Quackers

Usborne is a company that publishes children's books for kids just learning to read. They're really popular in England but I haven't seen them anywhere else.

There was a running gag in the Usborne books that appeared in every picture in every book--somewhere hidden in the illustrated scenes, was a rubber ducky. The duck was the 'mascot' or something of Usborne and it was kind of like this extra fun little thing kids could enjoy.

So it totally made my night and gave me serious nostalgia when I found this picture of a young geisha:

Look at the top left side of her head right above that green thing.

IT'S A DUCKY!!

It seems really weird that a profession as serious and almost sacred as geisha, here's a touch of flagrant silliness. With all the rules dictating how they can wear their hair, what makeup they use, and what colour and style kimono and obi they can wear, it seems a little incongruous that they'd be okay with someone placing a rubber duck into their elaborate and impeccable hairdo.

I kinda hope it was intentional as a kind of joke. I'm pretty certain it isn't but that doesn't make it any less funny.

Bad, but not bad ENOUGH

I don't know what it is, but I seem to have a knack for developing mysterious physical maladies that are painful and flare up frequently enough to be a bitch to deal with, but that aren't bad enough to really trigger any kind of medical panic on my end. Or if I do, they never seem to have a readily available explanation. Never mind my cough and my knees, let's talk about my indigestion.

Actually I'm reasonably sure this is a problem that, if not caused by, then definitely aggravated by eating irregularly or not enough. But it also comes when I'm otherwise totally fine, and it doesn't always come when I'm hungry. So I have no idea what it's all about.

But yeah, I get indigestion. It's anywhere from a mild burn to an intense searing pain in the back of my throat that feels distinctly like it's caused by acid or something--it's definitely nothing like a sore throat, but I don't know how to describe it. Sometimes it goes from my throat to my chest. When it's at its worst, it's so intensely bad it makes my ears hurt. Have you ever had an itch in your throat that almost feels like it's in your ears? Yeah, it's like that, except it's incredibly painful. I've asked a few doctors about this but no one has ever been able to give me a clear answer. Since it doesn't really disrupt my life, I'm not inclined to bother with it since I can control it with some regular OTC heartburn medicine.

But it's still a bitch.

Can You Say That on Television?

The closest I come to speaking another language is being reasonably well-acquainted with American and British vernacular. The two are hardly mutually incomprehensible so even in my most optimistic moments I can't honestly think of it as knowing a second language--just knowing two dialects of the same language. Even so, I'm still acutely aware of the fact that there are a lot of things that get lost in translation. One of the things I've always been aware of but never given much thought to (or written about) is the fact that some words that sound dirty on one side of the Atlantic don't sound that way on the other. And vice-versa.

Take 'bum bag'. That pouch people wear around their waists, especially tourists? In the US it's called a 'fanny pack' but I can't bring myself to call it that. Not only was I taught first to call it a 'bum bag', but in the UK the word 'fanny' is a vulgar slang term for female genitals. No, I'm not lying.

'Fag' in the US is a really terrible slur and one for which you will earn a lot of disapproving scowls. In the UK it's a cigarette.

And then there's 'winklepicker'. I'm not honestly sure how common a term that is in the UK but the first time I saw the word, I thought it was probably sexual or derogatory in nature. Or both. It's actually just a kind of black ankle boot with a long pointed toe.

When you fuck up in another language it's usually understandable and excusable, even as it makes people uncomfortable to hear it. English speakers don't have that excuse.

dressy

When I was in school in Yorkshire, all the kids changed clothes for PE so we didn't get our uniforms dirty. (I have no idea how common or not that actually is in English primary schools because I've never bothered to ask.) Changing clothes for gym is normal but usually not until middle or high school. The school had no locker rooms so we all changed together in the classroom. I suppose at that age there really aren't many differences between boys and girls. I didn't grow up to be a rapist or axe murderer and neither did anyone else, so clearly it didn't do any harm.

Anyway. For some reason, instead of leaving our uniforms in a pile on the chairs or tables, a trend arose for us to actually dress our chairs. Probably because people reflexively drape blazers and coats and cardigans on the backs of chairs--we just went all out and put all our clothes on our chairs. Tights and trousers went over the front two legs, blouses nad shirts on the back, skirts usually sat on the seat, and our shoes on the front feet of the chair.

That's just weird.

