I'm sorry, I'm a mammal. There's only so much to be done about that.

Here’s how I feel lately:

I need to get my teeth whitened. My hair needs to be dyed. Why are my boobs so big? I need to be stronger. I need to be thinner. I think my head is weirdly misshapen. The flesh around my bra straps is grossing me out. Why are my freckles so uneven? Do I need a spray tan for this wedding? I wish I had a proper lip line. I wish there was a way to get your legs waxed without having to grow your leg hair long enough for waxing. I wish the people who design clothes and the people who design bras would just get the fuck together and figure something out. My feet hurt in my shoes.

I’m tired of every single part of me needing to be changed to be acceptable. To be likeable. To be normal. It’s exhausting.

Recently, I was in a bar. A friend’s girlfriend was telling a story about the time she went six months without shaving her legs. The guys fell around laughing. “Gross,” they yelled, miming throwing up. “Ew!”

“Well,” the girl said, shrugging. “I wasn’t getting laid anyway, so I figured: who cares?”

“Of course you weren’t getting laid,” one of the guys hollered (disclaimer: one of my favourite people in the whole world, and in every other way the most tip-top human I know). “Who’d fuck that?”

You know what we hear when you say stuff like that, fellas? You know what you’re saying when you judge hippies with hairy pits or complain about leg stubble?

You’re saying, “In your natural state, you gross me out”.

The way you were born is not only not good enough, it’s repulsive.

You need to be different than you are to be likeable. To be attractive. To be anything other than revolting?

Really? Is that what we’ve come to?

I may be overreacting slightly, but I feel like there’s no longer any piece of me I can leave alone. Everything has been scrubbed and scented and de-haired and dyed and plucked and coloured in. And all you get at the end of that is to feel like maybe you’ve done enough to blend in for another day. To not creep anyone out with your warm-blooded body that makes sweat and grows hair and digests food. It’s not making me pretty – it’s just bringing me up to not gross.

That's gross.

End rant.

2011: The Greatest Hits

A year ago today, I was at work alone. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon. I snuck out now, at three, and met Jef. We walked up to Vicky and Neil’s old house in Mt Vic for a barbeque. It was the first time I’d really been anywhere in Mt Vic other than Keith’s house, the first time I realised how sunny it was there in the evening. I’d just moved into town and the intersection on Elizabeth and Brougham confused me. I think it was also the first time I went to Moore Wilson’s.

Life is weird.

This year, I’m at work alone again – but I’m at my dream job. In the year in between, I’ve moved to Mt Vic... twice. I got my cat, learned to ski, forded a river, fought a bee, attempted dating, gained a whole heap of friends... and lost more than a few, too. I also wrote about 40,000 words, none of which I’m keeping. 2011 has been huge.

-----

The greatest hits - JANUARY 

 

 -----

2011 started at Emily’s sister’s place in the South Island. It’s way, way out in the country. On New Year’s Eve we ate stew made from a hare Olmec had shot and vegetables from the sprawling organic garden, and the cat chewed on the hare’s back legs on the lawn. We swam in the watering hole and looked at the stars and picked fruit from the trees.

I also:

• Saw The National 
• Drank an entire bottle of Sauv (I KNOW.)
• Drove around Northland 
• Started a new job 
• Threw myself in the ocean at Oriental Bay on a weekday. 

FEBRUARY

•  I went to my first Webstock 
• Christchurch fell down.

 MARCH

• Ate at Logan Brown
• Gave a speech at Bec’s engagement party

APRIL

• Dyed eggs and hunted them in the garden
• Fell in a chasm
• Went to a roller derby
• Made a blanket fort in a hotel room
• Saw Jimmy Eat World.

-----

MAY

• Won the meat raffle for the second of four times this year
• Flooded my flat
• Ate a double-down
• Went to the ballet... and didn't really get it.

JUNE

 

•  Moved house and office in the same weekend
• Let someone stick needles in my veins for fun.

JULY

The day before I moved (yes, again), I helped Jef take his old mattress to the tip. It was bucketing with rain and took us twenty minutes just to figure out how to connect the rented trailer to the car.

Mattress and base finally loaded into the cage, we pulled into the Kent Terrace traffic. The rain hammered down, gusting sideways across the road.

“Um,” Jef said, as we pulled away from a light. “Did the mattress just blow out of the trailer?”

“Sure,” I said, without looking. “Whatever. I’m not falling for that.”

“It’s seriously fucking gone!”

