Oliver Twist Can Suck It

I have a 1500-word essay to do: developing an argument about the representation of the treatment of children in Oliver Twist. It is due a week from Thursday. Other than reading the book, I've not done a thing. Instead, I have wasted valuable time by:

I have:

watchd this dog destroy 74 balloons, over and over again

developed an unhealthy obsession with Pinterest

bitten my nails, while simultaneously despising myself for doing so

printed this and stuck it to the wall, at eye level in an attempt to inspire me to do something

opened The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age several times, only to close it, using the excuse that my brain has liquified.

watched Archie (the original Archie, that is) with unbridled jealousy and wished, not for the first time, that I had his life:

The Best Feelings

The three best, free feelings:

• The feeling of eye drops in sore, scratchy, tired eyes
•  The feeling of pure relief when you finally pee after hours of holding on
• A hot shower with perfect water pressure.

Three simple things feel so good. There are others, like the first mouthful of a cold beer on a hot day, or the refreshing feel of washing your face, but I keep coming back to these three as The Best.

I don't think these three can be trumped, but you can try. Go ahead... Discuss.

Imitation Copy

Remember when you were a kid and another kid would do something exactly the same as you? Wear her hair the same way, wear the same clothes, say the same things? And because you were a kid, you could yell Stop copying me! and get away with sounding petty because you were just a kid? Remember that? It's a lot harder to get away with as an adult.

I have this cousin; she's from the 'other' side of the family (I think every family has an 'other' side, don't they?). From about the age of thirteen, right through until I was twenty, we were best friends. When I was eighteen, I noticed things started to get weird. I would mention in passing that I wanted to buy a particular piece of furniture and a couple of weeks later, she would say Hey, guess what I bought? I said I wanted to buy a black Daewoo Lanos (hey, this was in 1998. Those cars were cool back then.), she pulled up in the driveway in a black Daewoo Lanos. There were other little things, but these two particularly stand out in my memory.

When I was twenty,  I met the daughter of one of my mum's friends and we hit it off, so I introduced her to my cousin. We would hang out as a group and for about a year, we had so much fun together.

But then it  all turned a bit Single White Female. Slowly, my cousin would start organising a night out and say to me, Oh, you have to work, don't you? Too bad. Oh well, there's no reason why we can't still go out. And off they would go, out together, until she finally dropped the pretence and just organised stuff for the two of them to do. I stopped calling either of them and funnily enough, I never heard from them either. Seven years later, my cousin was bridesmaid for the friend when she got married. Needless to say, I wasn't invited to the wedding.

We haven't been friends for ten years. I've only seen her a handful of times over the years, at birthdays and weddings. I miss the friendship, but I don't miss her, in a nonsensical kind of way.

Dad came home the other night from visiting his brother (Mum and Dad came home from their eight-week holiday two weeks early, by the way. Grr.) and told me my cousin has a new dog. So? I asked, wondering what his point was - I've told him in the past that I only want to hear about her if she's stacked on the weight. He tried to make me play Guess What the Puppy's Name Is, but I cracked the shits and demanded that he just tell me.

Archie, he said.

That's my cat's name. She named her dog the same name as my cat. The cat that I've had for over six years. My cat. The name I thought up and loved because I didn't know anyone else who had a pet named Archie. The name that is both cute and cool. My cat's name. (And before you ask: no, there is no way that she didn't know Archie's name beforehand. She's met Archie. Archie didn't like her.)

STOP COPYING ME!

Isn't it bizarre? I'm kind of astounded as to why she would want to name her pet the same as mine. I would imagine that even if you really liked the name, you just wouldn't because... well, it's rude and frankly, it's creepy.

I'm really disappointed at the moment. And a bit out of joint. It's weird! I keep yelling in disbelief to Mum and Dad (I'm sure they're ecstatic to be home early. Serves them right.). I feel a bit like Charlotte from Sex and the City when she founds out that an old friend has named her baby Shayla, when everybody knows that Charlotte has baggsed that name.

The injustice of it all!

Has it ever happened to you before? Was it friend, family or foe?

Little Miss Sunshine

It's award season in the little box of crayons. Over the last couple of months, some lovely bloggers have passed on some award to me and my blog (incidentally, the word blog sounds just plain gross).

The Sunshine Award comes courtesy of Louise at Lou, Boos and shoes. Louise's Things of Beauty, which she posts on a Friday, are something I look forward to each week.

So the award. Seven random things about me. Feel free to tune out now...

1. I generally don't have anything better to do than write a post on seven random facts about myself.

2. Each week, I make a donation to a different charity. It's not much, only five dollars, but that's really all I can afford at the moment. I started doing it this year because I felt really lucky - lucky to be able to quit my job and follow a dream of going to university, lucky enough to have parents who let me live rent-free and therefore only have to work one day a week, lucky not to have any debts (well, other than that pesky credit card debt...). Just lucky. So I decided I would give what I can to those who need it. Some are have personal relevance (the Cancer Council, the Heart Foundation, the MS Society), others are humanitarian (Amnesty International, the International Women's Development Agency), others for ones who don't have a voice (RSPCA, OzChild), but all are important and deserving.

