snow joke...

I couldn’t write this earlier. I had to wait until now to make sure I’d made it back intact. I can hardly believe it’s been months – yes months - since our BIG SNOW ADVENTURE.

I was nervous about going in the first place. You see, I’m not exactly new to snow holidays – oh the irony – I actually used to sell snow holidays.  Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

I made friends in Grade 1 with a girl who was the “only rich kid in the village”. All the same, she was very nice and wherever she is in the world today, I imagine that she’s probably still very nice, though I have no idea if she’s still rich or not.  

Anyhow, what made them rich amongst other things (such as serving Yorkshire pudding on Sundays), is that they were the only family I knew that went on ‘skiing holidays’.  Let's call this rich girl “Leggy” because she had fabulous, long legs (as you know, being rich just isn’t enough.)

Growing up, I didn’t know exactly what a ski holiday entailed but one time, at a sleepover at Leggy’s house, such was the fun we were having that she asked her parents if they could take me along the next time they went skiing.  Woop! Was I the kind of fun sleepover person that people spontaneously invited to tag along on family holidays? I don't think so, I think kids are just weird that way.  (Incidentally, this was the incident planted a seed of fantasy in my mind, one that continued to grow into my teens when I met Exotica and mixed up the whole Luxembourg/Lichtenburg thing – please refer to postcards and other lies on 12 April 2012 for the full story).

Leggy’s parents looked like they’d been put on the spot but said yes, they would certainly think about it and at the time I was sure they meant it. A long family conversation ensued about “which slopes would be best for a beginner” and how “at Seefeld they have so many friends”. Months later, what with no firm travel plans having been made, I realised that her parents were just placating her. My dreams of swishing down the slopes were dashed.

Fast forward to when I was around 22 years old and desperate to get out of the boring admin job I was stuck in. I’d heard there was a job going at Leggy’s dad’s tour operating company and I was wildly keen to get a job in travel (what with invitations to tag along on family holidays not materialsing.) Bless his well-spoken cotton socks, Leggy’s dad told me at the end of the interview “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” and hired me to be part of the ski-holiday team.

I could hardly contain myself when he said that I should ‘be prepared to take an educational travel trip' two weeks into my job so that I could ‘experience what I was about to sell’.  

Being new to the game, I wasn't prepared for the backlash from one of the girls in the office who took a fierce disliking to me upon news of the trip.  I finally asked one of my colleagues what the problem was and she replied,

“It’s because she’s been working here a whole year and still hasn’t got to go on an educational”. 

Come to think of it she was pretty cranky in general. I put it down to her really weird eyelashes. I used to stare at them for hours.

I was so amped for the trip. I imagined that I’d ski like an Olympic skier in no time.  You see I’d never actually seen someone learn how to ski. I didn’t know how fucking tricky it is. Weird eyelash girl did know though, because she could ski, so in the end she probably had the last laugh. 

For those who have never given it a whirl, it feels like you’re trying to control your limbs, that have been soaking in Novocain overnight, whilst trying to stay upright on a sea of writhing eel.

What I’m guessing didn’t help me was that I started off every skiing day a bit schizzeled. In the mornings before we hit the slopes (some of us harder than others) we did a quick tour of some of the pensions that our clients would be staying in.  With total disregard to the early hour we were greeted with a “welcome schnapps”. Yes, at EVERY pension we visited.  (Note of warning: this appears to be a popular custom in countries with cold climates). As my boss was diabetic and couldn’t drink, he’d slyly wait until I’d politely downed my shot and then would switch my empty glass for his full one.  My hands were tied. He was my boss after all. So whereas everyone else had, say, five early morning shots, I had ten.

Over those 5 short days of skiing I managed to cause untold mayhem. I imagine that some person in Austria is blogging about it as we speak. I succeeded in halting several T-bar lifts by falling off them. I regularly managed to cross my skis on the journey up (a special talent particular to only me, it seems) causing me to fall off the lift, mostly into the deep snow alongside.  Every time the instructor looked at me he looked nervous and slightly upset - on one occasion he was nearly reduced to tears.

