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Bloody diets. Who hasn’t been on one? And how many are there to choose from? My God...it’s a hideous nightmare and every bugger who has ever been on one, successfully or not has their own advice or recommendation.
I was just saying to my best mate, how the hell did we manage to stay thin all those years in our twenties and early thirties without stacking on the kilo’s? We drank, we ate whatever we wanted as often as we wanted to and never put on an ounce.
“We were in our twenties and thirties”, she said.
“Yeah right.” I do remember a time when sometimes a meal consisted of a coffee and a couple of cigs or a couple of wines. That possibly helped.
Mum used to say, “Have you eaten love?’
“Sure”, I’d say, “I’ve had two glasses of white wine”.
“Not really enough”, she’d say.
“Well its fruit, isn’t it? Grapes are fruit. They’re on the fruit chart. In fact there are a heap of perfectly good vitamins and minerals in grapes”. Case closed.
It kind of serves my right in a way. I always easily maintained my weight without trying and was exceptionally complacent about it. Then I hit mid thirties and while I wasn’t looking fat snuck up on me. I even went to the doctor after finding a small lump on my rib cage and said, “is this cancer or what?”- always my fear.
“It’s a fatty deposit.”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
Time to diet. I did the weight watchers diet merely by borrowing the books and adding up points and went to gym. I lost ten kilos and swore I’d never let that happen again. I hated gym. I was always one of those people who played tennis, swam and played netball regularly. None of this gym shit. To me gym was for desperate people or obsessed dieters in fancy gym wear and body builders. Still I went along, rode the bike, pushed and pulled heavy weights and kept an evil and envious eye on the thin people. What I really wanted to say to really thin, buff and fit women who squatted in front of mirrors and posed with bulging muscles and not an inch of fat on them was, “ Honestly, fuck off lovie, what’s your caper? You’re skinny enough, bugger off and let us fatty’s get on that stair climber”.
When I was breast feeding my daughter the weight dropped off of me easily and I was able to consume anything I wanted. I was complacent again, my partner was stacking on weight and complaining because I was consuming what I wanted and not everyone can do that if they are not breast feeding. When I stopped feeding her I stacked on 8 kilos in two months. Whoops a fucking daisy.
Back to dieting. So I went back to the weight watchers diet and wasn’t losing anything much even though I had drastically reduced my intake. Then I read that drinking wine even though only adds up to one weight watchers measly point each glass, means also that you retain more fat. How much does that suck??
I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while and was pregnant last time we met and she said I was too thin.” What’s going on with you?” she said. Now this chick is the thinnest bitch on the planet so it was weird coming from her but then a week later a woman I know well at my local petrol station asked if I was pregnant again....OMG!!!
As for exercise, my thoughts on that really were it keeps you fit, it doesn’t really diminish fat. Jury is still out on that one. So, I sat at my table behind a bunch of library books with various titles such as the carb free diet, the Atkins diet, the shake a day diet, the weight watchers diet, Tony Ferguson diet and so on and so on, plan my goal weight, pick something that suits and hope that something works and I get rid of my gut!! I don’t need to be a rake. I just want to be happy with it. I want to practice girth control. I have to exercise as early in the morning as I can manage so my brain won’t figure out what I am doing for a while. It can get pretty crazy though. You can go overboard. I write a list of everything I eat and so notice everything I do. Having a toddler means often finishing off their food. Half a banana here, some porridge and custard there. It goes on all day. Waste not want not and all that. I caught myself the other day not having the last bite of my daughters banana because ‘I’m on a diet’. For god’s sake...isn’t that going too far?
It really comes down to one thing. Diet Schmiet.
This is how 'they' do it!
Tight arse, fat gut and a coffee shop stop at 6am. These are the mid life crisis boys on bikes. The whole cycling apparel includes mandatory helmet of course with weird shit sticking out of the top to deter birds from chipping away at their on growing hairy ear cartilage I think. BioRacer Firm bike pants, better shaved legs than me, in fact nicer toned legs than many of us, windbreaker gloves, jerseys in a variety of fluro, the ability to balance without putting a foot on terra firma at traffic lights and attitude.
My partner always wants to open the car door when we pass a crew of them riding across seven lanes, rather than single file as they should, because they get in the fucking way and put the rest of us in danger...or so I hear regularly. I usually defended them because in all honesty that didn’t annoy me as much as drivers who brake before they indicate.
But then I had an argument with one of them at Southbank once. There was a hoard of highly prized and very probably exceedingly expensive bikes parked outside of Chez Laila cafe while a group of cycling fanatics took up seventeen tables one Sunday morning early. I was there early with my baby in a pram because she woke at 4.30am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. So there I was bleary eyed enjoying the morning sun and wander along the river, when bam, straight into a Merida Scultura carbon road bike. Before I could say “Shit, who put that bloody bike in the path of my pram endangering my infants life?...” a cyclist dude jumped up swiftly slopping his latte with skim onto his raisin toast, (no butter) and came at me. I stupidly assumed he was about to apologise when out of his mouth came an onslaught of abuse about me hitting his precious Merida Sculture carbon (how I knew the name). There was some statement about watching where I was going and finally, “Do you know how much this bike is worth? It’s a $7,000 bike for God’s sake?”
“Really, “I said. “Well my baby cost around that through IVF and this is a Bugaboo Cameleon with accessories mate. That makes my cargo worth $9,000 and take that ridiculous hat off dipshit, who wears a helmet at breakfast. What could happen?”
With that I left.