I looked. It was Seriously Fucking Gone.

We lost a queen-sized mattress out the back of a trailer in the middle of a busy city street. That happened.

And then we pulled a U-turn, slung into a parallel park with a trailer containing half a bed poking out into the lane, and sprinted back towards the lights. The mattress had been sitting on a wet road in the pouring rain for ten minutes, and weighed ten times what it had dry. We hefted it up as cars wove around us, and attempted to run down a busy city street carrying a soaked queen mattress.

That happened too.

-----

-----

• Watched people beat each other up for sport
• Moved AGAIN.

AUGUST

• It snowed in Wellington city
• My brother and I witnessed a gang fight in Whangarei
• I skied for the first time.

 SEPTEMBER

• Went to my first rugby game
• Drove the KB car to Napier
• Attempted to watch all the classic movies I’ve never seen, and then review them in three words.

OCTOBER

-----

• Went ice skating
• Saw a Shetland pony being born on the side of the road
• Held a baby kiwi
• Climbed on a glacier
• Toured the South Island – and visited ALL the wineries.

NOVEMBER

-----

• Went to Tonga for an island holiday
• Jumped off the plank on the waterfront on my birthday 
• Had a proper thanksgiving.

DECEMBER

• Went to Red Rocks
• Went to a 21st (okay, that's not a first... but it's the first in a long freaking while!)
• Went indoor rock climbing
• Had Christmas in Nelson.

-----

-----

Jan 07, 2011:

I want to be more confident. Less drunk. Care less. Care more.  Romantic watercolour worlds dazzle my imagination daily, and I’m never quite sure what’s me and what’s a fuzzy idealistic painting in my head. I don’t want your life, but sometimes I feel like a moth batting at the window because the light looks so warm. I’m still not quite sure what my life is going to be. I’m still in progress. Please hold.

December 30, 2011:

New places visited:

• Abel Tasman
• Nelson Lakes
• Tonga
• Kerikeri
• Red Rocks
• Otago
• West Coast

New things done:

• Skiing
• Rock climbing
• Ice climbing
• Snorkelling with tropical fish
• Jumping off the plank on the waterfront
• Ice skating
• Holding a kiwi
• Attending a ballet
• Attending a roller derby
• Making a blanket fort
• Watching people fight
• Dyeing Easter eggs (and hunting for them)
• Going to a rugby game
• Watching rugby for FUN
• Baking cheesecake (unsuccessfully) and pavlova (very successfully)

Verdict:

• Life is SO AWESOME
• I could still do with being less drunk.

-----

(Some photos by Emily, Jef, Michelle and Brock.)

Oops!

...Um.

Hey, you guys! I almost didn't see you there. You look GREAT today! No, really - I love your hair. Is that new?

I am a terrible blogger. I should be flogged. I keep MEANING to do something about this, but everything's been so EXCITING! I toured the South Island, and then I went to Tonga, and I had a birthday, and there was ice skating and adventuring and quite a bit of drinking, and, and...

Argh. Maybe we'll do some pictures sometime. Would you like that?

For now, here's Michelle's blog on our Thanksgiving feast last weekend. And here's what happened on my birthday:

So far being 29 is pretty cool. I woke up with a sore neck and last night my hip went as I reached for something on the floor, but I've yet to find a grey hair and I leapt into the harbour on a work day. So.

ARGH. Also, lack of bears.

Like everyone I've ever met has told me every day of my life, I need to learn to let go. And yet, the more I look at my own writing, the more I hate it. Finding this scene has been an unbearably depressing process, so you can all SUCK IT! But after you've read it, so I didn't suffer for nothing.

Except don't read it, because I've now been staring at it for several days, and every single word makes me want to dramatically slit my wrists in a bathtub while listening to Dashboard Confessional.

(You can tell I'm about to turn 29 because all my references are now dated. Crap.)

Also, I've never once looked at a single scene in isolation, even by a best-selling published author, and thought, "wow, that's amazing". I've thought, "I have no idea who these people are" and "I don't know why they're doing this", and then I've gone to get a snack and resumed waiting for my Twitter timeline to update.

Nevertheless, several people helped me pick this one, and I'm now at the point where attempting to edit out all the bad bits just involves taking out all the WORDS, so. Here's a scene from Sparks, aka Failed First Novel of Doom. 

