It is astonishing how much difference a little bit of money has made in my life. Getting paid for the contract work that I’ve been doing meant I could pay my phone bill. It meant I could get my meds. It meant I could pay rent. It meant I could go see my counsellor and discuss with her how awful it makes me feel to be 29 and in debt to both my sisters and my parents. She told me many times that just because I am bad with money it doesn’t mean that I am a bad person. We also talked about ways that I can work through things so that I don’t throw my hands up in the air and give up on everything and retreat to my “safe” place at the bottom of the Piths Of Dethspair. Of course though, along with the rest of the world, she is hapu, which means that she’s going on maternity leave soon so I can’t have a another breakdown until April, okay?
Job hunting continues to happen. I got feedback from one interview that I went to along the lines of “We thought you were fantastic. You blew us away. As soon as you left the room, we were all like ‘oh man, we wish we had a job for her!’ ” . I am considering being slightly less awesome in my next interview in order to avoid this happening again. Then again, the contract work that I am doing right now (at which I am kicking ass and taking names) is the result of a similar result from another job interview, so perhaps there is hope for me yet. And next week I will get paid by the government to help my mother cook dinner, so that’s always good (Serious Entertainment Function hosted by my father. It’s like the ’80s and the ’90s diplomatic life all over again).
So that’s the work front. On the home front, while I’m still looking for one flatmate, Thigh Voltage moved in yesterday and we had hilarious hijinks trying to mandangle a four-seater couch up our very steep and narrow stairs and through our tight hallway. Later that night Anna Jane gave me a neck massage and went “oh you’re so tight!” like a pornstar. I giggled a lot. I recommend her massage services, by the way. Chiara and Rachel plaited my hair like I was a My Little Pony. We were tiki-shacking it up to welcome Thigh. My house was full of my lovely friends and the glorious roller derby girls and other people who read twitter or something. I had hilarious gossips with Kim and Laura and Lisa in the tiki shack (we were mostly in the house because of the wind). My catchphrase this weekend has been “I drink a lot and I have low self esteem!” It goes a long way in explaining many things about me. However, the compliments from the roller derby girls about my creepy fandom and also of my boobs (I wore a low-cut dress to make up for not providing much food or drink, you see) went a long way to boosting up my ego to sky high levels. I have been reminded of the fact that the reason I have so many awesome people in my life is because I am actually pretty damn awesome.
Other things of note recently:
the meal Bambi cooked for me while I was crying on Anji’s shoulder
how after I cleaned the fridge out I discovered the only food actually in it was some creamed corn
the hammering I did when Shirley repaired her (stolen) park bench
discovering that apparently people a couple of years younger than me don’t use condoms every single time that they have sex (WTF? How is that possible???? I have had sex without a condom a grand total of twice in my entire life, and I was on the pill and thought I was in a monogamous relationship. There are some things I don’t fuck around with, you may be surprised to learn).
the insane amount of spirits that we got through last night. So many empty bottles.
eating Ethiopian food for the first time
The things filling up my social calendar – gallery openings, book launches, Skate Highway One – Wellington vs Auckland at Roller Derby, the FOURTH ANNUAL WELLINGTONISTA AWARDS OMG etc.
And now some multimedia stuff:
Me winning the best sign competition at the last bout of Roller Derby with this gem which encourages world peace, because obviously I’m dressed to support SMASH MALICE who won, but also the new flatmate who’s on Brutal Pageant:
Photo by Jed Soane
Bad Tom teaching Chiara how to tie a cravat before Pride & Prejudice & Zombies:
That might be it for now, actually. Leave me a comment, I haven’t updated for a while so give me a reason to be a woman do it more often!
Last Tuesday I was on the bus home, and I was texting Kat saying “I hate everyone in the whole world. Except for you” because I was having a really horrible shitter of a week/month/year, and all I wanted was someone’s shoulder to cry on. Then when I was stumbling down my street trying not to cry, I suddenly thought “Well, why the fuck don’t I just go visit her?” and decided that if I could get flights for under $500, I would. A quick flick through the Air NZ site and a text to confirm that she was free for the weekend later, I found myself with flights booked for Friday-Sunday, and as she told me that they live in a bedsit, I searched wotif.com for a hotel, and then ended up making a booking straight through the Hotel On Devonport site as it was cheaper – $130+gst for a deluxe room. Plus, they emailed me back almost instantaneously saying that they saw I requested a 10am check-in, to let me know that if my room wasn’t ready at that stage I could still park and leave my suitcase there. Very impressed with that.
