You Can't Seriously Be Serious ? O.M.G....

So the funniest/weirdest thing ever happened today. I have a client who comes in every few months and gets me to tighten up his spectacle frames, realign them, replaces the screws .... all the type of stuff you cant do without your own glasses on. He's a nice bloke, always has a little joke and says please and thankyou - all in all, he;s one of my good customers. So he comes in today and i do the usual thing but when i went down the front to give him his glasses back, he takes me aside and asks me what time i'm having lunch. Say what now ? He says he has something sensitive he would like to ask me about, and he doesnt want the other women in the office too overhear. Alright, i told him what time my lunch usually is, and he says he'll come back.

My colleague and i had two immediate thoughts - either he's going to ask me out or he wants to kidnap me and chop me up into little pieces. I'm not sure which i would prefer - he might be nice but he's old so i'm not keen on going out with him ( i was preparing my best Elizabeth Bennett refusal speech ), but if he kidnaps me at least i get some time off work. So my lunch time rolls around and my curiousity is almost killing me ( although J is still convinced that i'm going to be kidnapped and tells me to keep my mobile phone handy ). I meet my client out the front and he starts to get all nervous and bumbly. " Umm, i know this must seems strange, i'm not really sure how to say this.... " Inside, I'm going - Oh. Crap.

And then - do you remember Average Joe ? Turns out that my client is a good friend of Joe, considers himself like a surrogate dad type of figure, and, well, umm, just that young Joe must have been talking about me and was apparently more than a little disappointed when we didnt go out for a second time. You're joking right ? Inside i couldnt help but smile and how sweet my client was trying to be. He told me he wasnt trying to interfere, that i didnt need to go into details or anything, just that the poor guy was wondering what he did wrong. " You know, if there were no sparks, then were no sparks! If he said something wrong and you think he's a dickhead, then tell him he's a dickhead! Just tell him why - the poor young bloke is wondering what he did to upset you and is a bit disappointed, because he liked you and wanted to see you again ". Well bless this mans little socks for telling me so - like he said, he was just looking out for his friend, he and he always thought i was a " good bird ", so maybe i could contact Joe and let him know what happened ? So i smiled, and told him that i would send Joe an email, which i fully intend to do. I always did, i just couldnt think of how to word it, but now i feel extra bad because it seems like Joe must have really taken a shine to me.

After work, my sister and I went to get some take out, and i'm relating this whole odd little story back to her. She looked at me and laughed and said, " You know, i was going to try and set you up once.... " Say what now ? Oh yea - my bright spark of sister thought it would be a great idea to set me up with Banky McHands. Not that she even knows Banky McHands. No, her plan was to just track him down at the bank where he worked and describe me to him, and then just plain old tell him i thought he was hot. I can say with, like, 95% certainty, that had she done that i would have been forced to punch her in the forehead. How embarrassing would that have been ? I wouldnt have known anything about it, until the next time i went to the bank and he gave me this odd look, like i had leprosy or something, and gently explained that i was far too old for him. Seriously, if my sister had done that i think i would have been mortified to death.

But thats not all. On my sisters 18th birthday, she went out to dinner with her friends and, because her boyfriend wasnt in town, her boyfriends best friend went to keep her company. Aww, what a sweetheart you say ? Well, yea. YoungBoysBest Friend ( or YBBF as he shall now be known ) had come up to our duplex when my sister and i were flatmates, and after i had cooked everyone dinner, YBBF took my empty plate to the sink and volunteered to take the garbage out. Aww, what a sweet young man. Sure. So when on my sisters birthday my best friend P and I finally caught up with her, and my sister mentioned that YBBF had come to be her " date ", we all went - Aww, what a sweetie. When sister got up to get a drink, P goes " You should totally put YBBF on lay-by ! ". Thats lay-away for you American people. And why would i have to do that, do you ask ? Because YBBF is only 16 years old! And i mean he's only just turned 16, so that makes him almost 9 full years younger than me. And not only did P suggest this, but when i was telling my sister this story tonight she tells me that she and her boyfriend had already discussed this. Oh.My.God. My best friend, my 18 year old sister and her 15 year old boyfriend have all decided that I would be great with a 16 year old boy - who apparently, would "totally like to tackle " me. Which is 15 year old boyfriend speak for " The 16 year old guy wants to do your sister ". Oh. My. God.

A 16 year old boy ( who is quite sweet, and you know he's going to totally good looking and attractive when IS eventually legal ) wants to tackle me. That is just wrong. Flattering, but wrong. Right ? I just cant believe that all these people are so concerned about my almost-non-existent lovelife....

