I bought it yesterday, and have decided for sentimental sakes that I'll buy all in the series featuring the places that T-bone and I have been, viz:
* This is Paris
* This is London
* This is Rome
* This is New York
* This is Venice
* This is Hong Kong
* This is Australia
* This is Historic Britain (2005 and 2006, when I was there, will be regarded as seriously ancient history to these squiddlings, anyhow.)
So, yes, This is Paris is a picture storybook, and I do realize the twins are kicking wildly in utero and, well, can't really see anything at all yet, but I thought they might like to hear some Mama Momo does Spoken Word.
Here is a sample of how it went:
Me [bare bellied and reading in strident yet soothing voice reminiscent of the one I put on back when I wanted to be a (specifically) TV journalist. Once upon a time]:
Just a little way off from Notre-Dame we find the Bird Market, which is held every Sunday.
See, these are birds, children. I think that one's a toucan.
This is called the Conciergerie.
See, it's a big thing with watchtowers. Never saw it on my 'Paris, City of Lights' bus-tour, I'm afraid. Or maybe I did, I can't remember.
During the French Revolution Queen Marie Antoinette, the revolutionary leaders Robespierre and Danton, and 2,300 other people were imprisoned here before they were executed.
Oh. Well. I'll explain that bit later on someday. Let's turn to the next page, then.
My mum came and stayed with me this weekend, it was just us. For the first time in about 17 years we had a good talk about things. For once I didn't feel crushed by all the stuff between us that was being left unsaid because just about everything was spoken about. Things I'm not going to write about in great depth here. But I decided a while ago that I was tired of feeling clamped up and raging inside. I was tired of being distant and irritable and vaguely petulant. By asking and listening, she opened up and spoke with honesty about how tired and desperate for money she was while she was bringing me up, but that she was so glad how things turned out with me. Of course I know how she struggled because I was there, experiencing it too. But it felt a relief to have it said out loud. It eased a lot of the guilt I'd always felt by merely existing.
I learned for the first time that she stayed in hospital for three weeks after I was born because she didn't have anywhere to go. Both sides of the family were fighting and threatening one another. They were continuing the same arguments that sent her into labour eight weeks early.
At such a vital time, no one was there for her, but she was there for me.
I told her that I knew she did the best she could under her circumstances. I said I never wanted her to feel embarrassed of me. I said that I always felt that my actions reflected hers, which is why I have tried to not be too much of an idiot in my life. And, when I was young, her drive and determination to keep our heads above water is what made me ultimately strive for things. I'm not celebrating my own achievements here, I'm celebrating hers.
The baby scans went well on Tuesday after the Monday-night nightmare, thank goodness. So I am feeling very happy. There's a couple of sneak peeks over on Flickr on what our bebes look like. One is definitely a little boy baby, while the other baby decided to maintain an air of mystery with legs firmly crossed throughout the ultrasound.
We're away on a road trip for the next four days, somewhere in the countryside in a lovely spot. I'm keeping it a surprise for T-bone, so it should be a fun mini break. We both need it.
I've had problems with words lately, which is a bit tough while writing a book with time rapidly running out, but I was pleased last night when I felt like I was finally making some progress on my work, and decided to tell T-bone so:
Me: I feel like I'm no longer behind on everything now. So I'm not lagging, which is great, but I'm not really 'up to date' either, as there's still stuff to be written tomorrow. But no one is desperately waiting for me to write, because I'm no longer behind. No, I'm now delivering on time. So, I guess I'm ... I'm.
[Pause]
Me, continuing: I'm? What am I, T-bone, in the scheme of things? I was giving a status report? And I wanted to tell someone I'm neither behind or ahead or up to date, exactly?
T-bone: You, my dear, are 'on track'.
And he was right, you know!
I wonder if the babies were chortling away at this parental genius?
This is the most insane shiz that has ever happened.
It's 2.33 am and there is a man at our door drilling it open.
WE ARE LOCKED INSIDE OUR APARTMENT.
ON THE 21st FLOOR.
AT 2.33 AM.
WITH NO WAY TO ESCAPE UNLESS WE JUMP.
