11 posts tagged “alcohol”
My daughter lives 100 kilometres away, yet I was woken by her at 3am this morning creeping into my bed to tell me about her night. It seemed to involve a new hot crush, an old hot crush. who is apparently so hot he's making it hard for her to get over him, a popcorn party and a gang fight that involved knives.
She's gone home again now. Thats after laying around all morning on various beds and lounges (and I believe the toilet floor for a while), saying that it must be a stomach bug not a hangover. Althoug I did hear her mumble - I'm never drinking again. I wonder how many times that sentence has been said since the dawn of alcohol.
These photos came via email this morning. I'm wondering if it might be Flamingo at western plains zoo.
Who's going to change the tyre?
Thats what I'm suffering from.
Sick of everone I deal with thinking what they do is more important than what I want to do.
Lets take my daughters for example. Please, someone take them.
Lizzie. Sigh. I drive her to school in the mornings. I leave the house at 8.48am. Have for years. But lately she's decided to stroll out at 9am. When I say to her I really need to be gone by 8.48 she rolls her eyes and said whats it matter, that I'll just have ten minutes less to sit around and read a book in the afternoon. And I felt like going around and grabbing her ponytail and dragging her on to the footpath and giving her a good kicking. And telling her that I've spent the last twenty years raising children, working, keeping a marriage going and if I want to read a god damn book at lunch time I will.
And Kimba. Sigh. She's home at the moment and she's sick. And she storms around the house because she can't sleep so why should anyone else. She came into my bedroom at 1am the other night and whined about how sick she was and then yelled at me that I didn't care. Well, no, I don't actually because its 1am and anyway she'd been to the doctor and she was on antibiotics and painkillers and what else the hell was I meant to do about it. I mean I know she does have tonsilitis, pharyngytis, croup and bronchitis, but she's 20 for christs sake. Ok, that looks bad, but if she was well enough to go to the pub yesterday afternoon, how was I meant to know she meant it when she said she needed to go to the hospital last night.
And my husband. Who seems to forget everything I tell him within ten minutes. He's doing it at such an alarming rate that I'm starting to think he has early onset alzheimers. And thats just not going to work for me. I'll have to poison him or something. But really, it makes me feel as if everything I say must be as boring as bat shit. And at least I pretend to listen to his boring stories which are as boring as bat shit. Usually about fan motors, compressors, cars or football.
So yesterday I was down the shops and pissed off at everyone so I bought three books. And they weren't even on sale. Then I went to the bottle shop and bought a bottle of wine purely because I liked the label. Anything purple is like a magnet for me. And it was expensive but I thought, stuff it, they can all have toasted sandwiches for two weeks to cover the cost. I love that label and it didn't taste bad either.
I have to wonder whats going on in the bathroom overnight, when I wake in the morning to find this setup on the handbasin.
Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a cask of wine, trying to shake out that last drop?
My mother tells me life is too short to drink cask wine, but she's 74, so her life may be shorter than mine and she can afford to say that sort of thing.
So yes, I have found myself shaking that cask, going for the last drop. And before you know it, you've ripped the bladder out of the box.
Then do you find yourself squeezing the bladder, scrunching it up, forcing every precious drop towards the tap. Like this. And I wasn't squeezing the wine onto my tomatoes by the way.
Then you can still hear a bit shaking around in there so you think - I know, I'll blow up the bladder to get that bit out.
And I was doing this the other night (while making my soup) and I thought - why am I doing this? Why have I been doing this for years?
Why don't I just get a pair of scissors, cut the corner and tip it into my glass? Simple yet brilliant.
I saw this picture the other day and thought - Holy Crap - I really have to give up drinking.
Then I forgot all about her. I was having a wine later that night and thought to my self - hmm, hang on, there was some reason why I wasn't going to drink today. Anyway I don't wear blue eyeshadow so I'll never look that bad.
I made these cute coasters last week. Old magazine covers from twenties and thirties used here. I don't even want to talk about that little girl with the chooks. I spent a fair while extracting her from her background and just as I finished the computer did that extremely sucky thing where it says
windows has encountered a problem - this programme must close
And you're screaming NOOOOO and tapping keys. But it's all in vain. It closes. So I had to do her again.
The girl Kimba lives with, who shall be known as Riley, works as a barmaid to help pay her way through Uni. So on Sunday night the woman who owns the pub said to Kimba - 'why don't you come in to work with Riley and you can watch and learn and she can show you what goes on. A bit of work experience'. So Kimba said ok. Because with a bit of experience you can always pick up bar work.