Burfday weekend rundown

So that, right there , is my beautiful sister Erin. Doesnt she look cute? The angle of the eyeborws looks slightly wicked, but thats how she is really. So, just in case any of you have been living under a rock, or reading my posts without actually understanding them, this past Friday was Erin's 18th birthday. I am slightly sad to say that the weekend was a bit of a bust for me, but very happy to say she partied hard and loved it all ( after all, her birthday is about HER, not me ). Let me explain:
I'd taken the day off work on Friday so that we could hang out - i thought it might be nice to share the whole day with her, plus the idea of a day off for any reason was appealing. So while she was having a facial and a massage i hit the gym, and then we met back at home so we could go out for lunch. Not just any lunch mind you, but " $10 Tradie Lunch ", the best invention in the world. Basically one of the local pub bistro's offer a choice of meal, plus a drink, for only $10. I had the best chicken carbonara EVER - seriously - and enjoyed the company of my mother, my sister and her best friend.

Next on the agenda ? Tattoo time! Now we all know that i have four tattoos ( you knew that, right ? ) but i think i started a trend in my family. Since i got my first one, my father and brother have both been inked, and now it was Erins turn. She had to wait, legally, until she turned 18 to get tattooed but, in a stroke of genius, she decided to ask my parents if she get a tattoo as a birthday present - that way she wouldnt have to pay for it. And they agreed - well done little Erin! So my father and I went with her, less for moral support and more so we could witness the looks of mild pain and agitation on her face as the job was being done. Does that make us nasty ? No, just family. The tattooist Paul is a sweet guy though so he was always enquiring whether she was doing okay, did she want to stop for a break, stretch her legs, things like that, so he didnt make to easy for us to get inside her head. Incidentally, in a brief taste of D-list fame, Paul holds the world record for the longest tattooing session ever ( 42 hours people ).... take that " Miami Ink" !

So after lunch, the tattoo session and the traditional gathering for birthday cake ( caramel mud cake... uh, yum.... ), the immediate family went out for dinner. Witness below the astonishing beauty that was us ( ahem... yea, right ):








So thats her and, uh, me posing for a happy snap before the dinner arrived. For the record, my garlic chicken and prawns was lovely, thank you for asking. The place we went for dinner is a balcony resturant above my favourite pub, so it has a great atmosphere and made it really easy to move on after dinner. My heavily pregnant sister-in-law, neice and my flu-ey father went home after we'd eaten, and myself, my mum, brother and little Erin headed downstairs. Friday nights are always a little bit of a bust - i'm glad she wasnt completely geared up for a huge night, because Fridays tend to be a little quiet and the problem with eating out before hitting the pub is that there is usally a period between the end of the meal and the point in the night where other people start turning up. That period is the one that gets you - you get bored waiting for some action to arrive, and if your a birthday girl who woke up really early and has been running around all day you start to get a little tired too. So we had a few quiet drinks and decided to head home around 10pm. Kind of an early time to be calling it an evening, but my brother had to work in the morning, my mum is NOT a party animal,and the birthday girl was happy to have been able to get a few drinks in with her nearest and dearets. Aww, bless.

Which leads me to Saturday:

Nevermind the fact that I look completely washed out in that photo ( if you could get closer I had really sweet gold eyeshadow and black liner... it was cute! ) but, for me, the night was a bit of a washout. I was really looking forward to it - my best friend P ( thats her in the dots ) was going to be home, it was going to be my sisters first big night out and my first big night out for 6 months. And for a while, it was great: P and I had a great dinner together and then joined my sister and some friends at the pub. We started having some drinks and got to dancing - god, how i missed pub dancing! - and it was all going great. And then code name Mary showed up. I cant believe i let her ruin my night. One minute i'm dancing a way, not a care in the world and the next there she is, shotting me the death stare.

Once i knew she was there, she was EVERYWHERE. Turns out she was one of Erins friends cousins, so after having a short toilet break, P and I returned to the dancefloor to find Mary dancing with our group. That was it - i could not be there and have her either giving me the evil eye or, alternatively, completely ignoring me and making me feel uncomfortable in my own group. Once P decided she was going to go, I couldnt stay on my own, even though my sister was there living it up. I gave her amy apologies and told her if Mary was going to be hanging around, i couldnt.My sister, in her 18 year old wisdom, loudly announced she'd throw a drink in Mary's face, her tell her to piss off, because its not fair that i should be made to feel that way. Knowing that if she did try any of that, the situation would only be worse, I made my exit.

