What's my name?

For once, I actually had a pretty good weekend. And I got out of the house!

Saturday morning started off slowly. Ma made me breakfast and then I baked some biscuits for Holly and puttered around doing housework for a while. Since Ma and Gabriel were in their house cleaning frenzy, I decided to take Monty for a walk.

It has been stupidly windy around these parts for the last few days, and there has been non-stop rain which means that there has been a bit of flooding in my hood, so I knew I'd get dirty. I’ll be honest; I don’t walk Monty very often because I’m a lazy whore so he was pretty damn excited to be off on an adventure. There were branches strewn across the footpaths and puddles all up in my face, so we were a tad slow moving.

About ten minutes into our walk we encountered a bush turkey who was all “what’s up” to Monty and Monty was all “not much, man” and then the turkey ran away because I called it a slut. We continued along until we got down to the river, where you could see where it had risen to as all the grass was flattened and the pavement was cracked.

I love it when it floods so I was all excited; skipping around and taking pictures on my mobile while Monty looked at me like I was retarded. There’s a little sand island I usually cross the river to get to, but the water was head high and flowing rapidly so I didn’t even attempt to get over there, which sucked, because I like sitting there while Monty plays in the water and tries to catch lizards in the grass. Have you ever seen a dog try to catch lizards? It’s so cute when they stick their heads in the grass and stand still and then pounce around for a while.

As we were making our way home, we got swooped by some asshole birds (when I say ‘we’, I mean me), so I was starting to get irritated. My older brother showed up with his puppy Fynn, so Monty ran off to prance with him. After lunch, I had my customary nanna nap so that I would be lovely and refreshed when I went to the Coast later in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, that was when mum decided she was going to mow the lawn, so she was going up and down the front yard, which just so happens to be outside my bedroom window. I swear she did it on purpose. So I didn’t get much of a nap, and had a headache when I got up.

Just as I was going outside to have a smoke, my older brother (Chris) rocked up again and asked me if I wanted to go on a walk with him, his girlfriend (Yoland), and Monty & Fynn. I agreed, since I had nothing else to do and off we went again. This time we went down to a different part of the river, where there is a dirt path running along the side of it and it leads to a suspension bridge near the old Koala sanctuary.

The river was still higher than normal, and the path had been washed away in a lot of places so we had to wade through pools of water and stretches of mud so I ended up leaving my shoes on the path and continuing on barefoot. Chris kept saying we should go back, but Yoland and I soldiered on, because we’re tough bitches like that, so he had to as well. Fynn kept running into the water and scaring the shit out of everyone when he got too close to the currents, so we wandered back home.

On the way back, we passed an almighty stench and naturally Chris went to investigate. He found a massive fish, way up above us on the slope that had obviously been swept up there in the floods and wasn’t able to get back to the river. Poor little guy. Chris poked him with a stick for a while and then we continued on.

When we got home, Chris, Yoland and Fynn went back to their place and I got ready to drive to the Coast. I was pretty excited about going up there, because I was to meet one of my twitter friends. I know what you’re thinking: What if she is some crazy ass bitch, and locks you in a cupboard and makes you touch her inappropriately? Well I was pretty sure I’d be the craziest one in the meeting, so I could beat her crazy off easily. Heh heh beat her crazy off.

Anyhoo, I set my GPS to the Coast so David Hasselhoff’s voice could guide me, and set off. I went to an old family friend’s (Kath) place first so I could meet her new puppy and because Holly wasn’t home yet.

I had a good catch up session with Carol and her family while I waited for Holly to get home, and got to meet their gorgeous little puppy, Vala.

Isn’t she cute?

After that I headed off to Holly’s place and it wasn’t anywhere near as awkward as I thought it would be. She was stupidly easy to get along with, so we had dinner, chatted away for a few hours, watched Most Haunted, laughed a lot and I even got hit on by her dog a few times. After that I went back to Kath’s to stay the night.

The next morning at Kath’s, her parents came over and brought her nanna with them. Her poor nanna is 93 and has dementia. I’ve never been around someone with dementia before so I had no idea how to act, or what to expect. Her nanna kept asking me what her name was, and was calling Kath’s kids the wrong names. She seemed to be happy enough, but it was still horrid to see what the disease had done to her.

The kids somehow coaxed her into taking her false teeth out, so everyone had a chuckle and the kids seemed suitably horrified. After they all went home, Kath and I went shopping, where I bought Monty seven million toys for his birthday, and some more gifts for Ally’s birthday (NO I’M NOT TELLING YOU WHAT I GOT YOU). After lunch, I drove the hour or so home, and had a much deserved nap.

