Parcel Wrapping 101

My first job was on the Deli counter at Coles, or it might have been Woolies. Well that was my first real job cos I don't suppose it is right to count the summer when I was 12 when I lied to a crazy cow with 3 small kids that I was 14 and so spent 6 whole weeks carelessly looking after those shitful kids and ironing the crazy cows sheets and curtains - yep that's something I am hoping the senility demon will eat up, and any time soon would be OK.

Anyway the Deli counter was an excellent place to learn how to wrap stuff.

It didn't matter what the 'stuff' was, it needed to be tightly wrapped in white paper as fast as you could manage cos there was always some angry old codger there waiting and going on and on about how short my dress was and wasn't my bright blue eye shadow just a bit much for this early on a Saturday morning. So I wrapped up the Salami and it looked like long thin dicks and I wrapped up the squishy coleslaw tightly locked into a baggie so it looked like some mad cloud, but it all needed to be tight tight tight, cos back in the day, the price was written on the package with a fat felt pen and noone was happy if the pen stuck a hole in the paper and made a big bloody mess.

That wrapping experience has armed me with speed and expertise that is somewhat staggering to my family, who all agonise over every fold and corner, and so if we are all around the table together, I drive 'em mad with my slap dash attack and they drive me nuttier with the fastidious care and inevitable tantrums when the sticky tape gets stuck where it aught not be.

If the parcel is a one off, like some special thing for a special person's special birthday, I am happy to take time and tart it all up a little with curly ribbon and bits of decos, but at chrissie when there are lots of silly little bits of nonsense to wrap, speed is all important I reckon, especially when we play, 'Guess what's in the parcel' based on some very obscure clue, the clues take me far more time than the wrapping.

So Zig and I got a start on today and I hope I have shown him that it's not always necessary for the wrap to be perfect. He must have heard me say, 'Ooops oh shit, Oh Well, at least it's covered.' a few dozen times so maybe he will have got the idea. Stevie will never loosen up, with the sticky tape. He will disappear with a couple of beers and reappear hours later, in a sweat, proudly placing perfectly wrapped bits.

Ah horses for courses.

Shit news and Surprises

Bloody update - otherwise known as Fuck IT.

I think I rather like surprises, or at least I used to.

You know those little surprises like sliding your hands into the pockets of your winter coat to discover a forgotten twenty, shoveled in there to cover a cab fare home after a boozey night at the pub, but then the  weather changed and you were pretty pissed so decided to walk home instead. Ah those wonderful little surprises.

My darling Nanna awakening me with a cup of tea and a couple of buttered wheatmeal biscuits every morning was always a surprise, not cos it was unusual cos she did it every day, but it was a surprise to me that she did it every day. It was generous and sweet and we'd chat about the banal and the unusual. And I guess what surprises me today is that I liked it so very much, cos NOW I actually HATE eating in bed, quite possibly have done since I became responsible for washing my own sheets.

And then there are those less than fabulous surprises like when my ex presented me one chrissie with a bottle of truly 'Old Lady' perfume which he hadn't even sniffed and some shitty old T shirt. It wasn't the lack of parcels which was the problem, what surprised me was the appalling lack of effort and thought on his part, and I guess the absolutely staggering thing was that it took me still near enough to another whole year to pack up my T shirt and head off.

Yep some surprises are shitful.

Like getting a poor blood report from Dr Hemo.

The scores are only significant if you have CML, but in a nutshell, after a year I should be in remission and that means my score should be 0.00something. Some lucky ducks get there much faster than a year, and some folk never get there. I am at 0.14. Doesn't sound like much huh? But it's enough for Dr Hemo to suggest a change in the meds. Well fuck it, just when I was getting used to this lot of poison he's thinking we will change things up if there is no improvement in 3 months.

And here's the thing, I might have been the only one in the room who was NOT surprised with the poor bloody show. Poor old Stevie was shocked I think, and then when I had a little sob, he was surprised again. I am not a in-public blubberer and yep even in front of Stevie is in-public, so when my eyes leak, I am surprised, surprised cos I just can't hold 'em back, Bugger!