Eventually it was specifically banned. We weren't allowed to do it anymore. I wonder if that isn't still in the rules of that school--students are not permitted to dress up their classroom chairs. If it is, I bet some kid will find it and wonder what the fuck happened for a rule like that to become necessary in the first place. Well, kiddo, it's because back in the early 90s a bunch of kids kept wasting school time dressing their chairs up for PE.

the name game

My dad had a weird habit when I was growing up.

First of all, neither my brother nor I had familial nicknames growing up. No 'Pudding Pie', no 'Kitten', no 'Pumpkin'. For one thing, my name is one for which there is no accepted shortened or familial version, like 'Nicky' for 'Nicole' or 'Sam' for 'Samantha'. My brother is named 'James' and I think the only diminutive of that name is 'Jim', which my dad ATTEMPTED to call him. I say he 'attempted' it because every time he said it I'd get very angry and correct him in exasperation, 'THAT ISN'T HIS NAME!!' I'm sure it was because I had no idea Jim was a nickname for James and didn't want my dad calling him the wrong name, but to be honest I really have no idea why I disliked it so much.

So, yeah, no pet names.

Sort of.

When I turned thirteen, my dad started calling me 'Teenager'. Obviously because I was one, but I still don't know why he decided to call me by my age. Anyway, I was 'Teenager' for years. I can't honestly say I was really attached to the nickname but I did expect I might have it forever--kind of one of those silly ironic nicknames like calling a huge fat guy 'Slim'. Then shortly after my nineteenth birthday he informed me that he was going to stop calling me 'Teenager' because I wasn't going to be one anymore.

I was a bit disappointed. I don't even know why I was.

And, true to his word, he never called me 'Teenager' again after my twentieth birthday.

irrelevant

I think more or less all of us, no matter how much we may think we're not that shallow, are hung up on appearance. Our own and other people's, and especially women's. Even really, really professional people do this, without knowing they are. Even people whose job it is to focus on how our minds work. Like psychiatrists.

A couple of years ago I had some psychological testing done to determine whether or not I might have had a learning disability of some kind. Since I have such low self-esteem, I tend to latch onto whatever I  can use as 'evidence' that I'm as dumb as shit. One of the ones I latched onto the most was that I was a shitty student in school and struggled tremendously with any math beyond very basic. My skull jockey eventually persuaded me to undergo testing, in hopes of helping me understand that my shortcomings were due to factors beyond my control that had nothing to do with being stupid. A learning disability would explain how an otherwise intelligent person did poorly in school.

In the end, it turned out I don't have any learning disabilities at all. I really am just stupid.

I still have a copy of the psychiatrist's report and one very small passing observation has struck me as unnecessary and kind of bothersome. In addition to pertinent information about me--things that would influence the results of the test--for some reason the doctor felt the need to point out that I was 'an attractive 22-year-old woman'.

Being 22 and a woman could have had a hand in my mental health, but being attractive doesn't have a thing to do with it. I don't mind being found attractive. I don't even mind when people tell me. But it seems really superfluous here and sort of inappropriate to have mentioned. Why does it matter what I look like? The problems are going on inside me, not out.

appeasement

The first time I lied to a guy and told him I loved him was when I was nine or ten years old. The reason I lied to him was to stop him from trying to seriously hurt me.

Kids develop territorial crushes on each other quite young, and like adults they sometimes don't take it well when the feelings aren't returned. I attended a co-ed theatre camp that summer and two of the boys developed crushes on me that led to rivalry. Most of it came down to, 'Which one of us do you like best? It has to be either me or him', which is bad enough as it is because it left me no option to turn both of them down. And it put me in the position that, no matter what I answered, someone was going to get pissed off.

One of the boys--I actually remember his name, it was Tod--heard from some other kids that I'd admitted that I liked the other boy best. (I never said such a thing.) Tod didn't like this. Tod got very jealous. Tod reacted badly and decided he was going to punish me for not choosing him. While I was swinging around on the monkey bars on the playground, Tod marched right up to me and demanded to know if I preferred the other guy. I told him I never said that, but he didn't believe me.

That's when he grabbed me by my legs and tried to make me fall to the ground.

I don't like falling so the situation led to panic very quickly. He didn't let go, and said he wouldn't until I picked him over the other guy. In fear for my own safety, I told him what he wanted to hear. I told him I liked him. I didn't like him. I just didn't want to break my neck.

