I am lucky.

Luck is not measured by that which others believe we should be thankful for, but rather the things that make us feel fulfilled. The things in our life which bring contentment. Sometimes they can be that which you would expect someone to feel fortunate for having – a roof over their head, food in their stomach, money in the bank. Sometimes it’s smaller things, such as getting a new video game you’ve been waiting weeks for, or coming home to find someone has cooked you your favourite meal for dinner.

I don’t think of luck as in singular moments – “I got lucky on the pokies!”, but rather a series of events and states of existence that lead you to feel life is not always a difficult, up-hill climb.

Some things that I feel lucky for:

* Living in a place where we can paint the walls if we want to, or put in picture hooks, or rip out the spiky plants in the garden, because we own it!

* Being in love with someone who is in love with me

* Tim’s family – his quiet, thoughtful father; his caring, protective mother; his vibrant, beautiful sister; his funny, skilful brother; their gorgeous, aloof, fluffy cat.

* Having a positive outcome from my spinal surgery

* Having an awesome, weird & wonderful family

* Owning a Napoleon cat, and before him, my wonderful Dinnacat. RIP, Dinna.

* Having a place to go home to in Yamba, our family home, with my amazing mother now living there and enjoying the peace and tranquillity

* Having tickets to San Francisco next May (woohoo!)

* Being able to watch and be part of the process of my beautiful older sister getting married to the love of her life

* Having a seriously cool brother-in-law

* Seeing Rosie making her way in the world (I’m very proud!)

* Having dreams of study, and people who believe in me

* Having Chris as a friend, someone who has known me since I was about 5 years old, and therefore understands a lot about the way I think and feel! I’m so happy for Chris that he has found a Doon, and that they are happy

I have so many other things I could write, but for now I will bask in the warm glow cast by all these thoughts.

Life wasn’t always this good, but it’s worth the pain in the end.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, Casbot blog has been down for a while. But it’s back up again, and hopefully will remain up FOREVER (said in a booming, ominous tone). I felt disenfranchised, and I was going into blogging withdrawal. It’s a very serious condition – symptoms include depression, a general feeling of uselessness, severe boredom, and an uncharacteristic desire to log off the internet after five minutes of pointless surfing. The only cure for me was to reinstate my site, and edit all the content that could possibly get me into hot water.

So, what you see here is not the original, but the censored version of the original. It did make me quite sad to have to cut out entire sections of blog entries, but I suppose that’s what happens when you integrate yourself into a bureaucratic society. I don’t think I’m cut out for a censored life.

Yesterday, Calum and I went to Currumbin Sanctuary, on the Gold Coast. As you can see in the following photos, we had a grand old time.

On Friday night, Christian had a dinner at his place and invited me, Lauren and Nathan over. The reason for the dinner was so that Lauren and Nathan could meet Neo. I, of course, have already met Neo many times. I have also been bitten by him many times (no hard feelings, Neo!). Christian cooked a delicious meal of chicken breast stuffed with spiced gouda and avocado, and wrapped in prosciutto, on a bed of cous cous and steamed vegetables. Yum! Then we had banana fritters and vanilla ice cream for dessert, which was a special treat considering banana prices at the moment.

Mum and dad are selling our house in Wooloweyah. You can view its entry on Realestate.com here. It’s quite sad that it’s being sold, especially as, if it were fixed up a bit, the price it could go for would be a lot higher. Mum has already asked me to help out with settlement once she finds a property she wants to buy up here, but there’ll be no need for me to help out if she’s going to borrow money in order to purchase it – the Bank will take care of settlement for properties it takes security over. We’ll be living here in this house for another year yet, or at least until the Wooloweyah house sells.

Today is a memory day.

* I remember having blond hair and brown skin and going to the beach every single day

* I remember going for a drive with dad out to the Point during a hurricane. I was afraid. Dad told me about how when he was younger and lived in Sydney, he’d go down to circular quay when big storms came in and ride the ferry just before they cancelled it due to bad weather, because it was fun being on the ferry in the huge waves and pouring rain. I remember thinking that our car was going to be blown off the road, and not being able to see two feet ahead of us, and everything was grey. We went home.

* I remember church on Christmas Eve being so crowded that people lined up outside, and all the kids were outside running around in the yard and everyone was friends with everyone else, and it didn’t matter if we all ran off to the park, it was still counted as being there because we showed up and couldn’t get in, and all the parents stood around outside talking about parent type things.