(FFNoD is complete but not finished, which means all the words exist and they make a story, but both the story and the words aren't any good. It's a YA, first-person contemporary mystery -- the genre I was shooting for was kind of like teen pulp noir. After, for the record, is none of these things.)

-----

“We’re going to get eaten by a fuckin’ bear.”

“We’re not going to get eaten by a bear. There are no bears here.”

“Have you been out here and fucking checked?”

            “Shut up.”

Everything hurt. My knees felt like they’d been emptied out and filled with gravel. My hand was burning. My wrist ached, my ribs pinched and smarted with stitch, and I’d bitten my tongue at some point. Snot was running out of my frozen nose, and I didn’t have the strength to wipe it up.

Nate was bleeding from one eyebrow and favoring his left ankle. In front of me, he shoved a branch aside, and I couldn’t get my hands to cooperate in time to stop it from springing back to whip me in the chest. It was taking every tiny scrap of energy I had just to keep picking each foot up and putting it down again.

“Fuck it,” Nate said, and stopped.

I was concentrating on getting my right foot to move forwards while my left knee continued to hold my weight, and walked straight into the back of him. He stumbled forward a step and sat down. Just folded up like he was hinged and slumped into the mud.

The forest stretched and heaved and dripped around us. I didn’t think I had the strength to sit. It seemed like less effort to stay upright, clinging to the slimy, scratchy surface of a tree trunk. 

“We didn’t look in the garage.”

“Sparks.”

“We could—”

“Sparks.” Nate was a black smudge on the forest floor. “We need another way.”

I pushed my cheek against the rough bark of the tree. “I don’t have another way.”

“Bullshit. You’re like a dog with a bone—”

A bull with a sore head, my dad supplied in my head.

“—you have another move.”

I laughed and the tree swallowed it up. My tongue hurt. “I’ve got nothing. This was my big play. This was my whole plan.”

Nate was silent for what felt like hours. I saw his head knock back against the tree he was propped against. The trees dripped. Thunder growled from somewhere behind us—maybe past the Cove and rolling out to sea now, on its way to beach again in the real world. “Your forward planning sucks,” he observed, detached.

I wiped my nose with the sleeve of my sweater. I’d left Adam’s coat over the broken window at Mitchell’s. It probably had his name sewn into it. “Why are you here?”

“Because this is how I like to party.”

“No, really.” I found an exposed chunk of root and tried to get my creaky knees to bend. My jeans, sandpaper-stiff, pulled at my skin like a cheese grater. I didn’t think I’d ever been so cold. “What did you see on that calendar tonight?”

“Mitchell,” Nate said, but not in answer to my question. “That cocksucker.”

“You know what I don’t get? Selling that tape exposed that room to the whole island. Not the smartest move if you’re...”

“Knee deep in shit already?”

I nodded. “Did his hatred of me just overcome his sense of self-preservation? He was so careful with everything else.”

I saw the shadows of Nate’s hands, pale ghosts against his dirty face. “My brain hurts,” he said, muffled.

My teeth clacked and shuddered as they chattered. My hands and feet had gone from tingly to searing to totally numb—I could feel the dead weight of my second through last toes like my shoes were stuffed with rocks. Nate shuffled, and the solid weight of his wet coat landed on my knee. It was soaked and stiff with cold, but it was heavy and the damp lining was warm from his body. “Thanks.”

Somewhere down the hill, a branch cracked. We both tensed, waiting. The rain was easing up. In the gaps between gusts of wind, I could hear Nate’s teeth chattering, the rustle and whisper of his clothes as he shivered.

“You know,” Nate said finally, “he’s my stepfather. I know he’s a bastard. I thought you just wanted it to be Mitchell because he shot your dad. Because it’s easier if there’s someone in front of you to blame.” I couldn’t tell for sure if he was looking at me, but I could feel it in the dark. It felt like an admission.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It hurts.”

I heard him sigh. “I do get that he was your dad, you know. You’re trying to protect his memory.”

I hunched into Nate’s jacket, wondering if this was an apology. “That makes it sound noble. Dash said I was being selfish.”

Nate said, “You loved him.”

“Love is selfish.”

Next up: a scene from Sparks. Not even lying.

Another gap. Sigh. I am a useless blogger and should be punished. Not in a creepy way. A nice way, like with extra dessert and thoughtful presents. Like how I punish my cat with cuddles.

I’ve left this one because it’s a hard one to write. A few weeks ago, my grandfather died. He had emphysema from years of smoking while away at sea, and he gradually lost the ability to exercise, get around, breathe.