This satisfied Tod and he smugly let me go with the stern warning, 'You better not change your mind.'

I've read that some women who have been assaulted--sexually or physically--will tell their assailant that she loves him and that she's pleased with what he's doing. They do this in hopes of appeasing them, the theory being that a happy assailant it less likely to become more violent. This isn't exactly rare. People assault other people over jealousy and rejection all the time--and a lot of the time it's a male-on-female violence.

But I think there's something seriously wrong in the world that these behaviours happen in young kids. Not only has a boy learned that it's okay to try and hurt someone if they don't do whatever you want, but a girl learns that the only way she can avoid it is by playing along even when it makes her uncomfortable.

Not cool. Just... not cool.

but I want it! (or: small change)

I've developed a really stupid habit at work that carries almost zero payoff for doing something that, if discovered, could cost me my job.

I steal pennies.

I don't mean to say that I plan on making myself wealthy by stealing pennies from work. The pennies I'm after are Lincoln cents that the US Mint stopped producing in 1959. They're called 'wheatback' pennies (or just 'wheaties') because the tail side face was two sheaves of wheat and the words 'ONE CENT' instead of the Lincoln Memorial. When the Mint stops making a certain piece of currency, it doesn't recall them--instead they remain in circulation and are still perfectly valid. In fact, every currency minted in the US at any point in its history is still legal tender, even when it's no longer being minted. And because coins are much more hard-wearing than paper money, they last decades and even centuries, which means that if you are sufficiently lucky and look hard enough, you can find coins that date all the way back to the Revolutionary War. And you could still spend it. I don't know why you would want to, since they all have a collector value many times their face value.

So anyway. I steal wheatback pennies at work because I collect coins and I think they're kinda cool to have, even though whenever I express surprise and excitement whenever a customer turns out to have a wheatback penny and doesn't have any idea why it's such a big deal.

My dad was the one who got me into collecting coins and he had an impressive collection of dozens of wheatbacks. (Including the rare steel pennies minted for a year in 1943 so that the copper could be used to manufacture the munitions needed for the war). He told me that when he was a teenager he used to go to the bank and buy sacks of pennies (banks will let you trade in any legal tender for any other legal tender, including pennies), something like 1000 of them at a time, and he'd comb through it for wheatback pennies before going BACK to the bank and re-depositing the pennies. He said that as time went by he found fewer and fewer of them and it was because people like us kept snapping them up out of circulation.

He's probably right.

The same goes for quarters from between 1976-1977 that also have a different design on them. They were made to celebrate the two-century anniversary of the Revolutionary War and instead of the eagle, there's a minuteman playing a drum. Which is why they're called 'drummer quarters', Coin collectors sure are an imaginative bunch when it comes to names, aren't they?

When I can, I replace it with my own money, but for the most part I'm not especially worried that someone might see my register being off every now and then by a few cents and conclude that I was stealing pennies. For one thing, who would steal a sum of money that small? This is something that happens maybe once every week or two so I don't think it's consistent enough for anyone to get suspicious.

If I get caught I would probably be in big fucking trouble.

But I really, REALLY want those wheaties.

It bears repeating that impulse control is NOT one of my strong suits.

new horizon

Another moment from childhood that served as a milestone in the progression to maturity:

When wait staff at restaurants stopped offering me kiddie menus and crayons.

In my case this took a bit longer than most people since, as I've said, I have never looked my age. It was sort of offensive to my mature young-adult sensibilities--meaning I was an insufferable adolescent who thought she was above 'childish' things and was practically a grownup--when I was still being offered crayons and paper placemats with games on them until I was well into puberty. I don't quite know when it happened, since it was something that happened gradually--fewer and fewer hosts thought I was a little kid until eventually none ever did at all--so I don't know if you can even call this a milestone since it wasn't a single event.

Sometimes it's a bit sad to know you're officially too old for something fun just because you're an adult. I always feel embarrassed to admit I love colouring books and still buy them occasionally, because it's not okay for adults to do it. Of course, I do it anyway and just don't tell anyone. The worst things are the ones that are not only socially unacceptable but also physically impossible. I remember my disappointment when I realized I was too big to play on climbing frames at parks or fit my enormous hips through a tire swing.

