where I could stand. That actually made me happy, that the survival instinct still kicked in even though the noise in my head was rising up and up and up and I don’t know why. I mean yes, I’m mango like crazy so surely I will bleed soon, and there’d been an unsettling email thing that’s been all sorted out now, and I realised that I hadn’t taken my pill, but bleh, not fun. So it was nice to come home and sit on the front steps with Lani and trim back old herbs and hope that they’ll grow and grow and grow. We’ve talked about starting a worm farm too. I kind of wonder why she’s so happy to make so many plans with me, like what do I have to offer her as a friend, and I’m thinking that about other people too, why do they put up with me, what can i do for them, and so on and so forth. This is also about how I haven’t been to counselling in almost three weeks, and so I haven’t sat down and provided clear examples (it’s the essay writer in me) of ways that I make other people feel good. But I can think of some of them, honest. Drinking two nights in a row – even if I didn’t get drunk (there’s that Citalapram drink tolerance kicking in) is not a good idea, I suspect.

Anyways, onwards and upwards. Tomorrow I’m cooking a roast and we’re having people over for DVD Cluedo. On the weekend I’m going away for a romantic weekend with my parents (insert hand/fist slapping motion here, suggesting that the family who lays together stays together), and then the weekend after that is a Wellingtonista get-together with secret plans and clever tricks. And somewhere in between I might get to clean the house. Maybe. OooH! I think Lani has tennis on Tuesday night and Smoo’ll probably be working so that’ll be clean time for me. What a thing to get excited about…

Edit: I must also add that right after I saw Rockstar: Supernova’s new ‘Head Spin’ video on TV (and Gilby’s guitar-playing sucks more than the original), I got a text from Annabel telling me that she just saw Lukas having his hair cut in Newmarket. Hahaha! Awesome.

In the time that I’ve written lately, IK really should have given some shoutouts to Harvestbird because a couple of Saturdays ago, Lisa and I spent some awesome time in her company.

Oh yes, that’s right, did you enjoy that link? Cos it’s going to get more linky. So linky. Like when I talk about how we went to Bic Runga and it was so much more awesome than Alan’s experience, like Lisa’s photos will no doubt show you. Highlights include Bic stopping to point at a man peeing in the bushes. SO AWESOME! SO Intimate. We got seats RIGHT AT THE FRONT and enjoyed them mightily until some fuckwits came and sat in front of us drunkenly and talked and talked and oh man, I wanted to bottle those fucks. In fact, the ten dollar venison burger was plenty tasty but didn’t fill me up so I could have eaten those dumb fucks. Oh yes. But, as I said to Alan tonight, I wanted to retract all the things I said about kids befre, cos they were so much more awesome than the stupid fucking drunken grownu dicks. Oh, and I must give mad props to the girls (ummmm Georgie and Lindsay?) who came up to me and asked if I was Jo, Jo Hubris, and said that they loved my website, and made no mention of my blog or of Next (unlike the cleaner at work, and the woman behind the counter at the gym). Hurrah!

That was Saturday. Friday night was the gorgeous Peti’s 30th at the Southern Cross, and that was much much fun. D&D were actually rather drunk, as was Miss Fur, who was somewhat of a sad panda, and while I would hope that I’d never take advantage of that, I totally took advantage to stroke her hair and cuddle her like woah. Perhaps the boys were drawing off me in their insanely handsiness – apparently my Mary-Kate and Ashley locket is a total magnet. And yes, I will take some responsibility for like, the total hottness of my boobies, but like, woah. WOAH. Heh.

Which brings us to Sunday, which was officially (by me) declared to be Jo Day. This meant an hour and a half brunch at the local cafe with the puke-filled paper (OH MY HOLY FUCKING GOD I HAVE so MANY THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE POLICE RAPE THINGS), and then a swim at Lyall Bay in which the waves were over my head and there was so much sewaweed it ended up in my togs when I was showering, but the insane dunkings were kind of fun. And then I saw Ash in the supermarket so she came over for a beer in the sun, anad we talked about oh, you know, being crazy. I’d hoped to have a BBQ but of course that didn’t work out, so I fought off the associated “OMG EVERYONE HATES YOU” feelings in favour of a “wow, it’s entirely possible that one day someone will die from food poisoning as a consequence of you, but meh” feeling.

