Tuesday, September 27, 2005

A La Peanut Butter Sandwiches!

And lo! A post!

Here are some things that have happened since my last post: (major points underlined)

*A bunch of people because erroneously convinced that I had thought they were grumpy with me, and were the subject of my last post.

*The SRC elections happened. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that we, the Aardvark party, did not win. Dammit.

*I found that forum on the internet, which I was long a member of, but which I had lost. And people remembered me!

*I got a flat tire. At 1:30 am. And my jack stopped working, due to being a folding jack, so 2 ambulance officers nobly rescued me, and it took all three of us to make it go. I felt a little stereotypically Damsel in Distress, oh-look-a-girl-and-therefore-unable-to-change-her-own-tire-y, but y'know, I know I could've done it but for the stupid jack. >.<>theatre sports final which was pretty much totally great.

*My sister Katie turned 18, which lead to two nice sub-events:
- I got a top hat. It's the most awesome top hat in all the world, and I love it
with a love both pure and true.
- She had a birthday party (about which more later)

*I got all organised and went to the library to get the info for my Latin essay, which is due on Tuesday, but which I haven't begun. I'm sure I will, though, eventually.

*Alice from school turned 21, and had a party, which was fun, and at which I danced, not, perhaps, very well, but in a manner prompting Pun to write "Oh yes, and everyone, Ang & Tim are the sweetest and "Oooh-Oooh look at them dancing" couple. It's so enjoyable to watch a good friend and her beau have fun dancing. Such a rare thing to see a guy dance well and have fun *sigh* *dreams of finding a dancing beau in the future* :D :D" So there you go. Also, the dancing lady picked on Tim and told him his dancing was "sexy". He's convinced that she was being silly and making fun of him, but I privately thought that in his black suit and shirt and whole thingy she could easily have been being serious. I nearly wore my hat to this party, but only just refrained. I also refrained from wearing the complete set of jewellery made only of Gummi Ringles, which I had made, which was noble. Also, Kathryn, who also told me that Tim seemed nice (but also threatened graphic and actual physical violence upon his person should he be less than charming to me, as did Bethany, and possibly someone else?) said that someone from her party had described me as "the articulate girl with the hot fishnets" which is pretty much great, yes? I don't recall being particularly articulate, but there you go. Never look a gift-compliment in the mouth.

*The aformentioned Kathryn (herinafter referred to as "Kathyrn") forgot her glasses at the party, so I drove the Burwood to give them back to her, because am not only articulate and fishnet wearing, but also, y'know, really great. And we had chai tea from Kathryn's cool teapot and cups, which was nice.

*Prior to which (between these last 2 events) Our house was invaded by a veritable cohort of Croakers, Tim, Pun, and a builder, early on the morning after Alice's party, but we made Woddles (penguin-shaped waffles) from the machine which Pun had given us out of the goodness of her heart, so that was all good.

*Then, that evening, I watched a classy video with Felix, called Farenheit 451, which is apparently something of a classic, about book-burning. And now I get the title of "Farenheit 9/11" which is good. And then Gladiator came on (which translates directly to "sword-er" by the way) but the appalling history made me want to hurt the tv, so I stopped watching it.

*I got my sisters both presents due to it being Katue's birthday party, and me not wanting Alex to feel left out, because I am a truly excellent sibling. Also, which I was in Chatswood doing this, I saw a shop called "Sticky" which sells lollies, which they make before your very eyes. And I saw them making those little cylindrically shaped ones with words written in the cross-section, which I have always been fascinated by the making of, but nowunderstand. So I feel that my life has been enriched. They make them by making a great big thick one with painstaking care, then stretch it out long and thin, the same way hypodermic needles are made (which is a separate but also cool fact). Also, there was a couple there ordering lollies for their wedding in the same colour as the bridesmaids' dresses and groomsmen's ties, which I thought was a pretty cool idea.

