A Story of The Night

I spend an extraordinary amount of time staring at the ceiling - at two o'clock in the morning.
Falling over my eye bags every morning reminds me that this nocturnal activity is possibly not healthy. There appears to be no antecedent to this behaviour as even the street louts who like to drink cans of bourbon on my front fence are usually in bed by two, or have stumbled onto someone else's front lawn for a bit of shut-eye. The hoons in their lowered suped-up nitro-fuelled muscled-up penis substitutes have gone from doing circlework at the intersection outside to laying rubber on the highway, or smoking crack.  The residual trash have taken their domestic disputes from the street to behind their trailer doors.  So all is quiet.  And yet, I'm awake, watching shadows ebb and flow across the ceiling rose.
I rise to check the children as I'm certain that my wakefullness must be because my sleeping children have been spirited away by kidnappers. Or perhaps one of them has stopped breathing. I must get some perverse kick out of frightening myself.  Humphrey just thinks I'm weird.
All is well.  Their room is quiet and close.  They sleep, open-mouthed, with their limbs flung asunder and bedclothes hither and thither.  I kiss their warm little faces and wonder if it is possible to infuse them with a sense of love and well-being with each dry little peck.  I also become acutely aware that these precious little people are only mine for a short time and I don't want to miss a minute of their lives.  This makes me want to cry.  Instead I shuffle into the kitchen and flick on the kettle. My eyes scunch up in protest at the bright fluorescent lights.  I look like Gollum's mother.
Stirring the decaf I wait for the computer to boot.  At least ebay is awake at this hour of the morning. I check emails and half-heartedly spy on facebook.  I shuffle back to my bed.  One side of it remains unrumpled.  I realise I am lonely, missing that great warm lump of Humphrey - who should be in my bed each night, but for reasons beyond our control is not.  It could be worse, I say to myself.  Yes, it could be much worse.  I pick up my cheap supermarket reading glasses. One long-broken arm waggles uselessly, but I deftly flick it up over my ear. We have an understanding.  I won't sit on them again, provided the arm doesn't completely separate from the rest of the frame.  Settling back into a pile of pillows I smooth open a tattered page of David Copperfield.  It has been read many times, but still the characters can be conjured into my bedroom - the dumpy, apple-cheeked Peggotty, ominous Murdstone and pathetic Clara whom I'd like to pummel with a steak tenderiser.  It is 3am.  Should I make school sandwiches or should I try to sleep? Perhaps I should go and clean behind the washing machine.  Have been meaning to do that for some time.  I decide instead to settle David Copperfield on the bedside table, switch off the light and roll over.  I run my hands over the cool smooth sheets that should be warm with Humphrey....and wait for sleep.

Queen of Blurgh

Urgh.  Blocked nose, sore throat, thumping head and tired.  No, it's not conjugal duty time, its my man cold.  I don't get the sniffles, I get full-blown ebola-flu.  It is always worse when its hot outside.  Why is it that nasty little biological warfare bombs explode during summer? It's so damn hot up here that even cockroaches curl up their creepy little raspy legs,  but not our friendly neighbourhood ebola-flu.  It lurks on library door handles and shopping trolleys waiting to make your mucous membranes its cosy new home.  To make matters even more inconvenient the Charlotta sat an exam today. sigh. wish. me. luck.

Kim Kardashian, Seventy Angry Lawyers Weilding Seventy Breached Contracts and The Starving Children in Africa.

Sometimes after reading the news headlines I fold myself into the foetal position and weep.
No, I'm not talking about the impending financial collapse of the European Union and the fact that by 2014 we will all be living in dumpsters and selling our children as spare parts.  My latest news-induced physical and emotional implosion happened after I heard the tragic news of Kim Kardashian's impending divorce. 
On my knees arms beseeching the heavens I wailed "Where, oh where did the love go?"
All that effort...... THREE wedding dresses (because when you're really in love one is not enough)....three hundred and seventy six carat diamond rings (again, he loved her three hundred and seventy six times more than the average guy), .eleventy million dollars for photographic rights  and the blinding, radiant all encompassing LOVE....gone....just...gone.
I ...just.....can't....believe....sob.. i...it's.....over....blub...sniffle.
How our Armenian princess gets through the day after this personal armageddon is beyond me  How she drags herself out of her swag each morning to administer food and medicine to the starving Sudanese....How she squares up and pokes her finger into collective chest of the UN about war crimes in Sri Lanka....How she works in soup kitchens on Hollywood Boulevard....How she personally oversees the health and wellbeing of disabled Romanian orphans.  All of this.....and her marriage has crumbled.....it was all just. too. much.
Huh?
What's that?  She actually doesn't do anything?  ANYTHING?
Well what's she doing splashed all over the media all the time?  Of course it's a bloody good question.....
She sells handbags? Handbags? And clothes? Oh.
You are kidding......she actually charged people who had already bought her handbags $160 to get an autograph......in Australia?  She wasn't mobbed or spattered with rotten tomatoes?
But what about the starvi......
Nevermind.
Humans are stupid.  I want to be a dog.