Monday was very very meh, and pretty much the only highlight was my parcel from torrid.com, that included patent wedges with 4.5 inch heels that are SO FUCKING HOT all capital letters-esque, but you know,the practicality of actually walking and existing in them had me trying on many outfits (well, okay, two) for Lani and Smoo’s thoughts. Naturally we ignored what Smoo had to say, because he’s a boy, so of course he’s going to go for the red dress. Which meant of course that tonight found me wearing my brand new purty suit, for which I spent much of the evening giggling and chuckling at my pretense of actually being grown up and professional and all. Of course, that’s frequently like totally not true, although I did do a fuckload of work today, despite spending two hours stuffing envelopes. Apparently if we get another 300 people on our mailing list, we get to outsource the job, so are you keen?

But yes, so I went to the Paramount for Webstock Mini all dressed up and pretending to be a grown-up. I was of course there to support Sue and to support Martha, but I was also interested in what the speakers would have to say. Naturally I found myself giggling like a norty school girl in the back row, with other Wellingtonistas, but I felt I redeemed myself when someone (actually a sort-of client) was trying to introduce me to Skank, and I was like “oh yes, I used to know her” and he as was all “but she’s here tonight, you should meet her!” and I was like, wow, what’s the best way to put the emphasis on Iused to that would make it clear that I kind of wish I was 8 so I could scratch out her eyes. Do eight-year-olds do that sort of thing? Well, I suppose they don’t go to jail for it anyways. But blah blah. I’m pretty over people who are all “yes, we met before, I was there when you went swimming, remember?” because clearly I DON’T remembver, as well. I cheered loudly for Martha when she spoke, and when they asked if anyone else wanted to get up and talk about how the internet had changed their life, I knew exactly how I’d start, and it’d go a littl elike this: “Recently I got an email from a Canadian. this isn’t that unusual on the interweb, of course, but the fact that he told me that I was the reason that he stareed taking his bi polar medicine is pretty fucking special”. And the speech would go on to talk about the online community, and how in many ways you get the same giggling cliques (ie: the Wellingtonista giggling before Martha spoke), because of the bigger numbers even the most outside of the outsiders could find a place. Yeah!

But instead of saying that, I just talked to Martha & Glen and Sue, until they left and I still had a glass of wine in my hand, so I ended up going to Sweet Mother’s Kitchen for dinner with some people I knew and some I didn’t. we of course couldn’t get a table straight away, so I was drinking margaritas in an alleyway with the postboxes, and when we could sit I talked to our sort of client – or are we their sort of client? – about how their presentation was hilarious because their page of doodles included a couple of doodles of jizzing cocks, and umm, hi, inappropriate, but HILARIOUS. and it’s okay cos two of the Comms team are married, so they explained it to us. I had fish tacoes but I think almost no one got the “heh heh heh” of the title, and I got bored whilst eating and someone else finished it off for me. And then at the end I had another margarita and things were cool and fun, and I was talking ot a handful of people, but then the boy that I fucked a couple of weeks ago was all “so is your insulin level the way it is cos you’re fat?” and I was like “What the FUCK?” and got really angry, and stated loudly for the record and also for me that umm hi, my insulin levels are actually really fucking awesome (I have been tested many times and do not have diabetes), as is my cholestrol and my everything, except for, you know, my blood pressure in December. And that just made me so rarked up, like, oh, so the whole time that you were fucking me and I was feeling good cos I thought I was all like, good times and confident and awesome, you were all “wow. your. diabetes. is. like. amputatative. And. I would. like. to fuck. your stump. hole. ” and he wouldn’t step away from it, and I got so angry, because yes, I’m fat (okay, you didn’t notice?) but hi, I go to the gym at least three times a week, I go swimming at least three times a week, excetera, excetera, there are so many ways to be in which you can be worse than mine, and I always thought that my fucked-up part was my mental health, not my physical, so I left with the whole “Okay bye, nice to meet you”, “nice to meet you”, “nice to meet you” “wow, you’re a fucking cunt and I thought you were actually a nice guy” goodbyes and laughed at the “ooooh”s. So I took a 14, and got moody, and ended up crying at the foot of Smoo’s bed (or mattress) while he sat there not entirely knowing what to do but offering sound logic instead of hugs instead. Poor Smoo. It was just about the how things that make you feel good about yourself can sometimes backfire, and that’s dumb, and boo. And also, one of the guys tonight who did his two minute talk about how the interweb changed his life had talked about literal life-saving in the Balklands, and that’d made me want to cry at the time. Like, for serious,yes. Blah blah. Waaaaaaaaay too tired to write more now.

