Get This Dumpster-Fire of a Year Over With
Jan. 3rd, 2021 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeIn the second week of Term 4, those of us in regional Victoria were finally allowed back to into schools to discover how feral kids go when everything is hard and nothing means anything
Much as we had enjoyed sleeping in as late as possible and not having to waste time on makeup, it was nice to be back in person (especially when it came to somehow managing to get the Year 12s ready for an oral exam with just a week of face-to-face). I mean, yeah, Pye had to go back to doing yard duty, but that’s where the surprises happen! She showed up one day to find a herd of Year 10 boys milling eagerly outside a classroom, looking like they were up to some sort of shenanigans. What were the rascals up to? They’d spotted a giant emperor gum moth! (Year 9 featured in photo for scale)
We didn’t think that they wanted to hurt the fuzzy princess, but they almost definitely wanted to get her on a stick, presumably to chase people with her. But why do that when you could put a collar on her and call her a dog LOOK HOW FURRY SHE IS
Please notice how well the Year 9 girl is wearing her mask – apparently it is a difficult thing to do! Entirely too many people (including adults ffs) think that hanging your damn nose out of your mask is okay.
One of the good things about being back was the incidentally things you find while just being around other people. For example, a kid was filling in a form where she had to list the primary schools she’d attended, including one in Bendigo. Pye looked it up, only to discover that there’s been a place called “Jackass Flats” all this time and WE NEVER KNEW!
Turns out that Jackass is a derogatory term for kookaburras (in the tradition of ‘spangled drongo’, ‘tip turkey’, ‘little idiots’), and it’s just amazing to learn that kookaburras are basically called ‘YOU ARSEHOLES’, bless. It’s still nicer than what Stinky calls magpies. In other news, Moose got a new friend, its name is Fuckhead. He is supportive of Moose and his hobbies.
Speaking of arsehole birds, Stinky crocheted a wee version of Brian, the thuggish raven who lives at Pye’s school. He’s the leader of a gang of troublemakers – if someone gets into your lunchbox while you’re not looking, it’s going to be Brian. If a raven is going to uncharacteristically swoop someone, it’ll be Brian (he also threw a gumnut at Donna one time). Got kids doing a stressful assessment task? Brian will get his crew to come and sit on the roof and scream like idiots. He really is a piece of shit. One time, there was a Valedictory mass for Year 12s in the gym, and the priest had just finished talking about how the Lord provides (“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”). The words were barely out of his mouth before Brian was stamping up and down on the roof shouting “FARKKKKK!!!” like an absolute arsehole, because oh yea that be about him. Alas, the little yarn version of him was no better behaved :(
Everyone has a Brian story, even if they don’t know it. Pye and her office-mates were being evicted from their office which was being converted into a science lab, and she made a joke to the builders about how they’d be looking forward to finding dead rats inside the walls. The builder was all like, “Ha, forget rats – it’s the birds around here you’ve got to be careful of!!” He told a tale of how they were going to have a barbeque and they put all the stuff in the shed but didn’t shut the door so when they came back, Brian was tail-feathers deep into the snags, eggs and bacon. Donna and Pye nodded sagely and said “Yes, that’s Brian – you brought that on yourselves #rookie mistake.” But there was also some more! After Brian left they thought it was all over, but then in the dim corner they saw the possum, who was all like, “You are all noobs om nom nom nom!” Silly people are silly!
But speaking of foolishness and birds, this year’s crop of fledglings is definitely stupider than in the past. One morning Stinky watched a currawong run around the backyard, jump on a pot plant, then pitch over sideways and fall into a cactus. Then later an adolescent blackbird saw her, tried to bugger off around the corner (on foot), stacked and rolled a few times before diving under the bushes. We don’t even know what their excuse is!). Still, even those morons were doing better that this albatross who washed up on D’admiral and Chuckles’ beach.