21 FLOORS.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More than five-and-a-half hours ago, at 9-ish, we got home from being out eating Vietnamese soup, and T-bone went to throw out some rubbish. He tried the door. It didn't budge. He wiggled it and waggled it and the damned thing was jammed, so he called the building manager.
"No worries, I'll call a locksmith!" said the building manager, "We'll have you out in no time."
So a locksmith showed up about 20 minutes later.
After 10 minutes of him desperately jiggling the door and muttering away, alarm bells started ringing. Not literally, but in my head.
"Hmmn. Surely he should be more suave and relaxed about this," I thought. "considering he's a locksmith and all."
Then, after an hour, he'd finally opened the door.
He dismantled the lock. And pieced it again several times. Still muttering away and seeming a bit weird.
After two long hours, he deemed it FIXED and scurried out the door, locking it behind him.
"BYEEEEEEE!"
I complained to T-bone about the black grease this locksmith had left all over the carpet, and then T-bone tried the door and realized it was still broken. We were locked inside. STILL.
T-bone called him and said "OI. THE LOCK IS STILL BROKEN. YOU'VE LOCKED US INSIDE. COME BACK!"
And the guy did. After another two hours of jigging and muttering, he said "Oh, I'm going to get some tools!"
We waited half an hour before deciding to call him. We thought maybe he'd driven somewhere to get those tools.
The locksmith picked up and said, "I've gone home. There's nothing I can do for you. If you see someone passing by, ask them to force the door open with a crowbar."
Then he hung up.
Click.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course, this was wonderfully useful advice as we see LOADS of people passing by with crowbars while we are LOCKED INSIDE OUR APARTMENT ON THE 21st FLOOR WITH NO WAY TO GET OUT UNLESS WE JUMP.
"T-bone, what we need is an EMERGENCY ESCAPE AXE!" I shrilled. I started breathing quickly, laughing a lot, and then, worried I was about to completely flip out, buried my head under a pillow.
In the time it's taken me to write this, another man has arrived, and, through the door, has just told T-bone he is off to get some tools from his van ...
It would be funny if it wasn't COMPLETELY INSANE. Oh, and if we weren't LOCKED INSIDE ON THE 21st FLOOR WITH NO WAY TO ESCAPE UNLESS WE JUMP.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate this apartment with its constant stench from people cooking and noise from dorks playing their PlayStation really loudly at 4.30 in the morning, so loud it rumbles through the walls? Oh, how I can't wait to be OUT. Literally now, and soon, when our house is built in a few months. There, I will buy the household an emergency escape axe, but, by jove, things will be so blissfully utopia-like that we shall never need to use it.
The eensy babies have been kicking my innards like wild things over the past week, it all started about three weeks ago and it seems they're on a shake, rattle and roll, variously tapping out Morse code messages paired with what feels like synchronized swimming or can-can-girl high-kicks. Last night I was about to drift off to sleep, when the one on the left side decided to do what felt like a diving board bounce on my pelvic floor. Needless to say, this jolted me very AWAKE and T-bone is becoming very used to me giggling and hooting for seemingly no reason.
Apparently at 19 weeks in casa de womb, babies can start to hear things. So last night we dug out an old iPod and T-bone started loading up nursery songs, all of which were strange techno-fied versions that made me twitch, so I thought perhaps it would be a bad introduction to the sonic world. Instead, I played them some songs through headphones on my belly from The White Album. The first song they ever heard in surround bellyphonic sound was Dear Prudence. T-bone said this was a good, if moderately confusing choice, speculating that this might be going on, on the inside-inside world:
Twin A (to Twin B): Pray tell, who is this Prudence cat these folks keep singing about in such melodic harmony?
Twin B (stroking chin in pensive mode): Dude, I thought it was you.
Earlier, in one of his conversations with the babies, (most of which start "Hellooooo? Helloooooo? Little children? Can you hear me in there?" and I admonish him for sounding like Jack Nicholson in The Shining), T-bone loomed over my stomach, clapping, stomping, and whistling a strange hurdy-gurdy tune, like a 6'3" leprechaun.
I inquired:
Is that some traditional Dutchman jig, T-bone, from those Nether Lands from which ye hark?