I thought I'd have a shitty weekend, but it ended up being pretty dang awesome. There were no unicorns or double rainbows, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Woo haircuts.

I had to see the ex housemate yesterday. I’d arranged for my old neighbour to collect my mail so that I could pick it up from her and not have to see the wankstaff that kicked me out, but she got home just as I got there, so I was forced to hand her my keys in person instead of leaving them in the letterbox like I’d planned. I’d like to say I kicked her in vagina, stole her wallet and skipped away, but that would be a lie.

I strode up to her, handed her the keys and walked off. She said thanks and started fucking around in the doorway. I didn’t know why she wanted to hang around but ignored her anyway.

I went next door to pick my mail up from the garage, and started walking back to my car when HM came out again and handed me the tablecloth I’d forgotten in my hasty move the weekend before. I said nothing to her, and she was trying her best to keep her bitchy face in place, but it was slipping as I walked away again.

I then drove down to the post office to hand in my mail redirection forms. I only have to go back to HM’s once more to collect mail before the redirection kicks in and then I never have to see her assholey face again.

After the post office I walked to the hairdressers to get my fringe trimmed, as I’ve been having trouble seeing thanks to the wall of hair in my eyes. This hairdresser is at the end of the street where I lived with HM, so both of us went there regularly. When I walked in, Rachel, the hairdresser started yapping away. She asked how I was, and if I liked HM’s new haircut. I stayed pleasant, and said that I did like her hair and rah rah rah. Then Rachel started going on about some guy that was getting his hair cut at the same time as HM, and how HM seemed to take a liking to him.

Apparently, when HM left the hairdressers, she texted Rachel saying “Who was that guy? He was cute.” Rachel started laughing and went on to tell me that the guy was taken, and HM was obviously “on the prowl”. I kept my laughter inside as best as I could, because I sure do love hearing about someone being humiliated after they have been an asshole to me. I was feeling delightfully smug, and was in a much better mood when I left the hairdressers. After that, the drive home was uneventful, as was the rest of the evening. I could launch into a story about how I had to fight a dragon in the backyard, and ended the battle by stabbing the dragon in the eye and then he fell into the pool and drowned, and then I had to drag him out so he didn’t clog the filter, but that’s not very interesting so I’ll leave it at that.

Dirty Rugs And Long Nights

So last night was fun.

I had been home from work for about an hour, and was watching Sabrina Goes To Rome, which is totally awesome and has lots of sparkly magic and lulz and talking animals, when I heard Gabriel and Ma shrieking.

Gabriel was yelling, “Monty! No! NO no no no no no! NO! Ughhhh Monty!” while mum was trying not to laugh but failing miserably. I ran out of my room, arms waving crazily, saying “What? What’s going on? What did he do? Where’s my baby?”.

Ma was still laughing, and informed me that Monty had vomited on the rug in the hall. My poor baby dog was sick. She locked him outside on the deck, where he stared at me forlornly. Gabriel had already run off so she didn’t have to clean up the massive brown and white, shit shaped vomit.

Ma instructed me to get some toilet paper and start cleaning. I sighed and shuffled to the toilet, grabbed a wad of paper and went back to the vomit. I stood over it gagging for a few minutes, while Ma laughed at me and told me to hurry up and stop being a pussy. After delivering a few death stares to Ma, I grabbed a chunk of the vomit and ran to the toilet to drop it in.

Ma stood around watching me, and yelling instructions. “Get more toilet paper. No, that’s not enough. Oh, that’s probably too much. Rub it around for a while. Okay, that’s enough! Now get the disinfectant wipes.”

In between gagging, death staring and general whining, I managed to get the vomit cleaned up. Then I rushed out to rescue my baby dog from the back deck. He was still feeling ill because he just curled up on my bed and slept, when usually he’s running around the house like a maniac with a ball or rope in his mouth and running into walls.

He seemed okay at about nine o’clock, so I decided to go to bed. Yeah, yeah I know I go to bed early.

Fast forward to 3am and I was having a delightful dream about people from Twitter (shut up, I totally have a life. Asshole), when I was woken up by a gluggy retching noise. I knew Monty was about to vomit again, so I tried to turn the lamp on and move him off the bed before he did. I failed. I was smashing my hand on the bedside table, hitting everything but the lamp when I heard Monty hurl.

I was repeatedly yelling fuck and getting incredibly frustrated when I finally found the stupid ass lamp (which is the biggest thing on the bedside table). When I could actually see, Monty had his tail between his legs and was shaking in front of a slimy puddle of vomit on the side of my bed.