I expect that in remission I will feel better and as I haven't been feeling better I was pretty sure that the mutants had not behaved. Bugger, but no surprises.

So fuck it! No good blood news for chrissie.

I am now hoping that the surprises I have organised for my little family go down a treat on the Big Day.

And then I can put my best foot forward and do all I can - which is precisely fuck all, to see if I can get a surprise result next time. Fingers crossed that my little mutant fuckers finally decide to fuck off sometime soon, cos the idea of the adjusted treatments is not a surprise I want to spend a great deal of time considering.

In this case, I would swap a surprise with a good dollop of certainty in a heart beat.

Summer = Shit Tellie

Sun surf and shit TV. Yep that seems to be the case, but what I am not sure about is, why is it necessary to rub our noses in it, by running ads on a loop, about what is coming sometime in fucking February.

I reckon we could all just slide into the banal line up, the repeats, the return of some truly bad, never was any good, stuff, if we weren't constantly being reminded that this lot is indeed second rate crap and that good stuff is just around the corner. Now I am not gonna pretend that I am all that excited about the prospect of perving on the B celebs in the jungle or the herd of strangers getting married to other strangers, but it probably sounds better than the holiday shite houseness.

In preparation for this drought, we have been madly recording stuff sometimes for months, on our little Optus box thing.

Nah, I don't know how this works. It is just a little bit of modern day magic to me.

But here's the rub. The machine has become outdated. Yep it is the cassette player of Tellie boxes and we are getting messages that we should get the new one. And that'd be good cos this old one is a bit fucked. The recordings are all too often a bit out of sync, and the programmes are sometimes cut short and the sound is a bit shit and the remote has sticky buttons not caused by jammy fingers or spilled beer. Yeh sometimes I think something is going to be entertaining, only to find that it is all pixilated or wonky. There are far too many BUGGER IT moments.

At the moment, although I am not at all sure I believe it, Optus is saying that they will happily send us a new one free of charge.

But the trouble is, is that the offer runs out NOW, and if we take the new one, then all the shit we have recorded on the grand daddy will be lost, and then we are left with shit summer shows and no choices.

So damned if we do and damned if we don't.

Hello Summer

AS the luckiest Ma in the Southern Hemisphere at least, the summer has started. Yippee.

Cos The Grandie's Mum is hard at toil, it means that we are the proud recipients of this lovely young fella for a few days each week of the summer.

And so today he was the 'man of the house' cos I needed help dragging home a bit of something for Stevie. It's a great big heavy box. We all hope he likes it.

And then he hit the pool, and when I say HIT, I mean Hit, except the bloody thing wacked him back. He'd taken a tumble at school, with or without the help of others, and it had scabbed over but the action shot above was the precursor to a big old bloody leg. 

I am OK in a crisis, usually. but I could see this hurt and he was sucking back the eye washing, so then I was a bit of a mess.

We mopped up most of the blood and then he went for a shower. Put paid to a long afternoon in the pool I'm afraid, BUGGER.

The Dettol and cotton wool is at hand now and I am ready to disinfect the area, when he gets back down. 

This wasn't the summer celebration either of us expected, but at least I am only delivering him home tomorrow dented and not broken, cos I reckon if I broke him I might get the sack.

How's you day been?

Yeh it's a weird photo, but it about sums up my day.

Have I used old Forrest Gump's line, 'Life is like a box of chocolates' before?

Seriously I could be spraying all manner of used up shit here today, cos I rather doubt I'd know Arthur from his good friend Martha, and I sure don't feel like I know up from fucking down.

I've had a bit of a headache for 3 days now. Meds side effect - not too bad and not all the time.

I haven't slept more than about an hour in a row for a couple of days. Meds side effect. The insomnia just makes me even more stupid than normal.

There's a pain in my guts the size of Russia. Meds side effect. Usually goes in a few days.

There are lots of other shitting things that can go on, but I still reckon the biggest pain in the arse is that you just don't know what each day is gonna bring.