And, after trying to think of something funny to say, he (rep)lied emphatically:
Yes. I have many such Dutch tunes to teach them.
What else?
Oh, yesterday I swooned in the supermarket, out like a slowly fading light, but, thankfully, was still aware enough to not go CLONK! on the floor. Unable to see or hear for about 10 seconds, I had to sit myself down at the checkout. It was horrible.
Otherwise, as this stream of consciousness blog entry might indicate, it's getting quite hard to focus on, well, anything, including sleep at night as my mind constantly wanders to thinking about next Tuesday's scan, the big 20-week one, where hopefully we find out everything is perfectly normal and fine with the little 'uns. I'm finding all this wondering v. stressful, but, if the hootenanny kicking is anything to go by, I'm sure everything will go splendidly.
Gosh, I can't even remember where I found this, but it's been sitting on my desktop for a while.
If I were a cartoon drawing and not a real live person, I would want to look like this happy lady. All swingy royal blue frock, green eyeshadow, thick eyelashes that have to be false, and way-out flipped honey blonde hair. You may have noticed that we both share PRECISELY the same utilitarian type of nose, comprising of nostrils and little else (which only adds to a bloodhound-like sensitivity to smell).
T-bone keeps going on about how, in 50 years or something, you'll be able to download your brain on a computer and live on in Second Life or something, forevz. While I think this sounds quite a horrendous proposition, for the record, I want this as my otherworldly avatar.
You could never tell by looking at me, what with my steely athleticism, but I am a hopeless shot at just about everything. Unless it's by pure accident. See, on the weekend, when I was racing into the lift, my apartment access pass (the one that swipes me into the building) went ...
SCHLIIIIIIPPPPPPPP!!!!
Out of my hand ...
And flew a graceful arch that any lacrosse player would be most chuffed with ...
PHWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Before slipping through the VERY SKINNY and FRUGAL letterbox-like gap between the elevator and the floor, plunging to the very bowels of hell, for all I know.
[Insert lamentable whammy noise.]
In disbelief, I said to T-bone:
"Um ... score?"
Over the intercom, the building manager advised it would cost $800 to retrieve.
[Insert lamentable whammy noise.]
Or $80 to replace.
[Insert lamentable whammy noise.]
How immensely irritating.
Anyway, while T-bone went off to find a security guard to let us up to our floor (because the building manager wouldn't come down from his turret of evil), some dude came up to me while I sat in the foyer.
"Have you lost your pass or something?" he barked.
"Yeah, it fell down th ..." I began, before he interrupted, hastily:
"God! Is that your drivers license?"
And I looked at T-bone's ye olde ancient laminated Learner Permit from 1992 that I have dangling on my key chain and went to retort:
"Er ... do I look like a 16-year-old hoodlum BOY with blond hair and an undercut?"
(Answer: no.)
But he got in there first with:
"Because you shouldn't put a hole in it like that, you know. It makes it null and VOID. It's against the law. Go get a new one."
Me, I was tired of this loud bossy nark hassling me in the foyer, so I responded with something I haven't actually said to someone's face for about 15 years (or perhaps longer) ...
"Yeah. Right. What-ever."
And at that, he walked off, bossily, to the tune of me rolling my eyes.
For the record (and from what I could tell) he wasn't a crazy loon, rather, he was just a pain in the backside (and I have lots of patience for crazy loons, as it's not their fault. Being crazy. And loonish). No, he's probably a team leader somewhere and forgot to clock off his annoying loud bossy nark hassling for the weekend. Dork.
Speaking of slam dunk (and we weren't, but that's what I'll probably call this blog entry), here's a picture I just found in my iPhoto of T-bone when he met Magic Johnson at LAX earlier this year.
This is the first and only thing we’ve bought the twins so far, but I think it’s a goodie.
Planet 66, Summer Vacation by Takashi Murakami
I look at it and my heart sings. Smiling flowers! Fluffy clouds! A happy gathering of bunnies and funny blobby ghosty things drifting across the sky hand-in-hand!
T-bone was very keen to get some art for the nursery. When he told me this, I narrowed my eyes and said:
“Cool, so long as there’s nothing subversive or weird. It must be very, very normal. And I’d prefer it wasn’t by a certain New York street artist who, while entirely ace, is so omnipresent on our walls, shelves, and, indeed, your own t-shirted torso, that I often imagine people have big X’s for eyes, fan boy.”