* Katie had a birthday party too, on Sunday evening, and there was a bouncy castle in the night rain, so that was cool. And I wore my excellent top hat, and came in the role of eccentric elder sister. Also, it was a great party, and we used my fairy floss maker and Chocolate Fondue Fountain, which was also good. Also at this party, one of Katie's friends told me that I was the funniest person in the world, which was nice, but odd, since I have met him only fleetingly. Perhaps he reads this? If so, hi Al. Also at this party, I went for the first swim of the season. At night! Yay! I :heart: swimming. And we watched the rain fall on the pool which waslit from within, and beautiful. And Tim swam and patted dogs, his 2 fears, in the one night, and was therefore a brave knight with damp clothing instead of a white charger.

*My sister Alex and I (and also Katie and Mum, but they arrived late, and therefore count as parenthetical) went and saw that movie Sky High. Which had people with superpowers in it, so that was nice.

*Today before work I went to the Plaza and finally spent my BNT voucher and bought some bras, which is something of a relief, sionce I only had 3 left. Also, in less over-share-y purchases, I got 2 skirts and Diva earrings, and a black handbag. I was feeling affluent, because I got organised and paid my rent ahad of time, and haven't had to pay for food (or movie tickets) over the past few days. So naturally I spent more than I had saved. But, y'know (which I have now said three times) yay.

*Today at work was Wendy's birthday, who is now 51, and we therefore had lemon meringue pie, and coincidentally, because she's a Tigers fan, we spent about an hour putting up orange and black and white balloons around the office, which was fun.

And that was my week or however long it was. Yay.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

An excessively long post: my internet wasn't loading, so I just kept going.

So I was thinking, today, (I like to begin my posts as if I were already part way through a conversation with you, (which is, I suspect, a plagiarised phrase), but the recording tape placed in the room by, perhaps, the CIA, has just clicked on, starting to tape in media res), about the way people relate, and how I think about people.

I think perhaps that my approach is flawed. I was talking to a friend of mine the other night, and they seemed irritated with me, although I had absolutely no idea why. And though I always enjoy their company, and the mere thought of these friends is often/has often been enough to make me smile in sad times, it seems that the idea of them has been temporarily poisoned. (Well, made unwell, anyway, more like food poisoning than arsenic of hemlock or similar) So instead of getting that pink fuzz to my thoughts when they come up, today I feel more like a dull mental ache. Why is this? Why were they irritated with me in the first place? Were they? (I think so, I questioned other people for third party stability, in order to have them say something comforting like "no, your paranoia's just getting worse", only to have them confirm my apprehensions with their similar impression).

More importantly, why can't I handle that with a little more aplomb? Am I just a fundamentally irritating person? People around me aren't very often irritated with each other, but it seems to me that when people are irritated with someone or something, it's usually with me. Or else I really am paranoid (which is an entirely other stressor, we did paranoid schizophrenia in Abnormal Psych a few weeks ago. It was awful. If you believed that people around you were coughing to express hostility ad dislike, then by the end of flu season you'd be damn near suicidal, and this was the belief of one guy we studied).

And what if I am just an irritating person? What can I do about that? Maybe I just have no social skills and ought to just live in a box alone somewhere, with just one friend/aquaintance/employee/human contact/whatever to bring supplies, until they, too find me so tiresome that they just can't take it any more.

But this is, in all likelihood, all in my head, so perhaps disregard all that, and recall that I type at 1am.

Quite probably I'm just hugely over-interpreting. This does tend to be a bad habit of mine. Maybe I need one of those wanky mantras "Your friends like you. That's why they're your friends."

Although that really wouldn't help, surely, because if they didn't like you, what could they do? We knew someone like that in high school. Someone who sort of attached themselves to our group and whom no-one much seemed to like, but whose feelings no-one wanted to hurt. (I still feel guilty for so even articulating that. I wonder what happened to the poor girl? Can she shop in Burwood again yet?)

