The other day I didn’t get to sleep until 11. That’s 11am. Last night I was still awake and making sandwiches around 4am. When I finally do sleep, I do so until all hours of the afternoon because I don’t have a solid reason to get up in the morning. I think I might become a phone sex operator for a service in the UK or something, I might as well use my powers for good, right?

It’s been interesting though, watching twitter falling silent as first NZ and then Australia goes to sleep. I’ve learned that listening to pod casts doesn’t help me, and that there are only so many hours one can watch Whedon shows or read young adult fiction. I’ve learned that if you know you’re going to be sneaking out afterwards  because you’re not going to sleep that you should make sure that you throw all your clothes in the one place to make finding them in the dark easier. I’ve learned that the benefit of having friends on random morning shifts or up with babies is that occasionally you’ll get to pass twitters in the night and that’ll help you not feel quite as alone as watching the sun come up by yourself tends to make you feel.

Other than the sleeping thing, and the unemployment thing, time is passing rather nicely. I mean, it would be nice to sleep properly so I could achieve more during the day, but my social circle is pleasing right now, and I have numerous events to look forward to. People are providing me with delicious food and delicious company, and that is nice. I am struggling to not spend money which is annoying now that I have so much more time in which to spend it, but I’m cooking more for myself at home which is pleasing and cost-effective. I made some killer blueberry & almond pikelets the other day, for example. And with the eating of the vegetables, and with some photos of Jon Hamm on vacation that Jezebel did warn me would tug at my ovaries came a brief day of bloodening, and I’m still glassy and stomach-crampy when I orgasm so I know that there’s another period coming soon, which means two in the space of a month, which is like, woah, that’s what normal people do. It’s somewhat pleasing to me.

I still have miles to go on tagging all my hubris entries and getting that squared away, and I need to build my portfolio site as well. But there are so many upcoming events! Flatwarmings and Word Camps and Bar Camps and Bad parties, and birthdays of Karen and so  on and so forth. Oh, and Vanuatu, in less than three weeks. That pleases me tremendously.

I don’t, so much anymore, or at least not all that much today. It is nice to start your day with lunch at the Med Warehouse with Megan, and gossip your hearts out, and then to cruise the aisles looking at tasty things you want to eat, and then do the supermarket shopping, buy healthy vegetables and stuff and make huge big pots of dhal. It is also nice to have a Lisa Fur visit you and to watch Flash Dance together and sing along and twitter incessantly about Sassy Black Friends.

This unemployment thing is handy in that now I am coming off the zopiclone I am not sleeping at night at all so I am sleeping all day, but trying to be financially responsible means that my going out is severely curtailed. That is probably for the best, I suppose, because I am running out of people to drunk text. Getting cease & desist emails was a good thing, and the reaction that I had been pushing for.

Being home during the day means more amusing conversations with Smoo, and also being beaten by him at both Wii Tennis, despite my Williams-y grunting, and at bowling although I’m normally good at it, but beating him at Wii Baseball. It also means that I get to spend more time with Sebastian:

It sadly does mean that I’m churning through bandwidth at alarming rates, although I’m defaulting to simple things, rereading Harry Potter (I have lust for young boys, who knew?) and rewatching Angel.

I’m excited that I get to attend the cheese celebrations of Miss Harvestbird in October, and I’ve booked my flight on airpoints. Nothing good ever seems to happen to me in Christchurch (sorry Good Tom), but perhaps three times is a charm.

So you know I’ve been seeing a counsellor on and off for ages, and in my last entry I was all about the stack of hollow white bread who was failing to do anything, but since then things have somewhat improved exponentially. Both my workmate that I work closest with and also the head of our organisation made me cry at our work party by telling me how awesome I am and how valued I am. I went to see my counsellor, and she suggested that I need to change my medication, and I agreed because I’m not sure if it’s too strong or not strong enough, but it’s definitely not right, so she recommended a psychiatrist, and I waited a couple of weeks to get an appointment and this morning I found myself up and out of the house by 8.30ish, on my way to fork out $350 to spend two of the most painful hours of my life.

I say it was painful, but that wasn’t because of the shrink. He was actually very nice, as I had expected, and he even had rochard prints on the wall, and a nice leather couch, but oh god, do you know how hard it is to go through your entire medical history, and discuss what factors contributed to the bad times, and compare times when you felt suicidal with a plan to the times when you were unactively wishing for something to remove you from your situation (he phrased it much better), and then you have to talk about any other medical failings, and then you have to talk about your drinking, and admit that yes, there are occasional very small blackouts, but no, you don’t wake up in places and not know how you got there, and no, you don’t put yourself in danger – anymore. And then there’s your (light) drug useage history, and indignation when he mentions P because dude, no, and trying not to giggle when he says “Smokin’ weed” in that American accent, and just man, ick. I kind of wish that he could have just read Hubris.

