She Dreams In Colour, She Dreams In Red

At this time of year I can't help but think about just how many things have changed in my life in the past couple of years. There are really quite a few - some small, some not so small. If I sat down and thought hard about them all at once, I'd probably need the same kind of professional care as Tigger or Rabbit. But as I don't have a desire of using up good drinking money on therapy, I don't dwell on it. All of these changes are positive in my mind although some have affected others negatively....or they think it has (me behind the wheel of a car being the clear exception).

Perhaps one of the least outwardly obvious change I've experienced would my general feeling about people and the world. Because I was so desperately unhappy in my home life I used to have less of the occasional bout of uber rage and more like an ongoing seething hatred for humankind.

There are things of course things that still annoy the hell out of me such as self important idiots, tail gaters, people who use big words to say little things, homophobia, second-hand smoke, when people talk about 'Vitamin B' (there are like over 10 different Vitamin B's) and when the council shuts down the water supply during the day and when you get home from work and turn on the tap you get splattered with dirty water.....

But the seething hatred for humankind......gone.....that was until I had do some last minute Christmas shopping at a mall. Thanks to that little bout of consumerism, I'll be spending Christmas Eve disposing of bodies.

Hundred Milligram Forest

As a kid, I was never a huge fan of Winnie-the-Pooh, but it wasn't until recently I was able to put my finger on why....

To put it bluntly....the characters are all mental health consumers. Now having questionable and changable mental health myself, I am not in any way judging the individuals or anyone who suffers from the same problems, but you have to wonder about Christopher Robin's upbringing and/or A.A.Milne's social circle when they imagined the characters in the Pooh series.

Rabbit is a classic Obessive-Compulsive. Uber nervous Piglet clearly suffers from Generalised Anxiety Disorder and specifically Nyctophobia. Eeyone is clinically depressed and should seriously consider medication. Owl is not only a real animal that speaks to soft toys, but even though the dude can't spell his name correctly, he believes he is the smartest and wisest of everyone in the forest! This is what you call Grandiose Delusional behaviour. Tigger is obviously Manic Depressive and don't get me started on the Oedipal associations between Kanga and Roo. And while Mr Winnie-the-Pooh himself is sweet and somewhat endearing, he is also Borderline Retarded. It's all you eat and you spell it Hunny?!! Good god bear!

And that is why I always preferred Garfield. I could relate to his Compulsive Eating Disorder.

It's A Bird! It's A Plane!

I am suffering from bloggers block caused by a severe case of embarrassment. A few weeks ago I realised the hard way that several posts past, I had breached my personal blog code of not writing specifics about work. As one can expect this subsequently bit me in the arse.

So in order to punish myself (in a way that I won't enjoy) I will share with you a story that few have survived retelling. A tale of embarrassment most grim.

In order to get to school in the morning I used to catch a train into town. The train my group of friends and I used to catch was the 'school train' - one packed full of kids from other Wellington schools. As you could imagine this could be aptly dubbed 'The Hormonal Express'. Coolest possible behaviour was essential.

Which made my ride in one particularly morning even more socially fatal.

My friends and I would always sit in the same place - the double seats at the back of the train carriage. The four friends that got on at earlier stations would all together sit on one side and my friend C and I, who got on together down the line, would sit on the other side.

As we boarded the train that morning we came across a group or 'testosterone' of teenage boys taking up the 8 seats on both sides of the train, in front of the seats my soon to be (temporarily) ex friends were sitting at.

Big smelly school bags strewn across the floor, grubby cricket bats a plenty and nasty hairy legs everywhere.

Knowing it would be too obvious for the chubby kid with the strange and off-putting sense of humour to trip over these bags, I let C go first in the hopes that she in her thin, almighty prettiness would part the sea of bags like Moses.

Sadly but unsurprisingly, I was granted no such luck, so C slowly picked her way through the tangle of bags and size 11's and I followed closely behind.

Walking through the bag gauntlet had the level of intensity of that scene from Flash Gordon when those guys are putting their arm into that nest thing at the risk of getting stung by the deadly alien inside. That part of the movie gives me the wiggins second only to the bit in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when that dude gets his still beating heart pulled out of his chest by that long nailed loon. Shudder.

Oh, I digress.

Nope, before you assume, I made it through the boys bags just fine. It wasn't until I cleared the gauntlet and glanced around to marvel at my achievement, that I stepped forward just as the train started, straight into C's bag which she had kindly dropped directly in front of me.

The combination of stepping forward and the acceleration of the train caused me to be thrown a metre and a half across the train, directly into the laps of my four friends.

Did I mention that my school uniform was a dress?

Stunned at my new location and position it took me a while to get my bearings. As I came to, I heard the frantic whispers of "Get off me....Get off!....Get off!!!!" of my concerned friends. Finding my arms had been outstretched at point of arsing over kite, they were now laced down between my friends legs and I was unable to move. Before I could communicate my dilemma, my now who-is-this-girl-on-us aka friends began rapidly kicking their legs in order to get me off them. As I result I ungracefully slide onto the floor into a semi-catatonic lump where I lay with my dress up around my neck.

Having terribly embarrassed the-people-I-happened-to-be-near-and-certainly-not-her-friends aka yes, actually still my friends I was pulled out of my temporary paralysis by their urgent whisperings of "Get up...Get up!!! GET UP!!". As I stood up and turned around to face the train load of people, the entire carriage who had not only seen my performance but appeared to be riveted by it, erupted in laughter.

I sat down on my seat and my friends began to consoling me in the way that teenage girls do - by not acknowledging my existence whatsoever.

Ah yes. That'll learn me.