That made the rest of the week a little more dealable-with-able, along with sending a series of “this is why I am angry with you” emails to a series of people. And so on Friday morning I found myself up before 7am, with the shuttle picking me up at 7.20am. Golly gee, that was an early morning. Air NZ has gone all super high tech at the airport, where you check yourself in at a kiosk, print your own sticker for your bag, and just biff it on the conveyor-belt yourself. At this stage I would like to mention that the Caltex in the Newtown shops still sends an attendant out to pump your gas for you. What is happening to service in the rest of the world? Won’t someone please think of the children? Anyways. I had heaps of time so I got a coffee from Fuel and read the paper, but if I’d known that they wouldn’t give me a stamp for the coffee, I would have gone to Wishbone.
The flight itself was uneventful, and touching down in Tauranga was pretty. As soon as my taxi driver found out that I’d never been to Tauranga before, he proceeded to narrate everything, which is what I hoped for. He gave me so much information that I was constantly able to pull it out over the weekend and impress Kat & Kane, or at least make them start calling the taxi driver my boyfriend. He answered my questions about how much a taxi to the Mount would be, pointed out where the buses went from, explained that the Strand went off on Saturday nights (his words) and lifted my suitcase out of the car for me. The reception staff at the hotel were just as friendly and nice, finding me a room that was available then rather than making me wait, and asking when I’d like my complimentary drink delivered. My room on the fifth floor was absolutely lovely:
However, I couldn’t make the lights go. And yes, I saw the large plastic key thing that you’re suppose to slide into the switch, but it wouldn’t go in. I rang reception, and told them, so they sent someone up, who couldn’t make it go either because there was something jammed in the hole. They found housekeeping who unjammed it, but the lights still didn’t go on and they blamed a broken fuse. Five minutes later, I had electricity, and they checked to make sure. Hurrah! Kat wasn’t due to finish work until 2pm, so I decided to venture out and find myself some brunch.
Devonport St is the main shopping street in Tauranga, apparently, so there were lots of places around. There were also lots of vacant shops, but mostly it was a pleasant little high street full of chain stores. A block over and down I found a little plaza area, and decided to eat at Bravo because they had lots of sunny outdoor tables. I had mushrooms on toast with super crispy bacon and enjoyed the sunshine. I found the city art gallery and marvelled at the collection of NZ paintings that BNZ bought during 1982-1987 before they went bankcrupt or whatever, and talked to the attendant about how patronage of the arts will no doubt suffer in this current R-Word climate. After that, I strolled around a bit more before heading back to the hotel for a lovely nap on the huge big bed. Even Damian Christie recommends the hotel, and that says a lot.
Then it was KAT TIME! She came to meet me at the hotel and I hugged her so hard I almost went all Mice & Men on her. I offered to buy her a pedicure, so we went off in search of a place that would take us. The first place we tried right across the road was busy, but the second one we found (there are nail salons EVERYWHERE in Tauranga, it’s a little weird) the woman said she could do us both at once. Oooer. So we clambered up into the massaging chairs and soaked our feet while she slid back and forth between us. I know we didn’t have appointments, but she was really rushed because as we discovered she had another client coming in, and I just don’t think we got a very good deal. I was really disappointed that we didn’t get the dead skin razored off our feet, or any kind of massage (in fact, she only rubbed lotion into one of my feet!) and the nail polish job was patchy, and since my toenails are unnaturally thick, I always put polish on their edge, but she didn’t. For $48 each, I thought it was seriously lacking (although looking at their site now, what they list is what we got). Still, I bought some bright yellow nail polish as well, and it was relaxing to have the soak and the electric massage, and that’s what I was after. Perhaps I was spoiled by my only other pedicure experience in New York. And in fact, looking at prices of other places on the net right now, maybe that’s pretty standard or actually fairly cheap. Ahh well.