I spent more time on my arse and on my face making facedown snow angels than anyone in the history of skiing. People think I’m kidding when I say this, but I was such a clumsy idiot that absolute strangers would buy me drinks in the bar at après ski hour because they mistook me for someone who was employed for their entertainment. The clown of the slopes if you will.

To add insult to injury, my hair totally frizzed, and then froze in the frizz, broken only by my ear warmer headband thingy. This made me look almost exactly like John McEnroe in the 80’s.

I’m still traumatized by my skiing experience and as a result gave snowboarding a try on the recent BIG SNOW ADVENTURE. I have a few words of advice for people if they ever see me in the snow…clear the fucking slopes if you value your life.

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old krump...

A few days ago I posted this as my facebook status:

Next time someone asks me in a job interview what I consider to be my biggest strength I'm going to say ‘krumping’.

A bunch of folk commented and posted videos and stuff in response. It was cool and it reminded me of my first encounter with krumping.

Best Kisser had taken Mr PP away to visit his folks for the weekend and I was home alone for the first time since he was born (TFTF wasn’t born yet). I was very excited because I was going to cram all the things into a weekend that you can’t do with a toddler around, starting with going to the loo alone. 

Cycling, tick. Breakfast with the girls, tick. Walk on the beach, tick. Afternoon nap, tick. Rent dance movie, tick. 

The dance movie I hired is called Rize. For those who haven’t seen it – and many haven’t it seems – it’s a documentary about krumping. Well it’s also about stripping (not THAT kind of stripping), popping, clowning and all sorts of other street dancing, but mostly it’s about krumping.

Having never experienced this particular dance scene, I was enchanted by it. It seemed slightly dangerous.  The music was hard hitting and rough but not in a Metallica kind of way. More rap. More ‘brothers-in-the-hood’.

I watched it for a while and thought to myself, I wonder how hard it is to do? It didn’t look wildly technical like say, ballet or ballroom dancing. What I did notice is that it must be pretty bloody tough because those krumping bodies were buck man. I knew that my body, for instance, looked nothing like theirs.

I’m sure a lot of folk who watch krumping think it’s a load of old toss. For instance, I knew exactly what my Dad would say if he was watching the movie with me. He’d say something like “it just looks like a bunch of people waving their arms in the air and throwing their bodies around the floor (actually, it does look slightly like that to the ‘untrained eye’) but (knowing better) I’d correct him and say “No Dad, that would be performance art. This is krumping.”

Anyhow, after watching it for a while I thought I might give this krumping shit a whirl.

Meanwhile, our elderly neighbour had heard what he later called “loud, ghetto, music” coming from our side of the fence. He thought we’d all gone away for the weekend and was very alarmed to hear activity in the house.  Thinking he’d investigate before sounding the alarm, he’d sneakily snuck up to the front door and was peering through the glass pane.

It was at that moment that I was breaking out my poorly executed krumping moves. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement at the door and I tried to disguise what I was doing as best I could, which was pretending that a giant spider had crawled down the back of my shirt and that my flailing arms were attempting to claw it off my body.

Immediately I dashed to the front door and sheepishly greeted our neighbour. All the dear chap could say was “Oh. It’s you. I thought a whole bunch of home-blokes (I think he meant to say “homies”) had broken in and were throwing a party”.

I couldn’t look him in the eye for weeks after that and I swear, every time he saw me I could see the twinkle in his eye.

(This post is dedicated to our awesome neighbour, Riz. We still miss you and I’d happily make a krumping arse of myself again if it meant we’d get to share a glass of wine with you.)

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hirsutes nobody

(via www.vintag.es)

I don’t know why I did it.  I knew better, but still I did it. I suppose Blondie inspired me – she’s always so darn well groomed. Her head of hair is always sleek and as for facial hair, well, it’s non-existent. She tells me her secret is threading.

I know I’m being naff, but the very idea of someone ripping out my hair from the roots, brings tears to my eyes.  So does the thought of applying hot wax to my face but hot wax was the ‘good idea’ that I had today because it’s “so easy to do at home”.

The fact that there’s hair growing on my face at all is a mystery to me.  I just don’t get it from an evolutionary point of view (hint to God, please send an obvious answer - cloud writing would work). I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s been a fuckup in the messages to the hair follicle department, causing the hair that’s supposed to be growing on my eyelashes to grow on my mustache instead. It’s the only way to explain the imbalance.