D’admiral said that the local school camp had collected it and planned to send it to a taxidermist. We were surprised, because surely they know that it’s bad luck??? D’admiral said they do know, but they just said “Stuff it.” (bah dum *tish*)
When there’s not a lot going on, when something does happen, you find yourself sharing it more than when stuff happens all the time. Like, for instance, this terrible, awful story that happened to one of our favourite kids who graduated last year (we call her Gila). Her mum works at the school, so we still get updates about her adventure. This one is gross, so this is your warning to skip the rest of the paragraph if you’re likely to get upset. Gila was driving to work when a bulldog ran onto the road and she almost hit it. Being a good person, she pulled over and grabbed his collar so that he couldn’t try again with the next car that happened along. Another woman also pulled over, and she went to knock on a nearby door to see if they knew the owner. While she was waiting, Gila gave the doggo a bit of a rub on the tummy (as you do)…. and it jizzed all over her.
Apparently it was a truly staggering amount and poor Gila was deeply traumatised (not least because she was already late for work and couldn’t go home to get changed). They did find the foul beast’s owner, but let this be a lesson that no good deed goes unpunished.
We were pretty traumatised just by hearing about it, and another work mate tried to get us back to better ground by talking about a game that she and her brothers used to play when they were young. The rules were pretty simple – they had a length of rope, one sibling was tied up by the others, said sibling then had the same length of time as it took to tie them up to escape the bond. This is clearly a very excellent game, but apparently after a while they felt the need to escalate, so as an added challenge they would tie you up and put you in a cupboard or something like that. Their parents seemed fairly unconcerned about the game, until one day their mother caught them emptying all the food out of the fridge so they could put the little brother in there. Turns out that it was a fridge too far – not because of the suffocation risk, but because “Do you kids have any idea how much all that food cost???” Lol.
Speaking of stories, check out the story that SBS Viceland was telling back in November.
This wee woman wit…the joy of pain alone – jeopardy!
Random coincidence struck again one morning, when Pye was getting out of her car at work one morning. A woman who’d just dropped of her kid pulled up and shouted “Nice to see you!!” Pye greeted her back, even though she had absolutely no idea who this lady was. The the woman was all, “Hey, great hair!!” and then drove away. That made Pye think that surely she must be someone who knows Stinky, but there’s no way that we can ever find out – Stinky is silly and doesn’t recognise her by this artist’s impression:
Tell you who could find her though – the Contact Traceys!
So that was pretty random, but still not as random as this…
*singing* Oooh and if you still love me, tie some asparagus to the old wire fence
Or this phone call that Stinky received!
Them: Hi Julia, it's Caroline
Me: Nope, sorry, I'm Caroline
Them: Who did I ring?
Me: Caroline.
Them: But I'm Caroline
Me: My sister is Julia...?
Them: *desperate to get off the phone now*
Me: You got the number wrong, but all the names right!
Them: Um ah yes we can pray for each other bye
What are the odds she’d get to mess with a random like that, eh?
When you’re having a year like 2020, sometimes you need friends who send you pictures of penguins walking The gif was an excellent balm for the soul, but even better was one of the comments. To wit:
Even though they look super wobbly penguins are one of the most stable animals on earth! They dominate the biped category, and they rival almost all quadruped animals in overall stability and ability to stand up to external forces.
They have pockets of fat that surround their internal organs, but those pockets are able to move like a pendulum inside of the penguin, keeping its center of gravity... well... centered. Those fat pockets are aptly named pendulemic sacks. If you had a pet penguin you could tip it up to 75 degrees in any direction and it would regain balance and stay on its feet if it wanted to.
The experiment is obviously hard to recreate because most penguins don’t just let you tip them over. If you find a penguin willing to cooperate it still might fall down because it didn’t feel like putting in the effort.
If you keep reading it starts to look like bullshit, but WHO CARES, WE WILL BELIEVE WHAT WE WANT and one day maybe we will find an agreeable penguin who feels like boinging back up after we have tipped it over. Stinky is putting in all the practice she can in anticipation of that magical day.
That penguin was hanging out in Spotlight, which is, of course, one of our favourite places to visit. They did let us down, though, when we popped in to buy gold leaf. See, Stinky wanted to elevate this stool that Chuckles had snagged on one of her many close-to-home adventures…
Foiled by bricks-and-mortar, we turned to the interwebs, and that’s how we discovered the provocatively-named, splendid product that is Rub and Buff. Yep, it comes in a little tube, and you can basically rub it onto anything you like (well, if you like wood, metal, plastic – that sort of thing) and BLAM, you’ve got gilt, baby! And not the Catholic kind. Ta da!!!
Look how it comes up on metal! Before:
After:
Pye became afraid to sit still, lest Stinky gild her too.