So if the people I talk to didn't want to hang out with me, how could they politely solve their problem? Which is a destructive line of thought, because the answer is to do things like 'not invite me out'; and 'only come over when they can't much get out of it'; 'find some way to avoid interaction, by for instance, going to sleep whenever we hang out'; 'be strangely closed off and not share details of their lives'; 'introduce me to people as "this is Tim's girlfriend, I've told you about Tim"', (which has the strange subtext of "but I never mentioned her", doesn't it?) or say things like "I'm closer with these other mutual friends of ours than you guys" even though those people rarely show up to shared social interactions, which leads in turn to the question: do you guys then hang out together and not invite me? Or is their even minimal presence so abundantly preferable to mine/ours that quality triumphs over such great quantity of time spent in our company?

None of which musings are good for me, since this has all happened to me within the last few months. I don't really interpret it so, but I feel that I have to beware lest I put a mental foot wrong and slide down the steep and slippery slope of paranoia into the dark pit of self-imposed isolation which lurks at its base.

I feel for other of my friends, who seem to feel excluded even when everyone else is enjoying their company and presence. To feel like an nth wheel seems terribly destructive. I unreservedly apologise to anyone to whom I have ever given such an impression, and assure you that it was not meant so. It is a strange and terrible thing how groups of friends, not only large ones, like our 13 school friends, but also much smaller ones, will divide slightly into little subgroups of twos and threes.

This is particularly a problem in the little groups, I think, when people pair off, starting by just being a little closer, and culminating in being so involved and absorbed in each other that no-one notices the person or people who they've left out in the cold tundra of sitting-in-silence-with-your-friends, but all alone. I realise that this is something that I have occasionally (or even, I am ashamed to say, often) been wont to do, which distresses me, and fills me with guilt. This is not ok. It's just terrible behaviour, and I wish I could more effectively safeguard from slipping into such a mode of behaviour.

I don't know, this is an entirely unjustified amount of introspection late at night, all on the basis of one person snapping at me a couple of times.

In completely other news, tomorrow (well, today, now) is the Blue Moon festival in Newtown, a celebration of all things gothic and new age, and discounts are available from all sorts of nifty shops, and I have high and unfounded hopes of buying a great necklace. It's terribly exciting, Catie and I are going to wear black and try to fit in, and hope that no-one will be on to our poorly executed ruse, and cast us from the suburb shouting "fie!" at us. Should be fun.

Gaah! 1:45! I have to get up and de-furnish my room for Blasted Felix tomorrow before 8! I had best get some sleep.

************
Since this failed to post yesterday, I will just add an addendum (I just wanted to use the word addendum, really) on the cool day that was today. It’s funny, on re-reading the stuff I typed last night, 2 things are apparent to me: Firstly, typing at 1 am lends a strangely hysterical edge to one’s text: I should bear this in mind for future essays. Secondly: A flippant tone of voice doesn’t come across well in print That reads much more seriously than ‘twas meant. Try to mentally insert a laughing tone of voice and hyperbolic gestures, if you would. I don’t really take this all so seriously. Although it does make me want to go back in time to last night and hug me. And possibly to gently pry the keyboard from my sleepy fingers and put myself to bed earlier.

Anyway, today, we got up and had to deforest the lounge room and move our beds out there. The house filled rapidly with vaguely familiar film crew type people who remembered us better than we did them. We made toast for them, and tea all round, due to being just excellent people and hosts (in fact, Catie reckons she heard one of them telling Felix that we ought to win some kind of flatmate of the year awards. Yay!)

At which point, Catie and I got dressed for our day, which was scheduled to involve the Blue Moon Gothic/Alternative Festival in Newtown. Between us, we must have put on half a kilo of eyeliner and dark lipstick and so on, and long black coats and purple-lined cloaks were all the rage. Cat had black jeans and studded belt and black top with cape and eyeliner. I made up for my normal jeans with a studded collar and about 2 to 3 times the already excessive amount of eyeliner Catie had, as well as my long black coat. Was pretty funny, we wandered out of the room in pastels, and re-entered as impressive Goths. Scared Felix hilariously.

We went to Glebe markets, because that’s what we do, although there weren’t as many stalls as usual, presumably because of the weather. Then we met Cat’s sister Sylvia, who, in a mauve top, looked mildly shaken by our appearance (which was amusing, since we’d pretty much gotten used to it by this point, and weren’t jumping whenever we caught sight of each other any more), and had delicious pizza for lunch. We wandered around Broadway momentarily, then dragged the poor thing to Newtown.