Granted I used to refer to my pram as the landcruiser because it was so big and I often had trouble getting it through narrow spaces. Shopping was a nightmare! It was also an Emmaljunga and second hand, but how was he to know. The point is, there was no room because of the bikes and there was no ‘clean in body, clean in heart’ mentality going on at all there. They tell motorists to be cautious, be courteous and have a better cyclist mentality but mind-set like that makes it pretty hard. Granted it could have been just one guy but not one other bike man stood up to defend me. They were all glancing at their own bikes with that look on their face like, thank God it wasn’t mine. I took a backward glance when I was farther away to see the rude dude squatting with another cyclist to check out the damage...of which I’m sure there was none except when I "felt abashed at the extravagant praise" – NOT.
Failing to Mask Anti Cycling Agenda
I heard yesterday that people would rather go without sex, their friends, their mobile phone and other 'things' we have normally regarded as vitally important for us to exist, than lose access to the internet! You see some weird stuff on the internet, this global structure of interconnected computer networks that interchange information (or something like that anyway), that we can’t seem to live without. We can do everything via the net. You don’t really need people anymore, except to deliver the shit you order or bid for on eBay or similar websites. You can meet your future husband without even being in the same country and you can spend a lot of time doing 10 billion surveys and earn money and points that add up to a new ball point pen or something as arbitrary.
From food to go, to bookings in Paris, tickets for the Nicks at Madison Square Gardens, and chatting on camera to a mate in London, the internet has shrunk the world. We have found old friends, advertised our music, writing and cars and learnt that words we think we know well don’t necessarily mean the same thing as they used to. It is about something you can’t see but know its there. Virtual. The shopping cart for example. We don’t see it or push it like when we are at Coles but it can be filled quickly with stuff and cost you money. Trojan horse is not the mythical ruse of war used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C. It is a masquerading virus in the form of a computer program. And we have a whole dictionary of brand spanking new words and terms for things such as hacker. Paypal, a payment system that lets you send money via e-mail using a credit card that isn’t swiped ever. You no longer need to go to the newsagent and buy a birthday card or card for any other event actually because there is e-card.
Broadband is not a cummerbund, it refers to connections to the Internet with much greater bandwidth than you get using a modem. A modem is an apparatus that connects a computer to your phone line. It allows a computer to chat to other computers through the phone setup. A, podcast is a mode of audio broadcasting via the Internet. A blog is an ugly word and is essentially a journal that is accessible and presented on the web. I think that the internet with its social networking sites is a huge tool to show off really. Look at my life, read about my life and know my opinions, thoughts and see my photos. It makes for interesting reading but it puts you right out there too if you choose.
One day our children are going to ask who or what is a postie and what is snail mail? What is a street directory? E-mail makes it all very easy than taking the ancient way of pen to paper. Its probably considered as antiquated as a carrier pigeon or Morse code. I bet they don’t even sell writing paper anymore.
Some of the weirdest sites I have come across using the net are,
How to avoid trapped arm while cuddling in bed.
How to underdo her bra using one hand.
How to apply translucent powder (my personal fave)
Ugly millionaire dating agency
Why do socks disappear?
Who comes up with this stuff? Or rather who doesn’t. Seems everyone can have a piece of the action if they want to.
With the arrival and popularity of My Space, Twitter, facebook and a million other web 2.0 sites like stumble Upon, Squidoo, Hub pages, Knol, Live Journal and a stack more..it has allowed us to be everywhere and communicate from anywhere. To promote, to hear the normally unheard, to cathartically express ourselves and our secrets on sites like Post Secret, one of my favourite sites!!! It’s the living room war without the conflict...although there is always some of that too with the misconduct of some.
Post A Secret
Can you live without it?
I think one of the shittiest things to see, is a friend with the wrong one. It can be blindingly obvious to you and the world (and very, very possibly to your friend as well) and there can be a pattern. Initially they tell you they have met this person and he is interesting. It appears they like your friend, always a bonus but your friend knows in their heart of hearts that really, frankly, truthfully, they want it to work so that they are no longer single.
A friend of mine has done this several times. Oh my God it terrifies me when I see it happening. I can write it like a predictive diary of what will happen because I know the prototype. It is that obvious.
She does that whole, “Met someone last night.”
“Oh cool. Nice is he?”
“Sure.”
And that’s it.
“What else?” I ask.
“Rich.”
“Nice. How old?”
“You know. Older.”
“Well that’s alright. Good personality? Funny? Nice looking?”
“Did I mention he is rich?”
“Oh sweet Jesus.”
And you almost hear her saying, except she’s not,
“Bugger it he’s my only choice at the moment and I will make it work until it kills me.”
But instead she says, “I think I could marry this one.”
“Right,” I say, “Because he is so perfect for you in how many ways and you’ve known him how long?”
“It’s not about looks.”
“I agree. It’s about something in common and stuff you like about him. It’s about not settling. Right?”
It might sound harsh and like I’m judging her or something but this is how it will go.
She’ll see him every now and then keeping that perfect distance and then she’ll drink so she can bear to kiss him and then she’ll tell her mates that she’s not real sure but then she’ll sleep with him while drunk and then really, there’s no going back from there and she’ll know this. But to her it’s important to make it all seem like it’s the perfectly logical thing to do. Which is fine if he’s the right one.
“I’ll learn to love him,” she’ll say.
“Perhaps.”
But you know the rest is yet to come. She’ll get swept away with the thought of the whole romance. Of marrying him and finally being free from that ‘singles’ title and being able to have babies in wedlock because her clock is ticking and her parents are religious.
So she’ll organise bed and breakfast stays with him, lunches with her friends, meeting the parents, planning the wedding (with honeymoon destination) and then he’ll declare his undying love for her. She will be wrapped and shit her pants both at the same time because down deep inside she just knows she will leave him battered and torn because at the end of the day, he is the wrong one. Again. And so it’s back to being seriously single.
