Spiders, man.

There was a MASSIVE spider sharing the backseat of the car with me day before yesterday. I discovered it doing that sudden skippy jump that spiders do when they want to give you reoccurring nightmares and possible heart failure (yeah, that jump) around on the unoccupied half of the back in the first 10 minutes of a 30-ish minute drive.

I'd like to say that I handled myself with the dignity and grace of an adult, but then I would be lying, and I'd have to get a fire extinguisher on my pants. As it happens I'm rather fond of these shorts.

Trauma has a way of fudging important details. 

nk.

Fritz

Now now, settle down, I know what you're thinking -
'Three blog posts so soon after one another?' Nat must be trying to write an essay'.

Har har, very funny.

No I am not failing to produce passable legal commentary - life has just been stupidly laughable recently. Case in point: our autogate malfunctioned earlier this week. And it wasn't due to the assumptions that after 6 years of faithful opening and closing at our behest, the poor thing has finally reached its end of days.

Btdubs, I love the word 'malfunction'. 'Our gate has malfunctioned' sounds like I have a lot more engineery knowledge than I actually do. The alternative being, 'the bastard thing is on the fritz'.

Anywhoo, we finally got the gate-repair guy to take a look, and lo and behold, the fault lay not with our gate. T'was in fact (and I kid you not) a lizard, dead and semi-barbecued on the circuit board.

What was found in real life was nowhere as adorable, or funny as the representation.
And lord, did it stink.  

People* can keep their 'monkey wrench in the works'. I'm permanently replacing that saying with 'dead lizard in the circuitry'.

nk.

*except for Australians. I don't even want to know what they dig up spring-cleaning. 

Things That Should NOT Be Socially Acceptable no's #1 and #2

#2:  Miley & Thicke's performance at the VMA's. 

#1: THE WORD 'TWERK'

 And the fact that it's all over my facebook/twitter/life/everythingihaveeverloved.

KILL IT.

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

nk.

Life During Wartime

Sometimes I wonder what my mum imagined her children would be like as she cradled her two angelic, albeit slightly chubby and slightly chinese-looking babies.

And then I wonder how wrong she got it.

I'm pretty sure she never factored in the complex fight-(lack of)apology mechanics that took approx. 20 years, 3 consoles and what I'm extrapolating is nearing over a hundred pirated games to perfect.

The sequence of events is usually predictable.


STAGE 1: SHOTS FIRED
There is a disagreement, usually mild, that gets blown out of proportion due to one party's extreme stubbornness, unwillingness to see reason and inability to converse at appropriate volumes when frustrated, and the other's occasional sense of self-righteousness (BUT IM USUALLY RIGHT), permanent need to react to loud people with sarcasm, and an unfortunate knee-jerk reflex to aim below the emotional belt when threatened. Note that it doesn't matter who started what first, both parties are victims here.

Obviously.


STAGE 2: COLD WAR
This is usually followed by an undefined period of cease-fire, unnatural spells of silence and prolonged patches of 'this room isn't big enough for the two of us'-ness. There is no remedy, and the stubborn refusal to see reason awkwardness just needs to be waited out. Extreme patience advised.


STAGE 3: NEGOTIATIONS
After a stupid an appropriate amount of time, one party or the other will test the waters and attempt communications. If the other party is agreeable, a response will be had and we proceed down the list. If not, return to stage 3 and repeat. At no point is mum or dad the UN to get involved - by now I think we've established that the UN is pretty much pointless in conflicts anyway.


STAGE 4: PEACE TREATY
Ignore stage 4. Signing a treaty requires acquiescence, which in turn requires acknowledgement of wrongs. Like that's ever happening.

Sorry mum.

STAGE 5: RECOVERY
Also known as the 'we will sweep everything under the rug along with all the other accumulated slights we've never solved and then plonk an elephant on the pile to flatten it slightly' manoeuvre. Bribing to be done according to necessity. Conversation will be touch and go, and confined to coded references to sporting events, inane inquiries about 'your day' and the redirection of ire at innocent (<- debatable) virtual bystanders.

Decoded comms included in brackets for your benefit.

*Yes this is in lieu of an actual apology. No, we don't need therapy.

I think.

We're kind of in between stages by my count. Though it seems to be heading, albeit slowly, from 3 in the direction of stage 5. He's a pain in the ass, and I can be worse, though as chick-flicky as it sounds, we're pretty much the only option each other has in the sibling department, damn the parents for not providing spares. Apologies are overrated anyway.

If there be much swearing, shouting, explosions and sounds of men dying violent deaths, that's mum's sign that every thing is going to be a-ok.

I do pity her sometimes.

Nat out.

PR Advice

It says something about a person when someone like me dedicates two blog posts (to date) about them.

Well, it should.

It's really strange. I know better than most what it feels like to think that you're the best, that advice isn't necessary, because you're never wrong, because you were the biggest fish in the littlest pond, and you milked that for all it was worth. And even worse, you held on to that belief even when the pond water found its way into a river, which slowly but surely dumped you into the wide blue unknown that is the ocean. I know what it was like to have the magic bubble of relativity popped rather suddenly. And having to deal with the realisation that maybe you aren't all much to shout about after all.

It sucks. And I've needed multiple pep-talks to deal with the soul crushing insecurities that followed.

But I think it's easier to be a little fish in a little pond (well, a medium fish. He wouldn't like being called little.) and then to go into the ocean and realise you maybe aren't so little any more. And it's so easy to get caught up in that, and to lord that over all us shrinking anchovies.

The fish analogy is getting out of hand. But when don't my analogies?

Anyway. Said current big fish still asks for my opinion. Still (hopefully) values my feedback. And its in those moments that I completely lose the urge to strangle him for living my dream, and remember that he's probably worked harder than I ever did, and is probably more cut out for that high-flying stuff anyway. I remember that he's still him, albeit with a fancy university to slip in to introductions. And I remember that had our positions been reversed, no one would have heard the end of the fact that I was in a fancy university.

It's the little things that make you appreciate people, and sometimes maybe admit that the universe might actually know what its doing.

nk

I really don't do myself any favours

And so begins the mad dash to salvage the year.

The Hoodie-Tshirt Conundrum

Studying in my room has become a grueling quest for the appropriate 'sitting temperature'.

By appropriate sitting temperature, I mean the perfect heating that your body receives so that you neither sweat nor shiver while your butt remains firmly planted in one spot for hours on end.

I say hours on end, really it's the half an hour sprints of attempted studying in between trips downstairs for tea and cake.

Also, its not so much 'grueling' as it is really leaning more towards minor inconvenience.

Anyway.

It really is annoying! I put on a hoodie, and its too hot.
I put on a Tshirt/open a window and it's too cold.
So I put on the hoodie again.

Rinse and repeat.
You see? Its a vicious, thermodynamic cycle with no solution in sight!


Oh woe, WOEEEEE!




I suppose I could just turn up the heating a bit. Or whack on some jeans instead of shorts...

Nahhhhh.

nk