More First World Problems
Apr. 21st, 2014 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeGoing back to work after holidays is always a trying experience, but coming back after four months away was particularly traumatic. Stinky was appalled to realise that she'd lost what little immunity that she'd built up against the army of dust mites at her ancient working establishment. Worse, the ranga that colonised her (previously spotless) desk was playing host to a dust party, which made it harder to evict.
Stinky finally won, and got to sort out what is left behind when you change staff over - the most fun was finding a roll and a bunch of work in a storeroom, under a pile of other stuff. It's like an Easter egg hunt, only with correction, boo! The students were very happy to see us back, but Stinky's Literacy class took a little longer to catch on that she wasn't coming back to their class in the new year. 'So we had that bloke term 4,' 'Yep!' 'Now we've got that pregnant lady, who's leaving at the end of term...' 'Yep!' 'So then we get you back next term, right?' 'Nope, sorry!' It's nice to feel appreciated, it's just a shame they don't figure it out until too late!
Pye would like to relate stories of back to school joy, but you wouldn't be able to hear her through the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The other difficult thing about returning to reality was the array of little things, like getting winter coats dry cleaned while it's 40 degrees and realising at the gym that the reason your sneakers are dirty is because the sand from the Sahara desert isn't coming out...and you're in G-Town.
It wasn't all bad, though! Pye was nice enough to come and pick Stinky up one night after a particularly long meeting. There was a deluge of biblical proportions going on, so we nicely offered to give a colleague a lift to her car (no staff parking means that all day car parks are a precious thing and are a ten minute walk away). It was an unremarkable act, except for the fact that the lady is the subject of one of Camel's favourite stories.
See, the lady (let's call her April) is a Chinese teacher. Last year, schools being the generous places they are, a spot of gastro was going around. April stops by Stinky's desk one morning.
'Are you feeling okay?' she asks.
'Aww,' Stinky thinks, 'She's noticed I was away, what a nice lady!'
'Yeah,' April continues, 'I driving to school this morning... and I poo my pants!'
'Something was said,' thinks Stinky, 'It can't possibly be what I thought I heard...no, wait, she's said it again...'
'Yeah, I okay now, I go home and have shower, but I poo my pants!'
We convinced her that she needed to go home to not share it further (and be closer to the toilet), but now, if you want Camel to almost poo his pants laughing, you just have to tell that story. Not to mention the fact that some of his friends now say 'I poo my pants!', because he's shared the poo-love!
So we're back in the car, the rain is pelting down and other cars are sending waves of water over Pye's little car...and she's figuring out that she's got a celebrity in the car. Stinky would almost feel sorry for April, except for the next day, where April (figuring that Pye didn't look older than Stinky) said 'Ooh, you two are so similar! She like a younger version of you!'
So long story short, April's dead now.
On a less homicidal note, Stinky ran into a five year old (the carer of this zombie doll) at the supermarket.
Bless her, the little demon-master wouldn't remember Stinky's real name, but really likes to howl 'Hello Stinky!' She also attached herself quite firmly to Stinky's leg, and was quite content to let her mum leave her there. The chap working in the veggie section couldn't fill us in on what kind of specials they had on white children, which just goes to show the sad decline in Aussie customer service.
Australia Post was kind enough to deliver the last of our overseas boxes to Somers a few days before we headed down for Chuckles' birthday, which mean we were finally able to find things like Christmas presents and D'admiral birthday presents. There was also D'admiral and Chuckles' fortieth wedding anniversary, so amidst jokes about getting less time for murder, we gave them some forty year old whiskey.
We were really after something port-like, but had no luck on that hunt. Stinky was phoning around and a chap suggested that we'd have more luck with two bottles of something twenty years old. 'I'll just check the database from 1994...' Stinky stopped herself from saying 'No, I said twenty years!' just in the knickers of time. *coff*
Chuckles learned an important lesson, which was 'don't ask Stinky if she's able to crochet a tea cosy unless you want to have to keep a dodgy tea cosy'.