Why did lil miss muffet run away?
Most of us know what it is like to be out there looking for the perfect partner. At least at the start it’s the ‘perfect’ person we look for, later it’s just a person we are looking for and much later it can become looking for anyone at all, it doesn’t matter who as long as they are breathing and have a drivers licence. It’s okay when you want to be fancy-free living the singles life. But when it comes down to it that aspiration doesn’t last forever. Especially when the people we are surrounded by and hang with, are all cosily partnered up in some perfect world a ‘singleton’ doesn’t quite belong to.
Singles often go on about how incredible it is not to have the supposed ‘ball and chain.’ They brag about doing anything they want. They even have the whole bed to themselves and can lie horizontally in it rather than vertically if they want to. And really, they might really love it but others pine for a partner. Especially when they are ready. It’s a hard thing to be in a very happy relationship and watch and be with a friend who is looking. You can make all the suggestions under the sun and drag them around to meet your friends, even set them up on the old blind date God forbid, but you know in the end it’s all up to them.
I remember the looks on people’s faces on occasion when I have been single and they were blissfully paired up with their companion. It was that look of pity and commiseration like I was some loser from the planet, ‘Barren bitch’ or as though I’d lost all four limbs and been diagnosed with torso cancer. It seriously irked me.
They’d say gently (with that look), “How’s things? Found anyone yet?”
“No,” I’d retort back quickly, smiling and trying to sound peppy. And then there was that sigh from them.
“But I did get a massive promotion at work and won a million dollars on power ball.”
Sigh. “Wish I could help you.”
“Hmmm, never mind.”
If I’d had a gutful of them asking and snapped a vicious “NO,” back at them they’d do that sidewards glance thing at me like they were afraid I was on the edge. They’d raise their eyebrows and I could almost hear the words they thought but were too scared to say out loud,
“No wonder you’re single hon, with an attitude like that. Oh yes indeedy.”
Sometimes it all got a bit patronising and a little bit self-righteous.
I try not to give that same look to single people when I’m paired up and ask them whether they have any potential interests out there and have even practised that nonchalant bored face in front of a mirror when asking.
Close friends are different though. They want you to be happy but they don’t infer that that means ‘with someone’. They don’t patronise or look at me like I was missing out on the best adventure in the world. They even tell me stories about the shitty side of being in a relationship. Most of the time it was crap but you’ve gotta love their objective.
She is soo glad she is sleeping single!
It’s weird getting to the age where a partner becomes more important than the partner you had when you were 15. It’s even stranger getting to the point where they are almost (but not quite) as important as your best friends.
For years your main entertainment, distractions, amusements, communication, hobbies, sports, and whole life in general have been around your best friends and naturally, what they think. You grow up with these friends liking all the same stuff as each other. You like the same songs, ‘Smile’ jeans (80’s style of teen jeans in South Australia), the same make up, the same shops, the same sunglasses, and buckle bags (teen hand bags in South Australia). Your friend’s opinions are huge because they know you well and you believe in them and hope that they believe in you enough to steer you right. Your choice in kissing partner can be almost the first and only time that you notice that you may differ from your friends in likes and dislikes and thank God really.
This is where the perfect partner checklist comes in. Everybody has had one let’s face it. Although we have all seen the results of those that didn’t have one haven’t we? Huh? Hmm nasty. Just a few basic aspects is all it takes. It can go something like this, must be:
- Attractive but not too beautiful,
- cultured (but not more than me),
- good in bed with a reasonable sex drive,
- secure (in self not necessarily financially, I’m not shallow),
- have a good sense of humour (must be funny, must amuse me),
- a potentially good parent and finally,
It’s true. You can meet someone who fits all the selection criteria, have several dates, sex and good kissing and then a grave thought hits you. What if the friends don’t like this person? Because you start that falling in love stuff where your whole focus is on them and how perfect they are yet you know that there is that little but very important cliché out there, “Love is blind.” We know this cliché is true and valid because we have seen it happen to our own friends and more importantly to Julia Roberts when she married that man with big hair, Lyle bloody Lovett. What the hell was she thinking? He has to have a big dick! There is no other explanation.
Now the rules around friend acceptance and like of the new love commences with the best friend. If she likes and approves it is almost enough, afterwards you can move on to the other best friends and then other more casual friends and the rest, well who cares about the rest.
So you set up a best friend meets new love, summit. Drinks rather than dinner or coffee is always the better way to go because if it becomes evident immediately that they are not going to get on, or that she hates the new love, you can all get drunk and make out it doesn’t matter. If on the other hand it is a screaming success you can all get drunk in celebration. The bizarre thing you do when at this soirée is notice for the first time the faults.
‘Oh God he is slurping beer, loudly.’
‘He said something wanky, did he really say that? Make out he didn’t.’
‘Hate that shirt he’s wearing tonight. Geez, who dresses him anyway?’
‘Oh God, is that a booger, wipe it.’
And he is staring at you like you’re crackers because he has noticed all evening that you have been incessantly gawking at him closely and assessing him the whole time and occasionally kicking him under the table. Your best friend is also a bit perplexed but understands because she is your best friend. She also knows that no matter what she says to you about him when he goes for the first slash of the evening, (which you hope happens early so you can get her opinion and relax or plan the dump) is that you will know if she’s lying. If she says he’s great and she doesn’t really think so, you’ll know and she knows you’ll know so the pressure is on for all. The new love knows he is on trial and that the best friend is both judge and jury, and you are stressed because this is your dating future with this person. It shouldn’t be this way but it is. I don’t care how much you like/love this person, once your best friend tells you he’s crap. You think so too. It changes everything.
