Oh hello..

What is this bizarre insight into the life of a 22 year old I have found? It's me! My old blog. From when I was 22. Such a long time ago. Fast forward 4.5 years, two children and one really annoying cat later and here I am.

I rarely have any time to actually sit down and do anything productive, and the time I do get to myself I would really rather be playing the crappiest Facebook games I can possibly find.

I will now go ahead and bulletpoint the highlights from the last 4.5 years of my life.

1: One week before I turned 23, Sam entered this world. If he could speak at birth he would have been saying "HERE I AM, ARE YOU READY FOR THIS, BECAUSE I'M GOING TO JUST SMASH EVERYTHING YOU KNEW ABOUT LIFE AND SLEEPING AND HAVING TIME TO YOURSELF". He had the roundest head. His eyes were deep, dark blue saucers. He would stare at me. One second while I find a photo of him on the day he was born.. He really is a joy. An annoying, brilliant joy. I mean that in the nicest possible way because I truly love him to the moon and back. He has an innate ability to irritate me more than I thought humanly possible. He's quirky, odd, funny, really smart, sensitive, temperamental, dramatic, and if I don't say so myself, he's really good looking. One second while I find a photo of him as he is now! Sometimes when I write, I stop right in the middle of it and go and do something else. That time is now. I'll come back to this.

Something to read, that you can't unread, that will SO not be worth it.

I've decided to take this blog down a notch and write about any old inane thought that comes to mind. I might even just write about what I do each day.

Almost like a journal.

I am working at Bin Inn. I fill the spice bins. With spices. Then I sneeze Sometimes I fill small containers with spices. Also, sometimes herbs. Then I sneeze again. I then put a label on the container. Then a price sticker. Then I sneeze a few more times. I sneeze more when I fill the pepper. Or the paprika. Sometimes I get covered in cinnamon, because cinnamon is very dusty. Tumeric is worse though.. Because it's bright yellow. Sometimes they let me put chocolate fish into bags. This is hard. Because the bags are small and you have to be careful not to squash the tail or the chocolate cracks and you can see the pink marshmallow underneath.

I am getting infinitely better at serving customers though. Although, last week I tried to charge a woman $22,000 for 500grams of breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are extremely light. So she would need a shitload of breadcrumbs to have $22,000 worth.

I like my job though. It's fun and I made a friend. His name is Ken I think he is about 100. Everyday I ask him how he is and he says "Still breathing", and so I say "That's a start Ken". One of his eyes is dead. It oozes. Sometimes it makes me sick, but I try not to look at it, because he really is a nice man. He told me that he is going away somewhere to be looked after. He said he would miss me, and that he would be back. But then again, he also tells me everyday that he is going to die. So we'll see if Ol' Ken lasts a bit longer, because even though all he buys is rubber gloves and boiled lollies, he's my favourite customer.

There is a little newspaper in Thames called Thames Talk. I was thinking about writing in to them and pretending to be someone else, or maybe someone nameless. Like a phantom. Next week they are doing a front-page write-up about the brewing section we have at Bin Inn. I suggested to my boss that they take a photo of me lying down in the brewing aisle looking like I've passed out from being pissed.. From the brewing stuff. I don't think he heard me. Or maybe he just ignored me because he thought my idea was rubbish.

It's my birthday in two days. I'll be 22.

I stupidly, but accidentally deleted about 600 songs from my mp3 library a few weeks ago. Man I was pissed off. But then I remembered that most of the songs I deleted were crap, and the ones that weren't so crap, I'd put on CD a few months ago. I'm having an 80's phase at the moment. The Smiths, of course being at the top of that list. I managed to 'acquire' some bootlegs from a live Smiths concert from 86, so I am pleased about that, despite that fact that it took me about four days to download the tracks, because we have dial-up. Speaking of internet connections, our broadband is taking ages to get connected. I think we might switch to Xtra. I've also been downloading some Depeche Mode. I quite like them. My David Bowie phase is still going strong too. I bought his Reality Tour DVD a few weeks ago, and I'm hoping to get every CD he's ever made. Although it's quite hard because Thames only has The Warehouse to get music from, and well, The Warehouse sucks. They don't have any Smiths CDs or DVDs. No Morrissey, and only ONE Placebo CD.

See. Mindless drivel.

Easter Camping.

What's something that sucks damn near all the blood in your body in under an hour? Count Dracula? No. 500 mosquitos that see your pasty white legs as a beacon for a buffet.

Although I'm not entirely sure how they managed to steer the right way into my legs through 12 blankets, mens socks (which are almost as thick as concrete pylons), a pair of unflattering, horizontally striped rainbow pattern leggings, a pair of cords, a jersey, a pyjama top and a cardigan.

Actually, I do know how the little fuckers got to me. I admit it. In my exaggerated attempt to cover every inch of my body to keep out the cold, I got WAY too warm and had to kick most of it off in the middle of the night.