To be true, I have tried other solutions for facial hair in the past, specifically, bleaching.  I thought that if you bleached your facial hair it wouldn’t be noticeable.  I was wrong, of course, as Vikings have already proven.  Such was the outcome that I ended up with a resplendent blonde moustache, shiny as Playboy pinup’s locks.  Every time I moved my mouth it looked as if there was a tiny stripper caterpillar writhing around on my top lip.

The wax kit I bought today looked innocent enough from the outside, though in retrospect if I look closely at the drawing on the box, it shows a lady sitting in an awkward pose. She’s either looking down (at her nether parts, I wonder?) or is sitting in a ‘pose of pain’. She might even be crying. I’m going with the latter. 

(Exhibit A)

The kit involves a small metal container that you heat on the stove till it’s soft enough to apply.  Never a fan of reading instructions, I didn't take note that it shouldn’t bubble.  I also didn't note that if are foolish enough to overheat it, you have to wait a while for the wax to cool before applying it.  Duh.

I applied the scalding mixture to my mustachy bits and howled in pain.  For the hundredth time, I just don’t get people who like S&M.   As for the whole Brazilian waxing thing, it’s inconceivable to me. (I’m working off the assumption that the skin on my face is tougher than ‘down there’. Brutal, bloody brutal, is all I have to say.)

After waiting for the wax to cool down, I applied it to my movember.  So far so good. Then came the time to remove the wax. Holy schiznick, the pain was worse than when I applied the hot wax in the first place!  I could already tell that there was no way I was going to make it though to the end.  Inexplicably, the wax was removing several layers of skin whilst actually leaving the offending whiskers firmly embedded. WTF??!?!?

I realised that there was no way in hell I could continue ‘peeling’ till the movember was completely gone.  Panicking, I looked around for a solution. Ah. Nail scissors!  I could cut the wax off.  But no, this turned out to be a high-risk solution. I came dangerously close to cutting my lip clean off.   

In the end, I had to run a basin of hot water in an attempt to 'melt' off the wax.  It was a whole new level of torture when I had to repeatedly submerge my chin, mouth and nose into the boiling water. Still, it was nothing compared to ripping off the wax.

I now have a hairy, red, blotchy mustache show for my efforts and all I have to say is, pluck that shit, I’m not doing this hair removal crap anymore.

Pose o Pain

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oral hell...

(Via www.fauchard.org)

I went to the oral hygienist this week. My God, what a brutal business.  I always think it’s not going to be as bad as the last time but it always is.

As I sat down in the chair my body was already responding; heart beating in my throat, hands shaking and armpits sweaty. I could feel the adrenaline surging before she’d even begun.  Perhaps the oral hygienist felt the same when she saw my teeth.  There’s always the inevitable awkwardness when she asks if I’m flossing regularly and I lie, unconvincingly. The truth is so very obvious.

As she started to scritch-scritch-scratch I immediately thought  - as I always do – who in Gaaads name would want to do this job? This thought is quickly followed by, thank heavens she IS willing to do this job because I don’t want to do it.

As she hits one of the back molars I feel a sharp pain.

“Ooh,” I say “rat huns a hit henhitive (this is open-mouth speak for - “Ooh, that one’s a bit sensitive.)

Most folk would interpret this message as “touch that bloody tooth again and I’ll stab you in the leg with your scratchy tool”. But no, she didn’t get the hint and I couldn’t help but think that a safe-word should be mandatory with all dentistry. “Puuuuuuuck” would do the trick.

As she continued to scritch-scritch-scratch along all the bottom teeth, I started fantasizing about all the ways that I might get even with her, when all of a sudden she stops and says “you can take a rinse now”.

Hurrah, I think to myself. We’re halfway there.

As I rinse out my mouth and see chunky, bloody stuff in the basin.  This can’t be blinking right, I think to myself, she’s gouging away at my gums for Pete’s sake. I notice that she’s cunningly tinted the rinse water a pinkish colour so as to disguise the high levels of blood. Sneaky, but I’m on to her.

She then starts on the upper teeth which for some reason are always much worse than the bottom ones. Is it the confounded angle that she has to go in at?