Thankfully, she was still safe when the 'Melbourne Ring of Steel' came down, and D’admiral and Chuckles sprinted straight out of the gate to visit their mothers. And what better way to go home from Bendigo than via G-town? We did pretty well, as they brought with them Grandmama’s mother’s mirror for us to look after (it’s approximately the same age as the Spinster Pad, which is also pretty cool).
… and we got likkered up and got Chuckles to plant a dinosaur!
We also WENT OUT for lunch, which was pretty special – take THAT, 2020 :)
Amongst all of that the school year took its damn sweet time in coming to a close. As usual, Pye’s kids got sent away earlier than Stinky’s, while Stinky was forced to do things like walk herds of Year 7s from Indented Head to St Leonards for a picnic. While she was ‘picnicking’, Stinky was tasked with testing all the staff on their ability to use an adrenaline auto-injector. Most staff were very good and cooperated meekly with the roleplay element of the test. Except for one lady…let’s call her Bella. Bella was hella into it and was determined to run the scenario like a full-blown emergency. She popped her ‘victim’ in the recovery position and, at the top of her very loud lungs, called for help and an ambulance, oblivious to how over a hundred Year 7s immediately froze. At least half of them shit themselves. The primary school teacher at the top of the hill started calling an ambulance. Bella was a bit disgruntled when her roleplay was interrupted and she had to be told a couple of times to say at the same volume that it wasn’t real and thank you for your attention.
Meanwhile, having worked with Chuckles, then Stinky, then Pye, Norma had decided that this was going to be the last year she was a teacher in a school (don’t use the ‘r’ word, she doesn’t even know how to retire). This is obviously very selfish of her, as it means we don’t get to have her any more, but apparently we’re supposed to just be okay with it (??). Donna and Pye shook down their school community for contributions to the SNF Fund (‘Set Norma Free Fund’) and were surprised and delighted to end up with $770 that they used to get her an RACV Resort voucher (she loves her golf, see). Was it a success? Well, when she saw it, she said “Fuck!” and then cried a little bit, so heck yeah it was a success!
The end of year ended up being a bit of a circle wank – every year they honor long-serving staff, and Pye was up for 20 years. So one minute Norma’s there talking about how rad Pye is, then then next minute Pye’s up there talking about what we’ll all lose when Norma goes, lol. Norma was also giggling up her sleeve because Stinky was a lil rascal who gif’d together all of Pye’s school photos since 2000…
Because Stinky is clever and skilled she had lined up the right eye in each picture (which is what makes the morph thing work, see) – but Pye’s work mates might have thought it was some sort of coincidence… which is probably some sort of metaphor for the world not recognising the effort it takes to make something look effortless, but idk.
The end of term means that it’s also December, which results in egregious happenings, like the Powder Monkey turning 13 years old. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his voice broke while we were in lockdown and he is now taller than us, and none of these things is acceptable.
His birthday is a week before Christmas, which is almost as ominous as what we see here…
Speaking of Christmas, one day Stinky was watching some special features from this year’s TV adaptation of Good Omens and discovered the existence of such a thing as a library chair. This was, of course, something we immediately needed to acquire, and that’s how we got our Christmas presents - Pye bought Stinky a chair, and Stinky bought Pye a ladder!
It was delightful to be able to catch up with people again, and when we went to Two Birds with Damo and Merrin, we also discovered the joys of ordering via an app. Need another beer? No need to get up on your feet and got to the bar like some sort of peasant! Just play with your phone! Feeling peckish and want some wings? Blam, get ya phone out! Brave new world, the new normal is fine!
Merrin was also awesome enough to snag us one of Aldi’s advent calendars – nothing says ‘joyeux noel’ like a wee lil bottle of wine every day up until Christmas!
Socialising was wonderful, but at quarter past eleven on the Friday before Christmas, Pye noticed someone who was definitely not Santa trying to come in our back door.
He staggered up the back steps to tug hopefully on the door three separate times, and was very much off his tits. He left on his own accord, and there was no sign of him when the cops showed up a while later. Their theory was that he was one of the many messy bitches from staff break up parties that they anticipated in their evening ahead – although probably most of them wouldn’t enter and leave the property over the back fence. Our investigation in the morning revealed a dinted compost list, so it’s actually kind of impressive that someone who struggled so much with three stairs was able to yeet himself over a fence twice (it’s also disappointing that the compost lid held, because it would have been fricken awesome for him to end up to his knees in rotting vegetable matter, with its giant slugs).