Then we headed to a convenience store for snacks and a bottle of wine, and sat out on my sunny balconey until it got too hot and then we flopped all over my bed. We booked dinner at Cafe Versaillies for 8.30pm so we could watch NZNTM first, and Kane came and joined us in my hotel room for television watching, napping, and making sex-faces on the big suede headboard to confuse the housekeeping staff:
Eventually though, we were so hungry that we decided to change our booking to 7.15pm. We were seated in a corner that if we’d been on a date we could have had butterfly-adorned curtains pulled around us.The very French man at the restaurant was very accomodating, even though we felt obliged to try and thank him in French, which made me want to speak Japanese, as that’s my default “not English” language, and Kat was the same with Spanish. I tried very very hard not to make any “aw haw haw Baugutte!” exclamations, which was hard, because I was very very giggling, and also our napkins were arranged thusly:
And how can you fight that? Especially if you’re a cheese-eating surrender monkey. YOU CAN’T! It’s NOT POSSIBLE! So instead we surrendered to the duck in orange sauce and eclairs with incredibly intense chocolate sauce, and some beajolais and potato gratin. What did the French person say when they’d eaten a lot of amazingly delicious food, including eggs in Kat & Kane’s chocolate mousse? I’ve had an oueff!
After that we adjorned to my hotel for more lol-ing and lolling around on my big bed before they finally went home, with plans to pick me up at 10am the next day. I slept fantastically, the double-glazed doors keeping out the sound of street hooliganism that I expected but never saw. If I could change one thing about the hotel though, it would be that they didn’t have aloe vera-flavoured moisturiser because I don’t like aloe vera scent. But that’s just me being super picky. I should have remembered to pack my own lotion.
So yes, anyway, Saturday. They picked me up and we went to Grindz on First Avenue for breakfast after we flagged walking up to Fifth for some sort of market. They said that the staff at Grindz can have bad attitudes, but my french toast and coffee were great, even if the toast was more eggy than I personally prefer. Plus I love that Grindz has a whole dedicated playroom for kids to keep them out of my ears. We did some shop-browsing, then jumped on a bus over to the Mount. Kane wanted to go to a particular op shop, so we went to the “bad” part of the Mt Manganui shops. It all seemed a bit sad and shut down. I tried on a thousand pairs of sunglasses, but I still can’t find any I like as much as the glasses I wear these days which I’ve had since 1999 (May 1, 1999 to be exact! Which was also the first day I told someone to their face that I loved them is how I know that for a fact) and they’re all scratched up to hell. Eventually we got to go and plonk our asses down on the beach and watch a family learn to surf. I couldn’t help but cheer every time any of them caught a wave, especially the 10 year old girl. Kat also made me laugh and cheer and clap by performing the chicken dance from Arrested Development for me and also for Lisa, except that it was too high-res to mms to her. But here it is for you. Turn your head!
And if that video doesn’t make you happy, then you are officially (OFFICIALLY!) the lamest person on the face of the planet. Now, when I twitted that I was going to Tauranga, I asked people what I should do. Almost everyone who replied told me I should go for a walk up the Mount. Here is a picture of the Mount.
I don’t walk up shit like that. In fact, I was already starting to develop a blister, as well as having one on the back of my heel still from my stupid new shoes, and my arms were banged up from walking into a pole. So it was nice to sit on the beach and chill for a while, but eventually I declared that I needed scheduled relaxing free time, and we made a plan to go and get a bite to eat. I picked Slow Fish at random, and it turned out to be a very clever thing to do, because the haloumi that came with my greek salad was the best haloumi I have ever ever eaten. Because I feel bad for you because you didn’t get to share my haloumi, here is a bonus picture of a tree with big bouncy branches that we rode like ponies:
Then we went to the Hot Pools. Because I mysteriously found myself in possession of a Tauranga library card, I got in for $6, but it would have been worth the outsider rate of $14. We sat in the passive pool for a while because it had a shade sail over it, and I impressed K&K with my sign-reading-and-retention knowledge by telling them that it was called the passive pool, and that it was 35 degrees. Then we switched over to the active pool in the sun, but it was a much cooler-feeling 33 degrees, and so we were more active. We did interpretive water dances about our jobs. Apparently my job involves me typing with my toes. The salt water made me super extra buoyant. I couldn’t help but float, so I impressed them with my abilty to float with my legs crossed. My sunglasses are so big Kane could wear them happily over his glasses, but they did get salty. We finished with a soak in the spa pools (38 degrees) and then went across the street for Copenhagen ice cream. I discovered that a Black Cow Soda Shake is made with coke and chocolate ice cream, but since I’d already had coffee and a coke my heartrate was being a bit racy (like a Victorian lady showing off her ankles!) so I settled for a lemonade & chocolate concoction. It was weird and tasty but I don’t think I’d want to have one every day.
