Letters To Australia

OH MY GOD I GET TO BE A PIRATE AT WORK TODAY!!!

Rosie is crazy, the bartender and I are officially over.

Last night I finally grew a pair of ovaries, and a little bit of brain, and decided to exctricate myself of the whole ridiculous situation. She’s a little bit of a huge, contradictory, condescending pain in my ass.

When I was training with Deven and fell and tore up my elbow (wrapped in gauze because bandaids don’t stick, still feels like somebody is pouring acid on it) I apparently mangled my shoulder on impact. Great. Hope it goes away. Please go away mangy shoulder, I need you to stack cans with.

HALLOWEEN IS TOMORROW! Or today, since it’s 2:03am. Ima be a pirate. It’ll be great. When I told Rebecca she said ‘I can so see you as a pirate!!’ with an enthusiasm I have rarely seen from her. I didn’t know what that meant so I decided to tak it as a good thing, in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

I’ll be the rockingest pirate that ever swept aisle four.

I’m still living on the Blair man’s couch. He’s still fabulous.

I’m still working at Choices. It’s still overly air conditioned.

Last night, finally, I went to the Krav Maga place at the training centre next door to my work. I don’t think I’ll go back because it’s way WAY expensive, but it was heaps of fun. And it kicked my ASS.

I know the first few times I trained with Adori I felt like I was going to die the next day, but somehow I thought I’d fare better here. I had no idea exactly how unfit I am, holy shit.

I had fun though. And I was pleased to find that although I had forgotten some of the terminology (inside defence, hook, cross, etc.) I hadn’t forgotten how to actually do any of it. And I haven’t gotten into any bad habits like dropping my hands or fucking up my footwork.

Still. I have bruises on my arm from a blocking excercise with THE HULK, the muscles in my shoulders have been reawoken after a good few months of atrophy (and they are PISSED) and my stomach muscles… oh man I haven’t done sit ups since january and they made me do like thirty.

After all that I got up this morning and bussed it all the way out to Cambie and 29th to train with Deven from work. He has target mits and a kick shield and some gloves and stuff, so we trained in his back yard – Krav mostly but he also showed me a bit of Kali (omgomgomg fighting with sticks is the greatest).

The workout wasn’t too bad in terms of kicking my ass, but it rained this morning and the ground was wet so when we were kicking the shield my left foot slipped out from under me and I fell and ate shit on the pavement. Bang.

It was funny at the time – and it’s even funnier now - but my right elbow and knee are seriously torn up. I want my mummmmmy.

In other news it is almost halloween. OH. MAH. GOD.

I’m so excited. I’m going to be a pirate. we’re allowed to wear our costumes to work so I’m absolutely doing that, but I don’t think many other people are. Andrea is coming as a zombie but she’s the only other person who’s definitely dressing up. Deven claims he’s coming as Steve Irwin but I don’t think he will, and Rebecca says she might but she doesn’t have a costume yet so I doubt she will. And Blair is no fun at all so he’s not doing it.

Everyone will think I’m cool when I turn up as a pirate though. I’m sure of it. Nobody will think I’m a big nerd at all. Right?

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, I went out with a bartender named Rosie. We lasted maybe three get togethers before we stopped speaking to each other for dramatic reasons that I still don’t fully understand.

Since I work on Davie street, and she lives on it, it seemed inevitable that we would eventually run into one another. The way we did tonight.

Awkward.

I walked out of a seven eleven (which DIDN’T have any pasta, to my starving horror) and Rosie and Ky were on the corner, waiting for me. They were dressed as fairies and headed to the L or the O or whatever that gaybar is. The exchange went a little something like this:

Rosie: Sorry I didn’t text you back

Me: That’s ok, why didn’t you? Were you mad?

R: Yeah kind of. You never texted me back.

M: We both didn’t text each other

R: No you didn’t text me!

Then she kissed me, spun around, and walked away without another word.

Sweet Rosie.

The problem with being gay is that you can’t get guys.

Ok, SO… how great is life?

Not so grate, akshully, because nan passed away recently and I’m a million zillion miles away and that’s really hard, and really sad.

But when I’m not sad I’m generally pretty happy. I’m living, for the next week or so, with two gay guys in a seventeenth floor apartment furnished exclusively by Ikea. James and Blair. I was putting music on before and Blair said to me ‘I feel like listening to something upbeat, say, Madonna circa 2003?’

That’s one of the gayest sentences I’ve ever heard. He’s so funny and makes me laugh so hard and I have MASSIVE amounts of respect for him because he works dairy, which involves literally bringing things from one fridge to another, and one freezer to the next. Hell is not hot, dear readers, it’s a supermarket freezer.

I really like my job and that totally throws me because my job is stacking cans, and carrying boxes full of cans to stack, and pulling trolleys loaded with boxes full of cans to stack. But I have so many friends at work that it’s actually fun.