Like the grandfather who died last year, his name was Doug. But I didn’t grow up with this Doug. He was my birth father’s father, and I didn’t know him until I was 16. And then I didn’t talk to him again until I was 24. And then 26. It’s only in the last couple of years that we really got to know each other or spend any time together, so I’m not filled with childhood memories of him. We didn’t even know each other that well, really.

Here’s what I do know: he was a really, really nice man. He was funny, with a great laugh and a sharp wit. He was tall and lean and had the darkest eyes . My brother said he reminded him of me, and I felt like that was a pretty big compliment. He seemed, to me, kind and gentle-natured, and a bit of a ham. He was great with my little cousins, and always so nice and so interested in my life, without ever being pushy about how long it took me to really get to know them.

He was the person who finally fixed my car for me when I broke down (for the thousandth time) in the Coromandel a couple summers ago, and drove all the way to Kamo without coming to a complete stop. He and my grandmother happily gave me a bed for a week while we waited for parts, and Doug and my uncle were in under the hood and consulting with mechanics in minutes. I should thank my car for those extra days of drinking whiskey and L&P and hanging out with the goats, but my car is evil and should never be praised.

I wish I’d known him sooner, but I’m glad I got to spend the time I did with him. If I’m anything like him, I’ll consider myself lucky.

That’s all.

-----

Next Friday Brock and I are heading off on a roadtrip tour of the South Island. I’ve never been past Christchurch, so I’m very excited. And then I get back just in time to fly away to TONGA for a week. And then it’s my birthday. And then it’s Christmas.

Summer is coming. Life is good.

Slacker.

The other night, my flatmate was telling me about the time he had a colonic, and his body divested itself of a whole and intact red crayon

“Wow,” I said. “That had been there since you were a kid?”

He thought about this for a minute. “Maybe. Who can tell?”

-----

This is the same night the dog ate a bowl of jalapeno corn chips for dinner.

-----

It is a sad truth that when life is busy and exciting enough to blog about, it’s too busy and exciting to blog. Back soon, internet buds. Back soon.

A sting operation.

This weekend I took Bernie, known around the Twitterlands as Giant Dog, on an adventure. Flatmate was working, downstairs neighbour (and Bernie’s surrogate mother) was away skiing, and I was heading to Rach and Scott’s new house in Petone to watch the fireworks for the annual carnival.

I was getting ready to leave the house when a bee flew in my bedroom window. The bee, which was the size of my thumb -- just the biggest motherfucking bee I’ve ever seen, since I don’t exactly have delicate lady thumbs (more like what Rach once referred to as “crazy spider fingers”) -- headed straight for my cat. Lucas, in his usual perch by the window, took a swipe at it and missed.

Crap, I thought, if I leave them alone, they’re going to fight to the death. This bee is half his size! He’s never successfully killed anything bigger than a leaf! Is Lucas allergic to bee stings? Can cats be allergic to bee stings? If he went into anaphylactic shock, would Bernie’s Mountain Puppy instincts kick in? Would he fight his way through the snow with Lucas on his back, searching for help?

I was considering where to find Bernie a barrel of tiny cat-equivalent whiskey, the newspaper article half composed in my head (“Giant Dog Saves Smaller Cat From FUCKING ENORMOUS Bee”) when I remembered Bernie was coming with me.

The bee, now displaying some serious attitude, veered away and made a beeline (HAD TO) for the skylight in my room. The skylight was put in at some point by some well-meaning individual, but my house is very, very old. So old that it has no oven and a pantry with a pull-cord light and a cold-storage bench. So old that the ceilings are insanely high.

I looked at the bee. I looked at my cat, looking at the bee. I looked at the open window.

“Well, shit,” I said.

I didn’t want to kill the bee. As a kid, I used to do a round of my grandparents’ pool at least twice a day, rescuing bumblebees from drowning. I once stood on one and got so upset I almost cried, only without the ‘almost’.

The bee buzzed at the skylight. To me, it looked like it was trying to bite the window frame. That or rape it. It was an angry, angry bee. I pulled my desk chair over and got up on it.

“BZZZ!” the bee said, hurling itself further up the roof.

I grabbed a plastic tennis racquet that was lying around (don’t ask) and tested. On my tiptoes, at full stretch, I could touch the bee with the end of the plastic handle. I wasn’t sure how this was going to help me. The bee, further en-angered, threw itself at the glass.