Back at the hotel (my room was apparently aproximately the size of their house) there was more napping (I LOVE napping with people, I could totally be friends with Bret and Jermaine) and many episodes of The Simpsons before we strolled off to the fish dock for dinner.
It’s very nice eating 100 metres from where the fish comes in. People in the know bring along their own picnic sets and booze, but we just ate out of the paper. The fish was amazing, so fresh and crispy and yum. It made me a very happy Jo to be sitting with two of my favouritest people watching the sun set. Kat says that one of the reasons that i like them so much is that they don’t make me do anything, that we can just be still in each other’s company and not have to be rushing around doing anything, and maybe that’s true, and we proved it when we went back to my hotel to watch Grand Designs and Richard E Grant being awesome in Miss Marple. We giggled with glee a lot and told stupid jokes and just generally had an amazing time, and then they left and I was a bit sad. So I changed the time on my cellphone for daylight savings ending, and then I went to sleep.
When I woke up to my alarm, I looked at the time on the alarm clock that I’d also adjusted, and realised that MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH my cellphone had ALSO changed its time, and there was 25 minutes until my plane left. I grabbed all of my shit and rang a cab and dropped off my key. After waiting ten minutes for my taxi to show up, the driver tried calling the airport for me, but the flight was already gone. At the airport they offered to put me on the next flight to Auckland, but it was only going to save me $20 or so and I would have had to wait around there too, so I decided that I’d just take the next flight to Wellington – at a cost of $370 extra. I waved my arms in pretendish-fiero when I found out that at least I’d get air points for that flight so that I wouldn’t cry. I took my complimentary Herald On Sunday to a picnic table outside and waited three hours for my flight, really regretting not having taken the time to call the airport before leaving the hotel so that I could have showered and had a decent coffee and breakfast in town. Sigh. And then the fucking shuttle in Wellington went all the way around Oriental Bay and then back into Newtown while I sat there fuming and just wanting to be home and clean and with my kitty. Grrr. Bad way to end a holiday but oh man, it was a glorious time, so chilled out, relaxed and pampery. It was exactly what I needed and the perfect time to have it too. I will go back.
Other things in very very brief format that I have been up to: getting better at Hottest Dance Party Ever! on the wii, even though my knees might disagree / organising the Pretty Pretty Pretty First Birthday Party for April 18 (come along!) / discovering that me and much of my team are being made redundant at work / stressing out about Sebastian when he got a big nasty abcess and was in a lot of hurt at the vet’s / freaking out my new GP with all kinds of crazy questions and cut-up arm from falling against the evil wall outside the National Library while she was giving me a smear / trying to figure out ways to expand my circle of friends because I’ve been having Wellington claustrophobia because everyone has slept with everyone and it’s kind of stressful keeping it all in balance / having a million kinds of difficulty getting ahold of my shrink before and after my prescriptions ran out / making the married man sit at the back of a cafe and watch me cry for 45 minutes just to be sure that it registers with him how much I’m hurting but neglecting to ask the things I wanted to ask / buying a new laptop and becoming obsessed with season two of Gossip Girl / being perplexed by people who have different values than mine to the point where I was going to call my journal entry “My cunt: who’s in it and who’s not” before I went to Tauranga, and it would have gone into more detail about my smear and no one really wants to read that do they? / going to the most fantastic Steam Punk party ever where everyone was dressed up, there was a whole ballroom and a Klemzer band playing and pashing the woman that I pashed at Kowhai’s party last year again / I think that’ll do for now.
Clay has no faith in me, or perhaps he has too much faith. Either way!
When did I last write? Probably a while ago. Ahh, Wednesday, when I was sick and dying. Right. Well, Thursday I got up and cleaned the kitchen with Clay – we scrubbed inside cupboards and everything. Ben started moving out around 6pm, which was also when Bopa started moving in, so I found that kind of amusing. When Ben left finally I wished him good luck. Apparently he’s going back to Thames and he’s going to become a fisherman. It seems that the big city has broken his spirit. I’d feel a little guilty for that except that i told him he owed me $175 and he only gave me $80.