When the cops were round, Stinky got them to come and check the neighbour’s house – that one night, or all the days this year, was the first one where no one was home. We’d been deputised to feed lil Mo, the sloppy cavalier King Charles spaniel, and so earlier that day we’d noticed that their back door wasn’t locked. We have no idea if our drunken friend was going door to door, but we are happy to take the credit for saving all their stuff, even if poor Mo was dreadfully unsettled and upset by all the shenanigans (his dad said that when he got home, Mo was all, “OH MY GOD DAAAAAAAD WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE SHIT THAT’S BEEN GOING ON NEVER LEAVE ME AGAIN!!”)
So that was fun, but even better was the next day, when we got on a train (omg remember how to go on trains??) and went to Melbourne to catch up with the Belrog and Jenski. After a slap-up lunch in Fed Square, we made our way to the Botanical Gardens, in search of their fabled Arid Garden.
Ungh, look at all those pricks!
Please look at this caculent we saw!
But this is just way too many testicles, come on!!
The very next day, we found ourselves in another park – this time, in Bundoora, with Nonna and all her progeny. Whooo, party time!
Entirely too many of our relatives wanted to do the traditional cheek-kisses and cuddles, so if there turns out to be a third wave and you’re looking for super-spreaders, look no further than our family! Or… probably every other family in the park that day! It was pretty rad to see everyone, we should just have been blasting The Allusionist’s specially-designed Christmas song on repeat.
That officially meant that pre-Christmas was upon us, merrily decorated with Stinky’s handiwork and KK gift…
David and Margaret reviewed the year fairly…
…as we all hoped better for a better next stage next year.
>
Before you could say ‘It can’t be the end of the year, happened to November?’, it was Christmas. We fanged it down to Somers on Christmas Eve, with a delightfully uneventful drive, until the last bit, where we saw a tableau of ‘WTF happened there?’ On the left, there was a car with an empty trailer. On the right, there was a car that looked like this motorbike, but bigger and the double mattress was more wedged, leaving the car more with at least two wheels off the ground.
So, if you were wondering if you should drive around a mattress or fang it over the top of it, now you know! Fortunately, we made it to Somers unscathed, in time to see some rad birds. Look at this bird coming back to its parents to be fed, even though it’s big enough to fend for itself! If there’s a metaphor in there, I’m sure we can’t see it.
Before you could say ‘But how is it December already?’ it was Christmas Day. Moose made sure he gave the Boomerz an appropriate gift…
…and then shit just got weird
And thus we entered the perianal phase of the year, where time means nothing and the weather could be 16 or 36, nobody knows! Well, maybe this rock-band might…
…but they were too busy with jigsaws and the like.
One of the defining things of 2020 is the rise of the humble pie-maker. Once you have a pie maker, it changes your perspective on the world – everything is a potential pie-filler. Having watched the Powder Monkey carefully eat every part of an apple pie (except for the apples), Stinky thought, “I wonder if you could fill a pie with mini chocolate bars, how bad could it be?” Of course nobody would dream of validating such abad fantastic idea.
Who would have thought that it would turn out to look almost exactly like a meat pie and taste like pure sin?! All the cooking show awards can be given to Stinky now, please.
The Boxing Day sales (at least one of which proudly started on the 25th December) also validated Stinky’s data hoarding activities. She picked up a couple of 5TB hard drives, which (as per tradition) must be named and decorated. After much discussion, it was decided that Ghosts was a good inspiration for ladies’ names. One is named for Lady Fanny Button, and the other for Martha (the actress). Chuckles made sure that the decorations befitted the status of a Lady.
Moose really likes Fanny, but he’s not sure about Martha yet (he will have to get to know her, we suppose).
Before you could say ‘We get it, stop making single entendres, please!’ the dumpster fire that was 2020 drew to an end. Anyone who claimed to have 2020 vision couldn’t see what a year it would be (or they knew, and decided to keep quiet about it), but thankfully we all made it! A quiet new year is a good new year…
…and the house denizens lit up the joint.
Albert Brooks wins Best New Year Tweet.
