A Starfish Named Ness

I contemplated writing this post while drunk, just for something different, but it's only 10.30 on a Monday morning.  Oh wait...perfectly good excuse to drink! Especially when you wake up with a rotten cold, sore throat and headache. I couldn't feel any worse, could I?  Hmmm...on second thought, I'll stick to tea. 

I've never been much of a drinker, unless you count tea. And I do. It's totally addictive for me. Plus it leads to harder, more sinister addictions. It's serious, people. First it's an innocent cup of tea, then suddenly it's progressed to tea AND cake. Shocking. 

Anyway, what was the point of this post? Oh yes, I was going to entertain you with the scintillating details of the first and only time I got drunk.Yep, I'm SUCH a party animal. There was only once. I've been tipsy many times, but pissed? Not really. 

The thing is, I don't really enjoy that drunken feeling. I don't tolerate alcohol well. One or two drinks are OK. I feel relaxed and pleasant. However, if I make the mistake of pushing on to a third or fourth drink, it very quickly goes to my head. I detest that seasick, head-whirling sensation. Consequently I've never made a habit of getting drunk.

I've noticed that other people can drink and drink and drink AND DRINK and it seemingly doesn't effect them. No such luck for me. Sigh.

But let's get back to the story of the one and only time I was shit-faced slightly intoxicated.

Picture it. The Hunter Valley, 1992. A young 21 year old Ness with a poodle perm, wearing a body suit with high-waisted jeans. I went away for a Rotaract Wine Weekend. 

Those were 'the olden days', as my boys call them. There was no internet. You couldn't meet people through such classy things as Tinder, so you joined something like Rootaract instead. Oops, I mean Rotaract. And you joined because you really cared about making a difference through community service. Yep. Totally for that reason. If you also met people and made friends, that was just a bonus. Ahem. 

There was a bunch of us rotaractors who went away to this particular 'Wine Weekend', including Mickey Blue Eyes, but we weren't a couple at that point. (I think it was on this occasion, or one of the other wine weekends, when Mickey managed to be drunk the for the duration of the whole weekend while only drinking diet coke. A sign that we would make a groundbreaking, avant garde couple, if ever there was one).

Me circa early 1990s

But back to my being drunk story. My friend Kim and I took a peculiar liking to this vile, sickly sweet wine called Tyrrell's Blanquette. There is a photo floating around somewhere of the two of us proudly holding our packs of this beverage, but a) I would have to find it ; and b) Kim would probably kill me if I posted it here. So you are spared this vision. 

Such a shame, because if I recall things correctly, I had ditched the high-waisted jeans for this occasion. Instead I was wearing a most fetching headband and brown jumper combo with stirrup pants. Yep, I've always been a smoking hawt, cutting edge, fashion icon. Try not to be jealous.

The point is, we drank rather a lot of this wine and were quite merry. After a day spent wine tasting, we all arrived back at the Caravan park where we were staying.The drinking and merriment continued.Well, as merry as it gets for some one as quiet as me. Shut up.

Then, inevitably, we had to visit the bathroom. So myself, Kim and my other friend Pam, wandered off to the ladies toilets in the caravan park, giggling like the silly young things we were. I managed to go to the loo without any incidents. Then, as I was waiting for Kimmy and Pammy, I suddenly decided it would be a tremendous idea to have a good lie down. Right there. In the public toilets. Of a grotty caravan park in the Hunter Valley.

So Kim and Pam emerged from the loo to behold me resplendent in a starfish position on the floor. Classy.

The next morning we were all a bit seedy. We trudged to the reception office where they had a shop to purchase paracetamol for our pounding heads.

"Not feeling too well, are we ladies?" The gentleman behind the counter asked dryly. There may have been some requests from other patrons to keep the noise down. Not that it was me making noise. Even alcohol doesn't make me 'come out of my shell'. But it does make me do starfish impersonations. I like to be different.We sheepishly mumbled something and slunk away with our drugs.

As the years ambled on, I looked back on this incident and kind of dismissed it with a "Wasn't I cute when I was a bit tipsy" thought. I considered that I'd never really been drunk in my whole life.

But then I thought about it some more. I do tend to overthink stupid, pointless things. Hang on a minute, I thought,  I did a starfish impersonation on a grotty public toilet floor. EW. Yep, I was certainly shit-faced.

So there you have it. The one and only time Nesski has ever been drunk. Unless you count  right now, because I just referred to myself in the third person, so clearly I'm drunk. And I lurrrve youse all! Thankshs for reading...!!!*hiccups*

Linking up for I Must Confess

When was the first time you were drunk?

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Decisons

 

I’ve never been good at making decisions. Sometimes I find myself agonising over the simplest of things.  Deciding what to have on a sandwich becomes this epic debate in my mind, fraught with fear and self-doubt. Should I have tuna or cheese and tomato? Perhaps a good old-fashioned curried egg and lettuce would suffice? Then again, there is left-over chicken in the fridge!  There are just too many choices!

Plus, what if it my sandwich filling choice just doesn’t delight my taste buds on that particular day? I’ve already consumed the calories! What a disaster! See? I knew I would choose the wrong thing! 