When a Red Ribbon is Just a Red Ribbon and Not a Metaphor for Psycho-sexual Mind Games

Hell-oooooooooo! Phew, I'm finally back after being whisked away by George Clooney for three months in Sodom and Gommorah.  (Don't even know if I spelled tha' proper-loike).
Or I could have had my head stuffed so far up a criminalistics textbook that when I emerged I found my children have left home, I've three grandchildren, my husband has run off with a one-legged rastafarian mandolin player and I live within a fortress of newspapers - and ninety seven cats.  Which is most likely? Nevermind.

There is much to be said for hitting a certain age and discovering that your neurons fire about as fast as Telstra's internet dial up network.   I can run faster than the connection at my Mum's place.  Anyway, what I'm trying to say in my typically verbose fashion is .... I've been studying to the exclusion of everything....(except Thing 1 and Thing 2).  The way I hit the books you would think I would've actually sewn up string theory, or at least next year's Nobel Prize. sigh.
Unlike some, I can't learn via osmosis.  As much as I'd love to place my faith-healer hands on a textbook and feel all that knowledge stream into the draughty cavern that is my craniobrainio bit.  My brother-in-law learns like that.  He's a super dooper mergers and acquisitions lawyer who studies for his masters by just THINKING about blowing the cobwebs from his textbook - while he surfs.  My sister is the same....the memory of a steel trap, although admittedly it is generally confined to irrelevancies such as the fact that I borrowed $15 from her in 1982 (she's working out the interest as I write) and my plethora of other crimes and misdemeanours dating back to her birth in 1974.

Dreamt of exams the other day.  Usually it's me walking into a gymnasium looking at the eleventy million desks lined up for an english exam and ...*lightbulb*.... "Oh. I forgot to read the book".  Actually that wasn't a dream, that was true. Almost.  For practically all of my year 12 exams.
Modern European History: Medici's, yeah, weren't they hairdressers from Milan?
Religious Studies: Exodus, I'm sure that's an English boy-band.
Legal Studies: the snail in the bottle....the snail....in. the. bottle.  Yep, that set a precedent that resulted in Schweppes always making  sure there were never. any. more. snails. in. bottles. 
English:  A red ribbon always means a loss of viginity (Tess of the Durbervilles) and seagulls flying into a sunset means new life (Fly Away Peter).  God help me! When can a story just be a damn good yarn and not sneakily woven with symbolic trickery?
I failed. 
The latest exam anxiety dream was loaded with obvious neuroses.....my subconscious knows it needs to s.p.e.l.l things out for me otherwise I will meander in blissful ignorance into the next disastrous quagmire.

Sometimes a red ribbon is just a red ribbon.

(Coming up:  The Kardashians (good grief) and Living the High Life).

It's My Funeral and I'll Laugh If I Want To.

Occasionally I've been known to muse on my own demise and subsequent funeral.

Eidelweiss thinks this makes me weird. (At least I don't make lampshades out of baby skins).

(Should I die expectedly unexpectely tonight from being stabbed by Humphrey  an aneurism I expect my loyal Blogsters will ensure my final wishes are granted or I. Shall. Haunt. You.  Humphrey already has an Exorcist on speed dial).

So, this is how I would like my funeral to proceed:

There will be:  A ferris wheel,  face-painting, a bouncy castle, a sushi bar, Italian baristas, George Clooney (my God, he's single again...I may just holiday on Lake Como this year....), naked wrestling in chocolate mudcake, a fountain of any New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and me in a coffin in the likeness of Barbie.
For music I think a Mexican with a big sombrero and a ukelele (?) and a stout Italian man with a handlebar moustache and a piano accordian. There must be much dancing in circles.
Guests will dress in floral kaftans (the women can wear togas). Marshmallows shall be toasted over a the funeral pyre bonfire. Much gayness and frolicsomeness will be had by all.