3. I have a small tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. It's an ankh, the Egyption symbol of eternal life. I've had a long fascination with Egypt (pyramids and mummies and hieroglyphics - oh, my!) and did an eight-day tour of the most overwhelming country I've been to back in November, 2008. The tattoo was done on a whim when I was living in Galway, Ireland: I'd returned from Egypt a couple of months earlier and was walking down Shop Street and in typical Irish fashion, the rain started lashing down. I started to get really pissed off (getting rained on was a daily incident and one that was fast becoming tiresome) but then I stopped in the middle of the street and laughed, thinking, Well, this is life! and went straight to the tattooist. He would draw the design and I'd say Smaller. Definitely smaller, to which he would grit his teeth and start over again. Five minutes and fifty euros later, I was inked. Sometimes I love it because it reminds me of that time in my life; sometimes I wish I hadn't done something so permanent; sometimes I think about what I'll have done next.

4. My nickname is every variation of Lou: Louie, Lou-Lou, Lisey-Lou, Lucy-Lou, Lewis. You get the picture. It started when I was a newborn, so to be called anything other than Louie by family feels odd. If they call me Annelise, I snap my head around at them, ready to fight back because I think I'm in trouble, but to be called Louie by most other people doesn't feel right. My uncle has never called me anything other than Lewis.

5. I can't click (or snap, whatever) my fingers. I've tried and tried, but it just doesn't happen. A common misconception is that coming up to me and clicking your own fingers in my face will make me suddenly be able to do it. It doesn't.

6. I have discussed at length with my family that I want Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway to be played at my funeral, with my cousin playing the harmonica (unimportant fact: he can't play the harmonica). Christ, if Wind Beneath My Wings or Sarah Maclachan's Angels is played, I will haunt. I'd also love to see the celebrators (because it will be a celebration of life, not a mourning of death) do the Mexican Wave.

7. I can recite all the lines from Dirty Dancing, word for word. My favourite scene is when we're introduced to Johnny. Ahh.... And then he tells Robbie off: You just put your pickle on everybody's plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me.

So there's seven random facts. The award rules are that I pass it on to three more bloggers, so I've chosen:

Habebi of The Constant Search for More
Sarah of sarah b. says hello
Kristin of Skinny Jeans and a Chai Latte

Please don't feel obligated to do! I'm just passing it on because someone liked my blog and in turn, I like your blogs. I also have another two awards and I haven't posted them, not because I'm ungrateful, but because I'm lazy.

Enough of Winter

I'm craving sunshine. Summer.

weheartit.com

 

 I want to feel the sun warm my skin. I want to lay on the beach in the sun for days.

weheartit.com

Be as brown as a berry. Smell coconut oil, mixed with sunscreen.

weheartit.com

I want tan lines and freckles.

swissmiss, originally from sgoralnick's flickr stream

It has been raining all day. The heater is on, so are the woolen socks. Weather warnings for the region have been on the six o'clock news. I feel chilled to the bone. I've had enough.

Summer, you need to hurry up.

Living Alone: What I've Learnt So Far

• I can't cook. I don't want to cook. I hate cooking. Several nights have seen the house full of smoke, the ceiling fan switch on five, and the glass sliding door wide open, even though it's only four degrees outside.
• In lieu of a hammer, a meat mallet will work just as well to hang pictures.
• When hanging pictures, it is advisable to have a second person to ensure straightness.
• Fitted sheets left outside on the line for over two weeks will see spiders making homes in the corners.
• The garbage bins don't take themselves out.
• The vacuuming doesn't do itself.
• Said vacuuming needs to be done more than once a month, lest you be taken over by Archie's shed fur.
• If you get home, flop down on the couch, reach inside your clothes to unhook your bra, pull it out through the neck hole of your t-shirt and then throw the bra on the other couch, to then completely forget about it, chances are someone (probably your brother) will come over to visit, sit on couch beside bra. Attempts to stealthily remove bra from couch will fail.
• Living alone gives you far too many opportunities to talk to yourself.

Tales of Heartbreak

"You will break my heart one day," he said to me.

"No! No, you will break mine," I said to him.



Heartbreak #1

He was going to propose to me in Paris. I suspected the top of the Eiffel Tower would be the place.

"If you're planning to ask me something later, don't do it," I said, as we walked through the streets of Paris.

"I wasn't going to," he said, kicking a stone onto the road.




Heartbreak #2

The text message. It wasn't good. In fact, it was so bad, I woke him from sleep.

"What's this?" I said, holding his phone in his face.

"That's my phone," he said.

"Just tell me what happened," I said, an hour later.

"Nothing happened," he said.

We sat on the bed, not looking at each other. Around and around in circles, we went.

"Tell me what happened," I would say.

"Nothing happened," he would say.



"Tell me what happened," I said.

"I kissed her," he said.




In the end, I suppose we broke each other's hearts.