Six Glasses in a Bottle

I didn't think it was that much, but apparently livers don’t like it if you drink a double shot of scotch most nights – two on the others... I had some blood tests three weeks ago, one of which - without my knowledge - was liver function. Bad. So since getting the results, and a polite telling off from my GP, I've had a glass of wine on two occasions and that’s it, until tonight. I’m not in a scotch mood, really I’d like a good red wine, but there’s none in the house and I’m in my pyjamas with no intention of getting dressed today. I've had a bottle of Moёt in the cupboard for a few months, until last night when with great foresight I put it in the fridge. Now to drink the whole bottle before the fizz dies. Sorry liver. 

Driving Away

It is quite possible that tomorrow (well later today, but after I sleep) my car, a 1997 Ford Falcon which looks something like this

will be replaced with a Honda Jazz. I was grateful to my mother, who recently decided to buy my brother and I replacement cars for the death traps we are currently driving. But now that the reality is looming I’m having second thoughts. My current car is a moving testament to my dad’s impulsiveness; one day he decided that a great replacement for my old, but reliable grandma-mobile was a 6 cylinder family car and went out and bought it without consulting anyone. I must admit it was a blessing at the time, since I was spending 98.9736% of my time in the Dandenongs and quite enjoyed getting up the hill without a struggle. But really, what single woman in her 20s drives a thing like that. The car is definitely not road worthy, and I would like something smaller and newer, but it’s another memory of Dad gone. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or just thoughtless efficiency, but my Mum has purged the house of most things which suggest Dad once walked the earth, and the car is soon to be another one to leave. Also, the Jazz is blue.

I Can Fly

Day two not on any antidepressant and I haven't killed myself yet. That pretty much makes me a superhero. I assume it's still in my system though, we'll see how the next week goes.

Just out of boredom and because it helps my memory I was reading through my blog a few nights ago and discovered this gem written May 25th last year:
"My doctor (G) came to see me this evening and he had some interesting news, my genetic medication test finally came back. I think I wrote about it but I'll refresh you; it's a test to see how I metabolise drugs, whether I hyper metabolise, don't at all or if I'm normal. There are several categories the drugs fall into, I metabolise all but one normally, the other category I can't metabolise and lucky me - Cymbalta is in that. G said that explains why I'm having side effects even at a very low dose and that he'd like to take me off it and start me on another one as soon as possible."
Cymbalta is the drug I've just quit - again! He put me back on it a few months ago during my last admission, obviously forgetting about the testing and of course I didn't remember, thanks to ECT I'm lucky I can remember my own name, no no it's not that bad, my name's Maureen, right?

Next Time You're in a Womb Don't Try to be Different - Just Grow Normally

PAIN! Do you think if euthanasia was legal in Australia hip dysplasia would be a qualifying condition? Oh fuck it hurts right now. My kind physiotherapist and GP have both blessed me with the news that this is only going to get slowly worse over many years, eventuating in a hip replacement, and if I’m lucky it will only be the left side. Today I got to experience two other types of pain also. I had my breasts squeezed in a torturous instrument commonly known as a mammography unit, but I think it should be re-named mammary pancake maker. That was followed by a very long ultrasound, which kind of made up for the pain, as it was sort of like a massage, only sticky. To accompany the hip and boob pain I’ve also been enjoying the normal every day emotional pain, the knowledge that I am merely a hollow pile of skin bone blood and fat. On the fat front, I’m trying a new tactic, only mandarins after 4pm – since I get up at 12, that should work.

I sung at church last night for the first time since fish decided to walk. I also beed nice to people.

I’m going to find somewhere warm and soft where I can sob in pain now. Maybe I could have it cut off...

Yes

I can bake whilst drunk, just spilling quarter of a bowl of melted butter on the tiles and improvising some parts of a recipe I've never used before. I think it turned out pretty well, just had to mop the floor.

I Have to Bake a Cake Tonight - I Wonder if I Can do it Drunk?

Language warning for my more sensitive readers.

11:02 – Phone call from mum: Wake up your brother, he has a driving lesson soon. Roll over.

11:04 – Call brother from mobile phone lying conveniently next to head to wake brother up. No answer. Shit. The heating isn’t on and it’s nice and warm in bed.

11:12 – After debating pros and cons of leaving him there and hoping that as a 19 year-old he’s responsible enough to get himself up for a 12pm driving lesson choosing to get out of bed to wake brother up.

11:12:20 – Turn heating on so house is warm when I eventually decide to make my second exit from bed.

11:20:40 – Back in bed with sheet over my head because my eyes and ears are cold.

Dream about being a passenger on a bus heading up a high mountain with no trees whilst trying to escape a tornado. I scream at the bus driver to go faster so we’re not eaten up by the swiftly approaching tornado. There’s an explosion to our left outside a farmhouse. Me and my two fellow passengers command the bus driver to go back to offer assistance to whoever was involved. We find an upside-down truck with the driver lying unconscious a few meters away. He has a hole in his chest and something is wrong with his hands. We call 000 and try to help him to the best of our ability, he’s still alive. I find a yellow hand gun in the truck, it seems he shot himself in the chest. I move it further away from the man incase he wakes up and wants to shoot himself again because he didn’t die the first time. The paramedics arrive, look at him and decide that before taking him to the hospital they’ve got time for a coffee from the café which has just emerged from nowhere with lots of customers and a long queue. I show one of the paramedics the gun and we find a rifle in the back of the truck. I don’t know what happened to the tornado.