I got up to look at it from the other side, and it had dripped down the mattress onto the floor, where a bigger pile of vomit was. The poor little guy had tried to vomit onto the floor instead of the bed. He’s so considerate. I did the gagging, whining, cleaning thing again and grabbed a towel that I could throw over the vomit stain so I didn’t have to strip my sheets until the morning. I was half asleep, okay?! Fuck that. Monty came and curled up on my pillow and we went back to sleep.

An hour later it was on again. I woke up earlier this time, but still couldn’t find the lamp so Monty had vomited again before I could move him onto the floor. I cleaned up the vomit the best I could and threw the towel over both of the stains and went back to bed.

I got another hour of sleep before mum came barging in, and told me to get up. I tried telling her about the events of the night before but she thought I was asking her to let me sleep for longer.

“Monty was sick twice again last night.”

“No, get up now Saam. It’s ten past five.”

“Ughhhh. No, I said Monty was sick again last night.”

Finally mum got what I was saying. Monty hadn’t bothered moving which worried me, as he is usually out the door and jumping on Ma’s legs as soon as a light turns on. She called his name and he slowly got up and jumped off the bed to greet her, then started perking up.

As I left for work an hour later, he was back to normal. Gabriel promised to keep an eye on him today, and if he’s sick again he’ll be off to the vet. Honestly, that dog...

King George. Such a brave little fellow.

On Sunday as I was recovering from watching The Human Centipede by watching a shitload of Sabrina and attempting to doze off, Ma started yelling about a king parrot, and how OMG there’s a king parrot down there!

I ignored her, because usually she does that when one lands on our balcony, so I figured I could just block it out and head back to dreamland. But then she started screaming for a towel, and Gabriel starting running around the house crazily, so I figured I had better get up and find out what the hell was going on.

I walked out of room to find Gabriel running down the hallway to the linen cupboard for a towel, so I asked her what happened.

“There’s a King Parrot down there! Your Ma thinks it’s hurt! Quick, quick!”

She grabbed a towel and we both ran downstairs and headed for the gulley in the backyard, where Ma was standing cradling something in her jumper. That something was squawking like crazy and obviously wasn’t happy about the situation.

Ma told us about how the butcher birds (assholes) were swooping him, and he wasn’t going anywhere so he was obviously hurt.

She brought him upstairs and put him in a box so we could figure out what to do.

I suggested she call the Emergency Vet Hospital down the road, but she flat out refused, saying that she didn’t like the people there. So I rang the OTHER vet down the road, and they put me through to some woman who obviously hated her job. I gave the phone to mum, because I couldn’t be assed dealing with an angry person.

All I heard was;

“Hello, I found a King Parrot in my backyard and he’s obviously hurt. (pause) Uh, no, he’s not mine. He’s wild. I found him in the backyard. (pause) Uh, right. Okay.”

Then she wrote down another number and I said something about how “fucking useless” that woman on the phone was, and she totally heard me and I’m glad, because she wouldn’t help us just because we didn’t own the parrot, which is a bitchy move.

So then mum rang the other number, and lo and behold it was the Emergency Vet Hospital I’d told mum to call in the first place. They said to bring him in, so mum gave me the box and she got the car out of the garage so I could get in.

The whole drive, which is only like ten minutes, I was cooing to the parrot so he’d stop squawking and he totally did, because animals love me. Mum drives like a dick when she’s in her Holden, so she was showing off and I was trying hard not to move the box too much, so in between all the cooing and naming of the parrot (King George. It’s a good, strong name. Right?), I was yelling at mum to slow down.

Just before the vet, we had to wait for a light to turn green. We were sitting there for five minutes and the lights STILL hadn’t changed, so mum just ran the red light. I should have high fived her for being a mad d00d.

When we got to the vet and the woman had buzzed us in, mum explained what happened again. The woman asked us to wait in the lobby and she took King George off me and walked off. She totally didn’t care that she was moving the box too much, and I was going to kick her in the head but I figured I should wait until AFTER she fixed King George.

While we were waiting, mum went on about how this wasn’t the vet she hated, it was the other one down the road (it’s vets galore around our hood), and oops she should have called these people first.

I sighed a lot, and put the hospital into Foursquare so I could get the five points from making a new venue.

A few minutes later, the woman came out again with the empty box.

“He didn’t make it. He was paralysed so we had to put him down. When we put him on the table, he just flopped and couldn’t move. I’m sorry.”

Mum and I looked at each other to see if the other was okay, and then mum launched into the story about how she found the bird to the woman. I don’t think the woman was very interested, but Ma likes to tell stories to strangers.

I was so sad about King George. I hate it when animals die. Like, in movies when a person dies I either laugh because I didn’t like them, or say dang and then forget about it, but when an animal dies, I can’t look because I’ll just start crying.