As usual, the people-watching in these areas was excellent, but today, doubly so. People who were not dressed gothically were about as common as people who are, on a normal day. It’s interesting, actually, we think of them as people in black, but there are so incredibly many varieties of things to wear, it seems, for such people. There were huge high boots, and guys in eyeliner and lipstick, and girls in corsets and ruffles, and Victorian collars and plunging necklines and all manner of things.

And, and an actual real honest-to-goodness goth in a long black skirt and petticoat an corset and high boots and the whole deal complemented us on the cloak. While drinking blood-orange-lemonade ($1 a cup, festival special).

The shop we’d actually gone to see, Les Cabinet des Curiosities, was something of a disappointment, Not that it was uninteresting (far from it, no shop with a woman in a PVC corset, and long, black, ruffled, but still also PVC skirt pushing a pram with a little baby all in black and lace, could ever be uninteresting), only that my foolish dream of me walking in and them saying “Ah! Here is exactly the thing you want, for a ridiculously convenient, nay generous, price. Would you like it wrapped?” failed, surprisingly, to eventuate.

It was cool though, all these goth parents about the place, and all their children in their tiny goth outfits, mini black boots and all. What do these children do when they grow up and want to rebel? Wear pastels?

Eventually we left, and took Sylvia to see Glebe markets as well, because she’d never been, and it was wonderfully windy, and people were packing up, and I got a very cheap pair of very OTT earrings. Then we (nobly) took Sylvia all the way home and came home ourselves, to find the house more or less back where it ought to be. Brilliant.

It was interesting though, Felix was talking to his friends, while Catie and I pottered about the room and hung pictures/made drinks etc, about how he needs a girl for his shoot tomorrow, just to walk past the camera. It’s a terrible problem for him, all the girls he knows are busy tomorrow, you see. He’s quite desperate for a girl any girl, really, just to be a backdrop person to add texture to his film. Just as we were about to suggest that we could, perhaps, help, if the situation was really as dire as all that, he says “I just need a pretty girl, to coincide with the voiceover about watching pretty girls walk past. Damn, they’re all busy, every single one that I know.” Which meant that to say “well, I’m not busy” would have sounded vain and awful. But he didn’t ask us. Either of us. This seems to me to be a staggering breach of tact. The very least he could do would be to pretend he needed a blonde or something. It seemed that there was a yawning gap in the conversation which was pointedly being not filled with “Are you busy tomorrow, Catie?”. Instead he says “she doesn’t even need to be that pretty, I mean Semi-pretty would be enough”.

Which seems wrong to me. If that’s what you think, then don’t discuss this in front of us, I feel.

It amuses me, though, once upon a time I would have been personally insulted by this. But this evening it just seemed to me that he was being rude to Cat. Possibly have grown up into realisation that I can dress as well as I like (although I rarely do), but I am not, really, “pretty”. I remember being told when I was little, that I had “quite an attractive face, really. You can see the intelligence in your face”. Which was nice, I suppose. (I hasten to point out that any “aww, I think you’re pretty” comments will be shot down in flames. Don’t mess with me just when I’ve come to a mature acceptance.) Cat, however, is fairly archetypally pretty.

The two take-home points of this episode seem to be (a) Felix was being painfully tactless, and if we didn’t fit his requirements for some other reason, he ought to have mentioned this, and (b) perhaps I’m finally growing up, although the yesterday part of this post would seem to suggest perhaps not, and (sub-point bII) I really amn’t pretty. One can have good days and bad days, but I guess sometimes you just have to recognise your limitations.

Anyway, I shall attempt to resolve not to be over-sensitive and paranoid, but also not to be irritating, and if, sitting around in a little group of five, I again catch myself ignoring people, especially if the other pair is doing the same, I resolve to be a decent friend and not bar anyone by accident or design.
So there you are: the post is way too long, but perhaps we’ve learnt something. Or I have, since I’m the only person who will have read right through.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Half assessments done! *dances foxtrot* How exactly does one foxtrot?

