Snarks and Ladders

Falling back into my old sleeping patterns from high school is, quite frankly, unawesome.  Seriously, how the fuck did I get by on less than 3 hours sleep each night?  I spend my time at work in a semi-daze, teaching absolute shit house lessons because I am just far too damned tired to plan.  But, hey, it’s the end of term… having a screwy sleep schedule doesn’t matter, right?

So, of course, if I am sitting up ALL night, then I must be doing something, right?  Well… there’s been lots of gaming.  Lots of watching horrific romance films that make me cry like a baby.  And a bit of chatting to people, including doing the best I can to get someone I am interested in to ask some other girl out (an Angela specialty by the way – managed to successfully pull that one off at least 3 times).  Eh, I guess I just want to see him happy. 

On the plus side, I am totally hanging for the holidays.  Late nights, not having to work in the morning, not having to stress my poor little head for two weeks… Oh, it’s going to be wonderful.  I’m flat broke, thanks to a nasty phone bill or two, but I just want to relax and think some.  And maybe chill a little at the beach and work on the tan that I never manage to attain.  Pasty is pretty, right?

Now, it’s most definitely time to get back to soppy movies and making myself cry.  <3  And maybe thinking about what’s keeping me up at night!

• It just occurred to me that I have to work tomorrow. Well, one week to go!!! #
• The girl can write after all! 3 posts churned out, now back to gardening! #
• Oh, THAT'S right, I was going to plant grass today. Busy busy busy! I don't even want to go home for the holidays! #
• Why hallo thar, internet reset! <3 #
• After the 3rd dust storm to hit me in this week… I am getting tired of the people on the coast complaining about the remnants of the 1st. #
• Breaking shoulder is unfun #
• I -should- be hanging out my washing, but im finding it hard to care #
• So fecking tired. My head feels like it is going to cave in. #
• Yay for bedtime. 7 working days before holidays. Heaven help me. #
• Looking at boobs on bikes photos. It's like a train wreck. Having competitions to see who can pick the most fakes! #
• I just totally made one of those weird squeaky noises when I was thinking happy thoughts. #
• Can't stop god damn sneezing from this dust. Yuk! #
• I should be cleaning the kitchen, but damned if I can be arsed doing so #
• Is cold. And I am bloody hungry, and forgot to get meat out of the freezer -again-. Got meat for tomorrow now thawing… #
• gah, cat keeps jumping on laptop where im trying to facebook. She drives me nuts sometimes #
• Woke up to the world being red. Scary stuff indeed! #
• Decision reached – I am -not- playing football tomorrow in the middle of a dust storm. I value my lungs #
• @softthistle did you get your packing done? in reply to softthistle #
• And the wind from hell is back.. Hope my cat hasn't blown away #
• pasta… not paste. *sigh* #
• Best god damn paste ever. Will post the 'recipe' (if you can call it that!) tomorrow #
• Cream and egg pasta, or omelette? #
• Thinking of watching a DVD, but I don't know what to watch #
• Have I ever mentioned super windy storms with GIANT HAILSTONES OF DOOM scare the shit out of me? #
• @softthistle consider your butt kicked *boots* now pack! And you had better have packed a lot when I get home! in reply to softthistle #
• Note to self – wearing damp jeans to work will most likely result in being ill. Find dry pants, you lazy wench! #
• my cat keeps nomming me. ow! #
• Shower time. To use the 'Sonic Death Monkey' or the 'RubRubRub' bodywash? <3 Lush! #
• Dear, Dear Powers That Be – please let school today be cancelled inexplicably. Killer pigs running rampant or some such thing. #
• Oh, rain, how I love you. Saving me hopefully from touch football this week! #
• TweetDeck looks…. weird #
• @AFaulds lol, wait until you get the 'What?!!? I can only fit everything in if I do a 12 hour day?!?!' days in reply to AFaulds #
• Birthday activity #856 – indulging in flirting with the other guy. So naughty of me, but so much fun! #
• Absolutely CRAVING Mac and Cheese. It's crazy! #
• So far on my birthday: slept in for work. Was late for work. Taught kids. Yelled at kids. Came home and head banged. Ate lollies. #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Last night we had the combined hen’s night for two of our co-workers (believe it or not, 4 people I work with are getting married over the next 3 weeks!  Well, 2 of them to each other, but still….)  It was, dare I say it, the most fun I have had in a long time.