Edit: this morning my breasts are totally glassy, so ooooooooooh, I’m premenstrual! Aha! It all makes sense now.

It’s official. Sue is a bad influence. An hour and a bit talking to her online has cost me nearly $300 on my credit card. That’s on top of the $110 I spent at Farmers at lunchtime on firing protection. I should explain.

I think it’s also official that I am not just in a weekend come-down. For the past couple of weeks I have been saying to myself “I will always have depression but I won’t always be depressed” on account of how it’s been more than three occurances but there’s the euphoria too. But then there’s the gap where the euphoria of initial pillage was and it’s the “oh, so this is what it feels to be normal huh?” but then there’s the gap underneath where the normal is supposed to be. I didn’t go to work yesterday, because I couldn’t get out of bed, and also my throat was as swollen as a 17 year old virgin’s balls. I found myself at Lyall Bay in the afternoon, in the water cursing at the waves every time they failed to drown me. I wanted the cold water to wake me up, to make me grateful for being alive, to make everything feel real again, but instead I was angry because I couldn’t cry, because I was feeling numb, and because the lure of the water out to where it was deep and green and peaceful was stronger than it should have been for someone who is in theory on the mend. And of course just when I was about to start yelling and screaming out loud, no matter how much I was trying to supress myself because while I’d been the only one in the ocean when I started, two ten-ish year olds had shown up and were squealling at the waves too by that stage, I turned my back on the ocean and didn’t jump quite in time and a huge fucking wave crashed in to me so hard that for a moment I thought it’d broken my arm and that made me laugh lots and lots and cry “AHA TOUCHE!” at the waves. And so I left the foam behind and went home in a daze.

Today I made it in okay, but everything went downhill from there.At lunchtime I decided to be oh so very girly and go shopping in an effort to make myself feel better. I went to Farmers and laughed at the new labels they have in their fat section, because if you wnated to spend $130 on a skirt, would you really buy it there? No no sir. At least I hope not. But then I found a totally cute (yes, that is my phrase for everything now, and no I will not be changing it this week) grey tweedish skirt for $50, and a matching shortsleeved jacket for $60 (the skirt is curved to fit curves, with netting petticoat trim and a slight fishtail, the jacket is semi puffed sleeves and two buttons, and is two sizes smaller than the skirt, as if I needed further evidence of the pear shape of I. If you can’t picture it, I should say it’s sort of late 1940sish, pre Dior-new look but not all with the “oh there’s a war on” strictness), so I bought that on the grounds of if I get fired from work soon I will need some nice clothes to go to interviews in. Half of me doesn’t think that I will need them, of course, but then there’s the half that thinks I am worthless and useless and that everyone hates me and that I am a burden to everyone who knows me. It was nice to not have that half for a while, but meh. Oh, but of course when I got to the register, it turned out I’d left my wallet at home. When I got on the bus in the evening, after spending half an hour crying in the toilets after discovering that all the work I’d done int eh past couple fo weeks may be lost due to a syncing problem (euphemism), I got on a Lyall Bay 03 instead of a Lyall Bay 06, so had to get off and then because I was wearing my uncomfy mary janes I thought I’d walk back to Mt Vic and bus it rather than walk through the horrible Hataitai tunnel. Of course, I just missed a 5 getting to the bus stop, so i decided to cash in a voucher I had from Coruba for a free 4-pack of testing taster RTDs (I said free, right?) and while I was waiting for a guy to actually serve me a 2 went past. Then I lost my earphones and had to go back to the store to get them, then i had a long wait for a bus, then there was a long queue at the 4 Square and my avocado was $3.50 and and and oh man, badness. So tonight has been all about orange juice, frozen vodka ands peach schanpps and you know what? I think my flu has retreated a little. And Sue made me buy two pairs of shoes from Torrid, and also a ticket to Mini Webstock. And I don’t care. Somehow my credit card bill will be paid off, and my depression will get better, and we’ll figure out something at work about syncing and oh, blah.