We had some bubbles to celebrate Bopa moving in, and chatted to her friend Rabbi who was very nice. She went out to some gig, Clay went to hockey, and KateM picked me up and we went down to The Classic to meet up with KateH and see EyeTV’s last ever gig. After watching Sammy doing his MC intro, Katem and I realised that we hadn’t had dinner, so we went down to the Tanuki’s cave for yakitori. When we got back to The Classic, Soda were still playing. They were okay; nothing exciting. I was amazed at how empty the place was, and that it continued to get emptier and emptier, just because it was after 11pm by the time that EyeTV started playing. But they were so good! I love the singer. Of course, you may very well have noticed that i have an obsession with the singers of Kiwi bands, which works out well with KateH fancying drummers. Then again, I have started to notice the finger-work of bassists more and more, but that might just be my dirty mind. Anyways, they played Basement Static so I was stoked, and of course they played their other hits (if I was to reference you, ‘Just the Way it is’ would cut out in the middle), and we boogied lots and lots up the back. As a followup, Luke Casey noticed us dancing, and I’m sure he was impressed, so that’s cool. I couldn’t figure out why I was so comfortable with Sammy, since i’ve only met him a couple’o times whilst working for KateM and I realised that he reminded me completly of someone, but it took me until today to work out that he looks just like Olivia’s Steve. I was still very sick, and when the discoball started spinning, I was spinning too, doped up on night&day, and brufen and champange and passion cosmos. Kate was like “are you okay?” and I was like “I pay hundreds of dollars to feel like this sometimes!” which was of course an exaggeration, but still, the swimming feeling was kinda fun.
On Friday I met with my tutor in Persuasive Communication to discuss my forthcoming seminar, and she gave me some starting points – cognitive dissonance and social judgement theory if you wanna send me some papers on those topics. She also reminded me that attendance at all classes is compulsory, and then gave me back my mark for my first speech. I got 14/20 on it, and I’m wellstoked, because I also got a whole bunch of constructive comments and yeah, I kinda wanted to pin my mark to our fridge.
After that, I ran a bunch of errands and got my hair cut. Mmmmmmm scalp massage. Note to anyone who ever wants to watch me purr – play with my hair and rub my head. Thank you. After that I went up to the Office and did a whole bunch’o research using proquest; AUT’s library has gone all hightech and e-resourced since I left. And then I went to Mezze to have lunch with Dee and Shirley and Maz. Two PR girls & one in training vs one unemployed journalist; if we’d gone with our stereotypes (Dee walked in talking on her phone) it could have been very amusing. But we didn’t. So yeah, it was nice to catch up. I haven’t seen Dee since I went to see all her wedding photos, so I really should stay in touch better. She didn’t ask about the microbiologist friend’o her husband’s, and that is probably a good thing.
After lunch I was still feeling weak and tired and sick , and I got home to find a note from Bopa saying she was gonan be away for the weekend, so I decided to rent some videos. I joined the Source and got 10 for $10, even. So I watched ‘Occasional Course Language’ (shit) and later ‘Angst’, which I really liked. That’s about it, I think. Yeah, sleepysick, duvet on couch.
This evening (today being Saturday of course), Clay and I were watching ‘The Sting’ (which is excellent) when his friend Brad-friend-of-boatshoeguy showed up on our doorstep. He was just bored, so he stayed and watched the rest of the movie, and then when Clay went to bed (giving me a pointed look on his way out that suggested that I was not to seduce Brad or I’d be in trouble) he stayed and watched ‘Nightwatch’ with me as well. Exciting. Actually, it was just nice to have company; Clay’s always out, I’m not even entirely convinced that Bopa lives here yet and I’ve been too sick to pursue my friends very much and too sick to really go out (i probably shouldn’t have gone to EyeTV, but LAST GIG EVER waaaah, I was almost teary at the end). Now I’m wearing too much red lipstick and pouting in anticipation of the gangster-poker dressup night we’re planning. But I really should go to bed; after all, I’ve been ever so active today.