She continues to scratch and pick and draw blood on the upper jaw and such is my discomfort, that I finally decide I’ve had enough. Bracing myself with my hands on the arms of the chair, I lift my legs high into the air and behind my head in a kung fu kind of way. Gripping tightly, I grab her head with my feet and then lift her by her head out of her chair and fling her out the window.  It was like a Tarantino movie scene. 

OK, you know what, that last part didn’t really happen. It only happened in my mind. But just the fantasy of it gave me enough momentary satisfaction to see me through the top jaw.

 

She finishes up on the top, says that I should take a rinse (again, it’s as gory as a battle scene from Braveheart) and then - why oh why for the love of God - she starts working on the bottom teeth again.  WT flying F are you doing??? I think. I thought we were done there?

But no, she isn’t done with torture for today and keeps drawing more blood, and gouging and piercing me with her sharp thingy.  It’s not my imagination, I see the evil glint in her eye.

I’ve always wondered which is worse, a glycolic peel or a session at the hygienist. In the end I think I’d have to say that the oral hygienist wins hands down, simply because she appears to take so much pleasure in her craft. Sigh. The next session is only 365 days away.

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fallen ankle...

(Via www.drivingadelorean.com)

I wiped out in gym class today.  It was bloody spectacular, if I don’t mind saying so myself. I went 'over on my ankle'.  What a weird saying.  Sounds very much like - but at the same time no way similar to - I went 'over on a boat'. Anyway, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve gone 'over on my ankle' I’d have, lets see, three whole nickels.

My first nickel was earned in my second last year of high school.  The netball teacher had asked Exotica and me to demonstrate a 'move'.  Considering that to this day, I have no idea how many people are even on a netball team, I really have to question the wisdom of her choice.  The move involved me (as a defender) trying to get the ball away from Exotica (not a defender, the other thing). There was jumping involved. And landing. And wrong kinds of landing.

I heard a loud crack. Maybe it wasn’t that loud, maybe it was just loud in my head.  As I landed, a fierce pain shot from my foot, up my leg and into my brain. No, I don’t remember fainting. No, I don’t remember hitting the ground. No, I don’t remember convulsing*. No, I don’t remember peeing in my pants.  (* A little running note here: on a previous occasion, another poor girl in our grade had a full blown fit on a school outing and the kids mistook her convulsing for break-dancing. This was the 80’s remember.)

What I do remember is coming around to my team mates faces hovering over me in a kind of sports huddle, wide eyed and somewhat bemused. The coach, a mixture of horror and panic on her face, was looking at me in an overwhelmed way.  None of us had discovered the peed-in-pants part yet (though maybe they had and were just being polite).

At times like these I find the best thing to do is cry.  Sometimes, if you do it well enough, people want to join in. It was all very humbling, not least of all because I was blubbering in the company of 'Mean Cindy', a girl on the team that everyone was fiercely frightened of and in front of whom one definitely didn’t cry.

After a while, Exotica appeared with a Coke. She’d gone rummaging around in one of the teachers houses to find “something sugary” to bring me around from the break-dancing that my mum would have called 'a funny turn'. (Again, another weird saying, because it was hardly funny at all.)

As I sipped slowly on the sickly sweet black nectar (a forbidden beverage in a milk-drinking house such as ours) I slowly became aware of the ‘wet patch’. And then, as my cerebral capacity continued to return, I became aware of the very large field of chaps, alongside our netball field, busy with rugby practice.  I realised then that I was in for a long afternoon.  There’s simply no cool way that anyone with pee-pants can confidently saunter past an army of lads, let alone at the self-conscious age of 16. At one point I considered doing “the worm” to get off the field, but on my back you understand, so that the wet patch would remain hidden from view.

Turns out I’d cracked the bone in my foot and had to hobble around very un-sexily on crutches for a few weeks.

I earned my second nickel in a less dramatic way.  TFTF** was a toddler and we were holding hands whilst walking down the stairs together.  To this day, I wonder why the bloody hell I put the short person in front - it just doesn’t make any sense. To make matters worse, he was descending faster than me whilst sort of dragging me behind. And although I was practically bent over double, my body wasn’t quite low enough to make me the same size as an 18month toddler. 

