Why I Hate the Pub

I hate going to pubs. I really, really hate it. I hate it for many reasons - I don't really drink so I find it boring, I don't especially like being stuck driving drunk people home and I don't really like the horrible smell of stale beer and cigerettes.

However, I hated going to the Norseman local pub more than most other pubs. I hated it so much that I generally refused to go there unless in the company of a male. I hated almost everything about the local pub except perhaps for the lovely ladies who work behind the bar and the delicious pizzas that they serve.

So what, I hear you ask, could cause a vivacious young lady like myself to keep away from a simple country pub? Well I'll tell you - the men! The local pub is like a gathering point for every crude, undersexed and underwhelming man in the town. Now, I'm not saying that every single man in the pub is a hideous pulsating mutant; there are some lovely guys who hang out there...it's just that unfortunately most of my experiences there involved rather unlikeable drunken troglodytes.

Several nasty things have happened to me at the pub while I lived in Norseman. There was the incident where one of the local stray dogs attacked me while I stood screaming outside the pub, banging on the windows for help. No one helped. They just kept drinking and watched with this glazed look in their eyes.

Or there was the time that a drunken man climbed into my car and asked to go back to my house. Or the time when I got surrounded by drunken miners outside the pub, none of which would let me get through so I could go to my car.

I could go on forever, but my favourite incident at the pub has got to be the time when a man bought me a drink despite me telling him that I didn't want one. I'll let the cartoon speak for itself...

So ends the tale of why Lena hates the Norseman pub!

Now for something completely different...

My Cat is (Probably) Evil!

 I love my cat Khan. He's cute and fluffy and he has the most adorable and silly habits. However, I'm starting to think that he might be evil. It was just a sneaking suspicion at first - you know, I'd catch him looking at people with this...look...in his eyes like he wanted to do bad things to them. I didn't really think much about it at first because Khan the cat is always nice as pie to me, but soon I started to see a different side to him.


The reasons why Khan might be evil:

 1. Khan flicks water on Shaun's face while he sleeps

See, Khan gets thirsty a lot at night and for some reason he prefers 'people water'. Usually he waits until we fall asleep and then he'll drink from the cup of water that Shaun often leaves beside the bed. Gross huh? Well, we worked out a way around this...or so we thought. We got a long skinny cup that he couldn't get his snout into.

Well, that didn't really work out. You see, somehow Khan worked out that his paw will fit into the cup and that he can then lick the water off his paw. So that's what he does - he puts his entire paw into the cup and lets his fur soak up water, then he pulls it out and licks the water off - the licking in turns flicks water onto Shaun's face and wakes him up.

So he's really get spitty water in the face. Huh. That's even grosser than I first thought. Ew.


2. Khan attacks people's legs

Mostly Khan attacks Shaun's legs but from to time he'll pick on someone else, like my friend Jenna who copped many a bite from Khan. I'm sure why he picks on some people and not others, but I'm guess it's dominance thing.

Khan isn't subtle about his attacks - he doesn't hide around corners and then spring it on you as a surprise attack, oh no, he will follow you around and then randomly bite you and spring away. Or he'll simply chase after you - biting and scratching at your ankle if you're too slow to jump away.


3. He covers everything in a layer of fur

Everything in our house gets covered in fur. It doesn't matter how much I dust and vaccuum; the cats hair gets on EVERYTHING - especially clothes and chairs. This isn't so bad for me because I always keep a sticky roller thing with me to get the hair off...but Shaun has no such luck. He gets hair all over his suits and has to spend large amounts of time trying to get it off.

(Shaun really needs his own sticky roller thing! Note to self: buy him one!)


4. Khan vomits in walkways

Yeah...and I'm pretty sure he does this on purpose. He can never cough up hairballs on the lino or the tiles, nope. It's always the carpet walkways...although usually I find his little disgusting presents before people step in the. Usually...


5. Khan knocks EVERYTHING off tables

Mmm hmm, Khan tends to sleep on tables and anything on the table will get knocked off. He doesn't even do it accidently - I've seen him knock things off with his paws on purpose.