• Assorted penis shaped objects lying around – check
• Everyone avoiding penis shaped objects at the start of the night – check
• Copious amounts of sparkling wine – check
• Copious amounts of all other forms of alcohol – check
• 2 VERY drunk hens! – check
• Party members doing grossly inappropriate things with penis shaped objects by the end of the night – check! (I have vague memories of one of the hens putting a penis straw in her pants so it was poking outwards… and me doing something to it… THAT’LL be an interesting photo if it ever gets out)
• Hangover the next day – successfully avoided!  Whoo hoo!

We also managed to find out some rather interesting things about people during a great game of never-ever.  Turns out, no, I am not the only one to have pashed a guy with their partner standing less than 5m away.  Nor am I (sorry, gross-out incoming) the only one to have accidentally put a sanitary pad through the wash.  However, I have not pooped on the beach and buried it (to see a wedding be set up RIGHT ON TOP OF IT ten minutes later).  Especially not on my honeymoon, since I am unmarried.  Nor have I ever hooked up with a guy because a) I couldn’t find the guy I arrived with, or b) because I was overseas and he said he had a Western-style toilet (although I would so definitely do that).

Then, of course, in my infinite wisdom, I came home drunk, got on the internets, and babbled a lot of crap.  Including telling a certain someone how I feel.  Whoops.  Good thing I am past caring about it all now, isn’t it?

The Internet – the only place where you can babble while drunk and incoherent and everyone thinks it’s normal.

“How to put the relationship in distance relationship… by someone who has failed at many!”

OK, so I am not –actually- going to write about making a distance relationship work.  Hell, it’s different for every person anyway, and I have tanked a few.  But, I was pondering the many distance relationships that I have had, and trying to work out why they didn’t work… in light of the fact that the one I am in now feels like it’s heading down the crapper.  He just doesn’t realise it yet.

Guy A – Time Management

I saw the same guy most of the way through university.  At that point, we lived 3 and a half hours apart (he went to Uni A, I went to Uni B).  When he graduated, he got a job in a town about 4 hours away.  One would think that wouldn’t be too much of a difference, but it was HUGE.  Why?

It wasn’t the distance that killed us.  At that point he started teaching, I was in my final year of university, and our phone conversations turned into ‘Hey.  I’m tired.  Talk tomorrow, OK?’  Neither of us had the time or the energy to make a proper go of it.  Needless to say, it failed miserably. 

Could I have put in more effort?  Probably.  Especially for a relationship that spanned a couple years.  At the time though, it just felt impossible.

Guy B – Useless Git Syndrome

He was my first ‘We met online, I can never admit this to my friends!’ boyfriend.  He was a decent enough guy, despite the fact his mother hated me because I was ‘too Aussie’ (his family were Eastern European), but he was bone idle.

He had no car.  He had no job.  He had no education.  He sat at home all day playing computer games.

I ended up having to drive the 2 and a half hours to see him all the time.  He didn’t like making the train trip to my place.  He had no money most of the time.  And, I am ashamed to admit it, but I was embarrassed to have a partner who didn’t do anything.  He started a degree in Fine Art at one point… but dropped out in less than a semester.  Then he picked up a casual job, which he still has to this day.  And he still lives at home, mooching off Mum and Dad.  And he can’t drive yet either.

However, once we broke up, his mother thought I was awesome.  Yeah, I’m that damned wonderful that breaking up with a guy makes their mothers fall in love with me.

Guy C – Won’t Meet Half Way

This is the current guy.  Things work out kinda ok between us.  Sure, he doesn’t have a job, as he is studying.  So he has no money (although, I have to admit, I don’t get the whole ‘not working while studying’ thing.  Seriously.  My parents would have kicked my ass).  We talk a bit on Skype… when he isn’t talking on Vent to people about a raid.  He keeps screwy hours, which helps I guess.  However, he seems to want all the big things to be his way or the highway.

Not going to happen, buddy!  A little bit of compromise makes the world of difference.  I know that some of what I am asking is kinda huge, but, what he is asking is much bigger.

Thing is, none of this has made me anti-distance relationship.  For starters, the odds of finding a compatible person where I live are slim to none.  I can live with endless phone conversations and very little physical contact for quite a while (not forever, but a long time).  Of the people I have been with, the distance relationships have been the ones where the best discussions happen. 

I think the point I am trying to make is that all the shit that happened in those relationships above?  That could happen to ANY relationship.  Distance is not equal to fail!