* I remember when the circus was in town, standing out on our balcony late at night and seeing a drunk guy passed out in the church yard across the street from our place, and hearing the circus music in the background.

* I remember going to the library almost every day after tafe (NERD!), or going to the library in town every second weekend and sitting on the beanbags in the kids section and reading the new kids books, until I turned 11 and started reading from the adult section (and got told off by the librarian – “you can’t read that! Your section is over there —>”)

* I remember going to a party with Chris, and Noelle came too because she was staying with us for the holidays, and we left and met some random guy called Dan, which reminded Noelle and I of an ad for prune juice (Dan Presser, managing director of sunraysia natural beverages, is talking to his mum ruby about a new drink he’s created…) and then we walked down the main street of town and a girl was walking along with a guy, and he was drunk. He pushed Chris into the wall and said “Watch where you’re f**king going!” and the girl who was with him said “Go. Just run.” And we did.

* I remember using the metre-rulers from the blackboard as skis in year six, just before we went on our holiday to the snow, and being strongly reprimanded by the teacher for it (”these aren’t skis! they’re school equipment!”)

* I remember a boy from my class going missing at sea during a storm just after we had started high school. His own father found his body two weeks later at the docks. We had a memorial for him at the church behind our old primary school, and they arranged for all those who had known him to take the afternoon off school and provided a bus from high school to the primary school. It was a sad start to the year.

* I remember going up to the sports field of our village one night, and seeing glowing lines on the ground. One of the parents told us that the glowing stuff was left behind by slugs. I never actually saw any of the slugs.

* I remember going into the bushland surrounding the sports field, and finding paths cut through the scrub that you couldn’t see from the outside. They led to secret hideouts and clearings, and places where other kids had dragged sheets of corrugated iron or cardboard and made shelters and stored things there.

* I remember Noelle, Anna & Clare coming down for Christmas holidays and playing Super Mario Bros 3 and Spy Vs Spy on their Super Nintendo when they stayed out at the farm.

* I remember a Christmas when all the cousins came down to visit, and we put on a show for the parents, and we had tents in our backyard because there were so many people staying.

* I remember taking a kayak out on the lake and discovering what was on the further edges. There were islands and a huge black skeletal tree.

* I remember feeling content.

I just uploaded some photos and I noticed that my profile said I am 23. I had to think about it for a minute to really be sure that I am not 23. I think I’m overtired. We just got back from Yamba. The drive back was so long. I just wanted to be home, and I thought “The first thing I’ll do when I get home is have a shower (because my hair is all beachy from this morning) + then go to bed”. But I’m home, and I haven’t had a shower, and  I haven’t gone to bed (obviously). I really wanted to check out the photos from the weekend, so I had to unpack my laptop and set it back up again on my desk (because I took it with me so I could delete photos from my memory card over the course of the weekend, and it’s lucky I did because I only took my 32MB memory card instead of the 512MB one. IDIOT!) and then I had to upload some to my blog just because I wanted to, and so I had to resize all the photos so they weren’t like a million megabytes.

So. I will have a shower to clean the salt water from my hair (though we did go swimming in the Blue Pools AFTER the beach, which are fresh water, and I did have a shower after swimming at spooky, but it was only the shower above the beach where you get to wash off the salt & the sand) so I”m not all that salty, but I’m not going to sleep like this.

Last night was funny. We sat on the headland and had a picnic and drank and watched the fireworks (random fireworks were going off from about 9pm for no apparent reason) and there were hordes of 15 and 16 year olds walking past our table, all swigging breezers or cruisers, and they never failed to say to us “Happy New Years!” To which Anna would respond “yeah… it’s not new years yet!” or they would say “Happy 2006!” and Anna would say “Happy 2005″ back to them. There was no violence around this year, which is something to be thankful for. Nathan dropped us home just after the fireworks ended, and he had to make two trips as there were too many people. When we got home everyone was hyper, Nathan had leftover silly string and a water gun, and was blasting everyone until A poured a jug of water over him. Then he took the cap off the water gun and just poured the rest of it over Anna, who came out far more soaked than Nathan. I tried to get away from the water gun and bashed my knee against the table in the process. It’s still hurting. Then Zsolti served us all some Tokaji, and taught us the Hungarian toast which sounded something like “eggesheggedrrrre!” But I was a bit drunk at the time so I’m probably remembering it wrong. Despite the fact that I had been drinking vodka all night, and then had tokaji, I woke up feeling amazingly good. We went to the beach at around 9:30am, and the water was so cold that it was hard to breathe, and it wasn’t like I got used to it after a while, I had to move constantly so that I didn’t freeze, and my teeth were chattering and I was shivering. But it was beautiful, the water was so clear, and warming up in sun afterwards was just perfect. In contrast to that, the water in the Blue Pools was really tepid. It was cooler at our feet, further underneath the water where the sun doesn’t reach, still we didn’t stay in there long, because we had to leave anyway.