I’m a very suspicious person. Last year I wished everyone a happy new year and look what happened. So this year, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you.
Here’s to seeing the new and interesting ways for 2021 to out-do 2020, bring it on, you potential piece of shit!
Much as we had enjoyed sleeping in as late as possible and not having to waste time on makeup, it was nice to be back in person (especially when it came to somehow managing to get the Year 12s ready for an oral exam with just a week of face-to-face). I mean, yeah, Pye had to go back to doing yard duty, but that’s where the surprises happen! She showed up one day to find a herd of Year 10 boys milling eagerly outside a classroom, looking like they were up to some sort of shenanigans. What were the rascals up to? They’d spotted a giant emperor gum moth! (Year 9 featured in photo for scale)
We didn’t think that they wanted to hurt the fuzzy princess, but they almost definitely wanted to get her on a stick, presumably to chase people with her. But why do that when you could put a collar on her and call her a dog LOOK HOW FURRY SHE IS
Please notice how well the Year 9 girl is wearing her mask – apparently it is a difficult thing to do! Entirely too many people (including adults ffs) think that hanging your damn nose out of your mask is okay.
One of the good things about being back was the incidentally things you find while just being around other people. For example, a kid was filling in a form where she had to list the primary schools she’d attended, including one in Bendigo. Pye looked it up, only to discover that there’s been a place called “Jackass Flats” all this time and WE NEVER KNEW!
Turns out that Jackass is a derogatory term for kookaburras (in the tradition of ‘spangled drongo’, ‘tip turkey’, ‘little idiots’), and it’s just amazing to learn that kookaburras are basically called ‘YOU ARSEHOLES’, bless. It’s still nicer than what Stinky calls magpies. In other news, Moose got a new friend, its name is Fuckhead. He is supportive of Moose and his hobbies.
Speaking of arsehole birds, Stinky crocheted a wee version of Brian, the thuggish raven who lives at Pye’s school. He’s the leader of a gang of troublemakers – if someone gets into your lunchbox while you’re not looking, it’s going to be Brian. If a raven is going to uncharacteristically swoop someone, it’ll be Brian (he also threw a gumnut at Donna one time). Got kids doing a stressful assessment task? Brian will get his crew to come and sit on the roof and scream like idiots. He really is a piece of shit. One time, there was a Valedictory mass for Year 12s in the gym, and the priest had just finished talking about how the Lord provides (“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”). The words were barely out of his mouth before Brian was stamping up and down on the roof shouting “FARKKKKK!!!” like an absolute arsehole, because oh yea that be about him. Alas, the little yarn version of him was no better behaved :(
Everyone has a Brian story, even if they don’t know it. Pye and her office-mates were being evicted from their office which was being converted into a science lab, and she made a joke to the builders about how they’d be looking forward to finding dead rats inside the walls. The builder was all like, “Ha, forget rats – it’s the birds around here you’ve got to be careful of!!” He told a tale of how they were going to have a barbeque and they put all the stuff in the shed but didn’t shut the door so when they came back, Brian was tail-feathers deep into the snags, eggs and bacon. Donna and Pye nodded sagely and said “Yes, that’s Brian – you brought that on yourselves #rookie mistake.” But there was also some more! After Brian left they thought it was all over, but then in the dim corner they saw the possum, who was all like, “You are all noobs om nom nom nom!” Silly people are silly!
But speaking of foolishness and birds, this year’s crop of fledglings is definitely stupider than in the past. One morning Stinky watched a currawong run around the backyard, jump on a pot plant, then pitch over sideways and fall into a cactus. Then later an adolescent blackbird saw her, tried to bugger off around the corner (on foot), stacked and rolled a few times before diving under the bushes. We don’t even know what their excuse is!). Still, even those morons were doing better that this albatross who washed up on D’admiral and Chuckles’ beach.
D’admiral said that the local school camp had collected it and planned to send it to a taxidermist. We were surprised, because surely they know that it’s bad luck??? D’admiral said they do know, but they just said “Stuff it.” (bah dum *tish*)
When there’s not a lot going on, when something does happen, you find yourself sharing it more than when stuff happens all the time. Like, for instance, this terrible, awful story that happened to one of our favourite kids who graduated last year (we call her Gila). Her mum works at the school, so we still get updates about her adventure. This one is gross, so this is your warning to skip the rest of the paragraph if you’re likely to get upset. Gila was driving to work when a bulldog ran onto the road and she almost hit it. Being a good person, she pulled over and grabbed his collar so that he couldn’t try again with the next car that happened along. Another woman also pulled over, and she went to knock on a nearby door to see if they knew the owner. While she was waiting, Gila gave the doggo a bit of a rub on the tummy (as you do)…. and it jizzed all over her.