My cat, at this point:

I imagined the bee still working out its bee fury while I was trying to sleep. I imagined my cat, crippled by anaphylaxis, as Bernie and I casually ate pizza in Petone.

I got down again and found the tallest glass in the kitchen. Armed with this and the only piece of mail in the house, I returned to my chair. Experimentation showed that I could get the glass against the window enough to trap the bee at the lowest point of the skylight, if I stood on my tiptoes on a cushion. I then attempted to use the tennis racquet to encourage the bee to go to that point. The bee did not appreciate this.

After twenty minutes and two emergency dashes from the room, the bee crawled into range. I leaned up… and trapped it inside the glass.

“Ha,” I hollered. “Ha, bee, I win!”

It was around this point that I realised that I was holding an enraged, enormous bee by pushing the bottom of the glass against the window. I was at the absolute furthest point of my reach, and in my spare hand was a standard envelope that I was somehow to get over the mouth of the glass. 

The mouth of the glass I couldn’t reach.

I thought about this for a while. The bee battered itself against the glass in a frenzy of fuzzy stripes and rage. I was on a lean, on my tiptoes on top of a chair and a cushion, using my fingers against the bottom of the glass to brace myself. I was scared to let go, and I couldn’t move any other way.

Eventually my arms really started to hurt, so I took a flying leap at the other side of the room and then ran for it.

The bee went crazy. Just batshit. BEESHIT.

The only solution was the final solution. A search of the kitchen determined we had no flyspray. We had nothing that would reach far enough to squash the bee (and I couldn’t stomach the thought of squishing something that big. Squishing that bee would be juicy).

Finally, I got the vacuum cleaner. Don’t judge me.

I sucked the bee up. And then I exhaled. My heart was pounding, my palms sweating. I felt like I’d done battle, gone to war.

And then the bee started buzzing from INSIDE THE VACUUM CLEANER.

I took it outside and tried to shake it out. I tried to disconnect the bag, but I couldn’t work out how. (I know.) At this point, I was convinced the bee was evil. So I put the vacuum back on, and ran it until the buzzing stopped. Then I put the foot back on the pipe and jammed it back under Flatmate’s bed.

Done. Gone. Defeated.

I went to find Bernie’s lead, trying to swallow my guilt. I had TORTURED A BEE TO DEATH. I was a MONSTER. And, worse, I was OKAY WITH IT. That bee hadn’t been normal. It hadn’t been a kindly pollen-collector, fat of body and fuzzy of feet. It had been an enraged mutant bee, and it had wanted me dead.

Bzzt. What was…? Bzzzt!

I crept towards Flatmate’s door.

BZZZZZZT.

I forgot rule one: zombie bastard monster vampire bees DON'T DIE. Rookie mistake, Johnston.

Eventually I got the bee out the door from Flatmate’s room to the deck. HOW is an even longer and more embarrassing story, because by this point I was so scared of the BEE OF DOOM that I was SWEATING when it was over. The point is: THAT BEE IS STILL ALIVE.

And it could be coming for YOU next.

Sleep tight, friends. Sleep tight.

-----

I arrived at Rach’s half an hour late, with a giant dog in tow.

“Your life, Katie,” Shelley said to me. “Either your flat floods or you’re attacked by a killer bee.”

This kind of sums it up. A few months ago, a pipe burst in my bathroom. True story, I didn’t know how to turn the water off. Rach called me to ask a baking question and ended up talking me through finding the toby. Afterwards, while sweeping the water out of my flat with a broom, I realized the burst pipe was attached to a tap. Don’t tell my former downstairs neighbours, since most of the damage DRIPPED.

On Christmas morning, I went to pick my brother up from the airport and a wasp flew into my car. After 20 minutes spent trying to get it out, it crawled between the dash and the windscreen. I spent the whole drive waiting for it to fly out and kill me as I drove. Instead, a sparrow flew into my grille.

Typical.

Snow my gosh! (Icy what you did there.)

This weekend I went skiing for the first time.

(Well, technically I went once when I was eight, but I refused to get a lesson or learn how to stop, and thus spent a morning hurling myself down the beginner slope and falling over at the bottom -- and then walking back up, because I also refused to go on the tow thingy. (I know I’ve said it before, but MAN, sometimes I feel sorry for my parents. Little Katie was a pain in the ass.))

We drove up Friday night. I neglected to take any pictures, so here is an artist’s impression of the house:

Nice, right?