T-bone retorted, “No, no, I'll look for something that's entirely NORMAL. Your Fifties’ sensibilities won’t be at all offended, J. Edgar Hoover.”
When the print arrived, we looked at it and agreed it is even more lovely and vivid and gorgeous in real life. Remembering my stipulation of “It must be very, very nomal” I said to T-bone:
“There’s nothing odd that I’m not noticing here, is there?”
And he replied, “Oh no, sweetie. Perfectly sound. But did you notice all the flowers have cocks?*”
I squealed, “WHAAT!!!!”
And he chortled, “Hee. Heee. Heee.”
*No, they don’t. And, yes, I felt hideously lewd writing COCKS, but it loses its punch censored as ‘appendages’. My apologies.
If you get the chance and have a handy coupla shekels rattling round your pocket, please go get yourself this little short story I wrote a while back which has been published as a Mini Shots magazine by the lovely people over at Vignette Press.
It will set you back the minor amount of just $4 ($6 international) and even has a mixtape that you can listen along to online (fo' free).
What's it all about then, eh?
Oh.
Boys and girls. 1994. Wagging uni. Aimless hooning and larking about. Bad attitudes. Student residences. Throwing a sausage out the window at a vegan mandolin player. Being in love. Sizzler All-You-Can-Eat.
All in one short story, like Puberty Blues, but without the meat pies.
This morning, I woke up sparkly at 7.05am. First of all I was surprised that it wasn’t 3am, as that’s my chosen time to sit bolt upright, claw at my temples, and fret like all hell. Or just lay there thinking “Hmmmn. Wish I could go back to sleep.” I don't always fret. Sometimes I’ll try to tire my mind with laborious academic feats, such as reading a book. If that hasn’t bid me a Love Boat-worthy bon voyage into the land of nod after a good hour or so, I usually wander around the apartment looking for crazy kicks. Finding the abode bereft of crazy kicks, I’ll gaze out the window at the streets below wondering where the passing cars are headed, as I am, after all, nosy by nature. Then, if it takes my fancy, I’ll have a mid-early-hours-of-the-morning snack (cereal, banana, or chocolate Yogo gorilla, if I’m on the sneaky deaky).
After this hive of activity, I’m usually sleepy-ish again and go back to bed and wake up some time after 8, as I work from home now and can do whatever I feel like, thanks.
But today I woke up sparkly at 7.05am. As I had a lot of work to do, I decided to hit the kitchen and feed myself. I heated some milk in a saucepan for my cereal (the first serve of the day), remembering my father's sterling advice a few weeks ago of "Get lots of calcium. Would you like me to send you some goats milk? I've got a goat in the backyard."
(No thanks, Dad.)
Committing to being awake, I even turned on the TV.
Opening the pantry to get out the cereal, I was confronted by what looked like a green and brown Dalmatian. But no, it wasn’t a much-longed-for pet, it was a loaf of bread we’d purchased a few days ago and it had gone mouldy as a result of us hoiking up the heating when things turned a particularly chilly shade of autumnal last night.
I thought to myself:
“My! How unpleasant. It’s a good thing my morning sickness seems to have left the building, or else I’d feel hideously ill right now.”
Averting my gaze, I put the fungi loaf in the rubbish bin and then went about compiling my breakfast. I may have even hummed.
30 seconds later …
A creature from the deep even more hideous than that furry pet growing in the pantry decided to unleash itself, like this:
BLURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Right there in the kitchen, my morning sickness arose from its slumber both unexpectedly and spectacularly, like Nessie of the Loch. So I raced to the bathroom for five more encores in one of the more revolting experiences so far. In between, I muttered: "My God, when does this end?!" followed by "Help!" followed by the most plaintive cry of all "Muu-uum!" (even though she's 555 km away).
I eventually found my way back to bed, asked T-bone if he could hear me (yes), slept it off for three hours, and vowed never to buy a loaf of bread again.
So that was my morning. If you’re all itching to see the inflatable woman in progress, first belly shots over on Flickr.