Pye pointed out the Rules of the Inn that we'd brought back from Portsmouth and, sure enough, no flea-bitten tramps were allowed. So that was us gone, then.
To try and redeem our flea-bitten status, we took D'admiral and Chuckles to lunch at Paringa Estate.
Chuckles liked her new mildly intelligent phone (the poor stupid phone had to go to the place where non-smart phones go - it's a farm somewhere, we've heard) and it all would have been great if we hadn't let Moose pick the card (if we ever find out who let him on the internet , there'll be hell to pay!).
We had to walk things off afterwards, but Coolart was very obliging, and we couldn't even lose Chuckles in her lovely new hat...
The next day we all headed to meet wee Alfie (and Adrian and Kathryn) who were over from England. We are no longer the only Australian-contingent to have met him! He floored the Cabin Girl and Powder Monkey and was very cute.
Then it was back to work again. We've really got into the swing of this work thing, because we find the urge to correct things. One of the infuriating things about the location of the Spinstar Pad is the sheer volume of real estate agents flinging themselves at the door trying to sell our house for us. One enterprising chap decided to differentiate himself from the pack, not by sticking a card in the door that says 'Please call me' (LOL NO), but by sending a letter to potential clients. It was so awful we had to scribble all over it.
Then we felt compelled to send it back - if you're going to bombard us with unsoliciated offers, you can at least spell 'intention' properly and write in complete sentences. Perhaps we've both been teaching VCAL too long, but we have no patience for that sort of thing.
Fast forward a month and the dear chap tried again.
The question now is do we put a gold star on it and send it back saying A+ for effort and for taking on constructive criticism?
In the middle of pedantry and fun, we had another birthday. We got to celebrate in lots of different ways over the whole weekend, from seeing the Veronica Mars movie, to teppanyaki, to BBQ fun.
D'admiral and Chuckles took us out for lunch in G-Town's new teppanyaki place. It was great, but we soon realised why we got an odd look for booking when we were the only people there (there were a few people downstairs when we rolled out, so it was nice to think that they didn't open just for us).
We're pretty sure we didn't have enough to drink to hallucinate this on the way home, so what the hell was going on?
D'admiral and Chuckles pandered to Stinky's caculent fetish...
... as well as rounding out the baby Webber Andru and Robyn gave us for Christmas/birthday, with a gas bottle, stand and some tools. We put them together the only way we know how...
...and hoped for some better BBQ weather the next day.
Fortunately Sunday behaved itself. We were delighted that we had the chance to try out the new gear, as well as an apron we picked up in Italy. Again, we used the barbeque the best way we knew to...
It got the Cabin Girl saying some things that we promised we wouldn't put on the internet, but will try very hard to remember for when someone turns 21. Speaking of things that will come out then, there was the time she wandered around the corner and found the clothesline...
The Powder Monkey, on the other hand, not having any of that shit, and is prepared to defend his dignity by force if necessary.
Dignity only lasted so long, but it was fun while it lasted.
Speaking of dignity, Pye busted D'admiral fixing a poster in the bathroom. It should read ' A young lady, clever, with ample income...' Someone made an adjustment, which to be fair is both accurate and hilarious.
Being so mature now, Pye was allowed to go on camp with the oldest possible year level and found that Year 12 Retreat is a completely different kettle of fish compared with Year 7 camp (who would have guessed it?). Her maturity was then tested when her school's version of Moose (a wolf named Lil Iggy) was waiting in her room to come on the Italy trip. Somehow he ended up in her bed - not that she noticed until morning, when she awoke to realise she was holding his little paw. It was very confusing for everyone.
