» Family codes and rituals

Burp Secrets
My sister, brother and I have a probably everlasting running war of 'burp secrets'.

That is, tricking someone into leaning in with the expectation of having a super secrety secret divulged, only to be burped at directly into their ear.

As well as getting points for volume and moistness (I believe in one epic 'secret', some food was actually burped out INTO the receiver's ear), you can also factor into the success the disappointment of the receiver. For example, just going 'hey, I have a secret!' is worth fewer points than 'Want to know what I found out about where you REALLY came from?' (ones like this are harder to pull now that my brother, the youngest, is now over the age of six)

I fully plan, as the oldest, to give them each one final burp secret on my deathbed.

Edit: also just remembered about 'fart news'. Aka 'Guess what?!' said loudly and excidedly. 'What?!' expectant and intruiged. '*farts*'

Oh, the hilarity.
(Mon 24th Nov 2008, 14:17, More)

» Neighbours

Sticker- cat
My ex- boyfriend once found a box of blank, flourescent orange, round stickers in a box on the road near his flat. Soon him and his flatmates had sticker- i- fied every stationary object both in the flat and in the surrounding area (when we first started going out he proudly asked me to look out the window of his bedroom and spot the stickers on various lamposts/ fences/ trees nearby). So they decided to challenge themselves by aiming to stick atleast one sticker to the neighbour's cat whenever it wandered in- which was fairly frequently, possibly due to the presence of Dave the Mouse, who was referred to as a fifth flatmate, as in: 'Dave really hasn't been pulling his weight around the house lately' or 'Have you seen Dave recently?' 'Yeah, I saw him in the recycling bin last night inside a beer bottle. Getting blotto'. But anyway, I digress. After stickering the cat for a solid month or so, they were hanging around in the garden one afternoon, having just watched the once again flourescently polka- dotted cat run back over the fence when they hear a thoroughly confused: 'What the hell? Someone's put a sticker on you!'.

It makes me laugh imagining 1. the confusion of the neighbour over the mysterious new accessories on his cat and 2. how this was the first time he'd noticed!
(Tue 6th Oct 2009, 12:03, More)

» Grandparents

My grandma, in the last ten or so years of her life,
suffered from Parkinson's which gradually progressed into Parkinson's Dementia.

For the most part it was actually pretty horrible; I can remember the first time we visited her in her dementia unit, surrounded by all the things that used to sit in the house she raised my mum and her four siblings in, which her and my grandad had to sell after she couldn't handle the stairs any more.

She was sat in bed complaining loudly and furiously that Ken (my grandad) hadn't been to visit her in weeks, when actually he had just visited that morning, like he did every day.

I was sixteen and none of my grandparents had died yet and for the first time I started to sense what it felt like to lose someone you loved.

But the brilliant part came at the end of this otherwise horribly depressing visit- we were all doing our goodbyes and after my brother, who was about ten at the time, pulled away from his hug, she grabbed his shoulder and earnestly reminded him how lucky he was, because he had "that special thing where you're a boy AND a girl!"

So far as I know that isn't actually true; the look of ten- year- old confusion on his face was priceless.
(Fri 3rd Jun 2011, 12:35, More)

» The Dark

This came up in my facebook newsfeed today:
Fredrick took the What Lives Under Your Bed quiz and got the result: Lady Gaga..

If that were under my bed, I'd sure as hell be scared of the dark.
(Sat 25th Jul 2009, 0:22, More)

» Festivals

Stupid Ladies Toilets
A few years ago at the Big Day Out I made the mistake of waiting to queue for toilets when I was already busting for a wee.

And then I made the mistake of queuing in a line with only one toilet at the end.

And then there was no toilet paper in it.

And then I saw that was because all the toilet paper had been used to fill up the bowl so that the toilet wouldn't flush.

And then I did an exceptionally large poo.

And then I looked at it, sitting there on its comfy bed of other people's used toilet paper, having just wiped my bum with an EFTPOS receipt from my pocket. It kind of looked like it was sleeping.

And then I washed my hands and left.

And then my friend used the toilet after me.

And she wasn't like a really good friend who I wouldn't mind seeing my sleeping poo.

And so I felt embarrassed around her for the rest of the day.
(Sat 6th Jun 2009, 4:23, More)