The Birthday Scrooge

Last week, KJ turned thirty. So being the wonderful, birthday-loving wife that I am, I threw him a gigantic, no-expense-spared, everyone-invited birthday party. Which was more effort than your standard party, because KJ doesn’t quite feel the same way as I do about birthdays. In fact, he would prefer to spend his birthday pretending that it’s just another day and hiding under the bed when anyone tries to give him a gift. He’s the birthday Scrooge.

But I know, deep down, that everyone has to love birthdays. It’s just not normal to pass up the chance for a celebration. So with that in mind, I organised a massive spit-roast lunch at our place. We had about 50 or so people come by over the course of the day.

I’m not going to go into in-depth detail about the party, because all parties are pretty much the same – food, drinks, laughs etc. But there were a few things that maybe rate a mention.

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In the chaos of running around trying to get things done, I totally forgot to have breakfast, and the first thing I had for the day was a beer at about 11:30am. Probably not the best way to start a long day in 32 degree weather.

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The place was overrun with kids. Kids freaking EVERYWHERE. There were kids from 4 weeks old right up to about 16. It was weird. And people with babies love to pass them round at parties. As soon as someone showed up with a baby, they would throw it into my arms without a thought as to whether or not I actually wanted to hold it.
Watching me holding a 4 week old baby is like something out of a slap-stick comedy skit. Trying to cope with their floppy, flailing heads and their super-humanly strong arms is beyond my capability. And every time someone would thrust one of these little bundles of chaos at me, people would run in from all sides with cameras, saying things like ‘Awww, Torrygirl is getting clucky!’ or ‘Oh, you’ll be next!’ and clicking away as if they were recording some huge historical landmark.

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I ran around to a heap of different cake stores until I found one that still made the cherry ripe mud cake that KJ thought was no longer available so that I could surprise him with it. I am an awesome wife, if I do say so myself.

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Because there were so many people, we couldn’t hold the party in our backyard. We have a big open area out the front of the house, and a double garage that opens onto it – so we used that space. Our house is on a pretty steep block, so the bulk of the house is upstairs with the garage downstairs. This meant that I ran up and down the stairs to the kitchen about 500 times an hour. For around about 8 hours.

Now, I’ve made my thoughts on exercise pretty clear over the years, so anyone who read regularly knows that this much running is not a normal event for me. And man did I pay the price for it.
I ache in places that I didn’t even know I had muscles! I did so much food preparation and lifting and carrying things that even the muscles in my hands ache. My legs ache, my arms ache, my shoulders and neck ache. Even my eyelids ache!


It was all worth it though. We got to spend the day with good people, eating good food in good weather. And even KJ enjoyed himself – which has to be a first.

Maybe it’s actually possible to trick someone into enjoying birthdays.

You too?

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel that it requires another mention today – just because I’ve heard so much about it this week.

I think I am the only person in Australia - possibly even the world - who doesn’t really like U2. They’re playing in Melbourne at the moment and it’s all I have heard about all week.

So while I know no one is going to agree with this, I just want to put it out there that I think U2 is well over-rated. And Bono is really annoying.

Being a grown-up is also great because...

You can have cake and wine for dinner and no one tells you off.

Being a grown-up is great because...

You can eat cake for dinner and no one tells you off.

Not-So-Nameless Newbie

So I did a bit of sneaky detective work and it turns out that the new guy's name is (spelt phonetically) Lay-oof.

Anyone care to take a punt on the spelling? It's probably not something that I should just try to guess, I suppose.

Nameless Newbie

A new guy started out in the factory this morning to give us a hand in the lead up to Christmas.

The boss came in after lunch and asked me to print out an invitation to our staff Christmas party for him. The only trouble is, the new guy has a very unusual, very foreign name. In order to print an invitation for him, I need to know how to spell that very unusual name. Given that it’s such an unusual name, there’s no problem with simply asking him how to spell it, right?

Except that his name is so incredibly foreign and unusual, that I can’t even remember what it is. I can’t very well say ‘hey you! How do you spell your name, er... mate?’

I’m sure that it starts with ‘L’ and that it has a weird noise at the end, like ‘oomp’ or ‘oof’, but that’s no help to me. How exactly do you go about finding out someone’s name without letting them know that you don’t know it?