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I asked a workmate for a favour.  I had to get a BBQ from A to B, and the damn thing just wouldn’t fit in my car.  Or my neighbour’s car.  So, after a little bit of ringing round, I finally was able to use this guy’s ute.  On one proviso.

“You’ll have to clean the yabbie traps out of the back.”

Eh, sure, I can do that.  Bit of a pain, but hey, I AM borrowing his ute.  So, we drive around to pick up the car, and I start uncovering the tray.  It’s pretty stinky, but I don’t think too much of it.  Then I pull the back open and OH MY GOD.  What a stench!  You know those foul smells that make your stomach turn?  Yep.  I looked down and saw the yabbie traps… with massive chunks of half cooked dried out meat attached.  Yum.

My neighbour started pulling them out, and when he moved the first one, it uncovered a mass of maggots crawling all over the lamb neck that was tied to the next one.  At that point I was well and truly out of there – I don’t think I had ever moved so fast!  I was so glad I hadn’t eaten… my poor neighbours were dry retching as the two of them cut the meat off the traps and threw them to the ground.

Never seen anything so revolting in my life.  Maggoty, half cooked, half rotten lamb necks.  Turns out they’d been in the back of the ute since Thursday.  This was on Saturday.  We had a couple hot (35 degrees plus) days in that time.

Last time I ask for a favour!

Oh, and in other news…. y’know that storm I was tweeting about?

Well….

My house is now red.  Believe it or not, before yesterday, that driveway was white.  My house is FULL of dust as well.  Damn dust storms!

So the weekend just gone, I decided to host a BBQ.  This was the first time that I had actually organised and hosted something with more than 4 or 5 people around all by myself, so it was certainly interesting!  I do believe the process went something like this:

1. Get out of bed at 11am Saturday morning, since I was feeling ‘lazy’
2. Get roped into doing stuff with friends on computer until 2pm, even though I should be ironing.
3. Run around trying to get a BBQ from a friend’s house to my house[more on that to come tomorrow – it REALLY deserves its own post]
4. Do grocery shopping, of course, forget half the stuff I meant to buy.  Like the damper for the damper dip.  Fail.
5. Start ironing.  Wail at how much ironing there is.
6. Realise it’s now 5pm.  I told people to show up at 6.30.  Whoops!  Still hadn’t vacuumed or prepared all the food.
7. Frantically clean house.  6.15pm
8. Start preparing food… still making kebabs as everyone rocks up.  Yikes!

Of course, rather than being able to drink myself totally silly, I was busy all night running around organising food, tidying things up, arranging chairs and fixing music and finding drinks and all the sorts of fun things you do when you are the host.  But, hey, I still managed to drink a zillion daiquiris, so I was happy.  Even if the food didn’t quite work out.

I made chicken, beef and vegetable kebabs.  I also explicitly said to the people BBQing ‘Please please PLEASE save me a kebab when they are ready!  I’ll be inside the house getting salad ready’.  I was assured that I would get my kebab of awesomeness, and went inside to work my merry little butt off.  After about 15 min, I see people coming on nomming on meat.

“Ooooh, those kebabs were good!”

“The meat was flying off the barbie… what a pack of carnivores!”

At which point I asked, somewhat resignedly “Are there any kebabs left?”

“… Nope.  I think Simon ran away so you couldn’t kick his ass.”

God damn it.  All I got to eat was a couple snags.

After that things went pretty smoothly.  Sat around, had a few drinks, chatted, and then unfortunately a couple of somewhat drunk men had the brilliant idea of ‘inventing cocktails’.  In they charged into my kitchen, threw everything they could find into the blender, and turned it on.

Without the lid.  Fuck.

Also: cherry tomatoes do NOT belong in a cocktail.  Just sayin’.

Eventually, at the end of the night when everyone went home, we pulled all the chairs back into the flats.  I settled down in front of the TV with some vodka and a couple of close friends, when my neighbour storms in to the house.

“Where the fuck is my chair?  I am not paying for the chair!  You guys all put your chairs away, and I fucking lost one.” Etc etc etc in that vein for, oh… 30 min?

The next day he found his chair.  In his house.

Parties are interesting things indeed.