I don't mean to imply that I don't want to grow up. It's just a sad moment in life when you realize that childhood is so far behind you that it's completely inaccessible to you now.

another problem

I'm kind of discriminating drug addict. Some people will take whatever consciousness-altering substance they can get their hands on. Personally, I don't like doing that. First of all it's not safe, which I realize is a bit like saying I habitually drive without a seatbelt but don't speed because it isn't safe. I'm still doing a really dangerous thing, and if things go wrong I'll be just as dead as the result of one as the other. But you can never be completely sure what's in what other people give you or how you'll react to it, so I stick with what I know just because I don't want to end up in that situation.

Second, I don't like how everything makes me feel. I'm an insomniac and have depression, two conditions that put me in a position to obtain sedatives legally. But I don't like most sedatives. I don't like the way they make me feel, which is that I'm being played in slow motion and am carrying a lot of extra weight. I don't actually like feeling tired. If I'm going to drug myself to sleep, I want to get high doing it. Which is why I prefer the narcotic and hallucinogenic drugs. Lunesta is okay but I prefer Ambien. People hate that one because it causes blackouts and blank spots for long periods of time. And it does that to me as well. (True story: before we got together and at a time when I was in such a severe depression I was taking a near-lethal cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills, I apparently masturbated loudly on the phone with the guy who is now my boyfriend. I have almost no memory of it happening, and the parts I do remember feel vague and foggy like the way you only vaguely remember a dream. I really only have his word to go on that it happened at all, but he wouldn't lie about something like that and it's something I would do.)

My drugs of choice aren't sedatives or psychoactive. I just like the rush from narcotics and narcotic-based sleeping pills. So I don't go after anything else, because I don't want to. Which I guess is SOMETHING, right?

I don't have constant access to these things anyway. Because I'm too cautious and too chicken to do anything but obtain them legally, most of the time I DON'T have them because I can't get a prescription. Either my insurance isn't going to allow me to refill or it's too close to the last script and the doctor will become suspicious. And when I do have them, I don't have them long. This is mostly owing to me having no impulse control (why wait when I can get high RIGHT NOW??), and also because I have ludicrously high drug tolerance. The last time I was in the hospital for kidney stones I got a shot of morphine and hardly hiccupped. Three to four times the dose does for me what it does for normal people.

Right now I'm just making do with OTC. All OTC sleeping pills that actually work (i.e., aren't 'homeopathic') have diphehydramine in them. That's the stuff that gives the loopy feeling to Benadryl and NyQuil. I never really totally liked how the stuff made me feel--it's one of those makes-me-feel-heavy-and-slow chemicals--but it's better than nothing and taking as high a dose as I do gives me a bit of a lift. It's an unbelievably huge dose though. Anywhere from 250-500mg. For comparison's sake, the amount in a typical dose of NyQuil or Benadryl is 50mg.

Yeah. It's like that.

milestones

I'm pretty significantly overweight as an adult, but for most of my life I've been much smaller and lighter than my peers. Until late in high school, I was just generally a scrawny little kid. As a result, my childhood archnemesis was movie theatre seats. You know, the ones that fold up when no one is in them? Those. Unless I sat on the very edge and had the advantage of leverage, it was a long fucking time before I could sit in one without it folding up on me. Which, being me, I almost never remembered would happen and so every trip to the movies saw me helplessly squished into the folded-up seat like Wile E Coyote. Sometimes more than once. It was a great moment of triumph in my life when I realized I could finally sit like a normal person without ending up human origami.

Of course, that was still in the days before movie theatres with 'stadium seating' were commonplace so it didn't matter because I was still too short to see over the people in front of me.

thanks, Ma

Years ago I knew a guy whose birthday was December 31. This isn't by itself remarkable but he was born at something like 11.45pm--he told me that his mother had to be induced and since it was really late on the last day of the year, the hospital staff offered to stabilize her a bit and give her an epidural and then wait a bit so she could have the first baby of the new year. (Apparently people actually do this if they're RIGHT on the cusp and have any reasonable control over when the baby comes.) His parents thought about it very briefly but ultimately refused and chose to just induce and have the kid. Why?

"If we have him now, he's tax-deductible for the next year."

Well shit. I dunno what it feels like to find out your birthdate was dictated by how much money your parents could save off you, but I would probably laugh and cry at the same time.

thanks for sharing

I don't know why I remembered this.