-----

We were up and on the mountain at an ungodly hour of the morning. I was the only one of the group who’d never been skiing, and everyone except Jeffrey vanished immediately to do daring things at high altitudes. Jef was itching to impart some knowledge, so, gear acquired, he lead me down to the bunny slope to put on my skis. I almost fell over just getting them on.

“Okay,” he said, once I was upright. “This is a pizza slice.” He demonstrated. “Got it?”

“Got it,” I said, approximating his stance.

“Sweet. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

He zipped away. I pointed myself downhill, assumed my pizza position, and pushed off.

You guys, skis go FAST.

I also learned fast as I hurtled, out of all control, towards a class of six-year-olds. I managed to dodge them but, in trying to turn, lost my pizza. I picked up more speed. A group of beginner snowboarders milled in front of me. My legs wouldn’t bend. I had no idea how to turn. I clipped a fallen outlier, which slowed me down enough to dodge a toddler and his father and find my pizza slice again.

Somehow, millimeters from the queue for the magic carpet, I managed to stop. Later, Jef said to me, “you must be a fast learner -- I saw you as I was leaving and you were going really fast!”

Not on purpose, dude. Not on purpose.

-----

Later, he came back to check on me. I’d been practising my pizza for half an hour and was pretty sure I could now successfully come to a halt. Eventually. At very slow paces. In a straight line. “Want to go up further?” he asked me.

I WANTED a hot dog on a stick.

 

An impression by the same shitty artist.
You'll note my skillful stance and confident demeanor.

(For reference: a five-year-old. He is passing me. Probably while texting.)

-----

My lesson was at 12. I strapped my skis back on, post hot dog, and pizzaed my way there. The instructor looked at me. “This lesson is going to waste two hours of your life,” he said. “You don’t need it.”

“All I can do is stop!”

He pointed at the rest of the class. Three of them were stuck on top of a foot-high drift, too scared to jump off it. One of them was on his ass in the snow. The others gazed dimly around, skis in hand. “Look at these retards,” the instructor said to me. “In two hours, most of them probably still won’t be able to stop.”

This didn’t sound right to me. I had no idea what I was doing. I’d paid for a lesson. “Are you sure?” I asked.

We watched a chubby Asian tourist attempt to jump off the tiny drift. She fell over, rolled onto her back and lay there. “Oh,” he said, sounding despondent, “I’m sure.”

-----

I went back to what I was doing. An hour later, I was pretty sure I was an awesome skier. I could point myself in a direction and eventually get there. I could come to a stop at varying speeds, and I hadn’t fallen over once. (I ran into a fallen snowboarder at one point, but since his upright friend broke my fall, I wasn’t counting it.) I’d even mastered the platter (I gots the lingo!) (I googled the lingo), so I was pretty sure I was basically a pro.

I got a text to say the others were at the café for lunch. “I’ll be right there,” I replied, and leapt onto the platter. This shit was old hat. I zipped along, poles tucked neatly under one arm, chuckling fondly at all the beginners around me still doing their beginner-y things.

Re-creation: I’m awesome! I WIN at skiing!
Ha ha HA, plebian newbies, watch me and see how this shit is done!

Thirty seconds later:

...My limbs :(

-----

By the end of the day I'd more or less mastered turning in the direction intended in roughly the time frame desired. I could stop, go and not fall over almost at will. I came off the mountain ready to celebrate, and promptly crawled into my bunk and slept for 12 hours while everyone else went drinking.

Skiing is awesome. I can't wait to do it again.

In Whangarei.

“Can I see the wine list?”

She looked at me blankly. “Um. We don’t have one.”

“Can you tell me the shirazes you have by the glass, then?”

“Um. We have this one?”

“What is it?”

She held it up in my direction. “It’s this?”

Sold!

-----

On my brother’s birthday, there was a gang fight outside the café where we were having lunch. Three guys jumped another guy as he picked up his lunchtime pie from the bakery next door. The guy, unfazed, picked up a chair from an outside table and went to town.

The street was littered with too-loose sneakers.

My brother called the police, who DID NOT ANSWER.

The fight was eventually broken up by a middle-aged lady in a windbreaker. She had a perm and sensible leather shoes, and I thought for sure she was about to be killed. But apparently the gangs have an honour code as regards hitting the ladies, so she broke up a four-man street-brawl using nothing but a stern tone.

The gentlemen found the right sneakers, slipped back into them, and scuffed away. The original victim set down his chair, dusted off his pie, and resumed his lunch.