We leave a week from today. This time next week we will have been on the plane for 7 hours. Or about that. we’re supposed to stay awake for the first part of the trip, and then go to sleep for the last part so that we wake up when the plane touches down in Heathrow at 6:30 in the morning of the same day that we left. I think. I’ll have to have another look at the itinerary. We still need to get thermals. I’ll be going to get those this week, plus a travel pillow because Anna said that we will really regret it if we don’t get one now, because of those days that we are on the tour, if we dont have pillows we’ll be sleeping on each other’s shoulders. So I have to get thermals, a pillow, thick socks, waterproof gloves… probably some other stuff I will realise once I’m in the store looking at everything. Once we get over there I have to get some thick woollen tights so that I can wear skirts! Oh and plus I have to get the other pair of jeans I was thinking about last week. Plus some knee-high socks. I should write all this down so I remember.

Four more days of work to go. I don’t know how I’ll concentrate. It was that close to an impossibility to concentrate last week, though that might have been more to do with it being that stupid three day short week between Christmas and New Years celebrations, and it’s always difficult to be seriously motivated during that time.

Anyways, I’m tired and I want to have a shower and go to bed. Night!!!!

I’m being so lazy with my diary entries. Usually when i do write there’s enough there to make up for it. I don’t know why I even bothered to write the other night when I was tired and just wrote these halted sentences. dumb.

Went to Audra’s baby shower today. I don’t know why i dread these outings so much, but i do. But this one i didn’t dread as much as julies. i’m not sure why. Julie was there today. She looks really good, didn’t look much bigger than the last time we saw her a few weeks ago. She’s due in 12 days or something, but she said she’ll probably come to our work christmas breakfast on the 18th. Fran said that we could stay as long as we wanted at the breakfast, because she’ll be there too. it’ll be on at Coffee Club on Eagle St Pier. Should be nice.

Another thing i’m dreading so much is work tomorrow. I’m dreading this whole L. thing. I sent mortgages out to get signed and the customer only had one copy witnessed, so the other copy is useless. now i have to get them to sign another copy and i also realised that i got them to sign the non-urgent mortgages, which is going to get me in the shit. I’ll have to send them out again and just say “both copies of the mortgages need to be witnessed. oh and by the way i got you to sign the non-urgent mortgages. Here are the urgent ones, and i’ve wasted another week and they could have been lodged by now.” it’s worse because the customer is a self-actor and knows how everything works. It’s shit. And i’m not looking forward to this whole RP thing either. i just know i’m going to do up stat decs and stuff because i’m not going to find the CT. And the branch will blame me.

One good thing is that mum agreed to go on the bill for me with my phone. So the account will be in her name and i’ll just get the bill. I don’t know what phone i want to get, i don’t know if what beck said is true about phones taking pics on a certain frequency and in 2 months time that frequency won’t exist any more so picture phones will be useless… it sounds a bit like a conspiracy to me. Don’t know if i can believe that. I hope it’s not true. I want to get a panasonic like bec’s mum. Beck’s phone doesn’t’ take pictures in real time, when you look at the screen there’s like a 2 second delay, which is a pretty long time in camera time.