That is why, as you get older and listen to your friends heart over a particular person they’re seeing and know and understand that he is different from the others, that she is more serious about this one, that you learn to like and accept her new love for her or lie really, really well if you dislike him.
You look for all the good points and ignore the bad because there has to be something good there if your best friend thinks so. Unless (there is always an ‘unless’ in every scenario), you think he is really bad for her (beats women, has a mullet haircut, loves Lionel Richie), then you never stop telling her because at the end of the day you really care about her and want the best for her and because you are acquainted with the cliché, ‘love is blind.’ You have to be her eyes sometimes.
The Single Girls Guide
A bride’s behaviour on the day of the weddings I have been in has been very varied. They seriously change. They become neurotic; hung up on shades of nail polish, “what do you think of my Santorini sunset?” precious, fixated on panty hose and look a little disturbed throughout the morning of the wedding day.
Usually I am bowled over at the performance of the bride on the day. They suddenly turn into people I don’t know very well. They are like Charlotte from Sex and the City. Sometimes I think I just don’t get it. I know it is all very important and that all the carefully planned pieces need to come together on the day like a carefully crafted jigsaw, but really who gives a fuck if there is one flower out of a whole bouquet that is orange instead of yellow. How is that going to matter? Who will even notice? Will this impair the future happiness of the marriage? Something like this actually happened prior to a wedding ceremony that again I was bridesmaid in. I had no idea what was going on (not unusual), just that there were tears.
Let me set the scene.
Bride naturally, four bridesmaids, faces made up, dressed, hair bouffon pomped, glasses of French champagne in our hands (thank bloody God), wedding ready to go. Flowers arrived; we all did the obligatory, “wow aren’t they gorgeous,” and each took our posies. Right then there was a shriek of horror I had never heard before, even spilled my Champers. The frocked up bride in waiting was quivering over a box of flowers with mascara tears commencing their flow.
“Make-up,” someone called, could have been me I don’t know. It’s something I’d do. Something was apparently wrong with the bride’s floral arrangement.
“Jesus, is that all,” I mumbled reaching for the champagne bottle and re-filling my glass very carefully. It would have been suicide at that point to spill any on my dress.
“Top up?” I asked the others.
The thing is, and this is where I’m confused, the other three bridesmaids were all peering over the flower box too, shaking their heads and patting the weepy bride on her back in commiseration. They got it. They understood. Then I remembered two of these were married women too and another planning to take that amble down the aisle themselves very shortly. Imagine if something really serious happened? I still do not know to this day, what the hell was amiss with those flowers. I felt at that point it was best to fag up and go outside with the dog and my glass of bubbles.
After months of wedding talk, most of which I have tuned off from because hours upon hours of wedding talk drives me a bit fucking nuts and really I am more interested in the honeymoon destination than anything else, means that on the day I am just as surprised as anyone else at how everything has turned out.
“We’re going in a what?” I asked once loudly, dressed in my apricot bridesmaid dress.
“A horse and buggy to the church,” the bride said exasperatedly to me.
“Well why didn’t you say so?”
“I did. A million times.”
“Oh. Whoops a fucking daisy.”
While looking like cloned princesses on the day (the bridesmaids that is, the bride is clearly the Queen), it’s a bloody effort getting to that place. There’s the four am rise no matter what time you got to bed the night before or what time the wedding is that day, and lots of sitting around with weird shit in your hair. For some reason being engaged makes someone an expert on other people’s best hairstyles and optimum fingernail length. The bride tells you months before the wedding day how long your hair length will be and exactly what will happen to it.
“I want all you girls to have your hair up so you’ll all need to grow it out.”
“Oh right, well I was just thinking about going short actually.”
“Naa uttt. Not til after my wedding, Noooooo way.”
“Right of course, what was I thinking? Your day and all.” And it always seems to be the girls wedding. Never ‘our wedding.’ For months it has been, ‘at my wedding this, at my wedding that’.
“What does that other person think?” I ask.
“Who?”
“You know that guy who will be standing next to you at the end of the aisle? The one you’ll be spending the rest of your natural life with? What does he think?”
“I don’t know. I never asked or “He’s glad I’m doing it all.” Yeah, sure he is. But there’s that dawning on them right then and there look like, Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s actually the purpose of all this fan fare. I’m going to be with another person forever. Wow -
Oh my God.
Truth be known he probably really doesn’t care. He just wants to get through the whole thing so he can drink beers at the end of it with his mates and cuss about his life with his ball and chain (that he secretly loves).
A close friend of mine’s constant worry on her wedding day was that people would be looking at her. While many brides seem to indulge in that idea, this friend of mine was very anxious about it. In the end I don’t know why she worried, she was gorgeous and it was all very natural but I kinda see what she means. It’s a big focus.
The bride apparently should look her best ever. People are looking at everything, taking detailed notes of it all like journalists at some trial, especially the dress. The bride should look happy and radiant. Well at least happy, radiant can wait til pregnancy. It’s too much pressure otherwise and too much rouge.
Another wedding I was in was very cool because the bride was cool and unruffled about anything. She was relaxed and laid back. She told me up front I would not have to wear an upside down bowl of spaghetti on my head (traditional wedding hair) which I was incredibly pleased about because I don’t see the point in sitting for hours with heated rollers in my hair when I have naturally curly hair. I don’t feel the need to conform just because every other bridesmaid on the day has them. The point is I don’t need them. At the end of the day, to have hair that gives the impression of having an upside down bowl of spaghetti on your head is just not natural, at all.
She amused me greatly because she was so chilled out and frequently mumbled during photographs and between stubbies of VB, “Oh God, where’s my hat gone now?”
She meant her veil. I just loved that day.
