Recommendations for a successful start to the week

•  Don’t bring a milk drink to work, then drink it ‘shortly after arriving’, only to realise once you’re done that it’s actually been sitting on your desk for 3 and a half hours.
   
• Don’t follow this milk drink with a spicy Sri-Lankan curry for lunch.
   
• No matter how tight your budget may be, never consider single ply toilet paper a valuable money saving idea.

You want a what now?

I’ve posted before about the ridiculous things that one finds themselves typing daily when you deal with playground equipment.; Mis-spelling things to make them sound more ‘kiddy’, my dyslexic fingers turning regular words like ‘sun’ into ‘sin’ – conversations with customers about squeezing balls (of the kind that you put in a ball pit, that is).


But there is another thing that I find myself typing numerous times per day that you would never expect someone at a playground company to be typing. Something that seems to be more the kind of thing an employee at an erotic publisher would type.

‘Cock’.

I type it at least 20 times a day. Hundreds of times each week. Cock, cock, cock. And why? Why on earth would someone dealing with playgrounds be typing ‘cock’ all the time?

Streamlining.

When designing playgrounds, often you want to put in a ‘cockpit’. And when you’re doing this multiple times a day, typing the word ‘cockpit’ becomes time consuming. So you streamline. You chop the end off of the word, until you find yourself typing the word ‘cock’ more frequently than an a cybersex junkie.

I often thing that if ever a phone tap was placed on my work phone, an unwitting listener might easily think they’d tapped into a phone sex line, what with all the ‘cock’, conversations about ‘balls’ and today’s lengthy discussion with a customer about fixing his 'knob'.

Leaky Sponge

People say that children's brains are like a sponge, soaking up information anywhere they can find it. If that’s really the case, then I feel sure that at some point early on, someone picked up my information sponge and wrung it out a little.

Often, very basic information about the world and how it works seems to have trickled its way out of my brain and been left somewhere in a puddle of abandoned information. And I’m not just talking about the kind of information you never use, but also very basic things that you learn at primary (elementary) school. Things like basic multiplication tables and long division; why there are seasons and how electricity works. Want to know what 8 x 8 is? Don’t ask me! 245 minus 73? Hand me a calculator then!

It’s a very strange thing to find that you’re lacking in basic skills like these, especially if you’re not a stupid person. I may not be able to do long division, but I can design a playground that meets four different kinds of legal standards, fits into a small space and know exactly how much it will cost all in the space of about 20 minutes. I can read an entire novel in less than a day. I can use just about any computer program you put in front of me, and have it mastered within an hour. So why on earth do I have to think so hard about things I should have learnt when I was five?

Perhaps it's just that since I've been a nerd from the day I was born, I’ve come to rely too much on digital devices to provide these kinds of answers for me. Calculators and computers have made that part of my brain that deals with basic maths obsolete. My brain has decided to expunge all the information that it didn’t really need to hold on to, and as a result all that is left is a mind that has a firm grasp on vocabulary and technology, and little else. It would explain all those other blank areas in my mind where things like ‘history’ and ‘geography’ subjects should reside.


Is it too late to reverse this kind of knowledge loss? Can I bring it all back? And is 30 too old to be learning things that could be taught to me by my eight year old niece?

When you feel low

When I'm feeling down, and it feels like there is nothing that can cheer me up, there is one place I can turn to. One thing that never fails to make me smile, no matter how often I see it. And though you might expect it, it's not something deep and meaningful. It's not something that puts my life into perspective. It's a movie. A cheesy movie. It's Bridget Jones's Diary.

Judge me if you will, but hear me out; it's not the romance story that does it for me (though that's nice too). It's not the mischievous sexiness of Hugh grant, nor the inexplicable attraction of Colin Firth. It's not the image of an awkward, relatable woman finding love. No - it's the fight scene.
It's the greatest fight scene of any movie ever made. It's ridiculous, it's crazy, and it's so real that it makes me laugh out loud no matter how low i'm feeling.

When life is feeling like a bad drama movie, the only thing to cure it is romantic comedy. You can switch off your brain and let the images of two very proper English men trying to have a fist fight pull you out of your slump.It works for me every single time.

So before you judge me - try it. When you feel like crap and nothing appeals to you, watch the movie. I guarantee it won't fail to make you smile, even if only a little.