So today I was up making beds and washing sheets at about 5 am cos there was little to be gained from lying wide awake just thinking about doing that shit.

Then I felt pretty good so I jumped in the pool to have a little go at some silly arm waving about stuff that can't do any harm, or so I thought. Then when Stevie was up we went off for coffee and as I sat there I started to slide out of awareness of the day. I was tired and not just a little bit tired. Exhaustion slapped me around the head like that ad where someone gets smacked with a tuna, only as it was happening to me, I was not laughing. And I was one great big fucking ache from all that swinging shit.

We headed off to pick up my new seeing glasses and I was making even less sense.

As we are not famine ridden or doing some green shit purge, we needed food for dinner and that's when I lost it altogether.

Stevie: What should we get for Zig for dinner tomorrow night?
Me: Don't know. I'm tired.
Stevie: What about a Pizza, you could blah blah blah blah blab blab.
Me: I'm tired. I can't think
Stevie : Blah blah blah blah

And then he wanted to get some chrissie cards. I walked him to where I thought there might be some nice ones, but blah blah blah.

And then we drove to another shopping centre where I stayed in the car with the air con on and he popped in for a chrissie card look see.

I laid the seat back a bit and closed my eyes. Ahhh.

And guess fucking what! When Stevie got back the fucking battery was dead!

Seriously how the fuck did that happen?

Phone calls were made. Apologies were forthcoming - from me, cos if I wasn't such a lazy twat, I could have gone shopping with him.

The bloke arrived and even though he said the battery was fucked, I still felt like shit.

And then when we got home I had a little shut eye and took off for a massage, cos now my whole fucking body is rejecting the very idea of swinging bits around even in the pool.

Sylvia is a from Hong Kong. She speaks quite heavily accented English which it must be said is very much better than my Chinese. She goes pretty hard at the rubba-dub-dub. And usually I just lie there and have a little siesta.

But today she wanted to chat all things Christmas. I felt like it was possibly inappropriate to ask if she celebrated it, but ask I did, and then she told of how in Hong Kong it really is all about big parties and not much to do with families, but now she was seeing the value of celebrating in the Christian fashion, cos she has just converted to Christianity.

I don't know if it was then that the music got louder or that I just started listening to it more intently. There was hymn after hymn and then I noticed she was singing along, very quietly.

And that's when I started smiling. It made me giggle that this newly converted Christian was full of the joys of the season and was talking it all up with the excitement of children who still believe in the big fat red-suited guy, and there I was, the atheist, face wedged into the hole in the table, whose belly was so bloated that when she was working on my lower back I had to hold in a fart avalanche.

The massage was timed by the hymn sequence of her choice. Good for her.

And when I slithered off the table and threw on my clothes and had a quick look in the mirror to see if I was gonna scare the punters outside, I noticed that my face was red and blotchy. Yep it seems I might be allergic to the little bits of paper rag stuff that she uses to cover the face hole in the table.

And very attractive it looks too.

Surely tonight I am gonna get some sleep.

Wages and value for money.

It seems that the users of this stuff earn more in a day than a teacher. What the very fuck?

I was so very pleased that a girlfriend dropped by this week. We always enjoy a lively natter and a good catch up. We have worked together so we know and like and dislike a lot of the same people, and so bitching and smiling is what we do.

She is recently retired from the chalk face - yeh we both know that it's been a fucking eternity since there was chalk, for me especially cos I developed an allergy to the stuff back in the early 90s and bugger me if that wasn't an occupational hazard to be avoided at all costs, cos instead of a Black Board I needed a White Board, and who would ever have guessed that Education Queensland would kick up such a stink about providing a bit of white plastic board, but kick they did. The memory is not a pleasant one - shit!

Anyway, my friend retired and so now does supply teaching one day a week, and earns 370 bucks a day!