But the thing is, at the end of all of that, we have three plans of action in terms of my medication, which are dependent on some blood test results. He thinks that it is possible that I have an underactive thyroid, and if that’s true, there is medication that will fix it quickly and easily, which will mean that I can drop my dosage of citalapram, because having a fixed thyroid will make the meds work better and release more energy so I’ll be able to do more than trudge between bed and couch. If that’s not the case, I can introduce a new member to my entourage in the form of a GP he’s recommended because there’s no way I’m going back to the douche doctor I got my last script from. There’s a correlation between my severe downs and PMS, so if I was to go back on the pill, I could even that out. I’m reluctant to try this one, because of how the first time I was on the mini pill is the first time I became depressed (this is what being a grown-up means, I know it wasn’t ALL Ass’s fault), and when I was on Estelle35 to try and sort out my PCOS, I got blinding migraines that I thought meant something had exploded in my head on the sugar pills, so that scares me. But perhaps it could be a stopgap until I am able to function and get to the gym more often and restore my periods myself. OR, as the third option, there is an unsubsidised drug I could take, which is called something like S-Cipramil, which is the med I’m on, except it IS A MOLECULE SPLIT IN HALF to make it more powerful and with fewer side effects, and the super bonus of that, apart from that I’d need less to do more would be that I could switch to it in a single day rather than ween off this, then ween onto something else. So yes, it’s good to have options!

After all that, I met up with Brad who I hadn’t seen in ages cos he’s been doing plays in Palmy, and he gave me Ten on vinyl for my birthday pressie, yay! There was a half day of work after that, and with all that talking, and the early-for-me morning, at the end of it all I ended up feeling like the bones leftover from the chicken pieces I made soup from for Maree, and when I went to throw out the bones after a couple of hours of simmering, Stephen asked for them to make stock with, and I was like “but there’s nothing left in them”. There’s nothing left in me for today, so it’s just as well all I had to do tonight was skip quiz in favour of Lisa coming over and ordering pizza and pissing ourselves at Nevermind the Buzzcocks. So fucking tired. But happy that there may be solutions. I just never want to have to talk again.

Oh, oh! But there will be much talking and funness on Saturday at our Pretty Pretty Pretty party that Amy and I have been working very hard on the giftboxes for, so do sign up to come along!

There wasn’t really a chance for me to have lost my camera this Friday though, as it was terribly civilised. I hiked up to the Herd Street Bra after work to meet up with Tom and Che and MG and their respective partners for a drink. Karen came along and we headed off to New World for dinner supplies and to be picked up by Miss Lisa. We shredded roast chicken and tossed it with chickpeas, feta, avomacado, cashews, red capsicum, spring onions and coleslaw fixings and ate it in piles with walnut bread. And then we watched Captain Tightpants some more, woo hah. I suspect sometimes that I should find a new expression other than “woo hah”, because while it is awesome, it is definitely overused.

On Saturday, I went and had my alonetime brunch at Elements. On my drive there I noticed a filing cabinet inside the Salvation Army op shop in Kilbernie, so on my way back I stopped in and bought it for $35. There was a bit of fanangling to get it into my teeny tiny car, especially since there were still boxes of pottery lying around in it, but with the help of the young guy from the shop we got it there in the end. And I managed to drag it out of my car and into the garage at home, because I am Superwoman. I went to the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown to buy a bottle of Amaro for Tom, and also a can of silver spraypaint. Then I had to sand the fucker down, and scrape off old stickers. Hurrah for having turpentine in the house. I am so fucking crafty; craftly like a MONGOOSE. I ran out of silver paint on the third side of the cabinet, so I switched to gold for the handles, and then I spraypainted the round white paper lampshade that’d been hanging in the lounge until I put up the chandelier. But now some asshole’s taken that. Boourns. The cabinet is looking stunning though, with another couple of coats of paint that I raced to the store to buy today after work despite feeling sick sick sick.