Of course, being a realist, I know that something will go wrong.  Hopefully it won't be my putrifying corpse busting the hinges off Barbie. No I think it will be something all the more....gossip-worthy.   Oh, I know!!!
The birds are singing, the sun is shining and Aunty Helen is bouncing on the rubber castle....all are enjoying the flabulicious funeral......until....

The eulogy.

During the eulogy - given by George Clooney who is heartbroken that he the world has lost his only love a truly fabulous chick -- Humphrey pales and looks aghast.  It is not the sobbing of George that shocks our hero  H, but the arrival of a Fed Ex van.
The driver of  said van struggles with a large cardboard box punctured with multiple holes.  
"Parcel for Mr Humphrey from Mr H Hefner?" puffs the van driver swaggering with his clipboard toward the bazillions of eye-dabbing mourners.
"You're a day EARLY," hisses Humphrey.

And that, dear friends, was how Humphrey's friends, and my own, were introduced Candy - his new bride.  I say "new" because"  this 20-year-old model had been discarded by Hugh.  Candy had been superceded by the 16-year-old Lola version that the octogenarian had just moved into his Mansion. Candy was found in the bargain bin of the online catalogue.

Ok. So I may have been pushing the boundaries with the whole bouncy castle thing. It is more than likely that my funeral - with no intervention from my Blog Buddies - will end up like this:

Humphrey, a man of simple tastes and understated elegance (emphasis on understated), would probably prefer me to be wrapped in a linen shroud and buried under a bluebush.  The bush would be adjacent to the homestead orange tree because we all know how orange trees love a corpse (don't ask - it's a whole other post).  Whilst understated elegance is an admirable attribute, Humphrey would actually be more concerned about the understated impact a shroud-in-hole funeral would have on his malnourished wallet.   Floral arrangements will be supplied by Nature....in the form of naturally occuring bluebush, saltbush, mulga and cabbage trees, carelessly arranged as God intended.  This understatedly elegant affair would likely be BYO (beer and snags), oh and don't forget a cushion because the lid of your esky may get a bit hard to sit on during the service.
The most moving tribute will be the handing-out, post interrment, of hot pink fly swats, the heads of which would be embossed with my smiling face (ala Alessi's Dr Skud). Perhaps a fitting reminder (to Humphrey) of his dearly departed maggot life-partner.

Then the Fed Ex van will arrive....

Sheeeeee's Baaaaaaaaack!

I owe you a sincere, most grovelsome apology.  If any of you are still out there that is, my Preshuses.  You may, or may not, have been aware that Charlotte has been MIA.  The reasons for this may be many and varied and could be any one of the following:

A)Kidnapped by dwarf violinists and secreted in a former war bunker near Kiev where I was bludgeoned with wet teatowels.

B)Suffered a bout of amnesia an forgot who I....who....whooo....what was I saying?

C) Was whisked away by Humphrey on a three month cruise to Antarctica where we became ice-locked.     Humphrey selflessly offered himself......and was eaten.

D)Decided to take part in a walking pilgrimage to Mecca and took a wrong turn somewhere near Turkmeninistan.

E)In a fit of pique I sold my house, children and husband and bought a shack in Marble Bar where I now live with 47 cats and a squirrel.

F)Have been in a coma....on my loungeroom floor....for three months.....and the kids didn't even notice while they hunted for the remote.

G)Humphrey decided to act upon my whining and sent me to a fat farm...or his version of it.....chained in the shed cellar for three months. Much to his amazement I actually came out fatter. My ancestors thrived during  ice-ages and famines due to the ability to get fat on thinking about roast mammoth ears.  I have taken this ability to a new level.  The rats helped.

H) I roamed the wilderness (south of the homestead) for forty days and forty nights in search of enlightenment and found frostbite and a couple of hundred straggler sheep.

I) I have been languishing at Her Majesty's pleasure after being arrested for trying to hide under the bishop's robes at Will's and Kate's wedding (but that's another post).

J)I was abducted by aliens and now speak *^^_+ fluently. I can also spot a worm hole at 545 light-years.

H) I'm basically a lazy F*ck and have been so damn busy studying and caring for my Bratlings that my future famosity as a Blog Queen took a back seat to mediocrity in a backwater.


So there you have it.  Take your pick. Personally I go for "E" - it has a kind of appeal.  Or maybe "E" blended with "C" because I've always wondered what Humphrey would taste like sauteed wanted to go to Antarctica.

One is recovering from a short spell at one of Her Majesty's Hotels, Drake Hall.
Shame I didn't bump into any of the other guests at the Hall.