Probably the most trying wedding, even though I think the world of the bride, was when we, as bridesmaids were told every few minutes to ‘fluff’ the brides dress. I didn’t even know what that meant and just followed what the maid of honour (her best friend) did a couple of times, making sure I kept the cig that was hanging from my mouth well away from the flammable tulle. It was bad enough when the horse stepped on her dress before the reception. I got sick of that fluffing early in and simply made myself scarce, along with my best friend who was also in the wedding, as soon as fluffing time neared.
“Quick,” I’d say, “It’s nearly time to fluff, let’s nick off.”
“Absolutely,” she’d say, “I’ll get the supplies,” and grabbed the alcohol and cigarettes. Besides if you need fluffing at anytime and your best friend is there, it’s her job and after the ceremony it is clearly the husbands. It is a tough job being bridesmaid. It is air traffic controller pressure.
Most people though look very happy on the day of their wedding and for the days, months and even years that follow and this is lovely. It gives me hope. I’m a great believer in love and finding ‘the one’ and spending your life with someone that ‘rocks your world.’ It’s what life is about. When people are in love they care about everyone else. They are nice to be with and want others to be in love too, which is where the classic blind date set ups come in. Ugh!
Happily marrieds set up house, plan children, do domestic stuff together hand in hand like gardening, wandering around home shows at pavilions and eat picnics in parks. They don’t even care if a bird shits on their head while eating a picnic in a park because they are so in love.
And then years down the track or sometimes it is just a few years, you sit in the same happy couple’s house while they are angrily heaving furniture at each other and you protectively hold your rum and coke to your chest and glance to the mantle piece where the mandatory wedding portrait sits and you say to yourself (rather than to them because you don’t want to break up their fight, it’s the most entertaining thing a single girl has seen in a while) “Ahh, aint marriage grand.”
Anyway, after careful consideration of all of this I knew I just couldn’t say yes about being bridesmaid again to my new friend. I would rather eat razor blades on Jatz. The one only incentive I came up with for being bridesmaid at all was perhaps I might meet somebody nice, being single and all back then. I even considered getting out my wrinkled partner checklist to remind me that I was single and I looking. Life is tricky shit.
SMS, or short message standard. It’s not the brand new communication method but it is here to stay. My phone beeps the standard I just got a text message beep and my 2 year old says, “Mummy, te-ext”. Now that’s sad isn’t it?
It’s handy, it’s annoying, it saves time, is quicker than e-mail and it saves talking to people on the phone if you are not a phone person, like me. I h8 the phone but I <3 to txt, it’s g8. I was and on occasion still am, (much to my complete horror), one of those people who calls the world while drunk. I get bored chatting on the phone so I avoid it and instead text, Facebook or e-mail or do it while I am intoxicated. It is even easier to text than dial and chat while tipsy and I have been guilty of waking up with hangover and grabbing the mobile which is for some reason not 5 cms away from me and check the sent messages...very gingerly and in colossal fear.
Is texting wrecking our language? Well there’s a question. My opinion is that as long as it isn’t acceptable to use in school papers or in any other vehicle other than text via mobile or chat, it shouldn’t matter. Slang in one form or another has been used since the dawn of time. People are always going to take short cuts or embellish language in one mode or another. I guess the difficulty is that parents are unable to decipher the codes their kids are using when they are checking to make sure they are safe online or on mobile from the possible evils of society. There are forums however for parents to keep up with language used.
Texting while driving is so common. I see it every day. Looking to the left or right of me while on the road, I often see someone clutching their phone one handed pressing buttons and glancing every now and then at the road. I have even been pushed off the road by a texter while he swerved across my white line holding up a hand in apology only to present the culprit in question. I have performed the same myself at traffic lights, never while driving. The reason I haven’t is probably only because I saw a show on Oprah (embarrassing to admit and while clearly not myself, lol) once where a 19 year old girl was now a quadriplegic simply because she was texting and driving and had an accident. She had never admitted it until the Oprah show.
Recently there has been research released after a ten year study declaring that speaking on mobile phones without a hearing device can lead to brain tumours, particularly with younger people. Kids are now being encouraged to text for that very reason.
Texting etiquette. I can’t stand the person who doesn’t text back. It’s just plain rude. Even an ‘ok’ will do, even if it isn’t immediate. I mean how freaking hard is that? The other thing I can’t stand is being telephoned after I have texted. I text someone, I want a text reply. Not a bloody call...that’s why I texted. If I wanted to chat I would have phoned mo fo.
So with that said, get on the bndwgn, say wtf, I’ll b in it 2.
BRB with my next post!
Text is best, this is why!
sms and abbreviations
A friend of mine on a second date with her new man went hot air ballooning recently.
“What for?” I asked incredulous that that was the way this bloke was trying to woo her. “He’s dumped for sure, isn’t he? Idiot.” I said scoffing.
“No, it was great.”
“Uh huh. What?”
What is that about? Ten million feet above terra firma in a basket held up by the most flammable fabric on the planet with intermittent bursts of fire shooting up through the middle of it. Hmmm, there’s a great idea.
“It was, what’s the word?”
“Dim-witted”
“No, invigorating.”
The thesaurus will tell you that daring means bold, brave, courageous, audacious and heroic. A crossword puzzle will tell you it’s nerve. In my dictionary it’s stupidity.
“It was romantic and we had champagne after,” she told me. I would have had a jeroboam of the stuff and three Valium prior to climbing in that small picnic basket I can assure you.
“Celebrate living did you? Celebrate not dropping like a stone from 5,000 feet?”
She thought it was wonderful.