Movieworld was fun. beck reckoned i’d get burnt but i didn’t. my skin felt a bit hot at the end of the day but i am not burnt, which is good. i did put sunscreen on. i might do a bit of sunbaking this weekend. I feel so white. i think i am fairly pale, but not as much as some people. Plus i tan easily, so it’s a problem easily solved, right? I went on a lot of rides that i didn’t think i’d go on. this is how the day went:

Caught the 7:43 train from morningside to central, pretty uneventful. I arrived at 8:03 and beck’s train would get in at 8:16, and i had arranged to meet her at maccas, so i had some breakfast there. Watched some wiggas come and go, sitting on a bench across from macdonalds. Beck & her little sister Tanya arrived and then we had to wait for Beck’s mum. So we walked around the city for a while. Beck’s mum got there at 9:30. We then caught the train to Helensvale, and the bus from helensvale to movieworld. First thing we went on was the batman ride, according to beck it was tradition. That ride really jerks you around, i totally thought i’d get seatbelt burn. Then we went on Lethal Weapon. Only beck and i went on that, tanya and Kate (becks mum) didn’t want to, so they watched from the observation area.

It was a fun ride, but I felt like my ears had been bashed from my head banging around. Then we had lunch. i had a burger & fries, and beck had fish & chips (which were apparently still frozen inside). Then we looked at the matrix exhibit. Not very exciting. Then we went on the Wild Wild West ride. (if you’re at dreamworld it’s the log ride). That was fun, but i was really scared. I kept saying to beck “i’m so scared” and tanya, who was sitting behind me & beck, was saying “i wanna get off mum, i wanna get off! This is too scary!” lol. that’s how i felt. beck said to me “just be quiet, or you’ll scare tanya even more”. so i turned around to tanya and said “it’s okay, i’m a bit scared too but it’s bad for like one second and then it’s over”. and it was. i needed to convince myself of that too. When we got off, my hands were shaking so badly & my legs felt like jelly. But i got over it. Next thing we went on was the scooby doo spooky coaster. it was so cool, as beck said “it had just enough of everything”. especially the part where you go through this green smoke that looks like a tunnel and then you’re above everything and you’re going around these corners where you feel like you’re going to fall off… it was great. tanya was really scared at first and it took some convincing, but she loved it too and we went on again, this time with kate (she didn’t go on the first time and i had to sit next to this gross old man). Then we headed up to the looney tunes village, and went on the roadrunner rollercoaster. me & tanya went on that one twice, but beck only went once and hated it, and kate didn’t go on it at all.

We were pretty tired by this stage, so we got a frozen coke and sat on a bench in the main street. Austin powers and his dancers danced and sang up the street, and then we headed for the park entrance/exit to go home. but then kate decided she wanted the picture of everyone on the spooky coaster ride, so me & beck went to wait out at the bus stop while tanya & kate went back to check if they still had it. We went from the bus to helensvale station to central station, where i said goodbye to beck, tanya and kate. they caught the train home but i was too tired to walk home from morningside train station so i caught a bus from elizabeth street. While i was walking from central station to elizabeth st, i called rosie. dad answered and rosie was in the shower, so she called back a bit later and said that day she and sharna had gone to the blue pools and there were these girl aboriginal kids there. they were up on the cliffs and said that they were too scared to jump, and asked rosie to go first, so rosie and sharna went first to show them there was nothing to be scared of. So they all jumped in and started playing, and then some aboriginal boys came along, and dared rosie & the others to see how long they could hold their breath under water for. When rosie & sharna came back up from underwater, the boys were running away with their wallets and their phones. They were too slow in getting out to chase them, so they went up to the local store and mum was there, and they told mum and mum went to see if she could find them. she found them at greenpoint, but couldn’t get the boys to confess what they’d done and that they had the phones and wallets. so a bit later on, mum took rosie & sharna to the mission and they had a meeting with the elders. The elders said that those boys were already on good behaviour bonds, and that if they were charged with anything else they would be sent away, so to leave it with them to get the phones & wallets back. Mum agreed and they went home. about a half hour later, they got a message from the elders that the phones and wallets had been found. mum went to get them. so rosie & sharna got their phones back and their wallets, but their money was gone.

On january 3 & 4, mum said she’d take me & greta down to yamba. finally. So i told greta, and i think she should be fine to come. she got her new phone yesterday. it’s really cute and takes really good pictures. I think i want a panasonic tho. hers is a samsung.
Greta, Dimity & I are going to see the Lion the witch & the wardrobe live next wednesday (10th). Should be fun. i might need to borrow money from dad before then because i am going to be seriously broke, and because i don’t think i’m going to get my credit card, I’ll need money from somewhere. Fuck credit ratings & the default on mine from when no one paid the phone bill. ruin my freaking life why don’t you. it’s my fault though, but it shouldn’t have happened. no one paid the bill and all claimed they didn’t owe anything. well i can’t have made the bill for $200 on my own!!!