Apparently it was a truly staggering amount and poor Gila was deeply traumatised (not least because she was already late for work and couldn’t go home to get changed). They did find the foul beast’s owner, but let this be a lesson that no good deed goes unpunished.
We were pretty traumatised just by hearing about it, and another work mate tried to get us back to better ground by talking about a game that she and her brothers used to play when they were young. The rules were pretty simple – they had a length of rope, one sibling was tied up by the others, said sibling then had the same length of time as it took to tie them up to escape the bond. This is clearly a very excellent game, but apparently after a while they felt the need to escalate, so as an added challenge they would tie you up and put you in a cupboard or something like that. Their parents seemed fairly unconcerned about the game, until one day their mother caught them emptying all the food out of the fridge so they could put the little brother in there. Turns out that it was a fridge too far – not because of the suffocation risk, but because “Do you kids have any idea how much all that food cost???” Lol.
Speaking of stories, check out the story that SBS Viceland was telling back in November.
Random coincidence struck again one morning, when Pye was getting out of her car at work one morning. A woman who’d just dropped of her kid pulled up and shouted “Nice to see you!!” Pye greeted her back, even though she had absolutely no idea who this lady was. The the woman was all, “Hey, great hair!!” and then drove away. That made Pye think that surely she must be someone who knows Stinky, but there’s no way that we can ever find out – Stinky is silly and doesn’t recognise her by this artist’s impression:
Tell you who could find her though – the Contact Traceys!
So that was pretty random, but still not as random as this…
*singing* Oooh and if you still love me, tie some asparagus to the old wire fence
Or this phone call that Stinky received!
Them: Hi Julia, it's Caroline
Me: Nope, sorry, I'm Caroline
Them: Who did I ring?
Me: Caroline.
Them: But I'm Caroline
Me: My sister is Julia...?
Them: *desperate to get off the phone now*
Me: You got the number wrong, but all the names right!
Them: Um ah yes we can pray for each other bye
What are the odds she’d get to mess with a random like that, eh?
When you’re having a year like 2020, sometimes you need friends who send you pictures of penguins walking The gif was an excellent balm for the soul, but even better was one of the comments. To wit:
Even though they look super wobbly penguins are one of the most stable animals on earth! They dominate the biped category, and they rival almost all quadruped animals in overall stability and ability to stand up to external forces.
They have pockets of fat that surround their internal organs, but those pockets are able to move like a pendulum inside of the penguin, keeping its center of gravity... well... centered. Those fat pockets are aptly named pendulemic sacks. If you had a pet penguin you could tip it up to 75 degrees in any direction and it would regain balance and stay on its feet if it wanted to.
The experiment is obviously hard to recreate because most penguins don’t just let you tip them over. If you find a penguin willing to cooperate it still might fall down because it didn’t feel like putting in the effort.
If you keep reading it starts to look like bullshit, but WHO CARES, WE WILL BELIEVE WHAT WE WANT and one day maybe we will find an agreeable penguin who feels like boinging back up after we have tipped it over. Stinky is putting in all the practice she can in anticipation of that magical day.
That penguin was hanging out in Spotlight, which is, of course, one of our favourite places to visit. They did let us down, though, when we popped in to buy gold leaf. See, Stinky wanted to elevate this stool that Chuckles had snagged on one of her many close-to-home adventures…
Foiled by bricks-and-mortar, we turned to the interwebs, and that’s how we discovered the provocatively-named, splendid product that is Rub and Buff. Yep, it comes in a little tube, and you can basically rub it onto anything you like (well, if you like wood, metal, plastic – that sort of thing) and BLAM, you’ve got gilt, baby! And not the Catholic kind. Ta da!!!
Look how it comes up on metal! Before:
After:
Pye became afraid to sit still, lest Stinky gild her too.