I'm really cut at myself for letting her ruin my night. I'd been excited about celebrating with my sister for weeks and, on the actual night, i skulked home before midnight. All because some girl with apparent issues has some cold of emotional hold over me. My sister showed me all her photos in the morning, and excitedly told me about how the rest of the night went, and she had such a great time. It only made me feel worse for having missed out. So apparently i'm going to have to suck it up, and learn to ignore Mary - its just hard because i'm very non-confrontational, and i always feel that if i'm in " her " way too long, she's going to go off her nut again. My only other option is to pack up and move to some place she doesnt live. Poo to that, and poo to her!

And so endeth the burfday weekend adventures. Overall, i know my sister had a great weekend and thats all matters. Plus, my hair looked h-o-t on Friday and i had sexy shoes last night - beat that Mary!

24.10.08

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN JAYNE!!!

Okay, so in case you havent been following my blog, today is my little sisters 18th birthday. Happy burfday to her! We kind of have a full day ahead of us ( i have taken the day off work so we could hang out ) : we're almost ready to go to lunch, then she has an appointment at the tattoo parlour to have her first tatoo done, after that people will be turning up for birthday cake and then the whole immediaqte family is going out for birthday dinner. Ooh, plus, seeing as 18 is the legal drinking age in Australia, tonight will be her first real taste of Aussie pub culture - yay for that!

So she and I are going out tonight and tomorrow night aswell. Its been a while since i've been out both nights of the weekend so i'm expecting to feel, i dont know, like a 100 years old come Sunday afternoon. Everyone look forward to my posts after that....

Average Joes, wearing chocolate and super boys

Right, so i've decided to give Joe one more chance. This may be against the general consensus - according to the comments on my last post, all of you guys think its a lost cause and both my father and sister are in agreeance that he sounds like a total knob, but you never know, right ?I've agreed to go out with him again, if only to see if that elusive spark suddenly appears or to confirm my suspicions that he falls into friend territory. However, I have told him i will be busy for the next two weekends so he wont be seeing me before then. See, its my sisters 18th birthday this coming weekend and then my brothers 23rd the following, so i kind of have a good excuse to sit and mull over how to let Joe down gently if that spark doesnt appear.

In other news, like i said, my sisters birthday is now only 3 days and 4 sleeps away. Yes, she is about to turn 18 years of age and she is still counting down in the number of " sleeps ". Bless her little cotton socks... anyhoo, i bought the cutest black gladiator style heels to wear on Saturday night. Again, no picture for you yet but you can be sure i'll sneak a few pics of my tootsies at some point. I'm thinking after going out Friday AND Saturday nights, i'm going to have plenty pictures to choose from. Old school, drunk-at-the-pub, uploaded-to-Facebook style pictures. Look out!

Also, my neice insists that she will be wearing " chocolate " my sisters birthday dinner. What the? yes, when i asked her what she was going to wear, and i told her it had to be something nice, she replied, " Umm... chocolate! ". Well, yes, chcoolate IS nice, i just dont think its appropriate night time attire for a 3 year old. A 23 year old maybe ( especially if he has dark hair, and those goregous V hip muscle things..... ) but for a 3 year old, not so much.....

Oh, one last thing - i just want you all to know, in case you didnt already, that the boys on " Supernatural " are the prettiest boys on tv.

Oh lord, now i'm starting to count down....

I cant believe its almost the 8th day of the month and i've only made one post. What in the crap is up with that ? What have i been doing ? Truth be told, not s very much, but hey, it was a long weekend. I was content to sleep in, eat a late lunch, and watch bad cable tv. I introduced my father to " Date My Mom " and " Room Raiders " on MTV - i secretly think he liked them ( i'm sure i caught him watching that horrid soap " Passions " once ..... ).

So, now that the long weekend is over the next thing on my calendar that i'm looking forward to is my sisters 18th birthday in 17 days time. For those of you who dont know, 18 is the legal drinking age here in Australia so its the birthday where you get to go to a bar for the first time and get trashed with your friends and your older sister. Umm, i mean, you get taken out and shown how to drink responsibly. Of course thats what i mean. So everyone in our immediate family plus my best friend P is taking my sister out for dinner and then we're moving downstairs to the bar. I kind of like that my sister invited P, and i know P appreciates it to, seeing as she doesnt have a sister of her own. And, o0f course, my sister has friends of her own but she's going out with them the night after her birthday. She's chosen to go out with her family first ? Aint that sweet?