Saturday night I got glammed up and hopped on a bus to Sandwiches for Tom’s birthday dinner. They had no pork belly so after Che’s discussion on veal I opted for the vege cannelloni. I sent an update to twitter that said “Last time i was here at Sandwiches i was having the best pashes of my recent years. I miss Shiny! I look even hotter tonite than then though.” Dinner and conversation was very civilised, but I did get an odd look when I suggested to someone that they could fill their attic with dead bodies instead of pink bats as insulation. Apparently that’s not the done thing. When we were leaving, someone grabbed me and hugged me, and it was Bart with Blair, so I made a split-moment decision to go with them instead of going up to the Hawthorne Lounge. We went up to Richard’s apartment on Cuba Street and read catelogues from the Danish Sex Museum and drank and talked shit, then we went to the Southern Cross and wrapped ourselves up in polar fleece blankets cos it was fucking cold outside. When that shut we went to Frindigo, but that was closing a couple of drinks later, so we ended up at Club K, where we did shots of jagermeister and I got dragged onto the dance floor by some girl. Then after Bart and Blair sang a couple of Fall Out Boy songs (haha!), I somehow found myself warbling through ‘Like a Virgin’. I think they turned the microphone off on me, I was that bad. But it was fantastic! And I got home some time after 4am, fell asleep on the couch and then woke up in my bed still wearing my clothes. Needless to say, Sunday was a write-off.

I thought I had more to say today, but I guess I don’t, so I will watch the last two episodes of Season One of Deadwood instead. Tomorrow I’m going to Eagle Vs Shark, and on Thursday is the Great Blend, hurrah! And I’m still looking for a flatmate, grrrrr.

Wow, so that wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. I suppose because I wrote it in 2002, things have changed so much since then. I mean. looking at who read Boys, Boys, Boys, Boys, Boys, in so-far as who was in it, *IV said it was the sexiest thing he’d ever read, although, you know, that was after we’d had sex another time. The ex boyfriend (you know, of all of those ex boyfriends that I’ve had) has read it, but didn’t comment, surprisingly enough, for all the speaking out that he ever did when we were together and afterwards.

I had other things to say. I had photos in my flickr account to link to. I would have talked about how my new home project was Lisa and I watching Firefly at home. I would have talked about a buttload of social events that I’ve been to with the Wellingtonista, partially revolving around the Wellingtonista Quiz League and partly with awesome fresh fish at the Port Cafe last Friday, and oh, you know what? Whatever. Maybe I’ll post tomorrow or maybe I won’t. But hurray for Robyn, and now things will be awesome. Oh, and hopefully there’ll be new Hubris as soon as Heather can do it!

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”:
.

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.

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

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

HPV

Chlamydia

Gonorrhea

Genital Herpes

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

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

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

To contrast totally and utterly with the wonderfulness of Bic, on Monday I took Miss Lisa Fur and Anji and Karen and Bart to what is quite possibly the worst movie ever made in the entire history of the world – Poseidon. I hate people who talk in movies and at gigs and everything, but seriously, I’d had a half-bottle of wine very quickly before the movie, and it was just so fucking atrocious that I had to whisper stupid things in Lisa’s ear the whole way through, when I wasn’t falling out of my chair laughing, that is. Everyone should go see it. It’s like, totally awesome. And it cost $160 million. Puuuuuuuke. The next day when Karen came over to watch Serenity again and dye my hair, we commented that Joss Whedon managed to put more character development in the first five minutes of that movie than Poseidon had achieved in its entire length and the subsequent thousand sequels, if you know, they actually made them, which God willing they never will. And then I cried a little on the inside thinking of how many more adventures Captain Mal could have had if Joss had been given that $160 million instead (answer: at least three more), and then I died a little on the inside when I realised I was starting to think about what Poseidon would have been like if Joss had written the script. And now I realise that I am a total geek. Cos I’ve never had that revelation before, of course…

Today Heather is squeeing at me because I sent her flowers for her birthday, and she’s also quoting the text messages I sent her last Friday, which is making me laugh out loud so much I had to tell the girl I sit with. Stupid gaxy boys indeed.

I had a hot chocolate at Shoc yesterday when I caught up with my lovely Hubrette Frances, who is ex work, and oh boy, I must squee about that. It was pretty much pure melted dark chocolate with cardomon, and was like omgwtfpolarbear amazing. Sure, it cost $5, but my mouth hasn’t had so much pleasure in quite a while.