01:34 – Second emergence from the land of warm and soft.

01:34:40 - Mouthful of water followed by a rather large antidepressant capsule and more water.

01:36 - First ever attempt at using mum’s Nespresso machine – “Why the hell are you flashing that red circle at me, just do your job. Fine I’ll turn you off and start again” Machine off, disassembled and reassembled. Take two. “Stop that fucking flashing and froth my damn milk you piece of shit lazy person’s excuse for a coffee machine.” Milk down the drain and find that the froth-maker-bit-of-magnetic-metal-cone isn’t exactly where it should be. Take 8000. Coffee!

01:I don’t know what – The Age, The Guardian, The Conversation and Facebook catch up. Nothing really exciting. New X-Box revealed overnight, brother stayed up to watch it live.

3:55 – Clean the kitchen so it looks like I’ve done something when mum gets home.

4:10 – Get dressed and groomed, hair up for the first time since cut, it’s still long enough for a pony-tale, thankfully.

4:30 – Start reading “The End of Your Life Book Club” – I like it.

5:20 – Mother comes home and tells me off for leaving her coffee machine on all day. Continue reading.

7:10 – Trip to supermarket to buy the butter I forgot yesterday along with several impulse purchases

7:35 – Eat dinner and drink scotch

8: something – Write a stupid list of day’s lack of activities to bore people in the over-share world we live in with.

Thanks for reading, I’ll write interesting things when they next happen to me. In the meantime I just feel like writing sometimes so I’m writing this shit. Sorry.

A Bit of DIY

I’ve been meaning to get a haircut for a while – like maybe 18 months… A friend is going to dye it for me soon (I hope) and I didn’t want to subject her to my wiry, falling out hair that’s so thinned out at the ends that there’s only about 20 strands left. That means haircut time!

It is cold and rainy today so I didn’t want to leave the house and I was bored. So I did it myself. Plus it gave me much needed motivation to get in the shower. I’m pretty sure the left side is slightly longer and I have no idea what the back looks like. Curly hair is great in this situation it hides all manner of evil.

Missing

I can't be bothered trying to punctuate properly tonight so please forgive the errors, I do struggle with punctuation, guessing most of the time.

I lead a very lonely life, the only family I have in Australia is my mother and brother, unless you count the ashes of my father and skeleton of my other brother. I have one friend near-by and the rest of them are an hour away. This week I am doing nothing until Thursday, and even that is not until the evening; it is entirely possible that I will not change out of my pyjamas until then. I thought I’d be witty and write a funny post about the little things I miss about certain family members, I got to three paragraphs and realised that I don’t know enough about any of them to miss anything other than the most shallow of details. So I thought I should just write a little ode to my father, but I don’t really know him either. We hardly spoke, a lot of the time I was scared of him, but he was my dad and now he’s gone and I have no opportunity to get to know him.

Here are some things I do know about him that I miss:

• He was a very giving person, he couldn’t show love properly, he spoke through gifts. I do this too.
• He was a hard worker, working up until a couple of weeks prior to his death in the midst of radio and chemo therapy.
• He really loved his older brother, they looked so much alike.
• When Rico (my black cocker spaniel) moved in with my parents the two of them fell in love and dad had a billionty photos of Rico on his phone which we found after his death.
• He could fix things – the house is going to fall apart without him.
• He’s the one who said yes every time I wanted a new pet, including horses!
• He was impulsive.
• I have his eyes.

Left Horse

I poured myself a scotch and coke last night and was reminded how retarded my left hand is after overshooting the shot measure and then – after filling the glass not quite to the rim with coke – picking up the glass, that really wasn’t that full with my left hand and making a rather large mess. I think the only thing my left hand can do well is type. On a qwerty keyboard well over half of the typing is normally done by the left hand anyway. To demonstrate the retardedness of my left hand I thought I’d draw you a picture of a horse. Horses are my favourite real animal, I had two as a teenager. There was April a palomino of mystery breed who nearly killed my dad by throwing him into a fence and then jumping on his arm, and Copper, a chestnut Thoroughbred who was much less terrifying to ride. I would like to note that I did not name either of them.

Anyway, here’s the picture.

Trolley Queen

I’m a real adult now – yes?

I might have got up at 12:46pm today, but that’s okay because I made up for it by doing a very adult thing. I left the house twice and the second time was to go to the supermarket like the responsible contributing family member that I am; and I used a trolley, for maybe the third time in my 28.4 years I used an actual trolley, not even one of the little quarter trolleys that make you look like you’re too good to bend over to reach the bottom ones. I walked down every single aisle, some multiple times because I couldn’t find two things on my list anywhere and ended up having to substitute. I didn’t kick the little boy who decided it was a great idea to lie on his belly and pull himself along the aisle with his hands. (I know this isn’t because he’s disabled because when he reached the end of one aisle he stood up, walked to the next aisle and resumed his crawl.) I looked a little retarded walking back and forth to the scales from the sweet potato pile several times until I found one weighing exactly 500g – how amazing am I 500g exactly and I even read it on an analogue scale! Then, just to cement my adultness I opened the boot of my car for the first time since maybe December and put the shopping in there rather than throwing it on my back seat.

So just to summarise: House exited twice with no sedatives; child not kicked in the head; used and understood scales and opened my boot! The “You’re a Real Adult Now” ceremony is on Friday at 2pm in Northcote – getting there is the final test because if you can drive there without getting out of your car and punching someone in the traffic you truly deserve the adult medal. If you’d like to come and watch you’re very welcome.