I have the same trouble understanding people who like extreme adventure sports like jumping out of a plane with a parachute. I grill people about this so I can come to some sort of understanding about why this is a good idea. It’s just not natural jumping out of a plane. And for some reason they believe that a tandem jump reduces the risk factor by a thousand percent. It just doesn’t. It is still jumping out of a plane with a big hanky over your head that may or may not open and that you hope will unfurl at the right moment if it does unwrap. It is hard enough to get through life in one piece without injury and death let alone inviting it into your life.
“It’s okay I’m jumping with someone else,” they say.
“Oh goody fucking gumdrops sister. Two dead bodies.”
And the other thing, they pay huge dollars to do it. I would rather pay the same money and get on and off a plane in two different cities, or countries for that matter. There should be nothing in between except airline muffins and coffee.
It’s also not an attractive thing to do and they video it. People think it is great having footage of their faces flopping around in mid air.
“And I got a video of the whole thing,” they say overjoyed.
“Yay, you can relive it whenever you want.”
“I’m going to do it again.”
“Jesus, why?” I shout. “What’s wrong with you? Watch the freakin’ video.”
But people do the most amazing things. They climb very high cliffs and mountains with narrow ropes and little hooks. I don’t get this at all because not only is it dangerous and really mindless but it’s tiring. It is actual work and exercise and it is so very,very high. I get vertigo on a small ladder. I can barely watch TV shows of people climbing up these cliff faces without shuddering uncontrollably. It’s spooky.
The other daring adventure people indulge in that I don’t appreciate or comprehend at all is swimming with sharks. Sharks kill people just to snack. That’s why we have lifeguards; shark planes that circle over the sea when a shark is spotted, and alarms at major beaches. Didn’t people see Jaws? I’m from Adelaide and I know sharks can eat boats and surfboards and people.
“Sharks are my friends,” someone said on the Discovery channel. Who wants to see this dude’s enemies? My definition of a friend is a little different. It’s a buddy and companion, an ally. Not someone who wants to devour you at will while you bleed to death. I mean it’s a fish with very sharp fucking teeth.
Base-jumping is one more bizarre sport to me and seems that it can get a bit reckless and dangerous for others when people dive off of buildings or tall objects in major cities. I just don’t see the thrill in it when doing it from anywhere though. But I am a chicken in anything to do with heights so I’m possibly really biased. I know it’s all about the adrenalin and cheating death but it’s just such a long way down. The zipper at the show freaks me out. Stuff the zipper, looking down from an upper storey shopping centre paralyses me with fear.
While I’m not keen on risky adventure sports I don’t mind doing things of risky nature when I travel, like flying into New York with American Airlines on the 11th of February, sitting in row 11. That’s a risk I don’t mind taking. You see apparently the number 11 has been linked to mystery and power since the earliest of times. All forms of number research and studies, including numerology, the ancient science of Gematria, and the secret wisdom of Kabbalah, all give momentous significance to 11, and 11 derivatives, for example - 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99.
The 11th number is considered a master number according to some, an example is, the first Great War, World War 1 which, ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month. In Tolkein's, The Lord of the Rings, the number 11 is depicted as an inquisitive number, and getting to your 111th birthday is a huge event, it’s also a bloody miracle. Apparently the USA missed series of numbers on the Apollo moon missions to make certain it was Apollo 11 that landed on the moon. In Egypt, King Tutankhamen's tomb had combinations of 11 in the jewellery he wore, and he had 11 oars placed on the floor surrounding his tomb.
So there you go. I did a risky thing when I flew into New York on that day and that is as far as I will go.
I love travelling and have been to lots of places. Now that I have a partner I love to bits, I want to go back to all the places I’ve ever been and see it through their eyes as well as my own again, let’s be fair. So recently in February we went to the US of A. America, home of the free. I don’t think America is necessarily free any longer as much as they declare and remind themselves that they are.
I have been there three times and have discovered that that is still not enough. I have seen about 10 of the 50 states and no more than that because on my second and third go, I could not get past New York City. I am obsessed and completely fixated on New York. I have always been passionate about it, even before I went. I love everything about it. The architecture, the energy, the size, the bagels, the hot dog stands, central park, the buildings and the vigour of the place is indescribable. I have been there in the middle of summer and the middle of winter and loved both equally. I love it so much that I have applied for a green card in a lottery so that we can live there for a year or two if we want to.
Americans are an odd yet also lovely race in my opinion. Loud, over patriotic (so much so I think that they lose sight of reality), friendly, ignorant, (does Australia have wind, what state is Australia in?, you Australians are from England aren’t you?) and they can seem rude at times yet I am not sure whether that is really their intent or whether they simply come across as being bad-mannered. I wonder these days too if it really and honestly has something to do with 9/11. The day that changed the world most definitely changed America most of all and I think it seeps out of the people there in atypical ways.
Go Adventure!
Lonelyplanet usa
This year when we were in San Francisco I witnessed a cable car driver yell at some poor tourist telling him that “just because he is a tourist doesn’t mean he can do whatever the fuck he wanted”. The poor bloke was trying to quickly move out of the way of all the millions of people clambering onto the cable car and climbed out over the wooden seat on the side of the car. The reason he was doing it in the first place was because the cable car driver was shouting at all of us to move aside. I thought that was rude.
We went to a bar in San Francisco later that night and were only served one drink. The bar guy completely ignored us to watch the TV in the corner. We were the only two people in the bar and got the hell out. Later we were told by the next bartender Tommy, that the best advice we could take from him was to pay up (a tip) to the bar person after every round. We were shocked, firstly why didn’t the first guy just tell us that and secondly, what the fuck? After every round? We learned to get a tab quick and tip at the very end or else drinking in the States would have been an exorbitantly expensive course of action for us. This same bar guy had his own business card that had him on the front with a black background with him lighting a cigarette. He thought he was just Uber cool. He was a tosser. He told us there was no point in him travelling. Why would he waste his money on going anywhere else when everybody else came to him? It is all about them sometimes.