My fabulous haricut courtesy of Dana has grown out a bit and gotten a bit unkempt, so I plan to get a haircut tomorrow. I’m going to be a TOTAL dyke and get a faux hawk – but don’t worry, I’ll wear it down not up. I’m sure you will all sleep better knowing that.

It’s 2:04 am and I just had granola for dinner. I’d think I was an idiot if I wasn’t me.

In other news nobody seems particularly susceptive to seduction around here. Seriously. Person A: Get’s angry at me for no particular reason and stops taking my calls. Person B: Is leaving soon. Person C: Makes me turn into a drooling, gibbering MORON whenever I’m anywhere near her. And then I drop things.

I’m thinking about buying rollerblades.

Alison from the Cambie now works at choices – I reccomended her which means I get a bonus if we each stay as long as we said we were planning to, but we aren’t so I don’t.

We were chatting in aisle four and she said ‘Oh, hey, I caught up with that swedish girl who was on top of me at the  hostel… I mean… no! bunks! we had bunks!’

And I said ‘Oh yeah,I bet that’s what you meant’ and we laughed until a manager came up and we had to pretend to work.

Then, as I was building a display in which the low sodium vegetarian broth was featured far more prominently than any of the others I was supposed to make people want to buy, it came back to me and I snorted a laugh. The woman in the black jacket to my right looked at me like I was totally retarded and walked off. I laughed harder.

I ended up packing groceries for awhile, during the Great Dinner Rush, and a deaf guy came in. The girl at the checkout had ABSOLUTELY no idea how to deal with him and kept just talking loudly, without even letting him see her mouth properly. So I spent a little while gesturing and pointing and trying desperately to understand his very garbled speech (which seemed to be bitching about her, but I’m not sure) and he left with his groceries, everything fine.

The hardest hardest thing though, was trying not to laugh at him. Not because being deaf is funny, not because of the way he spoke, not because I’m an asshole – he wasn’t funny at all, it was just that I kept imaging myself using my limited american sign language on him and it made me want to giggle.

The only two words I know – courtesy of michfest – are ‘goosebumps’ and ‘vagina’

Nice, Tae.

The Other Day at Work

Australian Guy: Can you tell me where the matches are?

Me: Oh, sorry, we don’t carry matches-

Australian Guy: Why not?

Me: We-

Australian Guy: How do you light fires?

Me: Oh, well we actually don’t have fire in Canada

Australia Guy: No?

Me: No, just igloos

So SOMEHOW, out of all the places I could have ended up working, I got a job in a place that not only has the Krav Maga centre for a neighbour, but the centre BACKS ONTO our corridor, and they leave the door open for ventilation… I get SO distracted. And excited… the smell of sweat and mats, yelled instructions, slapping of pads and gloves… I love it. I can’t wait to start again. Yes.

What a wierd day… Amy the scottish girl left this morning to go to Banff and Alison and I were sad, it’s been like a sleepover. We turn the lights off and chat and say goodnight to each other and then start talking again…

We’ll always have facebook.

At work I met a whole bunch of people and forgot a whole bunch of names and discovered that I LOVE packing shopping bags. I mean not that I would do it in my free time (not that I have any) but it’s easier and less annoying than other things in the store.

Some old German woman stopped me at one point while I was stacking shelves and talked at me for five minutes before I figured out she wanted some sort of frozen fowl, something wierd but I forget what. So, as per the store policy, I said I’d find out if we had it and be right back but when I turned to leave she walked right up to the back doors and was like ‘I’ll just go in here and ask’

‘No, ma’am that’s staff only’

‘Yes I know, I’ll just go in and ask’

‘No, please, stay here I’ll be right back, I’ll go in and ask.’

‘No, I’ll do it.’

‘No-’

Then Alysia the cashier came up and was like ‘That’s staff only,’ as if we didn’t know, and the woman insisted, once again, and walked through. What was I going to do, rugby tackle her?

I just let her and when we got in there I stood behind her and made faces at Joseph while the old woman asked Deven where her hard to find fowl was.

Then I caught a dog.

A little black poodle puppy that was SO EXCITED about EVERYTHING came barrelling down aisle two and I dropped to my knee and caught it as it smashed into me. It hardly noticed me though, just tried to run off to explore and seemed confused about why it couldn’t. My arms were restraining it.

My feet are going to fall off, unless you count the shifts I did at fest as work (which I don’t because they were fun), then I haven’t actually worked since february. And now it’s like BANG eight hour days plus like two Ks of walking there and back. Nace.

I’m fungry.

Men wai you ge shijie
Xinzhong you ge shengyin
Sifang jiu deng ni lai
Younu
Lianshang gandao taiyang
Jiaobu suizhao xingguang
Tiandi zai ni zouyou
Zoule yi shan you yi shan
Zhe shan guole ne shan lai
Xinzhong you ge shengyin

World sits outside the door
A voice in your heart is calling
The ends of the world await
Traveling daughter
Feel the sunshine on your face
Starlight guides your feet
Earth and Sky will carry you
Journey after journey
One mountain to the next
Voice in your heart is calling