What else do I have to tell you? Oh, I remember now. You know that I didn’t join the gym with the active goal of losing weight because I didn’t want to get to a point where I was freaking out about not losing grams or whatever, well after I had that big “you’re shrinking!” speech from one of the trainers, I went in on Tuesday and got weighed, and I’ve actually put on seven kilos since I started in November. Cue the “it’s muscle!” speech, but meh, just as well my reason for exercising – keeping my mental health in better condition and sleeping better – have proved to be such total successes. But she measured me up all over, and so now when I go back in six weeks time for another go, I’ll be all like “holy fuck, I put on another 20 kilos of solid muscle and my buttocks are 2cm smaller”. Radsville. Exercise is funny. My pants are falling down, and I’m presuming that’s a good thing.

Anji reminded me last night when I was at her house for dinner about how my pants have also totally fallen down at Boulot, but like, not in the way you’re probably imagining, unless I already wrote about this, but rather because the bit in the button in between the two holes split, so off came the button and down came the pants when I stood up to go to the bathroom. Luckily I was wearing a skirt over the top, and was able to just discreetlyish kick the puddle of pant under the table. She made me and her friend Delwin vegetable lasagne and boysenberry apple crumble. Yum. My belly was about to pop. Her house is pretty, but I still think I like mine better because I have a dining room. And couches. Mmmm couches. Speaking of which, I haven’t cleaned the house properly in like, a couple of weeks. But don’t you worry, by the time 8pm tomorrow rolls around bringing it with Japan at the Country Club, it will be all shiny again. Honest. I spent ages at A-Mart yesterday picking up all kinds of wacky Japanese snackies. When I was rereading Number 9 Dream which is set in Tokyo, I found myself actually missing the city, rather than wanting to throw up at the thought of it. Perhaps this is what growing up means. That and I can laugh at the profile of this guy on Myspace on whom I used to have a massive crush on, but who was (of course!) part of the people who made 7th grade a living hell for me. Ha ha. Sucks to be him. Rocks to be me on a sunny day like today with my skin smelling all clean and good, and my boots currently rocking my universe.

And I was home that late at night because Anji and I had gone to Capitol for a bottle of wine (I <3 Capitol, the service is outstanding, and the toilets smell so good, and the bruschetta is yum), and then we'd joined up with the rest'o the family at Hazel, where much more jolly awesome wine was drunk, and mountains of tasty tasty food eaten. I am currently craving more squid rings from there, and I don't even like squid. Perhaps I am pregnant. With the second coming.

If you're wondering why I am so much more chipper in this post than I was in Tuesday's, well it appears that the one/two emotional gut punch of watching 'The Body' and 'The Gift' together paid off. Well, that and large doses of the Arcade Fire, St John's, exercise, listening to 'Kim' on repeat (geez, why are you so angry, Marshall?) and all twelve episodes of the unbelieveable hip hopera Trapped in the Closet, which is just so fucking wow that it deserves another round of Holy Fucking Crap!.

Other things of note that I have been up to lately? Hosting the work quiz last Friday. After much debate about the amount of wine we were to have, we did end up running out. My arms ached from carrying eight bottles one block, so in a way maybe it’s better we didn’t have more. The quiz went well, even though I was having initial “no one likes me!” thoughts at the number of attenders, although we ended up filling the room very well. On Saturday I went to see the Dukes of Leisure play at the Carter Observatory, and I was drinking straight vodka from a small bottle, and it was all misty with lamp posts on the way there like Narnia, and we had pillows and got to lie down, and I got to have snuggles with first Anji and then Karen and we all know that I’m a Romanian orphan starved for physical affection so that was nice, and I fell in love with the man who gave us a star tour, because I love story-tellers, and they made us popcorn in the middle, and the music was good too and oh, it was just great and I was crazy giggly, and that amused me muchly. On Sunday I went to a private screening of The Imposters which was hilarious, and found out various bits of gossip that I might reprint here if I could be bothered footnoting it but I can’t, and I just felt choice.

Tomorrow is Canadia, as I’ve mentioned before, and then The Phoenix Foundation at Indigo, and then on Sunday Luke Buda at Caberet. And now it is nearly 5.30 so I must put on lip gloss and harrass the boys downstairs until they come out for a drink with me. My feet hurt from being an escort to a group of people who came to look at the clever things that we do at work. And then one of the directors referred to me as a handmaiden. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen…

1. My stomach got butterflies when I knew that tiny little Rory was about to lose her virginity, but at the same time, I was so so so excited about Lorelei getting together with Luke VS: oh man, I hate it when they fight with each other, it gives me belly rumblings.