Anyways… Lauren and chris won’t be home til later tonight. wonder if they’re havng fun on the loveboat. can’t call them because i have no credit and our phone still won’t call anything except local. sucks.

no one seems to care about the middle. It’s always the beginning, and the end… like we could really just forget the whole middle part of our lives. The most meaningful things happen in the middle, the middle is when things are at their peak, when life is the most vibrant, exciting, depressing, dangerous…

But anyway, that’s not really what I was going to talk about. Yesterday I went to Shelley beach with Caroline, Lou, Pat and John. I am so burnt now, because it was soooo hot yesterday… I felt like i was suffocating, and i had to hurry through the bush to get to the beach. But then, when i finally got to the beach, it was so relief at all… it was stiflingly hot down there as well.

We sat on the beach for about 3 hours, while Lou slept and Caroline, pat and john talked about old people stuff. Not the interesting old people stuff, like how life was during the war (rations and drawing lines up the back of your legs so it looked like you had silk stockings), they were just talking about times when they’d been ripped off by someone or other, caroline was talking about the builder who ripped her off and someone suing for thousands of dollars after the HIH insurance collapse… I was bored. And today, what do I have to show for it? Weird sunburn, because I was wearing joggers, i have sunburn that goes down my legs but stops abruptly where my socks were. How embarrassing. I’m going to have to wear long pants or socks for the next few weeks… boo.

Anyways, best be off. I’m going into town today with caroline, to get a blood test and a new prescription… my weet-bix is sitting in the microwave turning slowly soggy and gross.

xxoo

I’m sitting here at the computer (completely obvious thing to say) at 7:11am, listening to Lauren’s Chill Out cd. It really is chill out music… it’s even got my favourite summer chill out song – Kinobe “slip into something more comfortable”. It’s also got the song from American Beauty, from when they’re watching the plastic bag dancing in the wind. That song never fails to make me feel melancholy… but not a bad melancholy, a good melancholy… if that makes sense.

Anyway, the reason I am able to listen to one of Lauren’s cds is because she showed up at the door on friday afternoon. She never told anyone she was coming down. She’s going back tomorrow (monday) cause she still has to work christmas day, but that’s okay. We’ll see her after christmas. I’m not sure of the exact day she’s coming home, but that doesn’t matter. she’ll be coming home and it’ll be fun ^_^.

She said she’s going to get me a tattoo for my 19th birthday, if I still wanted one. I think i’ll get one. I read something that leunig wrote in his calender, which mum photocopied from her work, where he described life as a holiday, and you go back home at the end of the holiday (which i guess could be heaven) anyways, he said that your body would be your home for the duration of your holiday, and that many people add personal touches to make it feel more like them, more a reflection of the person inside the body. So I figure that’s a cool way of looking at it, I’m just adding a personal touch to my body. I will have to think long and hard about it though. The original idea was for me to get the chinese character for ‘courage’, just a little tiny one on my shoulder, or the back of my neck. somewhere inconspicuous. I’ve got a while to think about it – my birthday isn’t until april next year.

I’d best be off, we’re all going to grafton today for some shopping. not sure if I will actually go, but i’ll get ready so the decision can be made without the stress of me not being ready to go anyway. I don’t really like going to grafton when I can’t afford to buy anything, and i really need some new clothings. i need new singlet tops, and t shirts, and shorts or long shorts.

xxxooo

ps. watched swordfish last night, i didn’t intend on staying up as late as i did, but it was such a good movie… i recommend it to anyone and everyone… very interesting.

Today we went to Ballina. By we, I mean me, Lou, Mike, Pat and John. Pat and John are lou’s mum and dad. They’re really funny. Lou’s dad accidently called KFC ken fucky chicken. He’s an old english guy, and I don’t think they have many KFCs in their part of Leicester. Anyways, Ballina was so hot. As soon as we stepped out of the air conditioned shopping center, I felt like I was being smothered by the heat. It was also really humid, which doesn’t help things at all. I reckon it must have been 90% humidity… just on the verge of raining, but not quite. The sky was overcast in any case.