So here I am, looking as if I have the measles down one leg. Oh and the itching. The itching is magnificently irritating. I think if there was a meat grinder lying around here I would be blissfully itch free, and bleeding profusely.

Besides being eaten alive and left scratching like a flea-bitten mongrel, the camping trip was successful. In between the ceaseless traffic that slowed to two cars going past every 10 or so minutes, I could hear the waves lapping at the edge of the lake (I should have anyway, since the tent was all of about three metres from the water). The toilet block had HOT WATER, despite my initially innocent query as to whether there was water there at all.

I think once I master how not to walk into the tent poles and figure out which one of the 10,000 zips on the tent actually lets me into the tent, I will be fine.

Bleh.

Argh.

It has occurred to me recently that I haven't written anything in a long while. Unless of course you count the blog about shapes I wrote at 3am on scrap paper and shoved under my bed. I fully intended to copy it into here, but alas, it's in Hamilton under my bed. I am now in Thames.

I actually think that I can't write 'good' anymore. The concept is foreign now, and my little brain just doesn't want to tick nicely into good word sentence things.

See? :(

Having a Mediocre Job with an Extraordinary Mind.

You know you're in the wrong line of work when more than three parts of your body are resisting you on any given day of the week.

Feet: I have never liked wearing shoes. They make me feel trapped and off-balance. Each day I go to work and my feet resist. They tell me this by producing peach-sized blisters on each of my toes and big flaky pieces of protesting heel. The day I can go through a whole week in bare-feet while still remaining physically, financially and intellectually productive will be a good day indeed.

Back: Lifting 20kg bags of Chelsea sugar isn't overly horrible. But when you lift 10 of these in the space of half an hour and add it to the 10 12kg boxes of Cold Water Surf you lifted an hour ago, you can appreciate that it takes it's toll on your back. The sculpting/toning of my shoulders and arms does little to numb the pain and dread of sacrificing my entire back to a life-time of dull back pain.

Hands: To appear as though your hands belong to a 50 year old male coal-miner at the age of 21 doesn't appeal to me very much. Yet my calloused fingers tell a different story. I will have my typists hands back one day.

Heart: When you're hearts not in it, you can't fake it completely. But you can fake it to the less discernable co-workers. You cannot however fake it to those who really care and know that you can do better.

And the body part that protests the most yet is the most effective at convincing the other body parts to grin and bear it? The brain. My brain. My brain that is slowly being squashed into oblivion by mediocre career choices. I walk down the aisles with a voice beside me saying "You're a writer Renee, what are you doing sorting the Budget Biscuits into their proper place behind the data strip?" How do I answer the voice? How do I take the plunge away from the inevitable obscurity that others relish? How do I divulge the answers to a life-time of wanting something different yet choosing the complacent path into a realm of normal beings.

It's coming. I just needed a hand to hold, a love that pushes me and guides me and knows ultimately that I can do it.

Living Alone

I have never lived all by myself before. It's an interesting novelty that I seem to have had little to no trouble getting used to.

I am quite pleased with the fact that I can come home after work to find everything where and how I left it, and if there were six biscuits in the packet, and I can damn near guarantee that there are still six biscuits in the packet when I return home.

I can play the same Jeff Buckley song 15 times in a row if I choose to, without someone saying "What are you doing you strange girl?" I can even sing loudly and off-key whenever I like.

"Don't you get awfully lonely?" I hear you ask. At night I do. But I have a very special teddy bear during the week and an even more special life-size teddy on the weekends to keep me warm and happy.

*sighs*

Things are picking up alright. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm going to quote for you, something I wrote about three months ago (It's probably not three months, but it will take effort to go and look at the actual date and frankly I can't be arsed.)

Ok here it goes "Life is great. Great flat, great flatmates, great boyfriend, mediocre choice of study"

How can life change so dramatically in such a short amount of time? Is there a pivotal moment in time where these changes take place? Or does the change come about through the ebb and flow of everyday existence? Rhetorical questions aside, I can honestly say that the crucial changes that have happened to me over the past few months were not altogether unexpected.

For one, I moved back home to Hamilton
Two, I got dumped on New Years Day
Three, I am no longer studying
Four, I have a full-time job
Five, I am living alone and I love it
Six, I have met someone wonderful who seems to understand me on a level I never imagined.

Life is so fucking weird..

Argh! Government Departments!

Ok, so it's inevitable that eventually, every self-respecting blogger will post about a government department and the wrongs they have done.

This particular complaint is about Work and Income New Zealand.

I normally have very little problems with them. They've given me money when I've quit my job, they've helped me to find work, and their offices have nice plants in them.

But this time. I moved cities, and coincidentally, I had just finished studying. So my student allowance was cut off, and because it was the middle of Christmas, I couldn't very well find a job, in amongst eating ham, drinking champagne and unwrapping my whole one present.

So WINZ won't give me an appointment till the 5th of January. Hmm, I've already had two weeks without money. Now I have to wait another two weeks. I am sharing a room with my mother, I'm a smoker and I have NEEDS damnit!

Argh!