I have been as busy as a mongoose lately. A mongoose! And consequently, there is not a part of my body that doesn’t ache. Except for maybe my right ear. But that’s it.

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.

Once again, I have been neglectful, and for that I apologise. But look outside. Do you really expect me to be indoors at my computer when it’s as gorgeous as it has been for the past week? Well yes, as a matter of fact, I spent all day at my dining room table typing away, because I slept very badly last night and consequently felt like shit this morning, and so asked permission to work from home. And that’s not even “work from home” as I did a page by page analysis of our site, proofreading, editing and planning for the future – and there’s about 100 pages on it. I was particularly impressed with one page that has “Image: please supply an image and caption in landscape form” developed as part of the text body, in title tags even, becasue um, hello, wakey wakey whoever developed it. Which wasn’t me. It was a long long boring job, but it was made easier by the fact that I was in my pyjamas, and Sebastian was curled at my feet, and all the doors and windows in the house were open to let in some air. That was much better than being in the office. It was also great that I managed to do three loads of washing whilst working hard, and also in my lunchbreak I went for a swim.

I have been doing much swimming lately, sometimes in my totally hott new togs, running to the beach after work, or on the weekend when I got totally sunburnt on Sunday. But let’s talk about the total and utter joy of last Friday first. In fact, let me paste in my drunken summation of it:

So, today I was clever and took my togs to work. But sadly, at lunch today as I wasn’t going to the gym, I ended up spending $50 at Farmers on lip gloss, tweezers, handcream and eye shadow. Then I thought I would pop into Zebranos cos they were having a sale, amnd I found a dress that I thought would be okay to try on since it was two sizes smaller than I thought i needed, but it ended up being fucking hot, if a little Twee-able, so I ended up buying it, on the rationa that it was $250 cheaper than usual on account of the sale (skipping that it meant it was $200), and then I had to go to Farmers again to buy a slip to go under it. Then at 5pm I ran away and took at #15 and went to the children’s playground near the Tugboat and found AWESOME private changing rooms and put my togs on and then Karen was there and we went SWIMMING! She pointed and made “want to?” motions at me, and so we decided that yes, we would swim out to the raft anchored in the harbour. It was about 100 metres out, and I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to make i, because while I am an excellent frolicker and floater, actual swimming isn’t actually my thing. But I paddled out there, and clambered on board, and felt my heart go bang bang bang, and we hung out there until we saw hordes of wetsuited people heading for us, so I dived in, and OW, must have done a booby flop cos while I thought it was a good dive, it hurt my tits like woah, but I swam back to the show mostly, and woah like FUN!

PS my dress is AWESOME

It is good when things are awesome. When I saw my counsellor last Tuesday I told her I kind of didn’t even want to come and see her since I was feeling so good and I knew that talking to her would be hard, and we talked about that some more. She asked me about my relationships and I laughed, and later she said “do you think you deliberately go for unavailable men?” and I laughed and laughed and laughed, not just because it’s funny because it’s true, but also because it seems like such a counselling cliche. I feel a little like she’s trying to tick every box with me, because now we have decided on something she says that many of the things about me are typical of that thing. But the thing that is grand is that she made me realise that while the pills have started to work, and the sun plays a part in lifting my mood I can also be proud of all the work that I have done to get myself into this state of being mostly okay again. So hurrah for me! What a clever girl I am.

What else do I have to tell you about? Tomorrow I am going to the Great Blend where people will no doubt refer to me as a blogger, and I will no doubt cringe. On Saturday February 10, I will celebrate ten years of Internetting. Yes, I surfed before, but that was the first day that I stumbled upon IRC, and therefore became addicted. In July I will have had a personal site for ten years. Ten years. Imagine that! And on that note, it must be time to put away my computer for the night. I am tired from doing so many loads of washing, and work, and making pesto, and cooking Papas Garbanzo for Lisa, and then going for a sunset swim at Lyall Bay. But before I go, I must throw mad props to Tori Spelling, because Donna Martin in Season One? Fucking hilarious.