In Spinstar Pad related news, the Ghost Of Nanna Who Died In Stinky's Room decided to punishing Stinky while Pye gallivanted around Italy with a bunch of students. First, one of the curtains in the lounge room developed two big tears (sure, it's sheer and gets a lot of light and stuff like this happens over time, but why did Ghost Of Nanna choose to do it when she did? And why to one of the extra-long custom-made curtains, Ghost Of Nanna, I mean REALLY). Then she overheard Stinky organising to have the halogen downlights replaced by LEDs and within an hour of the plans being finalised for twelve weeks down the track (aka, next holidays), she killed one of the downlights in the kitchen. The kitchen with a 14 foot ceiling, so even if Stinky was inclined to replace it (she's not), she couldn't reach anyway. How many Stinkenpahs does it take to change a light bulb? NONE, THEY CAN'T REACH ANY OF THE BASTARDS. Thanks again, Ghost Of Nanna.
Ghost Of Nanna hasn't figured out how to sabotage the new fence down the side, though. The owner ditched the rude, loud, renting bogans and moved his son in to fix the place up. They painted it, covered up the worst weatherboards and put up a bigger fence.
The bigger fence is a relief, because the rude, loud bogans took the curtains with them when they left and it's quite awkward when one looks out one's kitchen window and makes eye contact with the lad next door who probably isn't naked, but he's certainly not wearing a top. We're a bit worried about them, though, because there's at least five in there, all in their late teens and they had a housewarming the other day...and we didn't hear a sound. Not sure they're doing it right, quite frankly...
Speaking of not doing it right, wee Pye has hung around while wee Stinky went gallivanting in Italy with big Pye and Moose. We worry how wee Pye is coping with not being allowed to drink.
Luckily it was big Pye, not wee Pye, who took a pattern Davros gave us for Christmas and a ball of yarn we bought in Leeds and turned it into a knitted gargoyle. If we're being honest (and we are!), it was a horrible pattern, with unclear instructions and a lot of guess work that would have defeated us if we were less tenacious (it was a team effort in the end because sewing him together took all of Stinky's mad sewing skillz). So on his Ravelry page we might have used phrases like We hates him and the directions that are sent from gargoyle-hell to make life difficult. To be fair, we also said that we succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and we now quite like him. That last bit was important, because one of the old dears from gargoyle-hell who wrote the pattern also happens to be on Ravelry...and keeping an eye out for people who have made her creation, so she can send them messages! Would we have been less ranty if we'd known? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.
By this point it was holidays again, with poor martyr Pye still in Italy and Stinky spending half of them fixing things that Ghost Of Nanna broke and arranging for people to come and break other things down the track. Stinky is very good at taking care of things - just ask the neighbours! See, the west side neighbours went to Tassie for a bit of a holiday, leaving Stinky to keep an eye on the place. Stinky made sure that they knew she was taking very good care of everything.
Turns out that the nice lady from next door had been worried that she'd left the coffee maker on, and the smoke coming from the ceiling was literally too close to home, heh. Don't know what she made of the velociraptors...
We continued our tradition of confusing people over the holidays - Stinky got petrol from a nice chap who made a few confusing comments about hoping it was the right pump this time...turns out it was a former student of Pye's who got so into a conversation with her that he rang up the wrong bowser. Poor lad was just keeping the conversation going with the wrong person.
Before you could say 'Where are my pants' it was Easter. We braved the wet roads to trundle down to Somers, where we did things like 'running on the beach trying not to get wet' (it didn't' work).
We ended up at Coolart and ...things... happened.
Pye got to keep being a food bully with the wee crew, issuing commands like, 'You can't have another egg until you finish your smoked salmon. Now eat your bok choy'. We learned that going to Mornington on Easter Saturday was a bad move (everyone else in Victoria seemed to be there, too), but that the Emu Plains Market has some dang fine jewellery. And the kids learned (or will learn one day) that having an aunt with mad Photoshop skills (and an evil Grandfather who encourages that kind of stuff) means that they get actual photographic evidence of the Easter Bunny. It's poor quality (as these photos have to be), but you can just make out a giant bunny outside the door. They were very excited but not at all concerned by the fact that the bunny was six feet tall! EXCUSE ME I’M SORRY, BUT IF A FRICKEN GIANT BUNNY IS OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, I’M CALLING THE COPS AND WISHING THAT AUSTRALIANS STILL GOT TO KEEP BIG GUNS.