Mum loves her wildlife, so she was pretty sad too. Also, I think King George pooped on her jumper. It must have been his way of saying goodbye.

Resident Evil: Afterlife - The Review

So, last night I went to see Resident Evil: Afterlife with LB (little brother) thanks to Review Brisbane. In exchange for the tickets, I was asked to do a review of the film, so here we go:

I’d never seen a 3D movie before, so walking into the cinema to see Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D, I was feeling a tad apprehensive. What if some zombie jumped out at me and I screamed a little, annoying the other patrons? What if that scream was a tad a louder than intended? What if, god forbid, I oohed at aahed at the beginning credits, while everyone else looked at me like I was special?

Well, it turns out I didn’t need to worry about any of that. I DID ooh and aah at the credits, but so did the rest of the cinema, and every time something came flying at the audience, I wasn’t the only one to let out a whimper.

The film opened to a woman standing stock still in the middle of a busy street, while the credits ran in their awesome 3D fashion. There was a zombie attack pretty much straight away, like any good living dead movie, which certainly got me excited.

So there I was, bouncing in my seat, shoving popcorn in my mouth and stealing my brother’s frozen coke while the movie continued. I’m ashamed to say, but I hadn’t seen a Resident Evil film before so I was struggling to keep up with what was going on. Who was that mean dude? Why are there so many of the same girl? How did she make the ground do that weird wave thing and kill everyone? How can she shoot a shorn off shotgun with one hand without breaking her wrist? Oh, scratch that last one; it is a movie after all.

The movie did try to explain as much as it could about the whole situation, but there were some parts where you would need to see the previous films, or have played the games to understand what was going on. Like, the massive man with the weird axe/meat hammer combo and the potato sack with nails poking out of it covering his head (how could he see anything?!). I had no idea what that was about, but it was still pretty cool when he broke down the gate and a flood of zombies entered the survivors’ prison compound. Then there was the fight scene in the bathrooms with him trying to take down Claire. He managed to make a big ‘ole mess of the bathroom, so there was water spouting everywhere and slow motion slides galore, which was obviously the BEST EVER.

What I wasn’t keen on was the high-tech Umbrella Corporation. It reminded me of when I was a kid and would play Half Life on my dad’s computer and get scared of all the aliens and army guys trying to kill me, so I’d cheat and be invincible but still freak out when something attacked. Also, I’m just not a fan of all the white rooms, frozen people in tubes and odd control screens that look like see through iPads, but can blow up massive buildings and open and close doors (they can probably turn lights on and off too).

I have been instructed by my little brother to mention the blood splattering on our 3D glasses, which actually was pretty awesome. I might have even jerked my head back when I knew what was going to happen but everyone else did too, so shut up. So basically, I quite enjoyed the movie and will now be purchasing the other ones so I can attempt to catch up. I’d still prefer a plain old zombie movie though, where people have to go on raids to get food and end up losing half of their group BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST NOT VIGILANT ENOUGH.

Fin.

Foray into Blogland

As this is my first post, I can assure you it will be boring as shit. I have no clear definition of this blog, or even this post, so have fun with the whole 'keeping up' thing.

At the moment, I'm going through a hellish housemate saga so I'll be sure to post that delightfully entertaining story within the next few weeks. What that means though, is that I've had to move back in with my mum. This isn't terrible news, but it's not great news either.
I get cheaper rent, and don't have to worry about paying for groceries or electricity, which means I will have more money to save when I go to Thailand in December. But it means I have to eat proper food (no more pasta and cheese for dinner), do housework regularly and deal with my mum's partner's moods.

That last one is what is really going to suck proverbial balls. Since I'm so awesome at coming up with names, I'll call mum's girlfriend "Gabriel" so at least you know who I'm talking about.
So Gabriel and Ma have been together for something like 15 years, so she's been in my family in some way or another since I was a tiny, innocent child, still doing everything my brothers told me to do.
I see her as a second mother, but damn is she moody. If she's in a normal mood, her greeting will be a mumbled hello, but if she's shitty, all you'll get is a grunt.

When I was fifteen or so, I got sick of Gabriel never saying hello, so I stopped saying it to her when I got home from school.
Well damn man, shit went down. I was told off by my mum for upsetting Crankpot and when I tried to explain the situation, I somehow dug myself a deeper hole and gave up completely. I apologised, and now it's just something I have to deal with.

I'm not as down about the whole moving home situation as I thought I would be, which is definitely a good thing.
Also, my pup Monty had to go to the vet today, and that cost me over $200, so the money I'm saving will be very helpful right now.

I should get back to work, but here's a picture of Monty in a box, just 'coz.

- Mashonda