Hell Pants

Many moons ago, deep in the fiery pits of Hell, a disgruntled fashion designer plotted his revenge upon a world that lacked appreciation for his vision. Perhaps his time in Hell was a result of some dispute with a woman. Perhaps she was cellulite-ey, with thighs like oak trunks and an arse like a balloon full of cottage cheese. Perhaps, as he burned for his sins, he came up with the perfect revenge upon this woman. A revenge so sweet that not only would its malevolence affect this one woman, but all women the world over.

That Hell-dweller schemed and plotted, and with the consent of a gleeful Devil, he gave the world leggings.

But leggings alone were not enough! He needed to do more! So he foisted upon an unsuspecting world the desire for all women to wear leggings, regardless of her body dimensions and fitness levels. The shinier the better! And to cap it all off, he instilled the desire for these women to wear those leggings not below skirts or under dresses; but as pants.

And thus, the world became a little bit worse, a little more grotesque, as people like me and you were forced to be privy to this affront to our eyeballs.


And so it will go, until the day that Hell freezes over and the spell that has been cast upon the Earth is broken - and in a shattering moment of clarity, millions of women look down to realise that while they thought they were looking good, they were in fact sharing with the world the most intimate details of their bodies by essentially going pant-less.

That day cannot come soon enough.

Breaking the Stereotype

Contrary to the age old stereotype of the evil mother-in-law and her hatred for her new daughter-in-law (and vice-versa), i'm lucky enough to have a really fantastic relationship with my Mother-in-law.
I think that it may have something to do with me being the same age as her daughter, but being slightly distanced from the family because of that lack of childhood years spent together that means we relate well to each other. We can talk; often about things she wouldn't talk to her kids about.


Today, we all gathered at her house to pack up all her belongings, clean everything from top to bottom, and move her and her new husband into a house they recently purchased together. We rose early to get everything done, and slogged our guts out to finish packing boxes and load the mixture of trucks, vans and trailers we had collected to facilitate the move.

By 2pm, all of their worldly possessions were packed and mobile, ready to leave their past and head to their new home. Settlement on the new house was scheduled to happen at 2pm, so we were expecting a call at about 10 past to let us know that we could move everything in to the new place. At 2:10 on the dot, the phone rang. As my mother-in-law took the call, her happy grin slowly became a frown, and shortly after, she dissolved into tears. Somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong. The solicitors had the wrong paperwork, and the settlement couldn't go ahead.

I couldn't help but be upset myself as she crumpled into tears on my shoulder. She's a tiny little thing, small and petite, with not a scrap of fat on her, so as i hugged her, i was put in mind of hugging a tiny little sparrow. She felt fragile to me, and it made me glad that i was there for her - because if I were her own daughter, that fragility would be hard to bear. Parents are supposed to be the strong ones, and I think even as we get older, we find it hard to come to terms with the idea that our parents aren't infallible.

So tonight, my Mother-in-Law and Step-Father-In-Law are sleeping at my place. All their belongings are sitting outside my house in trucks and cars. And I know it could be a few days until they get everything settled - but that's okay with me, because while it may not be the expected reaction, i'm really very glad to have my Mother-in-Law in my life, and to share my home with her when she's trying to sort out her own.

Christmas

Christmas is almost here! I’ve been so busy pining for a holiday lately, that without me even realising it, it suddenly became December. And now there's only a week and a half left until Christmas.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how much I adore Christmas. It’s not a religious event for me. It’s not about the birth of Jesus, and it’s most certainly not about a fat man in a red suit sneaking into my house while I sleep and leaving presents.
For me, it’s about family. It’s about getting together with all of the people that I love and having a big meal. It’s about giving gifts to my loved ones to show them that although I don’t always say it, they mean a lot to me and I appreciate them.

But while these are the things that I love about Christmas, sometimes life and the people in it don’t seem to want to work with me on this. Some people seem to feel that Christmas is all about obligation, and whinging about Christmas obligations can just suck the fun right out of it in a matter of moments.

Take, for example my step-sister-in-law. This is only our second Christmas together as a family; and for some reason she felt the need to have a very long and complicated discussion (via facebook) about gift giving and who would be gifting to who and how much we were spending. This was while hinting all the while that she didn't want to buy anyone gifts.
As far as i'm concerned, gift giving does not require pre-meditation. The act of gift giving shouldn't be done with any sort of expectation of reciprocation, and most importantly, gift giving should never be done grudgingly. People seem to forget that there is a reason behind it all that isn't just 'because it's Christams and that's what you do.'