The circle of items which we find surrounding tables has been christened the 'cat corona' by Shaun and my buddy Lucy. Yes, things get broken and yes it's annoying. Khan is probably evil.

However, despite Khan being evil (mostly evil to Shaun - except for that one time that he tripped me down the back stairs) he is still my cute little adorable kitty ^_^ and I love him!

Is your evil? Do they engage in any nasty little behaviours? Feel free to share them with me!

I'm a SUPER AWESOME climber!

When I was young I was pretty athletic. Seriously! I was good at anything that was sports related or tied in with physical activities; running, swimming, netball squash, sprinting, long distance running, discus etc. etc. etc. I still have my many 1st place ribbons, trophies and medals! (It's also the reason why I now have an Osteochondral Defect in my knee - but that's another story!)

Despite being great at everything, what I was best at was climbing. I could climb pretty much anything – trees, poles, cliffs. You name it and I could climb it. I was especially proud of the fact that somehow I could manage to shimmy up straight-trunk trees and even basketball poles – namely things that were straight up and down and which had no branches to help you up.

How I was able to climbs these things I have no idea, but it came in mighty handy whenever I was playing hide and seek chasey – I’d just hide up the hardest to climb tree I could find and I was safe. Why bother hiding when I could taunt people by staying just out of reach? I mean, no one but me could get up them. Suckers.

Of course, I eventually had my comeuppance. Everybody makes mistakes and I made my mistake when I tried to climb up a rock face in Kakadu in the Northern Territory. The place where I decided to go climbing was at UDP Falls (made famous in Crocodile Dundee) which better known as Gunlom Falls. I thought it would be an easy climb that would impress my parents and the tourists...I was wrong.

Foolish, foolish me.

At first I was doing all right. I was climbing and having fun – it wasn’t even an especially hard climb but eventually when I was about a metre from the top; I got stuck. I couldn’t climb back down again because I couldn’t reach the footholds and I couldn’t get any further up because the top of the cliff was just out of my reach.

At first I tried to play it cool, but as I was stuck up there longer I began to panic and eventually I started crying, convinced that I was going to plummet to my death. Why was I so worried? Well, not only could I see down in the waterholes below me, I could also see exactly how far down the next giant waterfall went. It was a long, long way down and even though I couldn’t have possibly fallen down the second giant waterfall, I was certain that somehow I would and that crocodiles would get me.

As I sat wailing on the cliff I saw a man below in the waterhole catch sight of me.

“Look!” He yelled dramatically and pointed at me, “A girl is stuck on the cliff!”

A crowd gathered to gawk at me and once I realised that everyone could see me (and that everyone knew I was stuck) I began to cry harder.

Eventually my father used the bushwalking track to walk to the top of the cliff and he rescued me. To this day I will never forget being stuck on that cliff, and although I continued to climbs trees and the occasional small rock face I never again tried to climb anything that big.

I still have dreams where I’m at the top of UDP Falls trying desperately to climb down…

So tell me, have you ever got yourself stuck in a stupid and completely avoidable situation?

Before We Adopted Khan...

He was quite possibly a murderous evil kitteh who devoured his old owner. I love my cat...but I'm just sayin'...you know, he has the evils about him sometimes!

The Migraine Worm

So a few nights ago I had a horrible migraine. I get migraines fairly often and have been off and on medication for them for quite a few years now - although nothing much seems to help stop them so I usually resort to taking Mercindol and knocking myself out for a few hours. Not the healthiest option, but the easiest by far.

I picture my migraine like a worm that is stuck in my brain. A horrible little worm that wriggles and bites and makes pressure build up. I hate the migraine worm.

Some interesting facts about my migraines:

1. I smell an artificial strawberry smell when I get migraines.
2. Artificial mint and strawberry lollies always trigger a migraine – even just the smell of them.
3. I always crave white bread or white rice before and after a migraine AND if I eat white bread and drink coffee when I feel a migraine coming on, I can sometimes prevent it.

I first started getting migraines in high school. I can remember sitting slumped in my chair in classes with my head on my desk trying to block out all the light and sound going on around me. I must say that I adore all my high school teachers for being so good to me throughout those years – never once did they yell at me or pressure me to get up and do work. They just let me be.