Fortunately I didn’t pass out, convulse or pee in my pants this time.  It was a minor sprain with major grumpiness.

Today, of course, I earned my third nickel.  It was quite the movie moment.  Time slowed down as the entire class saw me go crashing down, like a slain mythical beast in a sci-fi movie. They all moved together as one, to my rescue.

No cracked bones and no sprains this time round, just a punctured pride.

** TFTF = TooFastTooFurious for those who aren't in the know.

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having a vuluva time...

(Via Groupon.com)

I have two words for you this week: knitted vulva.

So there I was, innocently mooching around Twitter when I decided to click on a link that someone had posted.  Imagine my surprise when I found that it was a knitting pattern for a (drumroll) ..... yoni! 

Whenever I hear the word yoni it reminds me of a friend I had at school whose name was Jon (still is, I’m sure) but you pronounced it ‘Yon’. His nickname was Joni, but you pronounced it ‘Yoni’.  I can’t imagine that he feels fantastic about being nicknamed after female nether parts. Or, in retrospect, perhaps he quite likes it.

Then someone told me the other day that you actually pronounce it ‘yoany’ as in ‘Joni Mitchell’. Either way, yoni has always sounded more like a yoga pose or a strong spice to me.  Truth be told, I’m not even sure if yoni refers to the ‘whole kaboodle’ or if it only refers to specific parts of the, er, yoni.

Anyhow, back to the knitted vulva.  The blog started off with:

        

‘It is nearly impossible to find a good pattern for a knitted yoni and I see lots of people in different craft communities asking for one.’

Who knew?

I imagine that men crafters – carpenters, iron-workers, ice-sculptors and the such – come up against exactly the same problem when they are looking to craft a lingam. Where are good lingam blueprints to be found when you need ‘em?

Far be it from me to scoff at anyone’s creative endeavors - I’m quite a fan of yarn bombing but be that as it may, I really have to ask: why? Why do they want a knitted yoni? What are they going to do with it?

For those who read one of my earliest blogs, we have touched on the joy of ‘wild knitting’ ("Hot Fuzz" Wed, 1 December 2010). It included questions around the likes of knitted garden displays, knitted fruit and even knitted cigarettes.

But truly, for the life of me I simply cannot imagine what one does with a knitted vulva. Granted, the blogger did use a very nice ‘velvet touch’ wool which looks awfully nice to stroke. Even so, is this knitted yoni for display - like a scatter cushion? Or perhaps it’s more a cuddle toy that you take with you to bed? Or maybe it’s the modern equivalent of a handkerchief and you give it to your lover as a keepsake – tailor made, so to speak.

Upon further investigation I found other sites that offer patterns for knitted body parts.  Namely, the cute, cuddly, uterus dolly. In one image, the bubblegum pink knitted uterus is hanging from a tree, in another it’s perched on a piano.

A TREE I say! What on earth is a uterus doing up in a tree? And while we’re at it, what is the connection with uterus’s and pianos? What exactly does my uterus get up to when I’m not looking?  Clandestine concerto composing?   Late night treetop trysts? I tell you, we’re but a hop, skip and a jump away from making a whole television series based on the secret life of the female reproductive system. (Joan Rivers would do a smashing job as the voice-over for the labia, what with all the excessive cosmetic surgery she’s had done on her lips.)

Funnily enough, it appears these uterus's do get around. If you Google “knitted uterus” you will see that a very proactive person sent a knitted uterus to a congressman to lobby for giving women better access to birth control.  I’m pretty sure he revised his policy just to get the thing off his desk.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall when he opened the package!

As I scanned the yoni pattern, the blogger went on to say that ‘Gauge is unimportant as this is totally up to you how big or small you want it to be!’

So there you go, size only matters if size matters to you.

And let me tell you, the blogger had a lot (yes, a lot) of very enthusiastic responses from readers who were going to “knit one immediately” or were going to “try it out in blue”. It seems cyberspace is teaming with women who want to knit a yoni. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I want one?

The final instruction left off with ‘Continue this pattern of increasing every second and every second … until you get your desired width’. It was at that point that I had to leave the site. As intrigued as I was, I had to draw the line somewhere.

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ink me up scotty...