Christmas this year has been further complicated for me by crazy family members.
In every family, there are the ‘strange’ relatives. The unusual ones who are crazy or perpetually angry - or sometimes both.

In my family, we have more than our fair share of these, but most specifically my Uncle and Aunt on my Dad’s side. Some years ago, they moved away from Melbourne to a small town about two and half hours drive away. This wasn’t a problem for Christmas lunches, because after years of jumping from house to house at Christams, we had settled into a routine of having Christmas lunch at my parents place. It's the most centrally located place for all of the family, meaning that everyone has the shortest drive possible to spend Christmas with their family. My Aunt and Uncle knew this when they moved, and each year they drove down to see the family for Christmas.

But as the years progressed, my Aunty and Uncle became more and more withdrawn form the family, until they stopped coming to Christams all together.
Then this year, out of the blue, they decided that they wanted my 83 year old grandmother to spend Christmas with them. Only they didn’t want to make the two and a half hour drive to come and get her. Instead, my other Aunt (also on my dad's side) had to offer to give up her regular family get-together on Christmas day and take my Nanna all the way to spend the day with my crazy relatives. And while it sounds nice that my Nanna gets to see her son and daughter on Christmas day, there's one person that got forgotten in it all. My dad. And it's not a case that the two and a half hour drive is too much when the rest of his family lives here. It's that they didn't even invite him.

So I guess that Christmas isn't about family for everyone.


As well as Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles not being around for Christmas lunch this year, my brother and his wife are in England with their three kids, visiting my sister-in-law's family for the holidays.

So it's going to be a quiet one this year. Instead of 18 of us having lunch together, there will be five. But that's ok, because it's five wonderful family members that I get to spend a whole day with. And I get to spend the evening with my new family-in-law, who despite all the trauma of the gift-giving debate, are great people too.

And for me, that's what really makes Christmas.

Whinge Week: Work

After two days of not being at work, I feel as though I should be more relaxed. But I’m not. Instead I spent all weekend feeling like a hermit because I had no plans and did nothing. And while doing nothing, I had no internet access. So I wasn’t even like a good, internet social hermit. I was just a lonely, sad person with no one to talk to and nothing to do but drink.

Then, after a weekend of wretchedness, Sunday night was spent thinking over and over “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.” My car ride in to work this morning was spent thinking “Why do I have to go to work today? Why do I have to go to work today?”. When I arrived and sat at my desk it became “Why do I have to be here? Why oh why do I have to be here?”

By the time I had read my morning emails I was so agitated that I had to avoid everyone. I need a holiday damn it!!

I may have mentioned before (repeatedly) that one of the things I hate most about my job is the fact that I am the only female employee. At the best of times this is nothing – it can even be mildly amusing. But when your workload becomes so great that you begin to lost control, working with men is a nightmare. They’re disorganised and stupid and they spend most of the time patting themselves on the back for how well they’re doing, when really they’ve just dumped all of their work on me.

On Friday afternoon, right before work finished, the boss called a meeting. He then proceeded to crack the shits at us for not having done some obscure task that was set a few months ago which had to be put aside because we’ve been so busy and so understaffed. As I am at my wits-end with all the bullshit; and since in the best mood I am strictly no-nonsense; I just yelled right on back at him. And while this is not such an unusual thing, because this is the dynamic we have, it always makes me feel like shit afterwards.

In the last two months I have been yelled at, bitched to, back-stabbed and harassed at work and I am so well and truly done with it all that I just don’t want to be here anymore. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve given as good as I’ve gotten. I’ve yelled at a co-worker or two, whinged about them and left work in a rage. But men and women feel differently about this stuff. And men never seem to see the vast workload which leads to this point. They just gloss over that and put down any bad mood to ‘female troubles’. Well, here is news for you men: my real female trouble is YOU. You’re lazy and ignorant. You’re incapable of multi-tasking and you can’t seem to ever talk about anything except cars. You forget that I’m a woman and joke about how annoying your wives or girlfriends are and some of you take to backstabbing when my work shows up how your work isn’t being done properly.

You suck, male work colleagues. You SUCK.

Whinge Week: Sometimes Life is A Pain in the...