When ordering a beer at anytime it always seemed that they had whatever we wanted in ‘lite’ beers but not in heavies. Lite beer is so very common in America on both coasts and in the middle bit. I asked the barman once assuming it was because of drinking safety and drink driving and guess in hindsight should not have been shocked at all by the reply. “It’s lower in calories”. We were told as if we were idiots.
Wow, we were blown away. Huge consumption of fast food, chips and nuts to snack on in the bars while drinking, but at least the beer is lite. Seems a little peculiar to me.
The nature in which Americans say things is astounding to hear. I got such a shock on an occasion when in a restaurant in America, waiting patiently for service, to hear American’s yelling out “Right here, waiter right here.” The waiters would toddle over and take their orders immediately. It was so weird. They certainly have some interesting ways of putting things. When in Carl’s Jnr (a burger place) I heard customers say to staff,
“Now, I need to get me a cheese burger, and I need to get me some fries to go with that and I need a Dr Pepper, oh and I really need you to super size that?”
Why do they need it? Want it? Yes, need? I don’t think so. And the super sized meals they sell there are inconceivable. I watched children drink what they call sodas from two litre containers for breakfast and eat fries from a bucket, prior to a burger. One word comes to mind, obesity and Australia is there too, it’s hideous. We are the baby brother copying everything America does.
In the small Californian coastal town of Morro Bay, I inquired from a lady about whether or not the information kiosk she worked at had postage stamps. The lady looked at me and said genially like she’d popped a few Valium’s that morning,
“We surely do not.”
What? ‘They surely do not’, and wasn’t she in high spirits about that.
Sometimes when asking for something in what you believe to be easy to understand, clear as crystal English and get that blank stare and complete misinterpretation is when it gets not only frustrating but incredibly astonishing. It is all English yet simple words and phrases do not get through, like coffee and banana. Like New York suddenly becoming the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik. You have to develop an American accent to be understood or else you could end up anywhere with anything. I was so frustrated by it once that I asked the person on the phone when inquiring about flights from New York to Washington DC and was given Iceland as my destination when she read it back, “Am I not speaking English to you?” I had to hang up immediately or else that was a very smashed up telephone I was paying for on check out. I could suddenly see where Russel Crowe was coming from.
I’ve never seen so many walkie-talkies as in America, in restaurants. Explains part of the obesity problem I guess. Staff do not have to walk through a section of a restaurant to talk to other staff. They each stand in their corner and report the stage of each table, which gets back to the cashier who is ushering people into the restaurant when given the green light.
“Table four’s on dessert that’d be a quick change in five I imagine unless the old gal goes in for another piece of pie.”
“Victor Charlie hotel, that’d be a big 9-0. Keep me posted and I’ll send the next lard arses in.”
“Roger that.”
And this occurs even though there are empty tables. It happens even when there are only five people in the place. What is the raison d'être please? I am confused.
The meal sizes absolutely blow me away when I am there. Almost all of them are preceded with soup and crackers, bread rolls and a salad with numerous choices in dressing. Now the tricky thing is that you have to eat the salad first. If you don’t, you will wait forever for your main meal because in America, the salad comes and is eaten before the meal and it is huge. If you ask for anything additional you will get triple the amount expected and the meals come with fries and have every ‘extra’ known to man and all the condiments ever manufactured. You almost need a table for six for two, just to fit the condiments on it. There is the tomato ketchup, the mustards, the sugars - white, brown, caster, raw, sweet and low, salt and pepper, maple syrup, Tabasco sauce, butter and margarine, chilli sauce, jelly’s (jams) and BBQ sauce, just to start with.
Ordering the food can take half an hour even for a simple sandwich. For example if I simply wanted to order the easiest thing out, a ham and cheese sandwich it would go like this,
“I’d (need to get me) like a ham and cheese sandwich please.”
“Hi. Sure. What kind of bread would you like?”
“Just bread. Any bread.”
“We have wholemeal, rye, light rye, dark rye, white, soy and linseed, multi grain and pumpernickel.”
“Umm white.”
“Sure. Thick slice, regular or thin sliced?”
“Regular”
“Sure. Would you like butter, margarine, non dairy or no spread?”
“Butter?”
“Sure Madam, it’s your sandwich. What ham would you like?”
“Ham?”
“You wanted ham and cheese?”
“Yes, I did.”
“We have Virginia, shoulder, leg, round, smoked, lite, honeyed, champagne, ham spread.”
“Virginian.”
“Now Madam your cheese selection what would that be today?”
“Just plain cheese would be great.”
“We have American, cheddar, Swiss, mild, Philadelphian, Dutch smoked, cream cheese, tasty, lite, blue vein, old smoky…”
“I’ll have American cheese please.”
“Sure and any condiments with that we’ve got mayonnai..”
“Mayonnaise would be super.”
“To go?”
“God, yes.”
“Fries with that?”
“No, on its own thank you?”
“Now on your salad? We have ranch dressing, thousand Isl..”
“No, just the sanga.”
“I beg your pardon Madam. Was there something else?”
Jesus no. “Just the sandwich no salad, thank you.”
Do you see my point and that poor bitch hadn’t even started asking about a beverage because even when you order water, it comes with four or five choices because it’s bottled and it’s fizzy and there are brands and it’s everything else.
Do not start me on coffee.
Mmm Yankee diet!
The bathrooms or loos (as we say) in America were an experience to behold. You never really ever needed to use your hands. There is a push button at hip height to get in and after using the toilet and standing, the toilet flushes on its own. The next step is hand washing, no need to touch taps; a small sensor triggers tepid water. Same goes for soap. The paper towel flows out of a plastic box after triggering yet another sensor. It’s high tech.