• Rewatched City Of Angels (for the millionth time). Balling my eyes out (also for the millionth time) #
• So… a personal blog feels like a diary that I just happen to leave lying around for people to read. Weird. #
• Can I have everything ready before tonight? Of course I can! #
• Lets see if I can shake off this god awful mood #
• The sounds my shoulder make and the feeling of it crunching actually make me kinda ill. Like scratching a chalkboard, inside yourself. #
• I don't think I ever want to go to another marking day. Ever. #
• Heh. just been told I am 'unapproachable and difficult to ask about stuff". Not how I would describe myself, so that's interesting #
• @ Facebook – what is with all the emo status updates? Seriously! It's bloody annoying seeing the same people whine about the same shit #
• Really excited about Kim Beazley getting the ambassadorship to the US. I'm a huge Bomber fan. Go Kim! #
• Fuckaduck, the god damn cat just scratched the shit out of me again. Sigh #
• Going to have a late night tonight. Because I CAN! #
• I need to find a reason to smile. Stupid emotions getting the better of me! *Crams them into a box* haha, that'll fix you! #
• Feeling creative. Going to buy some chalk pastels and a canvas I think, and fool around with it. It'll look hideous, but it'll be fun! #
• GAH! Honestly don't know how much longer I can handle the half-assed conversations for. Siiiiiiiiiigh #
• LOL for too long a title. last post is here http://www.snarksandladders.com/?p=58 #
• After writing that post, I feel like re-reading The Bride Stripped Bare. But some bastard out there borrowed it and never returned it! #
• Sports: designed for people too incompetent to read a book or use a computer. That is all! #
• Unplugging myself from the PC for a while toodles! #
• I still have student mentality in so many ways. Got excited today over 99c Suimins… nomnomnom #
• Why the HELL is this in the news? http://bit.ly/15PBkv For goodness' sake – it's a farm. You kill animals. Now where's my leg of lamb? #
• To bed, perhaps to dream of something nice… like scantily clad men offering massages. A girl can dream, right? #
• Caramel is made, was nommy. However, I now feel like a few dozen rock stars had a party in my gut… it ain't pretty #
• To eat another frosty fruit, or to move on to the corn chips and salsa… #
• So… I have a dead frog in the house, a dead snake in the driveway, and the dog just tried to kill a big-ass lizard. Why me? #
• When I made a remark about Vaginal Tightening Surgery, the boy said he 'wouldn't complain'. And is now wondering why I am offended! #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Just so you know, I’ll be dithering about and babbling like a teenage girl in this post.  Hey, it’s a few days before my birthday: I’ll grow up then.

So, the long-lasting, ever confusing saga between myself and the other guy has finally ended.  It’s only been going for a year!  I finally just ended up asking outright (well, actually, HE asked outright what I thought, in a way which was more like ME asking outright… bah), and I have decided to accept what he said as the actual, honest truth.  Unlike everything else, which has just been damned confusing.

In a way, it’s a relief.  Spending a whole year wondering what he really means when he speaks, not wanting to interpret it too strongly one way or another for fear of being wrong and somehow getting hurt by it or somehow hurting or confusing him… finally over.  I should be really, REALLY glad that he finally said it was all an ongoing joke, but a big part of me is also unhappy and fricking pissed off.

When you are joking around with people like that, you should make it bloody explicitly clear what the hell you are doing!  In the ‘real world’, if I went out and flirted merrily with some guy for a long time, he would assume I was interested.  Which he would be right to do.  If I finally said that I was just messing around, he’d be pretty pissed off, and I wouldn’t blame him.  Especially if he ended up being somewhat interested in ME.  Which is what happened to me.

Now I feel pissed off, both at myself and at him.  Pissed off at myself mainly because this shouldn’t be bothering me – I’m already in a relationship for heaven’s sakes, so this IS the best possible outcome for me logically.  Pissed off at him, for, well, screwing me around so much.  Now I feel like an utter fool, since I was telling myself all along that it meant nothing, and let some stupid dumb-ass 16 year old part of myself convince me otherwise.  I thought that you stopped riding these stupid emotional rollercoasters when you finished high school (perhaps this is a sign that I need to grow up?)

Well, at least you guys won’t need to suffer through me venting about this anymore!  Yay!

Warning: this post features a woman talking about her sex life in very vague detail.  Shocking, I know, right?

So, it’s been a while since I got any.

And it was a damned long while between that time and the time before that.

You want to know something?  It really truly sucks having a partner who you don’t live anywhere near, who you only have the very slight possibility of seeing perhaps once a year.  Obviously, this is a nasty situation for a variety of reasons, but you want to know something?