Stinky finally won, and got to sort out what is left behind when you change staff over - the most fun was finding a roll and a bunch of work in a storeroom, under a pile of other stuff. It's like an Easter egg hunt, only with correction, boo! The students were very happy to see us back, but Stinky's Literacy class took a little longer to catch on that she wasn't coming back to their class in the new year. 'So we had that bloke term 4,' 'Yep!' 'Now we've got that pregnant lady, who's leaving at the end of term...' 'Yep!' 'So then we get you back next term, right?' 'Nope, sorry!' It's nice to feel appreciated, it's just a shame they don't figure it out until too late!
Pye would like to relate stories of back to school joy, but you wouldn't be able to hear her through the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The other difficult thing about returning to reality was the array of little things, like getting winter coats dry cleaned while it's 40 degrees and realising at the gym that the reason your sneakers are dirty is because the sand from the Sahara desert isn't coming out...and you're in G-Town.
It wasn't all bad, though! Pye was nice enough to come and pick Stinky up one night after a particularly long meeting. There was a deluge of biblical proportions going on, so we nicely offered to give a colleague a lift to her car (no staff parking means that all day car parks are a precious thing and are a ten minute walk away). It was an unremarkable act, except for the fact that the lady is the subject of one of Camel's favourite stories.
See, the lady (let's call her April) is a Chinese teacher. Last year, schools being the generous places they are, a spot of gastro was going around. April stops by Stinky's desk one morning.
'Are you feeling okay?' she asks.
'Aww,' Stinky thinks, 'She's noticed I was away, what a nice lady!'
'Yeah,' April continues, 'I driving to school this morning... and I poo my pants!'
'Something was said,' thinks Stinky, 'It can't possibly be what I thought I heard...no, wait, she's said it again...'
'Yeah, I okay now, I go home and have shower, but I poo my pants!'
We convinced her that she needed to go home to not share it further (and be closer to the toilet), but now, if you want Camel to almost poo his pants laughing, you just have to tell that story. Not to mention the fact that some of his friends now say 'I poo my pants!', because he's shared the poo-love!
So we're back in the car, the rain is pelting down and other cars are sending waves of water over Pye's little car...and she's figuring out that she's got a celebrity in the car. Stinky would almost feel sorry for April, except for the next day, where April (figuring that Pye didn't look older than Stinky) said 'Ooh, you two are so similar! She like a younger version of you!'
So long story short, April's dead now.
On a less homicidal note, Stinky ran into a five year old (the carer of this zombie doll) at the supermarket.
Bless her, the little demon-master wouldn't remember Stinky's real name, but really likes to howl 'Hello Stinky!' She also attached herself quite firmly to Stinky's leg, and was quite content to let her mum leave her there. The chap working in the veggie section couldn't fill us in on what kind of specials they had on white children, which just goes to show the sad decline in Aussie customer service.
Australia Post was kind enough to deliver the last of our overseas boxes to Somers a few days before we headed down for Chuckles' birthday, which mean we were finally able to find things like Christmas presents and D'admiral birthday presents. There was also D'admiral and Chuckles' fortieth wedding anniversary, so amidst jokes about getting less time for murder, we gave them some forty year old whiskey.
We were really after something port-like, but had no luck on that hunt. Stinky was phoning around and a chap suggested that we'd have more luck with two bottles of something twenty years old. 'I'll just check the database from 1994...' Stinky stopped herself from saying 'No, I said twenty years!' just in the knickers of time. *coff*
Chuckles learned an important lesson, which was 'don't ask Stinky if she's able to crochet a tea cosy unless you want to have to keep a dodgy tea cosy'.
Pye pointed out the Rules of the Inn that we'd brought back from Portsmouth and, sure enough, no flea-bitten tramps were allowed. So that was us gone, then.