(via randomfunnypicture.com)

A long time ago, my niece Dormouse and I made a pact to go and have a tattoo together and last weekend was D-day. I suppose that I should start by telling you how old she is because people give me horrified looks when I say that I took her to such-and-such pub, or that we both have a crush on Paolo Nutini. So, just to make quite clear that all pub-going, crushing and tattooing is above board, she’s 23 years old, not 9.

We stayed with Dormouse in Buenos Aires and were supposed to ‘get inked’ one afternoon but ended up getting horribly drunk instead. I blame it on Evita. Or Evita’s grave, at least. We were totally creeped out at the thought of milling around mausoleums and decided that a beer or two might take the edge off. It was worth it. Beer totally beats graves in the beer-graves-scissors game.

Besides, Dormouse and I figured that it was just as well we didn’t have a tattoo done in a country where we didn’t speak the language. I imagine that there could be a whole TV series based on tattoos that have gone wrong due to a glitch in translation. It could be called “Inked-Up Abroad”.

I digress. Saturday morning arrived and I found myself on babysitting duty for both our kids as well as a friend’s two kids. The mom part of the family (lets call her Blondie for now) was away and their dad was squeezing in a bike ride with Best Kisser. Best Kisser had given me such late notice that I had no choice but to take the kids along. All four of them. To the tattoo parlour.

The people in the tattoo parlour looked like they were going to burst into tears when we walked in. Three adults and four kids aged between 4 and 11.  They didn’t quite know what to do. I could tell that they were worried that this mix of people might lower the coolness-quotient* of the establishment.  I’m not sure that they should have worried because there was already a young fellow in there that looked nothing older than 12, wearing a studded collar and with a piercing in his eyebrow.  Mr. PP asked me, ‘Isn’t that chap a bit too young to have that sort of thing?’ I said that possibly he was or that maybe he was a Waldorf student.

I imagine that people who have never had a tattoo think that tattoo parlours are in real life exactly like they’re portrayed in the movies. Dark and dingy, wedged between a laundromat and a strip joint with at least one firearm and a lot of biker types hanging around.  In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  The artists are positively anal about hygiene and the workspace is brightly lit. Fluorescently so. Which is a good thing really, because I want them to be absolutely sure that they can see exactly what they’re doing.

Truth be told, tattoo artists seem to be quite anal on the whole. And, they are as much artiste as the next artiste. This is also a good thing because an anal-artiste is exactly the person I want drawing something permanent on my body.

The visit started out great. Some chap was having a huge tattoo done on his belly and the kids were engrossed. The four year old in our group insisted that he wanted a tattoo immediately. Eventually the artist who was working told us - in not so many words - to sod off because we were cramping his style so I got the kids looking at some tattoo books** instead. 

Most of the images were really cool until we got to the dragons and stuff. The kids asked why people would want ‘funny animals’ on their bodies. I said I had no idea but that possibly they were good-luck-dragons. They were pretty impressed with the sculls though (Bless you, Jack Sparrow).

After a while the shorties got all fidgety so the parlour owner put on some heavy metal to chase us out. The lyrics were ‘Don’t tell me f*$@#ing what to do’ and I didn’t want the kids to get fancy ideas so I marched them down the road and bought them an ice cream at the dodgy corner cafe***.

When Blondie came back she says to me ‘I believe you took my kids to a tattoo parlour?’

‘Yes,’ I say, feeling slightly sweaty, but trying to keep my voice casual.

‘I couldn’t change the booking and the lads were out riding….Um, I didn’t feed them any colourants though’, I add.

‘Well’, she says, ‘at first I was a bit… erm… you know...but then I thought, oh well, it probably isn’t a bad thing that they got to see what tattoos are all about because now they’ll never want one.’

Truly, I didn’t have the heart to say ‘That’s what you think, lady.’

*This phrase is per kind favour of a friend. He said it better.

** Not the tattoo books that show real ink on private parts and everything. Just the tattoo books with drawings. Honestly.

***Cafe in SA is pronounced “keffie” and, disappointingly, is nothing like a cafe in, say, France. ‘Keffi’s’ normally smell strongly of incense, which I suspect is in an effort to disguise the smell of old cooking oil.

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