My friend Jason Priestley (not her real name) put this in my comments section last week, and T-bone and I thought it was such a hoot.
Kids’ Rock by Tim Hawkins
My favourite is Old Macdonald, Pearl Jam style.
Parents and people around kids would already know about all the ‘cool’ kiddie musical offerings out there, with rock artists lullabye-ized, like this and this. Ages ago, I remember stumbling across these muzak rock songs, all of which, especially the Nirvana stuff, creeped me out for sounding eerie and weird and vaguely hideous. If I was a tiny kidling forced to listen to this pulped down version of my parents’ record collection, I would be furiously stomping my crochet booties, waving my bunny rug like a Jolly Roger, and howling:
"LOSE THE BLAST FROM THE PAST AND LET ME LISTEN TO 'PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON', NOOOOOWWWWWW! GRUNGE IS DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, AS IS YOUR YOUTH, YOU SELF-INDULGENT CREEPSTERS!"
To which I, in role of mother, would reply:
"I concur, wee angry one. However, 'Puff the Magic Dragon' isn’t a modern hit song for children, it was in fact by folk outfit Peter, Paul and Mary and topped the hit parade around the world back in 1963. For grown-ups! By the way, no one really called ‘grunge’ grunge until it was all over anyway, in my all-knowing and pervading parental 'world of rock' book. So there."
[And, considering I’m having twins, I need to involve the other twin in this skit so no one feels left out …]
From left of stage, while trying to chow down on something inedible, such as a chair, the other childling would retort to his/her wildly incensed and possibly also-teething sibling:
“You are so PAWNED, G. My mama’s got da shizzle. BAM!”
After all, he or she had been listening to Hip Hop Baby.
In short, I doubt I’ll ever buy any of that stuff, preferring just low-fi regular tunes at not-too offensive volumes as a musical education. Or totally rocking out to 'Appetite for Destruction' in the living room, if that’s their bag. Except I kinda like the Sigur Ros baby album because they actually sound like nice pieces of music, without the creepy.
This requires a hazy memory sequence, bear with me! Do feel free to hum yourself a hit tune from, oh, the beginning of the year to get the retro early 2008 vibe happening ...
January 9:
I leap out of bed at 7am busting to go to the loo. While I’m there, I muse, “Oh, I might try weeing on this here pregnancy test I purchased last night from the supermarket, just to see what happens.”
Mid stream, I decide to halt proceedings and open another packet of said tests (different brand) and wee on another one while I’m at it. Just to be sure.
I then continue going about what I’m doing, there, on the loo, weeing on two pregnancy tests at once.
No one can ever complain about my stellar multi-tasking skills.
3 minutes later …
Two faint little lines appear on both tests.
Holy Gerber's mushed up macaroni!
It’s true, friends, as all this talk of pregnancy tests and wizardry of urinating might indicate, I am PREGNANT. And today (March 19) I launch into the second trimester (14 weeks).
Back on January 9, I leaped into the air, hugged myself in the mirror, prayed, ask some special loved ones to watch over me, did a few other shout outs, leaped up and down again, suddenly realised I shouldn’t leap up and down so much, shouted something like “HI BABY! HELLO! HELLO!” and then began singing A Day in the Life by the Beatles, humming the melody, as the lyrics are entirely inappropriate for such an occasion, except for the ‘I read the news today, oh boy!” bit, I mean. Cos two lines on a pregnancy test is, after all, a type of reading.
January 9-11:
T-bone is in Thailand, I decide to keep this secret from him until he returns … in two weeks time. I devise sterling plans as to how to break the happy news. Coming up trumps is the concept of meeting him at the airport, and writing a massive cartoon speech bubble on cardboard, viz:
HI DAD!
… and holding it over my stomach, much like a hired driver meets Garfield thinking “Mmm, lasagne”.
January 11:
Sterling plan ruined when I blurt over the phone, long distance, that I am (and we are) with child.
In the days following:
As the first sign of morning sickness, I become uber-sensitive to odour. A punk-rock girl in my elevator dares to eat a nori roll in my presence. I face the doors trying not to judder my shoulders as I gag into my hands. I spot a man eating an apple in a food court. I run away, wanting to hurl at this oddly sickening sight.