Thankfully, she was still safe when the 'Melbourne Ring of Steel' came down, and D’admiral and Chuckles sprinted straight out of the gate to visit their mothers. And what better way to go home from Bendigo than via G-town? We did pretty well, as they brought with them Grandmama’s mother’s mirror for us to look after (it’s approximately the same age as the Spinster Pad, which is also pretty cool).
… and we got likkered up and got Chuckles to plant a dinosaur!
We also WENT OUT for lunch, which was pretty special – take THAT, 2020 :)
Amongst all of that the school year took its damn sweet time in coming to a close. As usual, Pye’s kids got sent away earlier than Stinky’s, while Stinky was forced to do things like walk herds of Year 7s from Indented Head to St Leonards for a picnic. While she was ‘picnicking’, Stinky was tasked with testing all the staff on their ability to use an adrenaline auto-injector. Most staff were very good and cooperated meekly with the roleplay element of the test. Except for one lady…let’s call her Bella. Bella was hella into it and was determined to run the scenario like a full-blown emergency. She popped her ‘victim’ in the recovery position and, at the top of her very loud lungs, called for help and an ambulance, oblivious to how over a hundred Year 7s immediately froze. At least half of them shit themselves. The primary school teacher at the top of the hill started calling an ambulance. Bella was a bit disgruntled when her roleplay was interrupted and she had to be told a couple of times to say at the same volume that it wasn’t real and thank you for your attention.
Meanwhile, having worked with Chuckles, then Stinky, then Pye, Norma had decided that this was going to be the last year she was a teacher in a school (don’t use the ‘r’ word, she doesn’t even know how to retire). This is obviously very selfish of her, as it means we don’t get to have her any more, but apparently we’re supposed to just be okay with it (??). Donna and Pye shook down their school community for contributions to the SNF Fund (‘Set Norma Free Fund’) and were surprised and delighted to end up with $770 that they used to get her an RACV Resort voucher (she loves her golf, see). Was it a success? Well, when she saw it, she said “Fuck!” and then cried a little bit, so heck yeah it was a success!
The end of year ended up being a bit of a circle wank – every year they honor long-serving staff, and Pye was up for 20 years. So one minute Norma’s there talking about how rad Pye is, then then next minute Pye’s up there talking about what we’ll all lose when Norma goes, lol. Norma was also giggling up her sleeve because Stinky was a lil rascal who gif’d together all of Pye’s school photos since 2000…
Because Stinky is clever and skilled she had lined up the right eye in each picture (which is what makes the morph thing work, see) – but Pye’s work mates might have thought it was some sort of coincidence… which is probably some sort of metaphor for the world not recognising the effort it takes to make something look effortless, but idk.
The end of term means that it’s also December, which results in egregious happenings, like the Powder Monkey turning 13 years old. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his voice broke while we were in lockdown and he is now taller than us, and none of these things is acceptable.
His birthday is a week before Christmas, which is almost as ominous as what we see here…
Speaking of Christmas, one day Stinky was watching some special features from this year’s TV adaptation of Good Omens and discovered the existence of such a thing as a library chair. This was, of course, something we immediately needed to acquire, and that’s how we got our Christmas presents - Pye bought Stinky a chair, and Stinky bought Pye a ladder!
It was delightful to be able to catch up with people again, and when we went to Two Birds with Damo and Merrin, we also discovered the joys of ordering via an app. Need another beer? No need to get up on your feet and got to the bar like some sort of peasant! Just play with your phone! Feeling peckish and want some wings? Blam, get ya phone out! Brave new world, the new normal is fine!
Merrin was also awesome enough to snag us one of Aldi’s advent calendars – nothing says ‘joyeux noel’ like a wee lil bottle of wine every day up until Christmas!
Socialising was wonderful, but at quarter past eleven on the Friday before Christmas, Pye noticed someone who was definitely not Santa trying to come in our back door.
He staggered up the back steps to tug hopefully on the door three separate times, and was very much off his tits. He left on his own accord, and there was no sign of him when the cops showed up a while later. Their theory was that he was one of the many messy bitches from staff break up parties that they anticipated in their evening ahead – although probably most of them wouldn’t enter and leave the property over the back fence. Our investigation in the morning revealed a dinted compost list, so it’s actually kind of impressive that someone who struggled so much with three stairs was able to yeet himself over a fence twice (it’s also disappointing that the compost lid held, because it would have been fricken awesome for him to end up to his knees in rotting vegetable matter, with its giant slugs).