Of my 7 write-it-out-and-hand-it-in assessments this semester, I have now done 4. If I succeed in handing in the one due on Monday, which I certainly intend to do, then I shall have done 5 of those 7. Jeah. I'm so on the ball. 'Course, I haven't done any readings this semester, but, heck, what d'you want for nothing?

Am, in fact, deeply brilliant.

Also, yesterday, I went to HMV and bought a CD that I've been after all year, with a CD voucher, which means that the cost was, to me, effectively nil. (I say "effctively" because actually it was $3, which is effectively nil for a CD, I think. I had $70 of CD voucherness, one $50 one and one $20 one, and since the CD was $22.95, it seemed more sensible not to break the big one.) It's not a very long CD, only 10 songs, half an hour, but at least 2 of those songs are completely classic, so it's all good. Even if you look on all but 2 of the songs as being valueless (which I don't), that still meant that total cost for each of the awesome songs was something less than $1.50, when I would've bought the whole CD at $30 for one of them, so that's a definite profit.

Also, I bought two tops, similarly cheaply, one of them black with sparkliness on it, and the other one of those long ones with lace along the bottom that one wears under other tops (in this case, today, the black one) Which is lovelily toasty-warm.

Also, just as I was coming to the conclusion this morning that it was definitely possible to finish my assignment on time and hand it in in a leisurely manner, there was a knock on the door and I got a parcel! Yay! It was a birthday present from Jasmine Wong in Armidale, (double yay!) of a necklace and a cool hat and writing paper-stuff. Next to "declaration of dangerous goods: I the undersigned do swear that this parcel contains no dangeous material as defined by Section something, Article something, comma somethingslashsomething: materials which might die/smell/go bang/be terroristic subsection" She's written "This parcel contains things which may spontaneously combust." and signed it, so I consider it something of a blessing that it arrived at all, really. Obviously it would be anyway, but particularly what with her tempting fate in such a manner.

I would like to officially, thinking of official things, say here that I have no objection whatsoever to anyone other than spammers making any kind of comments whatsoever (except for maybe "you suck" not meant lightheartedly and in a friendly spirit, I suppose) on this blog. I say this because the other day I was upset and grumpy (I can't remember what about, particularly, possibly the workload in the upcoming week?) and I complained to my mother that sometimes I write long and boring and self-importantly kind-of-philosophical navel-gazing posts, and it bugs me when people say to me "that last blog post wasn't very amusing" (in person, you understand, no real problem with that posted as a comment, where it can be dealt with by me at my leisure), sometimes. Unfortunately my Dad happened in at that point, and my mother, in a well-meaning attempt to straighten this tiny issue out said to him, "she doesn't like it when you comment on her blog". And my Dad, whom I have always enjoyed the occassional comments of, and whom I encourage to comment was rather confused by this and sort of made those "what?... but... I... zuh.." sort of noises and looked hunted, as is appropriate in such a situation. The problem with this, of course, is that one then ends up with farcical misunderstanding and everyone becomes grumpy.

So I repeat: by all means comment. But if anyone feels that the quality is declining or similar, say it here, not at 11:30 when I've just finished work and have a drive down the M4, and limited sleep before an early start tomorrow ahead of me, and recall, peons one and all that whilst most of this is guff (read:everything on this entire blog, ever, is guff) I know that, that's why I set up the stupid thing, to pour guff into, just like everyone else. But it's my hole filled with guff, and I shall use cheap bulk-buy quality guff if I feel like it, so there.

Anyway, back to what I was saying before I completely derailled myself 3 paragraphs ago, the moral of this story is that I've had a very nice day, and I hope you all do too. Although I don't recommend tht Chinese brand of Lemon Ice Tea, it's a bit too tanin-y for my taste. I much prefer the Lipton variety.

Oh! That reminds me, must buy milk. Anyway, will see you all anon, possibly the next post will be a bitter polemicist diatribe against all of those of you who didn't come to my party. 4 out of 13 school friends is pretty harsh. (ah, now I remember what I was grumpy about before, that). Or perhaps it will be a paean to fairy floss. Who knows, really?