Anyhoo, i'm not sure why exactly i'm so looking forward to someone else's birthday. It is probably mostly because i havent been out since P's hens party ( the night of the Mary incident ). I mean, i went from going out every Saturday night, leaving the house at around 10:30am and getting home around 3am, to not going out at all for an entire 6 months. Its been a big jump and, to be honest, i've missed it sometimes. I've missed Mary's sisters ( lets call her MS ) friendship, for sure, but i've also just missed the atmosphere of a crowded bar, dj playing, people dancing, escaping the hot dance floor for some fresh outside. I wasnt like a disco diva or anything, i just liked being around so many people, even if i hardly knew any of them. I've missed sitting in MS's bedroom drinking a bottle of cheap champagne before we went out, gossiping and laughing our arses off. I've missed that.

So, come the evening of October 24th i'm going to put on a slinky dress, some cute heels, do my makeup all pretty like and i'm taking my sister out - for the photographic evidence please refer back here after that date, or find yourself my Facebook page....

Happy Sisters Day!

Yep, thats right, happy belated Sisters Day to all the sisters out there! My sister and I " invented " Sisters Day three years ago because we didnt think its fair that Mum's and Dad's get presents on a random day, but we didnt - so June 15th every year ( for three years running ! ) we have a day where we buy each other a present, we hang out and eat good ( alright, bad ) food. That would be my sister Erin, and I, showing off the good food we were eating at the movies. Thats what we did - went to the movies, went shopping ( for groceries mind you, but we were together... ), watched a DVD i bought her for a gift and painted our nails.

So here's to all the sisters we have, whether they are blood related or not..... long live the Sisterhood!

I must stop sabotaging myself

Seriously. My sister is kind of helping but thats not her fault - she just has a fast metabolism and can eat crap all day and it wont make an ounce of difference. Literally. But me ? I need to get all the junk food out of my house. I do not go to the gym four times a week just so i can eat icecream and chocolate and put on the calories i just burnt off. Thats not how it works.

I dont think i've actually put ON any weight thus far, but i would have liked to have taken some OFF in the last 6 weeks and i dont think i have, because Picnic Drumsticks are just too tempting. However, i had this rule before my sister moved in and i think i'm going to have to go back to it: if it isnt in my house, i cant eat it. Simple. That is, if there are no Picnic Drumsticks in the freezer, or hazelnut chocolate in the fridge, i cant indulge in any of it. And i am far too lazy to get dressed, put some shoes on and drive all the way to the supermarket just to buy a block of chocolate. So if its not there, i cant be tempted.

So from now on if my sister is craving icecream - which is pretty much every day ( lucky skinny bitch.... ) - than she's just going to have to buy something i dont actually like eating. Like peppermint icecream, or bitter dark chocolate. Just keep the Picnic Drumsticks away from me...

Please go away, you're doing my head in

My house has been taken over by teenagers. My sister has invited her boyfriend, her best friend, and her best friend's boyfriend over for the evening. They are slightly annoying. But, more than that, they are depressing.

I am doing everything in my power not to cry. I have bit my lip so hard it has started to bleed. The last thing i want when i come home is to be reminded, so obviously, of what i dont have.

I'm thinking of packing it all in and going to bed. And i would to if it weren't only 8.45pm. Somehow going to bed at such an early hour would make me feel even more of a loser....

Hey roomie!

Well, its official - my sister has finally got her drivers licence and, come this Saturday, i will finally have a roommate. This is both exciting and kind of annoying. On the one hand i really enjoy my space; on the other, its all that space that does my head in when i have bad episodes.

If i admit to it, i'm actually looking forward to her moving in. I mean, she's my sister, i've known her her whole life ( i havent known her all mine, i'm the older one ) but i think its going to encourage us to learn more about each other, and grow closer. We have a good relationship now but being seven years older than she is, we havent always had the time for each other. That is, not the physical time but, for example, being 15 when your sister is 8 you dont exactly want to give her the time of day when there is other stuff you could be doing.