Last year on the same day we got stuck in a police chase after dinner.Whangarei is nothing if not exciting.

-----

I went to visit my birth-grandparents. One of their goats, bored of his own species, has taken a carnal shine to sheep. My grandmother said, "I've seen it happen before, but the babies don't usually live long."

WHAT.

The sheep, looking haunted, scuttled around the shared paddock. The goat -- who goes by "Sweetie", and once broke someone's leg -- eyed them with his creepy goat eyes, doing something with his tongue that my grandmother refered to as "wine tasting". It was as gross as it sounds.

Sweetie.

Crazed alpaca; traumatised sheep.

I think the alpaca is scared he night be next.

Prompt from last year: Unfulfilled childhood dreams

Tiny Katie’s greatest wishes:

1. Ride a unicorn.
2. Do a backwards walkover.
3. Be a published author.
4. Get turned into a vampire.
5. Become Elizabeth Wakefield, only way better. And a vampire.
6. Marry Taylor Hanson.
7. Get older.

I’M TOTALLY WAY OLDER. HA! I WIN.

I guess I’m lucky in a way -- I’ve always only really wanted to write. I harboured vague dreams of being a... actually, I’ve been staring at that sentence for five minutes, and can’t come up with anything else I ever seriously wanted to be. A Latin scholar? Someone who was allowed to get her ears pierced? A superhero?

As a kid, I fully expected to be published by the time I was 21. But although I wrote CONSTANTLY through my teens, I never finished anything. At about 17, I applied for a couple of writing workshops at Vic, where I wrote some short stories I didn’t like very much. Then I wrote an Angel spec script which my dad and his endless networking managed to get to one of the highish-ups on LOTR. We had a meeting that I don’t remember because I was TERRIFIED the whole time, in which she told me that I had talent, and if I was willing to workshop the script with her a bit, she’d consider passing it on to some people for me. My failure-obsessed brain heard “not good enough”, and I never called her back.

WAIT, LITTLE ME. WHAT?

After that, I spent a year avoiding my classes to write a novel I got within a chapter of finishing. Then I read it, realised it was terrible, and threw it out. This was a good idea, because it really was terrible. Then I dropped out of uni and wasted a bunch of years dabbling in fanfiction (immediate gratification! Fans! Total freedom from the constraints of plausibility!) and rampaging about the internet. And now I’m approaching 29, and coming up to two-and-a-half years of SERIOUS WRITING and the prospect that I’m going to be well into my thirties before anything comes of this. I can live with that, but Tiny Katie would be HORRIFIED.

But then, Tiny Katie’s role models were Elizabeth Wakefield and Peter Pan, so I was never going to end up all that balanced.

By now, I mostly thought I’d know more. I thought I’d understand how the world works and what it’s all meant to be about. I thought I’d have been to Rome, and that I’d probably live in the US, and if I didn’t have a house and kids (since 28 always seemed, to me, to be about AS OLD AS IT WAS POSSIBLE TO GET) I’d at least be working up to it. And either writing books about AWESOME VAMPIRES, or working on a TV show about them.

It’s not that simple, Little Me. And Taylor Hanson is already married.

But, you know, although I WANTED to write something real earlier, I wasn’t READY to. I didn’t know enough about life and people and relationships to say the things I wanted to say. I didn’t really have anything TO say. It’s entirely possible I still don’t! But I think I’m getting there.

Although it really does SHIT ME that I’ll never do a walkover.

-----

Anyway. I was looking for some excerpts of stuff to post with this. I couldn’t find the Angel spec (which, from memory, is AMAZINGLY PORTENOUS AND DRAMATIC) but I DID find a Buffy spec I was working on after that (to amuse myself. YOU KNOW HOW IT GOES). So here’s some bits from that, because... just because.

I'm working up to posting some scenes from Sparks. Let's set the bar REALLY LOW. Go, teenage Katie, go!

(Scripty mark-up removed for ease of reading.)

-----

BUFFY
No! Okay? Death doesn’t bother me...
(off Giles look)
Okay, I’m lying. Deal with it. The issue is not me.

GILES
(getting it)
Xander.

BUFFY
Him and Willow. And Oz now, too—

She breaks off again as the doors swing open and Willow wanders in, looking suspiciously casual.

WILLOW
(monumentally awkwardly)
Oh, hey Buff! Say, I was just wondering if you were... going to class...

Buffy turns and checks the time on the clock. It still says lunchtime.