Clearly I have been out of the loop a bloody long time cos that sounds like a shit load to me, so much so that I reckon it is time for me to throw my hat into the ring again. Of course I am not sure where the ring is or indeed if I am capable of chucking anything that far, or if there wouldn't be some dick permanently employed by Ed Queensland to throw that fucker right out again, but maybe I could look into it -  Yeh Noone else  is convinced either.

But we had a couple of cleaners pop in to quote to clean the place for the Open Houses we have agreed to in January. So I don't know what qualifications they have, but they earn, wait for it.....800 big ones a DAY! I think they might have to share it, although I am not clear if 2 people are coming to slough out the Big House or just one.

Fuck Me!

I know the place is big but it ain't filthy! It's not like they have to back in with a mini skip and shovel in dog shit and people shit, and they don't have to dodge around decaying piles of food or rotting dead bodies. So I can't see how there is danger money to be had.

They have to sweep up dog hair and buff up the glass and mirrors.

Yeh if I was doing it myself I would be all red in the face and rooted when I was finished, but I would get it done in less than a day. Of course there is home ground advantage to consider, and there can be no doubt that I would far rather be using my brain than my saddo bit of brawn to earn a buck but to think that brawn outweighs brain to this extents beggars at least my belief.

The world sure as shit is changing!

The kids are all buggered and want to sleep late and play video games and eat peanut butter til it comes outta their ears, and the teachers, bless 'em all, well bless most of 'em anyway ( I can think of a few who need a hearty swift kick in the pants ) can all wave off into the sunset for a long well earned summer holiday, in the full and certain knowledge that if they fancied moonlighting as cleaners they could top up their clearly poor relation wage.

I thought someone had presented research showing that human brains were getting bigger and muscle mass was shrinking, cos we were thinking more and moving less, but that just can't be right.

I could have of course just made that up as wishful thinking.

Ho fucking hum.

Christmas Prep.

The London tree decos arrived this week, and were quite the hit.

I remember very well getting a chain letter when I was still in primary school. I can only have been 12 years old and full of the optimisim or maybe stupidity of youth, but in I dived. I wrote the requisite letters and sat back and waited for my letter box to overflow.

Nada, nothing, fuck all.

Yep it was a learning opportunity. And perhaps it was the birth place of the cynicism that leads to a barked 'WHAT' when I answer the phone to a number I don't know.

I try very hard to almost never believe the promises of strangers, but actually I am still pretty gullible. When someone says they are gonna do something, I just believe they are gonna do it. Unless of course there is some crazy looking bloke pushing the buzzer at the front gate who tells me that I have won a gizzilion million dollars and all I need to do to collect it is to let 100 people move into my spare room and grin widely as I sit amid their fart clouds all the while I feed 'em up and keep 'em entertained with a stand up routine delivered in Russian. Only then perhaps would I wonder if there was any truth to the yarn.

So this week when a mate put up a secret santa sort of chain letter thing on Facebook, well I jumped in. Actually it took me a minute or so cos I spent time reminiscing about the whole primary school episode, and rather than be pissed off, I enjoyed recalling the kids I knocked around with and the fun we had. The grandie's last few days of primary school might have been the impetus for all this memory swirling.

Anyway, jump in I did. It's all been a bit frantic cos I had to learn how to do stuff and then I found a website that probably everyone already knows about, called ETSY and I spent a lovely little while having a search through handmade stuff and arty bits and pieces and chose something I liked a lot for a complete stranger and and filled in the paper work to make sure that it's delivered to her before christmas.

It made me happy to do this silly thing.

It doesn't matter if my letter box stays empty, cos it makes me smile thinking about a stranger opening her parcel, and I really hope that she likes her bit of silliness, and I like the idea that craft's woman has made a sale which she otherwise would not have.

BaaHumBug might be tattooed where the sun don't shine but this opportunity to a be Santa without having to wear that ridiculous fucking red suit is like waving tinsel and singing a round of Jingle Bells. Yep it got me in the Chrissie spirit, so the tree's up and I am getting sorted with lists for parcels even if I haven't got ANY yet.

There's a little plan in my head for next week, so I am well on my way.

Ta Da!