Stop, pop and roll

For those of you that are interested eg my Dad, yes we won our game of touch rugby. If you want to track our progress you can go to this website
http://in2touch.liquidthinking.co.uk/SpawtzSkin/Fixtures/Standings.aspx?VenueId=24%20&LeagueId=500&DivisionId=0&SeasonId=93

Our team name is Touch you up. Yes the boys chose it.

Often when I play touch rugby, if my shoulder gets a sudden jolt, it dislocates. It happens a lot, about once every couple of months.

I went to see a physio shoulder expert who told me that I shouldn't really play anymore. And I was like but 'I think I am going to keep playing' and he said 'That's probably not a good idea' and I said 'Well I think I'll keep playing' and he was like 'You really shouldn't' and then we stared at each other for a few seconds and there was a bit of tension, before he said.'Do you want me to show you how to tape it so when you play it won't pop out?' Ha victory.

Anyway he taped it for me, see pictures below. When he was taping it he told me that lots of Maori and Samoan rugby players have the same problem. Comparing my physique to a rughy player! Insulting! I think he was getting me back for not taking his advice. And also did you know that when you rip the tape off it hurts. Like really hurts, and it takes ages to do. So bugger that I am not taping it.

Look at my terrible posture in this picture and it gives me a massive armpit fanny. And look you can see my photo moustache I told you a get a moustache in photos and this is proof.

Instead I have bought this very professional looking strap thing that holds my shoulder in place, so far three games and no dislocation.

When I bought it it said on the package 'not to be used for contact sports' I asked the guys in the shop if touch rugby was a contact sport, they said nah and I said 'It is the way I play it.' in a deep voice. And they looked at me weird and I felt a bit pervy.

I have three followers. Wicked.

Jamie is home from Tokyo today which is a good thing because I was starting to talk to myself like a crazy person and worse I was becoming that person who talks too much to shop assitants because you realise it might be your only social interaciton in your entire day.



Am off to make nachos for dinner. Yum.


xxxxx

new blog again

Those others blog colours/layout were annoying me so I changed them. I am fickle.

Below are a few pictures of me and Mieke's walk to Hampstead Heath yesterday, there is an awesome view from the top of the Heath all over London. I didn't take a picture of that. I took a picture of a random hill and a random person walking on it. So that's interesting for you.

Also on the side bar there is a thing called Followers and I think if you join this you might be updated when iIupdate my blog or something, not sure how it works, it didn't come with instructions, if it did I wouldn't have read them anyway.

Am off to play touch rugby in the sun. Awesome.

xxxxxx

The blog has had a facelift and ginger throws a tanty

New colours, new bits down the side, see what you can accomplish when you have no job and your husband has buggered off to Tokyo for a week.

Also I forgot to say that Ginger has been giving me grief lately. Basically this is her game, I feed her once day in the morning and she is a big fish, after she is fed she swims around happy as larry, up, down, left to right, you get the picture.

Then when it becomes apparent that there is no more food coming her way she sulks in the corner and stares out the window, as if she is the most hard done by fish in the whole entire world. And her other favourite trick is when I am meditating she gulps really loudly at the top of her tank, on purpose, to break my concentration. She is a sod. And never behaves this way when her father is home. Anyway I am not feeding her more than once a day, she can forget it and I told her so.

xxxx

My childhood Heroes

Hello Nicole!
How come you never told me about this?
Topp Twins movie trailer

When my sister and I were growing up we had an obsession with The Topp twins, (for those of you outside NZ, The Topp Twins are a comedic, lesbian singing duo and yes they really are twins, awesome!) every Saturday morning we would be at our friends house and us four (Me, my sister, Kylie and Alana) would watch the video of The Topp Twins tv special at least once if not twice. And they had a pool! We choose The Topp Twins over the pool every time. (Incidentally once in a thunder storm our mums lets us run round around the pool, get really cold and then jump in and pretend it was a spa, so much for parental control, I suspect mum was warm inside drinking wine)

In fact we watched the video so much that it had those static lines running across the bottom of the screen after about 6 months. Yes it was a long obsession, it was our Grease and I’m not sure it was entirely appropriate for young girls, but I think Mum was trying to install feminist ways in us early on, unfortunately for my husband worked.