I just realised that there are some times when I dislike summer. In fact, there are times when I downright HATE IT! I HATE it right now, for example. The reason for this is because I have my periods, and there’s nothing you can do to cool down in summer when you’ve got your periods. No swimming in the pool across the road, no swimming at the beach (just imagine the sharks that would attract)… no running around under the sprinkler, no hose fights… NOTHING. And my periods have been on for 7 days already. Compounding this is the fact that I have no money, and if this advance payment thing from Centrelink doesn’t come through, Christmas presents from me this year will have to be home made. Like, perhaps, a big ball of lint from the lint cache in the dryer. Hey mum! If you put about a million of these together, you might be able to roll them into one ball of oddly-coloured wool! How great!

Shopping today, in K-mart, Lou asked me what I wanted for Christmas from her. I said a pillow for my bed, since my pillow is like 20 years old and it’s kinda falling to bits. I figured that pillows would be like $5-$10. Nope, Lou chose one that cost $21. I feel really guilty. I won’t be able to get them something that costs that much. Lou’s mum and dad lent me $40, in case I found anything to buy Rosie and Lauren while I was there. I found some teeny tiny hair clips for lauren (she’s been looking for some for ages) and then got her 2 g-strings – one pink+orange, and one black. They were on special at Best & Less, and they were decent brands. I hope no one is too disappointed with my presents this year. I’ve got mum a new saucepan, a huge 16 or something litre one with a clear lid, so you can see the stuff you’re cooking. I did that cause I burnt the bottom of her other big cooking pot, and it took dad two days of heavy duty plumbing type cleaning to clean all the black gunk off it. But it’s back to normal now, so she will have two pots ^_^. I’m also putting in with Lauren and Rosie and we’re getting mum a mini-system. She really needs her own stereo. I’m so sick of listening to Georgie Fame, or whatever that crap is. I think dad will have to help with that one. I’m getting dad a little tape/radio, so that he can listen to it while he’s working. The radio in his car is stuffed. The one I’m getting him is like the boom boxes you used to get before personal cd players came out – only it’s a lot smaller, and it’s prettier – blue and silver. I think I’m getting rosie some make up. Rosie has done a few things that will insure her getting trick presents this year, which is hassling Lauren about a pair of socks that she accidently took to brisbane at the start of the year. Lauren already bought her a replacement pair of socks, but rosie still goes on about it, so Lauren is going to get her a whole heap of socks. That’s going to be funny.

Another thing rosie did was to Lou, Pat and John. They were over for dinner one night, and mum had just gotten back from Adelaide. Mum had bought us glow in the dark necklaces from Crazy Clarks, and was showing them to everyone. We all know that once you crack the necklaces they’re only glow for a short time – unless you put them in the freezer, so when mum went inside, after she’d given everyone a necklace to look at, rosie came outside and grabbed them all back, and went off in a huff. She shoved them in the freezer then went to her room and slammed the door. I told mum just today, and mum said she had no idea that happened. John said he was going to get rosie about 20 of those necklaces, since she seemed to love them so much. But Lou got her a nice bath towel instead. Rosie didn’t have a bath towel of her own.

Anyways, I’m thirsty. I’m going to go have a drink… and not alcoholic

Love you all!

Soon as my periods are over, I’m jumping straight into our neighbours pool! I’m sick of this crap! I don’t ever want to get periods again… how unfair. Tampons are the most overrated pieces of shit, as if they mean you can go swimming without worrying about anything. Stupid libra fleur.

I know I can just edit my last entry, but I’m too lazy. I’ll just start a new one.

One thing I forgot to mention was that mum told me what she’s thinking of getting me for christmas. Apparently, she wants to get me a really good mattress to go on the double bed base that we have already.
The double bed base is fine, but the double bed mattress that’s on it at the moment is horrible. So I said that’s a good idea – I had no idea what I wanted for christmas anyway. Then I realised that I wanted a portable cd/mp3 player. I thought “I can ask for that from dad.” Then mum suggested that dad get me a couple of new pillows, a quilt, quilt cover set and pillow cases, and a sheet set or two. Great. I don’t mind all that much… I guess I do need all that stuff. I also guess that means I”ll be saving up for my own cd/mp3 player. Lucky I opened a new award saver account at the bank… that reminds me, I have to make a deposit.. maybe I’ll do that this weekend when I get paid.