2. Via the interweb (youtube.com and onegoodmove.org/1gm, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert? Now, based on history, I should go with the best friend (Pacey not Dawson, Michael not Max, Seth not Ryan, and Logan Logan Logan not Duncan), but oh, Jon is so hot, and his mother used to be my subsitute teacher at ASIJ. But maybe I’m actually just in love with Ed Helms, because who can do a dead pan better than him? NO ONE. And dead pan is hot. I hope that the next person I have sex with (yes, in a million years, sure, whatever) is like “well, that was okay” afterwards. And then maybe ask me about how gay marriage is affecting my own marriage, because am I now tempted by other girls since it’s legal?

3. Which of coruse brings me to the real life problems, and the “oh what do I do in this situation?” blah blah, and you have no idea (unless you were Karen, who’d spent the day watching Firefly with me) how much I yelled at my phone on Sunday. The thing that was suppsoed to be all 2005 is like, totally in 2006 as well, and I confessed to someone who would know about it, and she was like “go for it!” and I was like no no no, and then there’s the girl, and oh yeah, she has a boyfriend, and I didn’t know, so don’t I feel like an ass now, and then there’s the other thing and oh I don’t know what to do about that.

And I think that’s about it for confliction, so can I talk now about how lonely I am at work since Sarah left on Thursday? Or about how I’ve been working super hard at the gym lately? Or about how I very almost won all the filters at poker tonight with my flatties? Or about how I am wearing my super awesome pyjamas for the first time this year? Awesome.

The observant amongst you would be like “holy crap Jo, why are you at home on a Friday?” while the more observant amongst you would have picked up on the cold, and the misery at work, and how I have Sarah’s hens’ party to go to at 11am tomorrow. Okay, so I haven’t mentioned that bit yet, but it’s like “the amazing race”, so I suspect I’m going to need my energy. And on that note, I should take Prince william Caspian to bed with me. Hopefully the boys will keep the noise down. I like them a lot eh, have I mentioned that lately?

PS- you know how I mentioned in my last post about how my friend Korinna was now going to be repping fuckerware parties? Well I got info from her today, and it’s not dVice, it’s ‘Joanna G’, which is mostly reaaaaaaaaally tacky lingere, but 1. the sex toys are a lot cheaper than dVice, for the same models and 2. you know my hott corset which I bought off Trademe? It’s in the catelogue, except in white, which is much tackier than black, and I paid a lot less for it. Awesome. Go me.

Meanwhile at work, we’d all shifted in to the offices in the other building, so people were doubling up on computers, or “working from home”. Because of the lack of computer access, I went to see Oma in the mornings and then go to work and cry. Lots of people were stressed out about various things, and it was so hot, and I was really upset about Oma, and at the same time I was paranoid about other things (*), and that made me feel like I did when Granny was dying and I was just worried about the flights I’d booked to Auckland to go and see *IV, and fuck, it just made me feel like such a stupid bitch. I felt useless because I’d cry on the phone to Mum and feel bad about it because she was under enough stress as it was. I felt useless because I couldn’t talk the brave talk like Anji, and I felt stupid for feeling stupid. Plus, with the heat and the increased stress, I stopped going to the gym, and was eating pretty badly too, and that took effect really fast on making my moods even worse.

On Thursday 22 December, we were told that if we’d finished all our work, and if we didn’t mind being on call the next day, we could leave at lunchtime. Me and some of my workmates went to the Brewery Bar for very mediocre food, pinot gris, lots of wind and hot hot sun, where despite the liberal application of olay complete, I got burnt. I hadn’t been to see Oma that morning because Anji was going to take me at in 6pm in after work. I didn’t want to go in by myself because I’m just so bad at hospitals and Oma’d become much more unresponsive. we had a couple of bottles of wine, and then Anita guiltripped Dave into give me a ride home. They stayed for a cup of tea, and Anita and I gossiped, and then they left. I cleaned the house, hung Xmas decorations and lights, and cursed fate for thwarting various stalkerness. All that kind of stupid every day blah blah blah stuff.

Jacinta, if you wanna skip this bit, please do so.

Mum had said she was going to be at the hospital until 6. Anji and I got there around 7pm. Oma looked much worse than she had the day before. Her skin was yellow-tinged, one eye was open, and so was her mouth. After saying hello to her, Anji sent me out of the room. I composed myself, and went back in. We couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. It really didn’t seem like it. There’s a question I never want to have to wait ten minutes at the nurses’ station to ask again “Is my grandmother still alive?” Of course, I won’t ever have to. Then the nurse got called away while I was talking to her. Finally, another nurse came along, and she went in to check for us,while Anji and I waited in the hall. Oma had passed away. Passed away? She was dead. Ever the considerate hostess, she’d waited until she was alone. Anji called Mum. Helpfully, I’d left my phone at home. Then I cried even more because all I could think was how much it felt like the Buffy episode ‘The Body’, now to the angles that focus on the medical professional’s shoulders, and how I was just in a stupid singlet, and I was all sunburnt and la la la, that’s not what is dignified at times like that, so I put my shrug back on.