To try and redeem our flea-bitten status, we took D'admiral and Chuckles to lunch at Paringa Estate.
Chuckles liked her new mildly intelligent phone (the poor stupid phone had to go to the place where non-smart phones go - it's a farm somewhere, we've heard) and it all would have been great if we hadn't let Moose pick the card (if we ever find out who let him on the internet , there'll be hell to pay!).
We had to walk things off afterwards, but Coolart was very obliging, and we couldn't even lose Chuckles in her lovely new hat...
The next day we all headed to meet wee Alfie (and Adrian and Kathryn) who were over from England. We are no longer the only Australian-contingent to have met him! He floored the Cabin Girl and Powder Monkey and was very cute.
Then it was back to work again. We've really got into the swing of this work thing, because we find the urge to correct things. One of the infuriating things about the location of the Spinstar Pad is the sheer volume of real estate agents flinging themselves at the door trying to sell our house for us. One enterprising chap decided to differentiate himself from the pack, not by sticking a card in the door that says 'Please call me' (LOL NO), but by sending a letter to potential clients. It was so awful we had to scribble all over it.
Then we felt compelled to send it back - if you're going to bombard us with unsoliciated offers, you can at least spell 'intention' properly and write in complete sentences. Perhaps we've both been teaching VCAL too long, but we have no patience for that sort of thing.
Fast forward a month and the dear chap tried again.
The question now is do we put a gold star on it and send it back saying A+ for effort and for taking on constructive criticism?
In the middle of pedantry and fun, we had another birthday. We got to celebrate in lots of different ways over the whole weekend, from seeing the Veronica Mars movie, to teppanyaki, to BBQ fun.
D'admiral and Chuckles took us out for lunch in G-Town's new teppanyaki place. It was great, but we soon realised why we got an odd look for booking when we were the only people there (there were a few people downstairs when we rolled out, so it was nice to think that they didn't open just for us).
We're pretty sure we didn't have enough to drink to hallucinate this on the way home, so what the hell was going on?
D'admiral and Chuckles pandered to Stinky's caculent fetish...
... as well as rounding out the baby Webber Andru and Robyn gave us for Christmas/birthday, with a gas bottle, stand and some tools. We put them together the only way we know how...
...and hoped for some better BBQ weather the next day.
Fortunately Sunday behaved itself. We were delighted that we had the chance to try out the new gear, as well as an apron we picked up in Italy. Again, we used the barbeque the best way we knew to...
It got the Cabin Girl saying some things that we promised we wouldn't put on the internet, but will try very hard to remember for when someone turns 21. Speaking of things that will come out then, there was the time she wandered around the corner and found the clothesline...
The Powder Monkey, on the other hand, not having any of that shit, and is prepared to defend his dignity by force if necessary.
Dignity only lasted so long, but it was fun while it lasted.
Speaking of dignity, Pye busted D'admiral fixing a poster in the bathroom. It should read ' A young lady, clever, with ample income...' Someone made an adjustment, which to be fair is both accurate and hilarious.
Being so mature now, Pye was allowed to go on camp with the oldest possible year level and found that Year 12 Retreat is a completely different kettle of fish compared with Year 7 camp (who would have guessed it?). Her maturity was then tested when her school's version of Moose (a wolf named Lil Iggy) was waiting in her room to come on the Italy trip. Somehow he ended up in her bed - not that she noticed until morning, when she awoke to realise she was holding his little paw. It was very confusing for everyone.
In Spinstar Pad related news, the Ghost Of Nanna Who Died In Stinky's Room decided to punishing Stinky while Pye gallivanted around Italy with a bunch of students. First, one of the curtains in the lounge room developed two big tears (sure, it's sheer and gets a lot of light and stuff like this happens over time, but why did Ghost Of Nanna choose to do it when she did? And why to one of the extra-long custom-made curtains, Ghost Of Nanna, I mean REALLY). Then she overheard Stinky organising to have the halogen downlights replaced by LEDs and within an hour of the plans being finalised for twelve weeks down the track (aka, next holidays), she killed one of the downlights in the kitchen. The kitchen with a 14 foot ceiling, so even if Stinky was inclined to replace it (she's not), she couldn't reach anyway. How many Stinkenpahs does it take to change a light bulb? NONE, THEY CAN'T REACH ANY OF THE BASTARDS. Thanks again, Ghost Of Nanna.
