Friday, June 20, 2008


General business:
  • Everyone is sick! Work is sick, home is sick, random strangers are sick. There is coughing and spluttering galore, and yet I remain unscathed. How is this possible? That's right, it's not possible, because I'm just not that freaking lucky. So I give it until Saturday morning before I wake up in a pool of my own snot, and will therefore spend my two free days feverish and sniffly, before miraculously recovering on Monday morning, just in time to go back to work.

  • Work is killing me. There is overtime EVERY NIGHT. I was being generous at first, but now I am just making myself unavailable. "Think of the cash!" they say, and yes, the overtime cash is lovely, but is it really worth the destruction of my soul?

  • My piano playing is going super well, and by that I mean that I can play Good King Wenceslas and When The Saints Go Marching In. A friend at work is giving me his sheet music for Cornflake Girl, and soon I will be able to play like Tori. Soon! (estimated time: twenty years)

  • This Saturday, Beardie and I are attending a birthday dinner, As A Couple. Besides last year's Christmas party, where everyone was blotto and I was all burning white rage from some drunken cow spilling wine all over my dress, this will be our first Couple Outing, despite going out for A While. And I can't fall into my 'sit in the corner and guzzle beer' comfort zone, because it is a dinner. A dinner where people sit around and discuss things. How will I cope? Do I have to act like a grown-up? I am afraid.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now, although I rarely give or go to dinner parties, every year at Christmas my family come over and we sit up at the trough...err, table to eat (which is silly. How are you supposed to see the telly from there, I ask you?!). Anyway, going from this experience, and having chronologically been a grown-up now for longer than I haven't been, I feel that it makes me expert enough to wax wise on the subject.

Firstly, after downing half a dozen Zany Carter Deluxes to get you warmed up, throw food at the person opposite you with the utensils by your plate that you won't actually otherwise use to eat. Remind the target of that time they did a strip-tease at the main-road end of the cul-de-sac when they were three. It doesn't hurt to remind them that they also ate gum they picked up off the footpath. Secondly, deny that, though they were younger and just a weak little girl, they went two houses up the road to beat-up the bully who was picking on you. Make sure you've got nude photos of everyone present from when they were two years old. It's even better if everyone sees the picture of you and points and laughs and tells you that you have a little (with emphasis on the "little") stiffy in the photo.

The matriarch at the party should look disapprovingly at everyone, and keep exclaiming your names in horror in response to the latest perceived infraction of tradition and etiquette, otherwise you'll never know where the limits are before you do a drunken YMCA dance all over them (If I had them I'd use my piano skills here...still playing YMCA though). Cry and say sorry to everyone (and them to you) when Bette Midler's "The Rose" comes on the stereo that you've been singing YMCA over the top of.

Set fire to the pudding, even if it's chocolate (use wrapping paper to get it started). Have a roasting fork fight over the last of the pork crackling, and tell the police that you promise to keep the noise down; that the blood is just from paper cuts from all the wrapping paper; and that the loud "OINK!"ing going on behind you is a family tradition to do with the bone leftover from the pork, "Honest, ossifer!". Fart...often (the loudest gets the crackling, and a month's worth of cold silence from the matriarch). Burp oftener, into the face of the persons sitting next to you. Drink all the booze in the house, including that in the medicine cabinet and makeup cases. Throw the empties at the neighbours. Find some leftover Parfait Armour, Vanilla Vodka and Lemonade to finish off the evening right - with a belly full of Zany Carter Deluxe...well, at least until you throw it all up in different corners of the garden the host will only find when the sun comes out from behind the clouds and starts to bake it ripe a couple of days later.

Back your car over the letterbox.

I hope this is of some help. My therapist (and by therapist I mean this lovely, brown bourbon-y bottle of brain-numbing bitterness in my hand) says it's what all the grown-ups are doing at all the best dinner parties.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, that's right...I hope you don't get sick.

RAT said...

montsnmags, woah! Firstly, biggest. comment. ever. And Christmases at your place sound very fun indeed. If only I had some dirt on these people I could set about embarrassing everyone royally, but they're all acquaintances; strangers, almost. Maybe I could make some stuff up. The dinner party didn't end up happening due to Beardie having the bubonic plague, or something similar, but I will take all of your valuable advice on board for next time.

And I'm not sick yet, but only moments ago I commented on my sore throat, so who knows. I don't think I'd mind having the plague if it gives me some time off work.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, umm, sorry 'bout that. You know how it is, you start to reply, your family comes up in the conversation, and before you know it you're taking a swig between sentences and using the blog comments section as a psychiatrist's chair. Hey, if it helps, I feel better now. ~smile~ I hope you keep doing so.

Adam said...

Holey Moley, I learnt so many things that I wouldn't have learnt had I not clicked on the Read Comments button. Anywho, you got out of Being An Adult - good for you!

audrey said...

Ummm. You also Live Together. Do you never go out or what?

ps xo

RAT said...

Adam, it is a daily struggle, but yes, I think I am succeeding in avoiding this whole adult business. Hooray!

Audrey, not very often! And if we do, it is usually just us, and we can act as immature as we like. It's that whole Other People thing that causes the pressure. The struggle to come up with intelligent conversation instead of sitting there giggling, etc. Then again, I guess that applies to just regular life, and not just the couple outings...