About a week following and continuing to present day (with some gradual relief as time has worn on):
My hobbies include:
a) Staying hermit-like inside, feeling too ill to move or speak
b) Gagging (day and night)
c) Spewing (day and night)
d) Sprawled on the couch groaning and/or whimpering
e) Stuffing Kleenex tissues up my nose because I hate the smell of everything (even the smell of tissues. I tried a clothes peg once, and contrary to cartoons, it pinches far too hard, inciting a near-panic attack)
f) Sleeping
g) Asking T-bone to get me things
h) Eating a lot
i) Complaining about being hungry
j) Complaining that I can’t taste anything
k) Gagging again (day and night)
l) Exclaiming with glee: "Wow! My boobs are HUUUUUUUUGE!"
February 20:
Something not-so super happens and I have to go to hospital, worried that something is happening to the baby. I get an emergency ultrasound and there, on the screen, are two tiny human-looking figures. The ultrasound operator says to me and T-bone:
“Can you see what I’m seeing?”
“The heart’s beating, everything’s alright?” T-bone and I nervously respond in a jumble together.
“Yes, it's all perfectly fine. But how many babies are there?” she smiles.
“I thought that was a mirror image! Or different angles, like watching a football replay” I wail.
“TWINS!” we shriek.
And the answer was, yes, twins.
---
So, there is much more to tell, but the long and the short of it is that we are having twins! It has been exciting, terrifying, exhausting, wonderful, mind-boggling and all things in between. The due date is September 19, but they’ll possibly arrive a few weeks earlier as twins tend to do.
The other week, someone quit their job at my work via SMS text message.
When I found this out, I hooted heartily.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" I hooted (heartily), "And did they do it in text speak?"
"What, like C U L8R?" said my fellow gossiping cohort, before adding that the person in question was a lawyer. This struck me as odd, because the role was junior and entirely unrelated to law. So we mused and gossiped on that a bit before another staff member pitched in through the (thin) wall.
"We don't seem to have much luck with lawyers around here."
A true fact. The last lawyer that worked for us, in a junior role completely unrelated to law, left in a haze of incompetent hopelessness and decided to hit me with the parting shot:
"It was nice to meet you. Sort of."
Which, if you ask me, is kind of the equivalent of going to shake someone's hand, and instead running it over your head like a faux comb, a la Fonzie in Happy Days.
"We must be getting the lawyers that slip under the bar," I said, laughing at my own joke, viz, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Encouraged by everyone else laughing (a whole two people, one of whom was through a wall and perhaps laughing at a FW on the email or something), I added:
"Yeah! And I reckon they hit their heads on that bar in the process! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!"
Now slapping my thighs and juddering at my own hilarity with bar jokes entirely depleted, everyone went back to work and completely forgot about it.
See, I've been dying to share that with someone, and now I have.
Le End.
AND IN BRIEF:
This Friday I'm back to freelancing, hence my one-off illuminating insight into what goes on in my (to be former) office. I wasn't sacked and nor did I quit via text message, so quit your gossiping. This gives me loads of time to write my books, hang out on You Tube and grow my life back. A lot has been happening of late, an unprecedented amount. But for now I'm remaining zipped.
I am, of course, talking about The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl.
I, myself (meaning 'me') read it in one big hubba-bubba-sized bubblegummy stretch a month or so back, and it is as splendid as both of Shauny'sblogs and the always gorgeous, erudite*, and much-beloved blogging phenomenon that is Shauny herself. But she isn't just a blogging phenomenon; blog or no, Shauny is a real life fantastic writer to boot. I love that her story is being told outside of the blogosphere, and, as a blog that became a book, it's lovely to see a nice and all-round uplifting story published, rather than all those jaded ones out there by call girls spilling the beans in Agent Provocateur (like seemed to be everywhere a few years back).
And so, before I pip off to organize my collection of half-empty shampoo bottles** that, depending on the precise level of "half emptiness", indicates my own quantifiable disappointment for an ongoing tangle of bad-hair days, I must say:
GO BUY SHAUNA REID'S BOOK.
*Being especially erudite myself, I almost wrote 'araldite'. Which, of course, is a type of heavy duty glue.