Ho hum, la la la

I feel pretty good this morning, considering. Want to hear something really scary that happened to me yesterday? Yeah, everyone loves a scary story, right? Well, basically, I was walking up this huge hill in town so that I could get to the radio broadcast office (cause my dad was in a meeting there) and when I got to the top, I walked over to the part of the hill that overlooks the beach, and took a huge deep breath of sea air. Only, at that very moment, a bee flew in my mouth. You think that’s funny? I suppose it would have been if it hadn’t stung me in the back of my throat. Yeah… it would have been hilarious if there hadn’t been a chance that my throat could swell up and I could die of asphyxiation (sp?). So anyways, I was trying to remain calm, spat the bee out, then I realised the stinger was still stuck in the back of my throat. I continued walking over to dad’s radio office, all the while trying to get the damn stinger out. it was extremely hard, because I had to try get it with my tongue… eventually, i got it out and put it on my finger. At this point, the pain was getting pretty bad, and I had tears in my eyes which I had no control over. When I got to the radio broadcast station, I could hardly talk. Dad said “oh hi cass, what’s wrong?” and he saw that I was panicking so he came outside. I said “I got stung by a bee in the back of my mouth.” and he rang his girlfriend (who also happens to be a nurse) to find out what to do. She said to take me down to the doctors surgery. We went down, and I went in to see him as soon as the person already in there came out. He gave me a shot of something – Lauren thinks it was adrenalin cause that’s what they give people who are allergic to bees, only I don’t know if I’m allergic to bees because I’ve never beens stung by one before to my knowledge.

Dad later informed me that I had been stung by one when I was about 18 months old, but in a normal place like my foot or something. Mum reckoned that the shot was anti-histamine (sp?) to prevent any more swelling. Then the doctor checked my heart rate, throat, and lungs. He said I was extremely lucky that the sting hadn’t affected my heart or lungs, and that if I was going to have an allergic reaction I would have had one by now. He gave me a prescription, which we then took to the pharmacy. Dad is friends with the pharmacist. He filled the prescription and then suggested that I get an ice block to eat, which would soothe my throat. Then he changed his mind and said I should get a frozen yoghurt instead – something about bacteria and coating my throat. Plus, I had to have something to eat with my cortisone tablets. I had to take 3 tablets right then, and today I have to take 2 more. Tomorrow I take another two, and then stop. So anyways, I went and got a frozen yoghurt and swallowed (with great difficulty) the tablets.

Dad took me home and I laid down in mum’s room until she got home. After a little while, I had to take panadol (I hardly ever take panadol, just for some reason i don’t like it) and it helped a lot. By 8pm I could eat without feeling like I was going to pass out. So I ate the pizza mum had made for me, and then went to bed. I woke up and had to have more panadol. Then, at about 5am today I woke up and realised my throat no longer hurt (actually it still stings a little, but not too much) and I felt really great.

What a big stupid dealio eh? Today I am going to see my regular doctor, because I need new scripts for monofeme (the pill) and to ask if I can get depo provera shots yet. I hate getting my period, it’s horrible. Cramps, feeling nauseated, back pain… not to mention having to spend like 20 bucks on pads… grrr. If I get depo provera, after a while it stops you getting periods all together. It does take a little while to wear off, but it’s not like i’m going to want kids any time soon.

Update on the Funky Monkey situation – I spoke to Lauren yesterday after the bee incident to tell her what happened, and we ended up having a huge long talk about me moving back into the flat. I said that the only thing I had to have was dinnacat, and lauren said that was fine. I feel so much better now. I mean, after all, he did live up there for a couple of months already, and that’s when he was a crazy kitten. He’s much more calm now. Plus, he goes to the toilet outside. Good dinnacat, and lauren loves him. The only thing she said had to happen was for me to have a job ready for me before I move up there.
I can handle that – chess is going to help me out. if i say i need a job straight away, chances are they’ll just be able to go into someplace and suggest they hire me. The best type of job for me now would be an office assistant type of thing in a cool environment, like at a zoo or vets or something ^_^. I’ll talk to Lyn, my caseworker, next Friday.

That reminds me – next Wednesday is Lauren’s graduation from Tafe. The whole family is going up to the presentation. I have to get some new clothes on Saturday when we go to Grafton, cause I have no formal clothes. I have casual and clubbing, but no formal. Shoes are ok, next things I need are skirt and shirt or maybe a dress. Yay! I love going shopping ^_^

Better go find out where tha heck dad is. I need him to give me my pocket money so I can catch the bus into the doctors, and pay my bill. Whoopey do dah.