A Different Kind of Cake

Today I ate a mint that tasted like what I imagine an un-used urinal cake would taste like if someone was stupid enough to eat it.

Not that I spend a lot of time imagining those sorts of things, but the texture and the medical flavour just had a certain kind of quality about them that said ‘when I grow up, I want to be a urinal cake’.

Afterwards, I felt as sick as I imagine you would feel if you really had eaten a urinal cake.

To summarise:
Very bad mint.
Don't eat urinal cakes.

Random Childhood Memory #4

My grandma used to have this liquor cabinet that was chock full of liqueurs, spirits and things with foreign labels that I still don’t even know the names of. I was always curious about them, because my parents drank pretty much every night, and at family functions the booze cabinet got a pretty good work out.
As a little kid at those family functions, I would hop from lap to lap, having my cheeks pinched, giving the old ladies the attention that they loved, and in return receiving sips from their glasses. Port, Ouzo, Brandy, Scotch, Wine, Beer – every glass was a new experience, a new taste.

My grandma, being a big softie, knew that I was intrigued by the endless bottles of mysterious alcohols in the cabinet, and so when I stayed there she would often let me taste tiny little bits from one or two of the bottles.

Then one day when I was about 11, I decided I wanted to see what it was like to have more than just a little sip. I snuck in and filled half a drinking glass with port, and the other half with coke. Turns out 11 year olds aren't that great at estimating a standard drink.


Needless to say, the results of that little experiment kind of diminished my enthusiasm for the mysteries of the liquor cabinet. And now, at 28 years old I have only recently been able to drink port without getting a little pang in my stomach at the smell.

Slutty Old Me

Apparently, I'm slutty. In some stupid survey, my name made the top ten in a list of girls names that men think are most up for sex.

Since I don't use my real name on here, I'm not going to say exactly where my name came in the top ten, but given the thousands and thousands of female names in the world, it probably doesn't really matter which name it is. Even coming 10th would be pretty much almost as bad as coming first. Maybe I should change my name. I wonder which name came 2000th...

My Natural Selection

On the weekend, while channel surfing, I came across a documentary with one of those boring, garden-gnome-bearded scientists pontificating about natural selection. One of the points he was discussing was whether modern medicine constitutes an interference to natural selection, or whether it should be considered as part of the natural selection process.

It got me thinking about the times that I’ve relied on medicine, and how my life would be different without it. And I realised that if it weren’t for modern medicine, I’d already be dead. If natural selection is really being hindered by modern medicine, then I have already been picked off by nature. Which is disappointing, because I always thought I was stronger than that. And to add insult to injury, not only have I been sick enough before to have died without medical intervention, I’ve been that sick twice. Does that mean the universe is trying to tell me something?


When I was about 18, I got glandular fever. While that’s pretty common for people around that age, and not lethal, it sent something out of whack in my inner ear, and I got so dizzy that I couldn’t even blink without throwing up. I was so dehydrated and malnourished that they had to cart me off to hospital. I was stuck there for a week until I was well enough to be able to go home, where it took me a good 3 or 4 months to get better. Natural selection averted.

Then earlier this year, I got really sick. What I initially thought was the flu turned out to be a virus that attacked my thyroid, and it made me so freaking sick that I felt like I was on my way to a slow and excruciating death. When it was finally diagnosed (after 3 separate visits to the doctor), I had to take a total of 12 pills a day for over a month to get better. In the middle of my illness, I had a resting heart rate of around 120-130bpm. A heart attack in the making, I’m sure. But modern medicine managed to avert a bit of natural selection there too.


Courtesy of that shitty illness, every day of my life I now use modern medicine to keep me alive, because the virus damaged my thyroid quite badly and now I have to take a pill every day to stop me from getting sick again. Fun times.


So I think I’m going to side with the people who say that modern medicine is a part of natural selection, just helping the weaker links to become stronger. And I’ll always be grateful that I live in the 21st century where I didn’t have to croak just because of some stupid random virus. Or from something that is commonly referred to as the ‘Kissing Disease’. That would just be embarrassing.