When I was in high school, after a dreary and icy and totally depressing winter some of the teachers could occasionally be talked into holding class outside as long as they could make it look like it was an actual part of the lesson. Even though we never did anything except wander into the woods.

On one such occasion a guy in my earth science class interrupted the lecture to ask, 'Does anybody mind if I go use a tree?'

Just goes to show how totally weird my life has sometimes been. You have to be pretty darn weird to pee in the woods within just a few feet of all of your classmates getting a good look at your dick, and ask the teacher out loud and completely unashamedly in front of the whole class in the middle of a lesson. I don't know what this says about the kind of people I went to school with but it doesn't strike me as being a terribly common thing to do.

this is awesome

I don't know how I haven't mentioned this before, considering my runaway commentaries and total lack of verbal filter. Especially because it's possibly one of the funniest fucking things ever and one of the few fond memories I have of my dad, who is otherwise an emotionally distant abusive fuckbag.

One thing he and I have in common aside from DNA and a surname and impressive unibrow is Bugs Bunny. We both fucking love Bugs. It's one of the few things we can sit down and enjoy together and this was the foundation for one of the few genuinely enjoyable things we did together.

All cartoons have orchestral musical scores, both original and other people's. The National Symphony Orchestra, an otherwise extremely serious classical music organization people aren't generally inclined to associate with frivolity, does a tour called 'Bugs Bunny on Broadway'. It's a live orchestral concert set to a background of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's hilarious. If it's in your area, I highly advise you to go see it. Especially if it's being held at a venue with a liquor license.

The funniest part of the show I went to was the the conductor--remember, of the National freaking Symphony--admitted that he cannot listen to the song 'Ride of the Valkyries' without picturing that Bugs Bunny mock-opera. And hearing 'KILL THE WABBIT, KILL THE WABBIT, KILL THE WABBIT! *bah-dum-dah-dah-DUMM!*'

The same goes for the 'Barber of Seville'. My dad's dad was a particular anti-fan of this one because he hated cartoons but loved classical music and he felt like it was violating a serious piece of music.

There's also a similar orchestral concert that plays the scores from popular video games. It's called 'Video Games Live' but I haven't seen it.

Now I have that song stuck in my head.

Kill the wabbit...

NOM

I'm not sure whether or not this provides any kind of explanation or clarification with regard to my many, varied, and flagrantly obvious problems, but before I was born my parents spent a few years breeding pythons.

I'm one of the few people I know who isn't afraid of snakes. Not just not afraid of snakes but I genuinely like them. They're freaking cool. They can't fetch a ball or play with a bit of string and they're not really built for cuddling, but they're fascinating to watch. Plus there's no poop to clean up. My dad got his first pet snake as a teenager in the 70s. It was a reticulated python. He named her Monty. Oh yes, he went there.

So because my parents were so comfortable around snakes, I've always been comfortable around snakes. In my parent's neighbourhood I became known as that girl who will remove snakes. Except for the occasional copperhead--which is rare and distinctive--there are no venomous snakes in that area so there wasn't any danger in me picking them up and carrying them half a mile to release them into the woods.

Before we got our dog, we actually had a pet snake for quite a few years. It didn't have a name but it was a common black rat snake, which I think are related to the common garter snake and don't grow very big. He found it hanging from a light fixture in his office and everybody was freaking out even though it was just a baby snake--barely thirteen inches long and skinny as a pencil. He took it home and we kept it as a pet for four years.

I don't know what this says about me either, but my favourite thing with this snake was watching it eat. Most people give their snakes frozen mice or something that's already dead (partly because watching a snake strangle live prey is probably pretty disturbing to most people, and partly because live prey can fight back and potentially harm or even kill the snake), but my dad always bought it live baby mice. He got them from pet stores. They're called 'pinkies' and are newborn mice still hairless with their eyes closed. It was like watching Animal Planet in real life, watching the snake eat. When it got older it graduated to baby mice with eyes and hair but even at its biggest the snake was maybe four foot long and as big as a garden hose at its fattest point.

People think I'm weird because of this. They're probably right.

I'm supposed to know this, aren't I?

I always feel like something of a failure as a person because I am a grown woman but have no idea what it is my dad does for a living.