In waiting until everything that you want to whinge about piles up into one giant heap, you end up with the problem of not knowing what you want to whinge about first. I guess, logically it would make sense to start at the very beginning, but I’m not sure that starting at the very beginning will give the full effect of how whinge worth things have been lately.

If I were to start at the very beginning, I would start by moaning about my job. But before I complain about my job and how I have a workload so big that I would need an army of office-serfs to get it done before Christmas, I’m going to whinge about something that affects each and every other crappy thing that has happened lately.


Some time during the last two weeks, I did something strenuous. I know that’s kind of vague, but I can’t recall what exactly I might have done that was strenuous, I only know that one morning, I woke up with a slightly painful twinge in my lower back. I put it down to sleeping in an odd position and tried to ignore it.

The universe, of course, decided that since I was ignoring that twinge, it would ramp things up a little to get my attention. When I woke up the next morning, the twinge had become a sharp stabbing. I got up out of bed so that I could stretch it out. Faster than I could stand up, I found myself on the floor writhing in back spasm-ing agony.

‘Fear not!’ I told myself once the pain had eased a little.’ Your sister is a physiotherapist! You’ll be fine!’. And as a good sister does, she immediately came to my house to work her magic. Half an hour of painful poking and prodding later, my lower back was taped up and I had an ice pack in hand and a belly full of Nurofen. As I headed to bed that night I felt relaxed and I was convinced that by the next day, I would be fine.

I’ve always wondered why people with back pain make out like they’re the most hard-done-by people in the world. Now I have a fair understanding. When I woke the next morning, the pain was excruciating once again, and it stayed that way for quite a while.

For the following week, my back was a constant source of pain. It was fine provided I didn’t try to do silly things like bend, stretch or move in any way; but you really don’t realise how much bending your spine does until it doesn’t want to do it anymore. Even something as simple as coughing becomes a giant pain the...well, in the back.


Now, there is a reason that my stupid back has been my first post during whinge week. This little tale of my back pain woes is something to keep in mind during the rest of whinge week. Because every single crap thing that has happened, every annoying person or irritating moment that I have come across recently – all have been accompanied by a sometimes stabbing, sometimes aching, always agonizing back pain. And when people and things suck, a pain in your back makes it all suck even more.

So to excruciating back pain caused by a mysterious strenuous activity, I say this:
You SUCK, back pain. You suck.

Commence Whinging

With the huge workload I’ve had at my job recently I haven't really found myself with a lot of time for writing, and when I have found time, all that comes to mind is a whinge about how busy I’ve been and how I have no life. I've always tried to stop myself from whinging too much on here, because I figured once I started it would be hard to stop; and if people wanted to hear someone complaining, they wouldn't have escaped to the internet in the first place.

So a few days ago, I finally mustered up the motivation and creativity to write something. It was a glorious little piece about some observations I had made regarding wine drinkers. The writing started slowly, but after a little while the words began to flow and I ended up with a fantastic, tight piece of writing that I was proud to post after my lengthy absence.

Then, as I copied and prepared to paste my writing into blogger, the unthinkable happened. My computer crashed.

Luckily, I am well prepared for such an eventuality. I save my work almost obsessively for just this reason. So I hit the reset button, and waited for windows to reboot. A strange message flashed across the screen, suggesting that I run a check disk. Impatiently, I opted to skip the check. The message disappeared...and the computer restarted. Same message again. This time, feeling slightly more cautious, I chose to run the check disk. The message disappeared...and the computer restarted.

And with that, my wondrous blog post, along with everything else on my PC disappeared into the great and mysterious virtual void.


That moment there; that brief but devastating moment; was the beginning of what seems to be the universe's attempt to make my life very difficult for a while. So many annoying, upsetting and painful things have happened to me in the last few days that I need an outlet for them all. And despite my attempts to keep this blog whinge free, there comes a time when whinge I must.

And so begins my 'Week of Whinge'. For one whole week I’m going to be totally self-indulgent and just write about how bloody annoying everyone and everything is at the moment. And maybe, just maybe, it will help me to feel a bit better.

So read away and feel free to join in by commenting and sharing your own similar experiences; or judge me and call me a grumpy old lady - but if you choose to do the latter, keep it to yourself. For one single week, I intend to complain without feeling guilty, so 'suck it up princess' type comments will be deleted - and then possibly whinged about. Because everyone needs to complain once in a while without fear of being permanently dubbed a 'whinger'.

And that is all I have to say about that. For now.

Let the whinging commence.