It must have been the half-lesbian in me but I can’t tell you how much we loved The Topp Twins, I remember once Mum went to one of their concerts, we were outraged she wouldn’t take us. She said it would be smoky and we would be up late. (By the way a classic parenting trick of my mothers was when she went to a restaurant, she didn’t get a babysitter, she made us sleep under the table, I know what your saying you can’t sleep under a table in a crowded restaurant, even as a child I knew that, so mostly we just hung out under the table trying to avoid the chewing gum gettting stuck to our hair) So you can see the staying up late excuse carried no dice with us. Anyway she went without us, my mother was not one for compromise, but she did bring us back an autograph. We were beside ourselves, we pressed the autograph really flat between the pages of a book and treasured it. We were two girls under 10 and the most exciting thing we could imagine was an autograph from two singing lesbians, I’ll let you analyse that.

So after watching the movie preview I went on youtube and saw some footage from the tv special we used to watch and I had a good old sing a long. You see this is what you have the time to do when you are unemployed, you can relive childhood memories. Anyway my favourite song is still Untouchable girls.

Let’s just review some of the kick arse lyrics
We’re untouchable, untouchable, untouchable girls (goes on like this for a while so I’ll skip a bit of this)
We’re stroppy, we’re aggressive, we’ll take over the world
We don’t let anybody touch our brains
We won’t ever, ever plug into the mains
And we are overtaking on a single lane
We’re untouchable, untouchable girls
We live in a world that doesn’t care too much
You’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to have guts
And we are untouchable but we touch
We’re untouchable, untouchable girls da da da dun !

Words to live by ladies

Link of awesome 80’s feminist song here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aK3oJrcPL8

NZ from ages ago bro

I didn’t put any pictures from my NZ trip up. I am sorry. Forgive me. Now I am unemployed I have far too much free time on my hands so I can time to put up some pictures which are now about 3 months old.

And it occurs to me while reviewing my trip through my photos that most of them are of little children that I hung out with in NZ. So no scenic shots sorry.

Also this are not in any particular order in fact they are in reverse order I think and therefore follow no chronological or even logical pattern Much like a David Lynch movie.

Me! I thought this photo was funny because it reminded me of your 5th form ball when your mum makes you stand in front of the curtains to get a nice picture. Anyway here I am on my way to Emily and Aaron’s wedding.

My nephew will point at anything and sometimes nothing. He sure does like to get his point on.

This is my mum sleeping on her sofa with the cat on her head. My mum likes to nap and the cats like to nap on her. The cat at the top is my favourite pebbles, the black one is Kahli (named after Kahula, make of that what you will) Kahil is a bit highly strung if you ask me, she’s no pebbles.

Sue, Dad and Louis in the chemist. I know I take really interesting pictures. But there wasn't a picture of Johann on here and I wanted to show you what he and Louis look like side by side. Sppoky, like twins.

The Wohlmuther girls and a child we kidnapped when we where out at lunch. Just kidding that's Louis looking like Johann, again! See picture above for reference.

Aunty Andrea and Louis. Look how tight I am holding him, we were in a pet store and I think he wanted to see and/or grab the fish.

Cheeky Isla

Beautiful Ava

Mudbrick on Waiheke Island, It was so beautiful on Waiheke that I cried on the Fullers tour bus.

Rain on my holiday, do I even need to explain how angry I was? Angry.

My sister’s placenta. Yes I know it is gross and she defrosted it on a dinner plate. One that they will eat off again. And the most shocking part was that Nikki and Jono didn’t even find it gross. I’m like It’s a placenta at least defrost it on some old plastic for god’s sake. They didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Parents are weird.

My heat rash! After one day in the country my body went into shock and I got a rash. This is what happens when you live in London too long your body becomes allergic to the sun.

Louis playing with his car on the glass, it makes a noise that he likes. Also he gave me a virus that made me vomit and come out the other end. Lucky I was only down for a day and me and my Mum were sick at the same time. So we planned to spend some quality time on Sunday together and we did! We layed on sofas and felt sorry for ourselves. And then in the midst of our vomit/queasiness/dio marathon I rang my sister and she said ‘I don’t know how you got sick because you need to come into contact with Louis faeces to get it’ And I said ‘I don’t really need to hear the word faeces at the moment in time' Also my sister, brother-in-law and stepmother all had it. My Dad thought he had it but he didn't. He just wanted to join in our gang.