Being 17 years old, and having just got her licence, i think its going to be interesting being one the closest people to her when she starts" growing up ". I dont mean to sound either nostalgic nor naive - she isnt my child so i have no need to be all parental, and she's not exactly new to everything - but i think it will be nice to be in the front row as she starts earning her independence and becoming a fully functioning adult. I hope - and i think she will - that she will come to me for advise on stuff, like which shoes go with her outfit, or the best place to go out on a Saturday night or whether i think her new boyfriend is a douche bag. She said a few weeks ago, during an argument, that i'm apparently too old for her to go out with or hang out with much and, although it hurt quite bit at the time, i know she doesnt mean it. I hope not only will she ask me where to go out but that she will ask me to come with her, or ask if she can come with me and we can do all the fun stuff together. There are still 8 months until she's legal, so as we have it planned, i'll get to take her out for her first big night on the town.

So here's to the little sis moving in on Saturday, to impending and unavoidable arguments, but mostly to new adventures, even for an oldie like me...

Stop searching the obituaries, i havent died...

Nor have i fallen off the face of the planet, or moved underground to live with the mole people. I merely decided that i needed to take a complete break from blogging, just for a little while, because if i cant escape the confines of my own mind i can at least escape from putting them to print. You would think that getting thoughts and feelings out would do a person some good, would at least get things off my chest, and in some part it does, but it also lets you read and re-read things that perhaps you'd rather not live through again. But never mind that, here i am, alive and sort of well, at least today.

See thing is, just after my last post in december, which was relatively sunny in comparison to the other recent posts, i had a nice little meltdown. Not exactly on a Britney Spears kind of scale, but big enough for me to take notice and need to take a step back. I'm talking a full blown panic attack, crying and thinking ( and hoping ) that i would die; strangely enough, the start of this panic attack happened in front of my parents and younger sister, at their house, which i fled in tears. I drove home, erratically mind you, and tried locking myself in my house in the dark but my mum kept calling and calling and within 20 minutes or so they had turned up at my place, trying to help. And they did a little, in that instance anyway - i still kept crying, stopping and starting, still struggling to draw breath at some points but they managed to calm me down and talk me through what was plaguing me at that particular moment. Apparently my parents are a lot smarter than i thought - they told me they'd noticed that i'm lonely, that my behaviour had been more depressed and nonchalant lately, that a lot of the time it appeared like i really didnt care about anything. They also told me that unfortunately there isnt a lot they can do to help me with the loneliness issues, and any self-esteem or self-worth things i have going on, well, they dont really see where any of it could stem from. They think i'm fantastic. But you're parents are supposed to think that right ?

So there you be - i had my breakdown that, lets face it, we all knew was coming. Nothing much really has come of it, except for a few days afterwards i felt a little lighter because i had managed to get something out. But that feeling of emancipation hasnt exactly lasted long - i've had bad days since then, and have an almost constant feeling of " blah ". By that i mean that i have almost no motivation to do anything, or at least anything important. I havent eaten properly in at least three weeks because i cant bring myself to cook anything ( i've been eating fruit or making toast, or buying takeaway, and yep, i know thats not healthy ).I have a few ideas running around in my head but no drive to make any of it happen. Not that any of the ideas themselves are important on a world scale but they would at least give me something to work on. And the stupid thing is i know that i have no motivation, i'm disgusted by the fact that i would really like to get out and go for a walk, or do 50 sit ups, or even fold my basket of washing, but i have no inner feeling pushing me to do anything other than lie on the lounge and watch the cricket. It makes me sick. It makes me think i need to be back on medication, or in counselling, or at least reaching out to someone and asking for help but i dont want to admit defeat.

The other thing that has come of the shit hitting the fan is that i have decided, after me originally suggesting it jokingly a few months ago and then having my parents bring it up for real, is that my sister is going to move in with me when she gets her drivers licence. I am both happy and apprehensive about this. On the one hand it will mean that i have a room mate, that i wont be coming home to an empty house, and that will be nice. Plus, i'll have better finances because she'll be paying half the rent and bills, so more money is a nice incentive. But on the other hand, my 17 year old sister is almost the complete opposite of me. Dont get me wrong, for siblings we get on really well, i'm not worried about that. What i mean is that she's a beautiful girl, popular, has all the self-confidence in the world, and the people to go along with it. What i'm worried about is her inviting friends over at the weekends, or the new boyfriend she seems to chop and change every month or less, and me looking like the sad older sister who has a sibling for a room-mate because she has nobody else.Of being the sad old spinster who always seem to be sitting around Erin's house, doing nothing, with no-one.I dont want to be that.

And thats it for now. I was thinking i would make a post with my favourite stuff for the year, like movies and music and world events. I've been meaning to do it for a few days now but, strangely, i havent been able to muster up the motivation...