This probably explains why cheese and tomato sandwiches were my staple diet for many years. It eliminated the decision making progress to opt for the same thing time after time. If I really wanted to be totally wild and crazy I might mix it up by having toasted cheese and tomato. I’ve always been cutting edge.

This cutting edge tendency is probably apparent in my choice of attire. Boring, bland and predominantly black sums it up. Therefore, the amount of time I spend ruminating and pondering over what to wear is patently ridiculous. Who cares what I wear?  As long as I’m covered and clean that’s all that matters.

This doesn’t stop me from wasting an inordinate amount of time fussing over my outfit. It seems that I must be under some sort of grand illusion that I’m a celebrity about to be hounded by the paparazzi each time I leave the house. It’s as if I’m making the important choice of whether to wear the Prada or Gucci instead of the Best & Less or Big W. Often, I mix it  up and team Big W garments with Best & Less ones because, you know, that cutting edge thing again. And do you know what? Except for all the times I’ve been mistaken for Nicole Kidman*, this hounding by the paparazzi hasn’t happened yet! 

Don’t even get me started on grocery shopping. It’s the stuff of nightmares for a scatterbrain like me. So many aisles, so many decisions! I do take lists but still get confused once I’m in the supermarket and all those rows upon rows of choices are around me. Suddenly, things appear in my trolley that weren’t on the list. Of course they are always organic kale and herbal tea, not chocolate or cakies.  No way.

I mean, do you know how long I’d spend agonising over whether to get the Maltesers or Mars Bars? It just seems easier to get both. Ahem. Except that these days I’m on Weight Witches, so I just walk very fast past the confectionary aisle. Then I get to the check out and there they are, right in front me. Sigh. Life can be cruel sometimes.

Anyway, I spend so much time agonising over these mundane decisions it may have prevented me from making any reckless, life-changing decisions that I’ve come to regret. I’ve never taken illegal drugs, gambled away my life savings or robbed a bank.

Yes, there is an infamous mullet-perm in my past but a) it was the 80s, and b) it’s provided ample entertainment as fodder for this blog. So let’s give it another whirl.

I should regret this hairs style- but I won't. I know
you're laughing. You're welcome.

There is one mild regret lurking in my past. Rewind back to around 1992 or 1993. By this time I had ditched the mullet-perm for an attractive poodle perm. Like I said, I’ve always been cutting edge and classy. I was in my early 20s  and working at the State Library. Somehow, on my meagre pay I had managed to save a sizeable chunk of money. I was able to do this because I lived with my parents and didn’t have a car or a social life. This totally confirms my cutting edge status. Shut up.

In the back of my mind I had some hazy idea that I was saving the money to eventually buy a car or go overseas. There were two problems with this grand plan; a) I didn’t have a drivers’ license, and b) I didn’t have any friends to drag overseas with me. The idea of taking off on my own never occurred to me. I was still a tragic Mummy’s girl and ridiculously shy.

Luckily however, around this time I ended up joining Rootaract. Uh, I mean, Rotaract and thusly acquired something resembling a social life. Consequently, I met Mickey Blue Eyes.  My parents were in the process of planning a trip overseas to the UK. It crossed my mind that I had the cash to go with them. I quickly dismissed this thought as absurd. After all, mature, worldly, hip 22 year-old Mummy’s girls who lived at home and proudly owned an entire collection of Carpenters albums didn’t go overseas with their parents!  This would totally tarnish my now legendary cutting edge persona!

Case in point: The Carpenters were totally retro-cool in 1993! There was even an alternative tribute album recorded in their honour! This confirmed that I was ahead of the game and cooler than anyone gave me credit for. To my 22 year old mind I couldn’t risk the damage to my ultra-cool character. It would just be sad and pathetic to go away with my parents. Besides I would have to be parted from Mickey Blue Eyes for a whole month! We were still at that stage where we actually missed each other if we weren’t together every day.

Of course, 20 or so years later I’m wondering why this was even an issue. I see the  man all day, every day. Every. Single. Day. What was I thinking? A  month was a blip in the ocean in the scheme of things.

And the sad truth of the matter is, I would have enjoyed going overseas with my parents much more than going on some Contiki tour with a bunch of raucous, drunken twenty-somethings. Sad, but true.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if I could rewind back to 1993 I would have gone overseas with my parents. But it’s all good, because we’re currently in the process of obtaining our passports so I’m sure we’ll get there eventually. Except now we’ll have three lovely children to tag along just to make it extra special. This should be tremendous fun. I mean what could be worse: going overseas with your middle-aged parents when you’re young or waiting until you’re middle-aged and going with children? This is a totally rhetorical question, just in case you were trying to figure out the correct answer.

Oh well, I suppose I had better leave it there and go and decide what to have for lunch. After all, it could take a while.

 

Linking up for I Must Confess.

 *OK, so I've never been mistaken for Nicole Kidman. But it could still happen! HMPH!

What decision would you change if you could?

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Mick & Ness: A Love Story

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every blogger or  would be writer will pinch those opening words from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (damn she was good). So I did.  Just to get it out of my system.