My migraines got progressively worse the older I got. By the time I was attending university they were horrible and lasted for days at a time. After one especially bad migraine I went down to the university doctor and encountered Doctor T.

Doctor T was probably not the best doctor for me to have seen. For one thing he seemed convinced that I was making it up and that I was just trying to get out of university classes and work. His response after I gave him my symptoms has stuck with me for all those years…

 I was not impressed! Luckily the second doctor I saw was much more professional and diagnosed me with chronic migraines.

Migraines have resulted in some very painful and embarrassing moments for me. For instance when I was in my last year of high school I went shopping up town and got a migraine. Normally this would be no problem but this was in school holidays so my parents were working, I didn’t drive and I lived several kilometres out of town.

 After vomiting violently in the public toilet in the mall I lay collapsed on the floor of the cubicle, my mind whirling over how many germs I must be lying in, but my brain and body were too pain racked to care. I eventually called my mum and she said she’d come and get me. I stumbled up and made my way out to the top car park near the movie theatre to wait for her. Unfortunately it was raining and cold outside but I was worried that if I waited inside I’d not notice my mother’s car, so I curled up on the ground in the rain to wait, only moving to crawl a few metres away to vomit.

It was horribly humiliating to be huddled in the rain in a public place with so many people walking past. Big thanks to the two women who stopped to ask if I was okay. There wasn’t anything they could do but they waited with me until my mother arrived out of the goodness of their hearts. I have no idea who they were…but thanks. I less impressed with the dweeb and his dumb blonde girlfriend who came over to see if I was "alive".

I’ve also spent time huddled under my desk at work with a migraine to escape the light and I’ve driven 120 kilometres in a car with a migraine, only pausing to pull over at truck stops and be sick. Big thanks to the random trucker who came to see if I was okay on this trip and gave me an unopened bottle of water and some gum during one of my vomit breaks. See? Not all truckers are evil!

Personally, I look forward to the day when scientists cure migraines or find some amazing way to stop the pain.

Needles Don't Hurt!

So, remember my post about my needle phobia and how I had to go back to the hospital to get more blood taken? Remember how I was determined that I was going to get over this because needles really aren't that bad? Remember how I mentioned that the world likes to screw things up for me?

Well, life did it's usual little trick of throwing a spanner in the works, and I endured what is probably one of the most horrific bleeding experiences ever. Really.

Things actually started off quite well - I explained my phobia to the lovely old lady who would be taking my blood, and she was very reassuring and promised me that she would be extra gentle with me. Then the guy from Device Technologies turned up with his little box of...needles and syringes...and things took a turn for the worse.

First of all, I found out they were taking twice as much blood as last time - 120ml of blood, I think. He had these two massive syringes that both had to be filled to capacity.

Then things got worse. You know what you don't want to hear when you go to get your blood taken? This...


Nurse: Wow, these needles are huge! I don't think I've ever taken blood with a needle this big.

Man: Yeah, normally we take blood from people when they're unconscious and having biopsies. This is the first time I've seen these used to take blood from someone while they're awake.

Nurse: I suppose they have to be big to stop the blood coagulating. Say, these needles are a little strange. How does the needle and tube attach to the syringe...?

Man: I'm not sure...

Meanwhile I was sitting on the chair freaking out while they waved giant needles and syringes around and tried to work out how to attach the needle and blood tube thing to the syringe. Eventually they got set up and it was time for the needle.

Now, I should mention that the last time they took blood from me, I was in tears by this stage. This time I was dry eyed and in reasonably good spirits. The entire thing was pretty surreal.

Then this happened - now you have to excuse my terrible drawings (worse than usual!) but my arms hurt a lot from the needles, so I drew these quickly. I think they illustrate what happened pretty clearly though...

Apparently the tube thing hadn't attached to the syringe properly, so when she stuck the needle into me, blood went everywhere. Everywhere. It was all over me, all over the chair, bench, floor and everything else within about a foot of my arm.

I will never, ever forget the poor lady screaming out, "Don't look! Don't look! Oh god, don't look!" As blood went everywhere.