The nurses had moved Oma onto her back and closed her eyes, so Anji and I sat down in her room to wait for everyone else. To me, that was the important part, because I was still a little upset that Mum and my aunt had decided that Oma was a lapsed enough Catholic that she probably wouldn’t have wanted the last rites. I’m not a religious person at all, but I guess I lean towards religion around death – like how I loved the presbyterian service at Granny’s funeral, so I had wished that she’d had it, although of course, it wasn’t my choice. But we sat with the body, and while it wasn’t for three days, I think it was wake-enough. Another one of the nurses came in to hug us and apologise for how we’d had to find her like that, which I thought was incredibly sweet. I have so much respect and gratitude to the nursing staff – they all seemed like really great people.

My aunt Diz and uncle John arrived before Mum, and when Diz started crying it set Anji off. Diz was like “Jacinta said that by hook or by crook Oma would get us all together to see us at Xmas” and that seemed entirely appropriate. Mum and Neil showed up, and then Karen, and there was much switching of seats, and fussing around, and there was hugging and joking and laughing. Oma’s death wasn’t sudden, and while she died alone, she had seen and recognised her family around her in the days leading up to her death, and I know that she felt loved. I’m incredibly relieved that she never had to move out of her house into a home, because she didn’t want that, and I’m (selfishly?) relieved that it wasn’t a long drawn out process for her death. She was greatly loved, and she’ll be greatly missed. I feel really stupid (again) because I wish that I had the words to describe her, or to memorialise her. Mum asked one of us to speak at her funeral, so I did, just like I did at Opa’s, but just like at Opa’s, I didn’t write anything down so I can’t share it with you. Instead, to really remember Oma, I think you should just go and click this link, becuase I think this is how she’d like to be remembered – always the ultimate hostess.

Oma, May 20 1920 – December 22 2005.

On the way back from Paraparaumu we made a short but scary stop in Coastlands for something to eat, and we all pretended to be Britney Spears with frappe type drinks from Muffin Break. I dazzled Anji and Karen with my amazing grasp of geography, managing to figure out a much quicker way out of the mall through the cinema. We went back up to Ngaio and Anji picked up Ethel while I absconded with the car and took Karen home. Then it was nap time, finally.

Later, Miss Lisa Fur picked me up for our hott bear-cub planning date, otherwise known as seeing The Phoenix Foundation with SJD at the Opera House. While we were waiting the long time before the show started, we played the “who knows more people here?” game. Because of the number of musicians present, we made it that you’d had to have at least talked to the person in the flesh for them to count. I only managed four – Mr and Mrs Noizy, Sam Scott and Nato. Umm, not to name drop or anything. But while I AM namedropping, I’ll say that we were sitting by the door to backstage, and sometime during the Phoenix Foundation, someone that I think was SJD came and collapsed in the seat next to me, talked to someone behind me for a while and then sat there texting away for a couple of songs before leaving again. Not cool. The light was really distracting. That said, the Phoenix Foundation was unbelievably excellent. I think I am now a huge fan of sit-down gigs, and large scale production values, and comedy lead teams and cute home movies with adorable kids and and and oh yeah so good. Yes. Fantastic. I think it’s one of my top three gigs’o the year, along with Nick Cave and the Straitjacket Fits. Ohhhhh yeah.

On Sunday, since my parents were at Toast Martinborough and the car was still at our house, I drove all the way around the Miramar peninsula, starting at the old Navy base or whatever it is, and then all the way up to Owhiro Bay and back through Brooklyn. It was really nice to be playing party mix CDs really loud and singing along, and it was sunny despite the wind, and just really great time to myself. Then I grocery-shopped, which wasn’t nearly so interesting, but had to be done. And that was the weekend, with a little laundry thrown in there as well. I am a party animal. At least I got home late on Friday night *), because I am a spaz. Today I am really tired, just for a change, although going to the gym has perked up my mood (who’da thunk it?), and tonight I am going to Serenity again with Lisa, and my mother who needs a healthy chunk of escapism right about now, I reckon.