I've mentioned it before and I do kinda sorta know what he does. He's a computer programmer/engineer and whatever it is he does with those computers occasionally entails being hired by governments and defense contractors and shit like that. But I really don't know any specifics at all.

This has always been the case. My parents both worked for Grumman Aerospace (in the 80s and early 90s and before it became Northrop Grumman), and I'm vaguely aware that they had a hand in some parts of the space program and the actual technology itself, but beyond that I have no details. And the reason I don't have these details is because for as long as I can remember, my dad's job has been one that he is not legally permitted to discuss outside of work.

I'm not joking here. I have never once been to any of the places my dad worked because he's always worked in the kind of places where unauthorized personnel will be arrested on the spot.

Actually, this is one of the few things in my life I have been able to identify as being extremely weird without anyone having to tell me how weird it is. There's a lot of shit that featured regularly in my reality that was always unremarkable to me--because it's part of my everyday life--that I later only found out were unusual when I casually mentioned them in conversation and everyone within earshot stopped to stare at me like I was completely fucking deranged. In this case I was aware that my situation was unusual, probably in large part because it sounded ridiculous to me as well.

Since it's just a facet of my reality, I tend not to think about it very much but every now and then I'll realize just how bizarre it sounds when I can't offer anything but a vague half-answer to the question, "What does your dad do?"

I have no idea what he does, and if I ever found out the CIA would shoot me.

probably

There's an actual fancy medical term for laughing so hard you pee yourself. It's called 'giggle incontinence'. It isn't a big deal and isn't cause for any medical alarm. Except when it is, because then it could be an indicator of multiple sclerosis.

famous

Even though it's not something I actively brag about, I am distantly related to Billy Joel. He's a cousin of my maternal grandfather on his mother's side, but they only met maybe two times as children because my grandpa's mother was disowned by her obscenely wealthy Jewish family for marrying a poor Italian immigrant. (It was not a love match--it was her way of rebelling against her parents because in the 20s that was pretty well how you pissed your parents off if you were a woman because there were so few options open. You just married someone they didn't like, and marrying outside your class and religion, especially in New York, was a major cultural no-no.) But the family resemblance is pretty fucking obvious. They look like brothers, Billy Joel and my grandpa.

And this same grandfather shares a name with a very very famous baseball player for the New York Yankees that was once married to Marilyn Monroe. They are NOT, I am sad to say, related. But my mom said she used to use it to get into clubs for free. She wasn't lying about who her dad was, she just wasn't telling the whole truth.

Six degrees separate most people from other people so being related distantly to a very famous person is a lot easier than it sounds.

I went to high school with a girl whose great-uncle was actor Gregory Peck, best known for his role as Atticus Finch in the film version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. And to prove this, the girl brought into English class, as we were reading that very book, the pocketwatch Peck wore in the role for the movie that was willed to her family when he died in 2003.

Of course this girl was a horrible person and impossible to get on with so nobody was really impressed.

not good

Sometimes I think my drug problem might be a bigger problem than I'm willing to admit.

I like to pretend I'm as responsible about it as it's possible to be--I don't buy of the street, I don't drive or go to work or do anything potentially dangerous while high, and I give myself a 'ration' in order not to overdo it--but in reality the fact that I have this problem at all indicates a complete lack of responsibility on my end. And I suspect I'm a bit too cavalier about it and one of the biggest red flags is the fact that I don't worry about overdoses.

Years of pill-popping has taught me my own tolerance levels, and while my tolerance level is extremely high precisely because of this--it takes up to four times the dosage to do anything these days--I still sometimes occasionally overshoot it. It's never deliberate, and it's never by very much, but it does happen. But it doesn't actually bother me that it happens because I know what to expect and it's never an overdose by a significant enough margin to cause any real problems aside from the ones I cause by banging down pills in the first place.

What happens is that I throw up. And that's normal. It's actually a good thing, believe it or not. A dramatic full-system-reversal is the body's way of dealing with something it can't handle--if you didn't do this, you would be in danger from anything dangerous you ever ate. The body's first defense against this is to just get rid of it, which it does by expelling it violently from the nearest orifice, which is what makes us puke and get the runs.

Obviously overdosing is extremely bad but you have to pretty excessively overdose in order to require anything but a place to vomit and some ginger ale. The body is pretty good at keeping out the things it doesn't want, and you'll be violently sick long before you're in serious danger.