I am tired of not getting laid.  Yep, I said it.  On the internet too!  It absolutely sucks not getting any!

This sounds super obvious.  I mean, everyone (or, OK, most people) enjoy sex.  There’s a reason why people do it!  However, it drives me fricking bananas that a woman can not admit that she has unsatisfied sexual urges without people looking down on her.

A great example that I recall involves the novel ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’.  (If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend you do.)  Now, myself and a few co-workers read the novel, and were all discussing how fantastic it is when I said the unthinkable:

“It’s so true to life as well”

They were shocked!  They were appalled!  ‘Oh no, I have never had thoughts like that!’  ‘Don’t you think the woman in the novel is a bit, well… you know… a whore?’  Um, no.  Sure, most of the things she thinks are things which I would never say, but do I think some of them?  Of course I do!

News flash guys: women think about sex.  We just don’t talk about it as much as you.

Women aren’t allowed to be seen as wanting sex.  If we are, we are labelled promiscuous.  We certainly can’t be seen as wanting anything other than conventional sex, at least not in public (and in some relationships, not even in private).  Then you aren’t merely promiscuous – you are an outright filthy whore.  In the mean time, men can acceptably talk to some extent about their sex lives.  I hear men talking about their sex lives at work on a daily basis, in varying levels of detail.  I hardly hear women mention it at all.  We just aren’t game enough, and we have trained ourselves to truly believe that we can’t talk about it.  Hell, would I ever talk about my sex life in public?  Goodness no!  How mortifying!

I have no idea what can be done about this, ladies.  But something has to change.  I want to be able to write a post that says ‘Damn, it’s been a long time since I got any and I really kinda miss it’ without feeling obligated to put a warning or apologise for it.

So, I know you guys have heard this all before, but, you know what, I am going to blab it all out on here again today.  Yay me!

Ever since I got back from the US things have been both easier and more difficult with the other half.  It was awesomely nice to spend time with him, really, it was.  However, it has made the old “I’m not moving!” “Well, I’M not moving either!” impasse, well, more impassable.  After my trip to the US, I have decided that I just don’t want to live there.  No offense to you American folk, but I didn’t see anything there to dissuade me from the view I already have of your country.  Besides, as much as I would hate to admit it – I have fallen in love with the landscape out here in the desert.  So much so that I want to do a big camping/photography trip sometime.  This place is gorgeous. (And the rest of the country aint half bad either)

Anyway, I know the American landscape is beautiful as well.  I just can’t see myself getting used to some rather different aspects of the culture over there.  For instance – I get the philosophy with tipping.  Really, I do.  However, it irks me that I have to leave a tip every time I buy a drink at a bar (considering the ridiculous price I paid for a drink anyway!).  It irks me that I get poor service since I didn’t understand the custom properly and often screwed it up (you leave a tip on the table over there?).   And it irks me that I have to tip because there isn’t a protection set up so people earn a living wage.  That’s right, I couldn’t live somewhere that didn’t have my left-wing “We will pay you enough to live.  And we will give you universal health care.  And we will give you a pension that you can live on when you are of sufficient age, thankyou for paying us taxes all those years you worked!” philosophy.  The US as a somewhat left-wing oriented person seems like a very frustrating place indeed.

Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be a rant about how much I dislike America.  I figure, the country itself honestly must be OK, because I like a hell of a lot of people that I have met over there.  But, as an Aussie… somewhere like Canada might be more to my liking. *Shrugs*

But, of course, the BF doesn’t get it.  And I don’t understand him not wanting to come here.  I would REALLY appreciate some sort of FAIR agreement – you know, he lives here with me for a year, I live there with him for a year – but he doesn’t want to do that.  He doesn’t want to move here at all, ever, full stop.  Hell, he foresees me visiting him before he visits me (I’ve already been there, it’s HIS turn!).  AAAARGH!

Not to mention, we just don’t get to spend enough time together.  We hardly talk because he is often too busy gaming, or out socialising, or whatever.  I understand that time zones make life suck, but it is mildly frustrating.

Oh… and guilty conscience time.

So, I find myself flirting with the other guy.  I really have to stop this, and I really have to draw a line in the sand and not cross it.  It isn’t fair to him.  Just sucks that I was, well, interested for such a long time, and never sure enough of myself to make a move.  Probably because he lives bloody 17 hours away.  And because he was SO unclear with his motives.  Seriously unclear and confusing.  Still is, really.

Get the feeling I like to make myself suffer much?

/rant off