Jamie and my nephew Cooper, who is very smiley and also just learning to walk and also not sticky.

Ida and Scott’s cute little boy Sol, who is a very easy child. Probably because he couldn’t move anywhere yet, that’s the way I like my children stationery and not sticky.

Karma'a a funny thing

So one of my new things is to give money charities or homeless people that cross my path. Now I won’t bother to explain to you why because it’s boring and I suspect may come across a bit preachy but in a nutshell it involves karma.

Jamie is very angry about my new resolution. He thinks that they spend the money or heroin or a bottle of meths (the homeless people obviously not the charities) I think he mostly gets annoyed because I never carry cash and are therefore always asking him for his money to give to disabled homeless people. Not sure who’s Karma this is helping but let’s go for a 50/50 spilt.

So with Karma and compassion in mind I ask you to analyse this story. The other day I was walking down the road with a £2 coin in my wallet and I walked past a homeless person and I thought, I’m hot, I need a drink I can’t give him my whole £2, I need some money because I am thirsty. I’ll buy a drink and give him money on the way back. But as fate would have it I didn’t walk back past him, (this was because someone was giving me directions not because I was avoiding him)

Anyway so I felt bad but bought myself a drink anyway, so obviously not that bad. Then as luck would have it I walked past another homeless person, that’s right I live in London there are lots of homeless people. And I thought, great1 a chance to put it right. And here’s where your maths will come into play. My drink was 70p so I had £1.30 change and I gave him £1.20. It would have been £1, but I felt bad about walking past the other guy so I upped it. Jesus this story is long and I suspect a bit boring but I’m more than half way through now so bear with me.

So after giving homeless man number 2 £1.20 I strolled on with 10p in my wallet. And then I went to pick up my sunglasses which a screw had fallen out of and the optometrist had fixed for me. And I said ‘How much?’ and she said 'just put a pound in our charity box.' But you guessed it I only had 10p in my wallet and when I put it in the box it made a light tinkling noise instead of a healthy clunk. And she totally knew that I had put less than a pound in but I made a quick exit. And to think if I had given that first homeless pounds £2 none of this charity/karma confusion would have happened. Or if I had given the second guy only 20p I would have had enough money to pay £1 for my sunglasses? What if my drink had been £1.50 and I only got 50p change. You see there are many variables.

So that’s the story, what was karma and the universe trying to teach me?
I am open to any suggestions and comments below.
I suspect it was trying to tell me that karma is a complicated thing which should not be undertaken lightly. Or it could be that I should just always carry more cash on me, I think Jamie would agree with the universe on that.

xxxx

One day ...

When I was little I wanted to work for a magazine when I grew up. I thought it was glamorous and I love magazines. I love the way a magazine cracks when it's new and full of gloss and promise, I love reading an article that surprises me, I love looking at the fashion pages and loving a dress, ripping out the page knowing I will never buy it let alone look as good in it as the six foot, size zero model.

So when I got my job at a magazine I was thrilled, I thought it was part of a whole new life for me and the beginning of something exciting. And it was, I saw and did loads of things that I loved but let’s be honest, the job wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, I felt stifled and to say it wasn’t challenging was an understatement. And I had wanted to move on for a while but still I was shocked when I was made redundant yesterday. And I can’t lie, there were tears. And I didn’t leave on my terms which was frustrating.

Anyway so I had my last day of work yesterday and to think when I woke up in the morning I didn’t know it was my last day. If I did I would have been in a much better mood.

And redundancy is not the worst thing in the world that can happen to you. In fact I feel really lucky, I am a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend and really that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Xxxxx

Ps Redundancy does have its upside apart from all the free time, I am milking it with Jamie I told him that he has to be nice to me the whole weekend. Like it’s my birthday and it’s a long weekend as well so extra niceness. Bring it on.

P.p.s now I don’t work on YOU magazine anymore oh the stories I can tell without getting in trouble. You are in for a treat.