We drove a fair way in America. I think it was about 3,000 kilometres in the end. I really enjoyed driving although LA was a bit hairy and very easy to get lost in. On every car except perhaps one, were magnets representing large ribbons saying ‘Support our Troops’. We wondered if they had been given out for free at service stations because there were so many of them adhered to the backs of cars but I have a feeling every car owner paid for one themselves. I just can’t imagine Australians being so patriotic about anything like this, I don’t know if I’m glad or annoyed at that. It seems a bit over the top to me though and a bit contrived. But that is my opinion.
The number of fast food restaurants in the US is staggering. I will list merely a few. Burger King, Pizza Hut, checkers, Hardees, White Castle, KFC, Arby’s, Carls Jnr, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Dominos, Roy Rodgers, Burger King, Big Boy, Subway, Qdoba Mexican grill, Chick – Fil – A, Donut King, Krispy Kreme, Mel’s diners, A&W Restaurants’, INS and OUTS, Starbucks, Denny’s, Long John Silver’s, Dairy Queen, Sonic Drive In, Hard Rock Cafes and of course on every corner and in every field, McDonalds. It is fat heaven. It is also a cheaper option and an endless variety. You can’t ask for more than that. What isn’t a cheaper option is ordering a pot of tea from a casino hotel room in Las Vegas at $11.00 a pop and have it arrive cold.
The tipping and the taxes drive you a bit mad after a while and in the end when we weren’t as keyed up any more and people were rude to us we just didn’t tip much at all. We did not mind tipping well if people were courteous but why should we pay them a gratuity for fucking impoliteness. It’s wrong. Taxes are unavoidable but we had some power when it came to tipping. Piss us off, very small tip, nice to us, great tip. We kept a collection of smaller notes in our pockets constantly because we would forget to keep smaller bills and then it was embarrassing when you had a few quarters and dimes to tip and that was all. We just couldn’t afford to tip $20 notes. It was hard to work out how much to tip sometimes and math is not a strong point for either of us, at all. The very last day we were there (typically) we discovered the easy way to work it out. Just double the tax.
Since 9/11, security has become exceptionally stringent and thanks to God for it. On arrival in the States we had our fingerprints scanned and our retina’s photographed. I was glad to do it. We frequently had to remove belts and shoes and have our backpacks checked in airports, buildings, shops and museums with and without special gadgets that picked up explosive dust or something. It became an automatic practice to kick off shoes and pull belts from pants upon entering any of the above without being asked. I found myself very aware this trip of the low flying planes or anything seeming odd. I didn’t expect to react that way at all not having been back since 1989 but the world is different and I think America will always be a mark for that shit.
The West and East coasts are very different from each other and each of the cities I have visited really has different and interesting characteristics of their own. Los Angeles, city of Angels is a seedy place with a great feel though. It’s warm and ‘out there’. I probably liked it more this time than any other time and when I’m there I think I probably won’t ever return to LA but whenever I leave I know I will. It pulls you to it. I guess I have my own agenda with an interest in Hollywood and the movies but it does feel comfortable to me.
San Francisco is a scenic city with a beautiful harbour, famous bridge, hilly streets and a prison called ‘Alcatraz’ or ‘The Rock.’ I have always loved being there, the city not the prison of course. Las Vegas, God what can be said about this place of ‘Bright daytime lights at night’ and endless gambling? Gambling, cigs and booze, bad make up and Hawaiian shirts come to mind. Buffet meals, $1.00 beers, free cocktails while gambling and rooms filled with smoke and body odour from stale old gambling fuckers who never quit, not even to shower. The day you roll into town your eyes nearly bug out of your head. I swear we didn’t utter one word bar “fuck me” while driving through town. It is so full on and weird. It is dreamlike and bizarre and when the sun goes down it remains surreal and you love it because it is unlike anything you have ever seen in your life before. You love the fountains at the Bellagio, the colossal well lit billboards, all the rooms full of games and cheap meals in restaurants, seeing incredible casino’s like Luxor, Mandalay, New York New York, The Venetian, Caesars palace, Paris, MGM, Monte Carlo and Flamingo, just to name a few. Then a day or so later after getting married by Elvis and losing $50 bucks in a poke on a poker machine, you know you hate it with all you’ve got and you are coming down with something. You cannot look at that carpet on all those casino floors anymore because it looks like multi coloured throw up. And on your way out of Vegas, city of sin, heading for the desert, you swear you will never be back but you don’t know if that’s true or not.
Flying by small plane from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon National Park and then through the Grand Canyon itself via helicopter, cruising the Colorado River and heading to amazing look outs by way of a hummer with a native Indian was an extraordinary experience I will never forget.
Washington DC was the revelation of the trip we weren’t expecting. We loved it. We did not have enough time there because we didn’t want to cut any more days from New York but next time, we’re staying a week. It is a beautiful, historic metropolis that is very different from our own capital and the people there seem lovely. The memorials, statues and monuments are a sight to behold and are spread across the capital so that the whole city is worth venturing into. Then there are the Smithsonian museums that can occupy you for days. It is just so very interesting which is possibly what separates it from the rest of the cities we went to, irrespective of their own attractive features.
The thing with America is that we all know all of it so well. We see it in movies and on television daily and walking the streets in those places feels very, very familiar and almost natural even on a first visit. It is in our consciousness and it is in our history and as eccentric as it can seem I will always be drawn to it like a moth to a flame and I have no idea at all, why that is the case. My love affair started with the United States long before I went and the visits there have only consolidated it...not that I’d ever leave my country to live there for good.
Travel USA
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