Anyway, according to our GP, (who is all too familiar with our history of woes, all of which are a gigantic saga of epic proportions, more weepy and melodramatic than a Danielle Steele novel) Mick and I are 'Two gentle souls who found each other.'

 More like two mega dorks from hell who couldn't find anyone else, really. And clearly she hasn't heard some of the swearing around here. Or seen me throw things when I have a  melt down. But perhaps she has a point.

As how we met is quite the touching love story. It goes like this. Cue the schmaltzy romantic music. Or not.

Around age 21, a long-time friendship and suddenly went pear shaped.  Distressed, I confided in a work colleague. 

"Don't worry about her, she sounds like a bitch," was her advice. "you've got other friends haven't you?"  To which the answer was a resounding - No.

"Oh," she said "well, you'll just have to make some."

Right. Easy peasy.  Especially for a painfully shy, quiet, introverted Aspie like me. (Not that I knew about the Aspie part at the time).  Then Jeanette, the work colleague, suggested I  should go to something called Rotaract.  I had no idea what Rotaract was really, but she was quite persistent. She gave me a number and said "If you don't ring up, I will!"

So I made the phone call, hands shaking, voice a whisper.  The cheerful sounding girl at the other end of the phone didn't seem to notice. It turned out that Rotaract was some sort of Community Service and Social Club for 18-30 year olds, which was sponsered by Rotary.

 "We're all going to Studebakers Night Club this Saturday, "  Cheerful Girl told me "you can come." Yay. I lurrrrve Night Clubs. Thumping 'music' and passive smoking are SUCH a thrilling way to spend a night out.

Subsequently, I ended up sitting there at Studebakers,  the following Saturday night, with a bunch of strangers, passive smoking, feeling awkward and answering the usual polite questions.  Among the strangers was Mick.  The only impression he made on me was that I thought he was really serious.  He was having a really intense, grown up conversation with some others about something really Accountant like, such as mortgages or the stock market.  I glazed over.

I kept going to Rotaract, also known as Rootaract, due to the high number of marriages among our friends that resulted from it.  Luckily, I made a good friend, Kim, and was constantly glued at her side at every Rotaract outing and function.   So, for the first time in my life I actually had something resembling friends and a social life, even though in reality I was still painfully shy and quiet.

We had many outings and functions and I'm sure all those wine tasting weekends at the Hunter Valley and Priest and Pro's Dances we had were extremely *coughs*, erm...helpful for the community.  At one such function Mick and I were chatting. I'd been going to Rotaract for possibly close to a year by now. During the conversation, Mick casually asked me out.

I have always been completely and totally clueless when it comes to flirting or catching on if somebody chats me up. Which is a shame, because it obviously happened ALL THE TIME in those days, in light of my striking resemblance to Nicole Kidman.

 Consequently, when Mick asked me, I so wasn't expecting it, that it took a full minute to register that he'd even asked me.  The moment passed and I didn't answer him.  I felt quite upset that I hadn't answered him and might have hurt his feelings and left him pining away. I have since brought that up years later, and he doesn't even remember, so he obviously wasn't pining at all. Hmph.

I agonised over it like a herione in a Victorian novel.  Like Lizzy Bennet did over Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.  Like Rachel McAdams and Ryan Goseling in The Notebook. Like Maria did over Captain Von Trapp. Kind of, sort of...

I gave it some thought and sent him a rather enigmatic letter indicating that I wished I'd answered him, like the dark and mysterious (ie. awkward and cowardly) person I am.  He asked me again, and we embarked on a date.  We went to the movies. Mick gallantly let me choose the film. So what did I choose for a first date?

Sleepless In Seattle. Save me.

You know. Tom Hanks. Meg Ryan.

One look and it was...magic. And all that crap.

Possibly just a tad over the top for a first date. Plus, it hadn't really happened like that for us. My first look at Mick, I glazed over. Oops.

A year later, he asked me to marry him in his usual blase fashion.  Over an Italian meal in a restaurant. With my parents present. I said yes. We finished our Veal Tegame and he went home to his place and I went home with my parents.  So romantic. I rang Kim and a few other Rotaractors and told them we were engaged.

The next day they rang Mick at work to congratulate him. He had yet to inform his parents and siblings.

We look slightly different now..sigh..

We had our wedding a year or so later. Luckily I didn't know what was going to happen over the next 16 years or I might have run shrieking from the church. But I didn't.  It was quite an eventful day, so that might be a whole other post.

Put it this way, over the last 16 years we have certainly been through it all... for better, for worse,  in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer...

Hang on. Wait.

We actually haven't been through the richer part.  Even after Micky Blue Eyes promised me he would be millionaire by the time he was 40.  And he is turning a big number with a zero in it next year, and the number isn't 40. Hmph.  And  a big snorty honking sound even.

So I can only hope the richer part will be along presently. And then we can live happily ever after in wedded stress....oops, I mean bliss.

Linking up with Cathy from The Camera Chronicles for Flashback Friday.

Linking up with Kirsty from  My Home Truths for I Must Confess. One more time, for the good times.

Linking this up for I Must Confess AGAIN because I couldn't be bothered writing a new post  it's SUCH a touching love story.

Have you ever heard a more touching love story? I doubt it....

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