So I don't worry about overdosing. I try not to do it, but since it's never a huge overdose I don't see it as something I need to worry about except for getting to the bathroom on time.

half a point

My high school began at 7.15 in the morning and most people were already there by 7am. Not everybody can muster the energy to act like a person that early, so students nodding off in class was something of an epidemic. I'm one of those people whose brain doesn't get out of first gear until lunchtime and I was an absolute fiend for falling asleep during my morning classes. Some teachers took it personally and tried to wake me up, others just let me sleep because they couldn't be fucked to bother.

In chemistry class my junior year I was especially prone to falling asleep, which is probably why I did so badly in it. The teacher generally didn't like it when I did but on one occasion he was so impressed with the position I'd adopted crammed into my little desk that he decided I deserved the nap.

I was sitting with my legs crossed Indian style on the chair, my left elbow propped up on my knee, and my head resting on my left fist. He later told me he was both amused and impressed by the fact that I managed to adopt this position and stay that way while sleeping that he didn't have the heart to try and wake me up.

you DO that??

So, I've occasionally had to wear makeup on parts of my body that aren't my face before for shoots because some of the modelling work I do is nude or at least topless. Most of the time there's no problem with this but towards the end of the summer last year I had a tan for the first time in years (and I tan very dark and very quickly so the tanlines become noticeable almost immediately), and tanlines don't look really good on camera so to minimize the appearance I ended up having to, well, powder my bosom. It was weird. It's not something I would elect to do if I wasn't getting paid to do it. And it stained my shirt and bra, as well.

I recently found out that some women actually do this. Like, just generally. They get dressed up for the club or whatever and they powder their boobs to make them look bigger or nicer or whatever.

Why would you do that? I had no idea anybody did this at all except in the context of a photo shoot. But apparently some women do. And so do some men.

I just don't get it.

psst!

I only started wearing makeup a few years ago so obviously I'm slow in learning the tricks. But here's one I have learned.

If you're lucky like I am and have really long eyelashes naturally, mascara is kind of superfluous. And thank goodness for that because the mascara brush and I only started getting on in the last two years. Anyway, fake lashes and mascara are totally unnecessary for me. Sometimes I wear it anyway but that actually makes me look like I AM wearing false ones. I found a happy medium though.

Clear mascara.

They do actually sell this and it doesn't have nearly the same dramatic effect as black or brown do. Sometimes you find it marketed as 'eyebrow mascara' or something but it's just a clear gel and does the whole 'separate the lashes' thing without making you look like a drag queen.

Of course I still really want bright purple mascara. Because why the fuck not, and PURPLE.

WHY DON'T YOU FOLLOW MY RULES??

Every now and then a character I've cultivated will take on such a well-developed personality that they essentially become their own people and are no longer under my control. Like raising children: eventually they just mature to where they want to do things their own way. It happens mostly with characters I've written for years but occasionally a relatively recent one does it. Naomi is only a few years old but has more personality than most of the others. She won't do anything she doesn't want and it's slightly insulting to be writing a scene and hear this voice in my head going, 'I'm not doing that, go fuck yourself!'

Stop disobeying my rules, goddammit, you're making me look bad!

Very, very occasionally this will also happen with characters who are not only comparatively recent additions but are also minor peripheral characters. Bex and York, for example, are a set of twins who have featured in bit parts for years but never played a major role. Nonetheless, they developed into their own people.

And, like sometimes happens, they started doing shit I not only never intended them to do but that I also find extremely objectionable.

For some reason, Bex and York decided they were going to have a creepily inappropriate close bond. Not normal twin behaviour but behaviour that suggests there is something very squicky and very wrong going on when I'm not in the room. Possibly because of a mental block on my end and possibly because they're being sneaky about it, I don't actually know whether or not anything is or ever has been going on between them but that doesn't make the clear indications of 'twincest' any less creepy. Or less obvious.

They even hold hands in their first official picture.

I'm not completely sure I even want to know what's going on just as long as I don't ever have to look at it.

Bonus writer!fail: I don't even know who is who. They're freakishly identical. Their ears are cut because they had a very sadistic governess as children who got fed up with confusing them and their place-swapping pranks, who did it so she could visibly determine who was who. But I don't know. York might be the one in the dress.