So they're about two hours into the six hour shift when Riley starts feeling unwell. Then really unwell. And they decide she should go to hospital. So the guy in charge drives her to hospital. Which leaves Kimba in charge. So it's gone from work experience to running the pub. Go Kimba.
She told me that it's a good thing she's spent so much time in pubs over the last twelve months. Because she knew what someone wanted if they ordered a JD, or a schooner, or a middie. They seem to be the most popular sunday night drinks.
I have something purple. I don't know what the purple day is though and the link wouldn't work. But purple has always been my favourite colour so I'm there. Supporting it. I know it looks pink. But its purple.
Yesterday I had the taste for some chips. Or crisps, or whatever you call them wherever you live. Salty, crunchy, fatty goodness in a packet. But I wanted in particular the french fries. Or as I call them, straws.
So, I was at the bottle shop (the bottlo) and I put my bottle of wine on the counter and said to the young guy working there
Do you have any straws?
And he kind of looked flustered and went
Oh, yeah, sure
And started searching under the counter.
No, no, I said. Chips, in a pack, french fries.
Ooooh, he said, laughing in a nervous/relieved way. I thought you wanted a straw to drink your wine.
He was very polite about it though.
It hasn't come to that yet. Or rather come to that again. Because who can't remember sitting in a carpark somewhere trying to push a cork into a bottle of wine with some tool you found in the boot of the car so you could pass a bottle around.
The government is contributing to my alcohol problem.
Here in australia we have a huge drinking culture. Everyone drinks. Matter of fact, I'm drinking now. And we are a nation of binge drinkers.
And apparently no one likes a drink more than teenage girls. Once you hit 13, its game on. They love all those premixed bottles of brilliant coloured grog that we now call alcopops. Do you know that the manufacturers of those bottles even made them smaller so they were a more comfortable fit for a girls hand. I wish they'd been around when I was 13. Would've saved me from the nasty rubbish I had to drink.
So the government decided something must be done, so they have raised the tax on alcopops. They figure if they make them expensive enough, teenagers won't be able to afford them. And this is where my problem arises.
I'm normally a wine drinker. Or a vodka drinker. Hmm, vodka, lime and soda. However on Fridays I buy myself a 375ml bottle of premix smirnoff black. It's a treat. But when I went to buy it last week, due to the new tax, that one drink of premix was going to cost me $6. So I look around and see that for a couple of extra dollars I can buy a whole bottle of wine. So thats what I did. So instead of my one drink, I now have four. And thats just my treat.
So why isn't it just going to be the same for teenagers. They'll think, well hell, I can buy a cask of wine for not much more than one 375ml bottle of alcopop. Kids aren't stupid. They always find a way around things.
And so another 16th birthday party comes to pass.
This was another of Lizzies friends - who lives across the road actually. Actually they live in the house that the old lady lived in of The Missing Cat/Police story.
So, Mum says to sweet 16 -
You can invite 30 people.
Sweet 16 thinks that what Mum really means is - You can invite 100 people. And off she goes to print out the invitations. Sweet 16's friend thinks what Mum means is - Hey, why don't you post it on My Space and make it open house.
Mum gets wind of these plans and decides the party is off altogether.
Daz and I were going out that night, so out we went. A while later we get a phone call from Kimba saying -
Our house is out of control. It is full of kids, there's alcohol in our fridge and the police are parked out the front. Oh yeah, and there's some 18 year old girl who's going to come around and bash someone up.
Hmmm, I say to Daz, do you think we should go home?
I'd just like to point out here that the police car was totally unrelated and I didn't lie to them at all. They just happened to be driving by and pulled over a guy on his pushbike who wasn't wearing a helmet. Of course if they knew what a den of eniquity it was just a few metres away they could've had a field day.
Lizzie rings me and tells me that yes some of her friends are there, not a house full, just that teenagers are big these days and they take up a lot of room. And yes there was alcohol in the fridge because as usual some parents had supplied alcopops to their kids to take to the 16th party. Which they musn't have mentioned to the parents was called off.
As for the 18 year old basher, I'm not sure what that was about. What I do know though was that 10 kids (including sweet 16) had given her $40 each to buy them alcohol. So she had $400 worth of grog that she kept in the end as there was no party and she's a nasty bitch I guess and didn't give them the grog anyway. And I guess they couldn't go running to Mum and Dad and dob on her.
$40 worth of alcohol is a fair slug for a small 16 year old girl. What happened to a $2 bottle of passion wine. Or blackberry nip. That was classy.
Show us a smile.
Nothing like a bit of alcohol to bring out the smiles. Well for the first few hours anyway, then it usually ends in tears for someone. Kimba on the right with some of her buddies.