Ghost Of Nanna hasn't figured out how to sabotage the new fence down the side, though. The owner ditched the rude, loud, renting bogans and moved his son in to fix the place up. They painted it, covered up the worst weatherboards and put up a bigger fence.
The bigger fence is a relief, because the rude, loud bogans took the curtains with them when they left and it's quite awkward when one looks out one's kitchen window and makes eye contact with the lad next door who probably isn't naked, but he's certainly not wearing a top. We're a bit worried about them, though, because there's at least five in there, all in their late teens and they had a housewarming the other day...and we didn't hear a sound. Not sure they're doing it right, quite frankly...
Speaking of not doing it right, wee Pye has hung around while wee Stinky went gallivanting in Italy with big Pye and Moose. We worry how wee Pye is coping with not being allowed to drink.
Luckily it was big Pye, not wee Pye, who took a pattern Davros gave us for Christmas and a ball of yarn we bought in Leeds and turned it into a knitted gargoyle. If we're being honest (and we are!), it was a horrible pattern, with unclear instructions and a lot of guess work that would have defeated us if we were less tenacious (it was a team effort in the end because sewing him together took all of Stinky's mad sewing skillz). So on his Ravelry page we might have used phrases like We hates him and the directions that are sent from gargoyle-hell to make life difficult. To be fair, we also said that we succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and we now quite like him. That last bit was important, because one of the old dears from gargoyle-hell who wrote the pattern also happens to be on Ravelry...and keeping an eye out for people who have made her creation, so she can send them messages! Would we have been less ranty if we'd known? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.
By this point it was holidays again, with poor martyr Pye still in Italy and Stinky spending half of them fixing things that Ghost Of Nanna broke and arranging for people to come and break other things down the track. Stinky is very good at taking care of things - just ask the neighbours! See, the west side neighbours went to Tassie for a bit of a holiday, leaving Stinky to keep an eye on the place. Stinky made sure that they knew she was taking very good care of everything.
Turns out that the nice lady from next door had been worried that she'd left the coffee maker on, and the smoke coming from the ceiling was literally too close to home, heh. Don't know what she made of the velociraptors...
We continued our tradition of confusing people over the holidays - Stinky got petrol from a nice chap who made a few confusing comments about hoping it was the right pump this time...turns out it was a former student of Pye's who got so into a conversation with her that he rang up the wrong bowser. Poor lad was just keeping the conversation going with the wrong person.
Before you could say 'Where are my pants' it was Easter. We braved the wet roads to trundle down to Somers, where we did things like 'running on the beach trying not to get wet' (it didn't' work).
We ended up at Coolart and ...things... happened.
Pye got to keep being a food bully with the wee crew, issuing commands like, 'You can't have another egg until you finish your smoked salmon. Now eat your bok choy'. We learned that going to Mornington on Easter Saturday was a bad move (everyone else in Victoria seemed to be there, too), but that the Emu Plains Market has some dang fine jewellery. And the kids learned (or will learn one day) that having an aunt with mad Photoshop skills (and an evil Grandfather who encourages that kind of stuff) means that they get actual photographic evidence of the Easter Bunny. It's poor quality (as these photos have to be), but you can just make out a giant bunny outside the door. They were very excited but not at all concerned by the fact that the bunny was six feet tall! EXCUSE ME I’M SORRY, BUT IF A FRICKEN GIANT BUNNY IS OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, I’M CALLING THE COPS AND WISHING THAT AUSTRALIANS STILL GOT TO KEEP BIG GUNS.
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Date: 2014-04-21 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-21 10:56 am (UTC)