**True, my steely focus toward organizing my collection of half-empty shampoo bottles is what keeps me from my once-were steely focus of keeping this blog current-ish.
Over the past few years, I’ve become a horoscope person. I always read my Susan Miller horoscope after my friend Sadie in London recommended it (and, I agree, Susan Miller is very frequently onto stuff), but once a month isn’t enough for me, oh no, I like to see a daily horoscope. Even if I drag myself out of bed on a weekend at 1pm, with wild banshee hair and drool pasted to the side of my head like Clag, and concur that, yes, it’s all pretty much over for the day as I’ll probably sit in the living room with the blinds drawn watching DVDs groaning URGH! and CUP O’ TEA! I still want to know what to expect and so log on to find out, hmmmn?
Yet, while I have an enquiring mind, I am also fundamentally lazy. So I just peruse my daily horoscope from the website of Melbourne’s better daily paper, the Age. Unfortunately, the fair gypsy Fairfax is completely shitful and lame-o with her star gazing, with the astrological bar remaining shin-achingly low.
Yesterday, for instance, Scorpio began a little something like:
Today you will be surrounded by positive influences [blah blah blah]. Expect to relax with family and friends [blah blah].
Considering it was a public holiday, yes, the day had an overall positive influence. We got our car washed and the man did a sterling job. That was a positive influence, if cleanliness is next to godliness and all. Other than that, for about eight hours, T-bone and I sat hermit-like in different rooms working on our laptops and drinking ginger cordial. We were surrounded neither by family nor friends, but it was better than being at work-work slaving for the man. So, yes, in spite of our industriousness, it was still relatively relaxing.
Pointedly, the horoscope failed to mention that our relaxing evening would be marred by a BBQ of organic sausages resulting in both horrendous gas and a pair of matching tummy aches.
It could have said something like:
Steer clear of organic BBQ sausages today. They’ll bloat you and your partner like a Black Widow spider about to spawn 10,000 mini-spiders and cause you to emit competing hideous noises, much like an untied balloon deflating in haste and flinging helter skelter about the walls. Next time, get the cheapie $2 tray of snags. True, you’ll be chowing down on tubes of gizzards, guts, and sawdust, but at least you’ll keep your dignity, fart-a-tron.
But perhaps that’s expecting too much from a horoscope. Specifics.
Interestingly, the horoscope ended with something like his:
In the next 20 years, expect to see a lot of change in your life and the way you communicate.
This blew my mind as I pondered CHANGE in the next 20 years. Holy bazookas!
Maybe I’ll:
Get a new car
Go on holiday
Change jobs
Move house
Meet a new mysterious and interesting friend
Take up a hobby
Dye my hair (likely)
Buy a different shade of lipstick (unlikely)
Get a spray tan (more unlikely)
Take up with a merry band of banjo-playing coyotes and tour casinos and poker clubs with our variety act.
While the opportunities for change in the next 20 years are seemingly endless, I also wonder how I might change in the way I communicate. First, I thought perhaps I’ll become a wildly popular right-wing talk-back radio shock jock, rather than writing nerdy (but highly informational) reference books for children. And then I considered these alternative communicating methods:
Rapping my fingernails on tabletops/available bald heads in Morse code
Holding up cards, similar to those that chauffeurs use at airports. Like that famous Bob Dylan video.
A fast-quippin’ hand puppet named Reggie.
Rubbing my hind legs together and make clicking sounds like a grasshopper. Or is that cicada?
Exaggerated facial expressions and horn-honking, a la Harpo Marx.
Purring, hissing, and miaowing
E.S.P.
L.S.D.
L.C.D. horizontal light display. As seen advertising Ultimate Jumbo Feed just $5.95 below KFC menu boards everywhere.
Megaphone and bible/book of spells
Kazoo and party popper
While I ponder, go and check out my mate Yo Yo Betty's new blog. She writes like a mofo (of the finest kind) and is one of my dearest, funniest, and best-looking friends. You'll like!
And also! The excellent Chew and Lily of the excellent food blog Lily and Chew are up for nomination on the Blogger's Choice Awards. If you're a fan like me, follow the links and go vote!
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