When the cops were round, Stinky got them to come and check the neighbour’s house – that one night, or all the days this year, was the first one where no one was home. We’d been deputised to feed lil Mo, the sloppy cavalier King Charles spaniel, and so earlier that day we’d noticed that their back door wasn’t locked. We have no idea if our drunken friend was going door to door, but we are happy to take the credit for saving all their stuff, even if poor Mo was dreadfully unsettled and upset by all the shenanigans (his dad said that when he got home, Mo was all, “OH MY GOD DAAAAAAAD WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE SHIT THAT’S BEEN GOING ON NEVER LEAVE ME AGAIN!!”)
So that was fun, but even better was the next day, when we got on a train (omg remember how to go on trains??) and went to Melbourne to catch up with the Belrog and Jenski. After a slap-up lunch in Fed Square, we made our way to the Botanical Gardens, in search of their fabled Arid Garden.
Ungh, look at all those pricks!
Please look at this caculent we saw!
But this is just way too many testicles, come on!!
The very next day, we found ourselves in another park – this time, in Bundoora, with Nonna and all her progeny. Whooo, party time!
Entirely too many of our relatives wanted to do the traditional cheek-kisses and cuddles, so if there turns out to be a third wave and you’re looking for super-spreaders, look no further than our family! Or… probably every other family in the park that day! It was pretty rad to see everyone, we should just have been blasting The Allusionist’s specially-designed Christmas song on repeat.
That officially meant that pre-Christmas was upon us, merrily decorated with Stinky’s handiwork and KK gift…
David and Margaret reviewed the year fairly…
…as we all hoped better for a better next stage next year.
> Before you could say ‘It can’t be the end of the year, happened to November?’, it was Christmas. We fanged it down to Somers on Christmas Eve, with a delightfully uneventful drive, until the last bit, where we saw a tableau of ‘WTF happened there?’ On the left, there was a car with an empty trailer. On the right, there was a car that looked like this motorbike, but bigger and the double mattress was more wedged, leaving the car more with at least two wheels off the ground.
So, if you were wondering if you should drive around a mattress or fang it over the top of it, now you know! Fortunately, we made it to Somers unscathed, in time to see some rad birds. Look at this bird coming back to its parents to be fed, even though it’s big enough to fend for itself! If there’s a metaphor in there, I’m sure we can’t see it.
Before you could say ‘But how is it December already?’ it was Christmas Day. Moose made sure he gave the Boomerz an appropriate gift…
…and then shit just got weird
And thus we entered the perianal phase of the year, where time means nothing and the weather could be 16 or 36, nobody knows! Well, maybe this rock-band might…
…but they were too busy with jigsaws and the like.
One of the defining things of 2020 is the rise of the humble pie-maker. Once you have a pie maker, it changes your perspective on the world – everything is a potential pie-filler. Having watched the Powder Monkey carefully eat every part of an apple pie (except for the apples), Stinky thought, “I wonder if you could fill a pie with mini chocolate bars, how bad could it be?” Of course nobody would dream of validating such a
Who would have thought that it would turn out to look almost exactly like a meat pie and taste like pure sin?! All the cooking show awards can be given to Stinky now, please.
The Boxing Day sales (at least one of which proudly started on the 25th December) also validated Stinky’s data hoarding activities. She picked up a couple of 5TB hard drives, which (as per tradition) must be named and decorated. After much discussion, it was decided that Ghosts was a good inspiration for ladies’ names. One is named for Lady Fanny Button, and the other for Martha (the actress). Chuckles made sure that the decorations befitted the status of a Lady.
Moose really likes Fanny, but he’s not sure about Martha yet (he will have to get to know her, we suppose).
Before you could say ‘We get it, stop making single entendres, please!’ the dumpster fire that was 2020 drew to an end. Anyone who claimed to have 2020 vision couldn’t see what a year it would be (or they knew, and decided to keep quiet about it), but thankfully we all made it! A quiet new year is a good new year…
…and the house denizens lit up the joint.
Albert Brooks wins Best New Year Tweet.
Here’s to seeing the new and interesting ways for 2021 to out-do 2020, bring it on, you potential piece of shit!