BUFFY
In a half hour.

WILLOW
Right! Because that’s when it is.
(an intensely uncomfortable moment passes)
See you then!

She leaves. Buffy watches her go, then turns back to Giles and picks up her speech again.

BUFFY
God, even Cordy. This is my deal; I have to do it. And I know they want to help...

GILES
They won’t just let all this go, Buffy. They made a choice to help you, and we have to respect that.

We move to the doors...

...And through them. In the hallway outside the library, Xander, Oz and Willow are holding a quiet but furious confab.

XANDER
So?

WILLOW
I think Buffy hates us now.

OZ
I don’t know, guys. Tense silence, short answers—maybe the world’s just ending again.

XANDER
Yes! It’s not us, it’s doom. I like it. I’m running with it.

WILLOW
It didn’t feel like the world was ending. When the world ends she’s usually less... twitchy.
(beat)
Oh, she tapped her foot. Buffy tapped her foot.

XANDER
Crap. She hates us.

OZ
You guys are really reading a lot into much, much less.

-----

SCHOOL – AFTERNOON

It’s after school. Kids are clearing out, the stragglers packing away their books and heading home. Buffy skirts a cautious path around them, eyes wary. She spots Oz, hoisting his backpack and guitar case and heading down the corridor with a band member. She ducks behind a handy soda machine as he passes, then slips past them and slides sideways into the library. Buffy peeks through the doors to be sure she’s alone, and then turns, satisfied she’s evaded the gang.

Xander and Willow are sitting side by side on the table, facing her.

XANDER
(good cop)
So!

He raises his eyebrows: here we are. Willow crosses her arms and puts on her serious face. Here we’re staying.

WILLOW
(bad cop)
So.

XANDER
What are we doing tonight?

BUFFY
We’re not doing anything tonight. You’re injured—you guys should go home.

XANDER
That’s not the gig.

BUFFY
It’s not your gig.

WILLOW
No, it’s ours. All of ours.

BUFFY
We’re talking about the same gig, right? Sacred duty, mystical whatsit? ‘Cause it says ‘one girl in all the world’ right there on the box. Collectively, we come to more. And some boy bits.

WILLOW
We’re not slayers, Buffy—

BUFFY
And I need to remember that.

XANDER
Look, Buff—

BUFFY
Shut up, okay? I’m the slayer. You’re civilians, and you shouldn’t be patrolling with me.

WILLOW
Civilians?

XANDER
We’re sidekicks.

WILLOW
With magic. And army stuff, and wolf... power, and—

BUFFY
Funny concussions. Until I get you killed, and then—

WILLOW
Get us killed? Buffy, we’re not your puppets.

XANDER
...Or your puppies...

BUFFY
You’re not the Slayer, either.

XANDER
No. There’s this thing called free will. Not to be confused with the movie about the whale, but still very big. You have to do this; we chose to.

BUFFY
This isn’t an elective. God, this isn’t even a democracy.

There’s a moment as everyone digests this.

WILLOW
You’re firing us?

XANDER
You can’t fire us. We’re founding members. We get the newsletter.

WILLOW
We write the newsletter.

-----

LIBRARY - LATER

Buffy is collecting her things. She’s slow, clearly down as she gathers her books and slaying gear and pushes open the back door... revealing a vampire, fist raised to knock and a package clasped in its free hand. Buffy stakes it reflexively, without any drama, taking the package from its hand as it dusts. The package reads ‘RUPERT GILES’. She tucks it under her arm and turns to leave, only to discover Angel, lurking in his silent Angel-y way.

BUFFY
One of these days I’m going to stake you too.

ANGEL
I was going to get that guy for you. I was just looking for a stake.

BUFFY
Sure. Scaredy cat. How long have you been out here?

ANGEL
Long enough.

BUFFY
It didn’t occur to you to come in and back me up?

ANGEL
It sounded like you might start throwing books. I thought I’d wait out here, since they make those out of wood.

BUFFY
The guys were pretty...
(long pause)
...paper is wood?

ANGEL
Are you okay?

BUFFY
I guess. No. I’m the slayer. They’re my responsibility.

ANGEL
They’d probably disagree.

BUFFY
So, if you got a papercut...?

ANGEL
To my heart?

BUFFY
Oh. Right.

-----

I'm posting this almost entirely for the the "or your puppies" line, which ISN'T EVEN FUNNY unless you watched Buffy and know Oz was a werewolf. Oy.