The Device Technologies man kept his distance while the nurse desperately tried to stop the blood from spurting everywhere. Me? Surprisingly, despite the fact that the giant needle had really, really hurt, was too busy laughing to do anything. It was surreal.

Finally the tube attached and they took the blood. Then they realised they still had to take a second syringe of blood, and they realised that they would have to use my other arm to take more blood. Luckily, the second syringe of blood went better - it didn't go anywhere except in the syringe! It did however really, really hurt.

It was over soon enough and the lady bandaged up my arms and told me to leave it on for 6 hours, because the holes the needles had made were quite large and they would take longer than normal to close up. She also told me that she had never seen needles this big before and apologised for the blood and the pain that I'd experienced.

I was able to tell her, in between giggling fits, that although it had really hurt, I had actually found this the least stressful needle-related experience ever. Which is funny because I think this is the kind of experience which would have usually cause needle phobias in people!

So, despite lunch serving up giant horrible needles and a bucket load of blood, I think I've actually taken quite a big step to getting over this phobia of mine.

Take that, fear!

Childhood Trauma Movies

I think everyone has a childhood trauma movie. You know; that movie that you saw when you were a child that scarred you terribly and haunts you to this day? It didn’t have to be a horror movie, it might have been a science fiction movie or even a children’s movie...but something about the movie reached out and touched you and said, "I’m going to screw with your mind for the rest of your life."

For a friend of mine it was an episode of The Storyteller. He was traumatised by the porcupine man and was convinced that the porcupine man would burst through his ceiling and attack him at night. His paranoia was so great that he used to sleep under his giant teddy bear, figuring that when the porcupine man eventually came through the ceiling it would land on his bear and attack that, giving him time to get away.

These fears are usually highly irrational and when you grow up and become a big brave adult, you can laugh off your silly childish fear as being nonsensical!  "A porcupine man isn't really going to burst through my roof and attack me! Ha ha ha ha!"

But, in the dead of night, when you're surrounded by darkness and you're all alone...that silly fear will wake you in a cold sweat. You see, the power of childhood trauma movies is that they worm their way into your subconcious and they scar you deeper than any knife could ever cut. They injure your soul. Yes, your soul. The fear becomes a part of you and no matter how rational or sensible you become; you'll always be afraid.

For me, it was a movie called ‘Fire in the Sky’ that was shown to me by my well intentioned mother. Apparently, and this is going on my memory as a child, a friend had recommended the movie to her. So my mother sat down to watch it one bright sunny Saturday afternoon and thought that it could be something we could do together. Thanks mum.

I believe this was my reaction:

Fire in the Sky, for those that don’t know this particular gem of a movie, can be summed up pretty easily by a few choice words: 'Horrible aliens', 'abduction', 'alien medical procedures' and 'needles in eyes'.

Here is a brief (and misleading) synopsis care of IMDB:

"This film recreates the strange events which happened November 5, 1975 in the town Snowflake, Arizona. Travis Walton works as a logger in the woods. When he and his colleagues drive home after work, they encounter an UFO. For the next five days Travis disappears and his colleagues are accused of murder. When he reappears, first he didn't remember that he was gone, but in time the terrible memories come back..."

It doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But it wass the horrible little alien abduction sequence in it that scared me! I came away from Fire in the Sky with a few thoughts running through my mind - and they've stuck with me ever since.

Firstly – Random bright lights in the woods are bad.
Secondly – Don’t walk around in the woods at night chasing after bright lights.
Thirdly – Aliens will abduct you for no good reason to do ‘experiments on you’.
Fourthly – If aliens do abduct you, you will get dragged down a hallway and have a needle stuck into your eyeball while you scream.

It occurred to me after watching this movie that the aliens (and I had no doubt they existed) would get me no matter what I did. I could be walking home at night and BAM! The aliens would catch me. I could be at a friends house and BAM! The aliens would get me. I could be at home in bed hiding under the covers and BAM! I’d be gone!

There was no escape for me.

No escape at all.

Here, this clip from Youtube will show you why this movie scared me:

Thanks to watching this film as a child I still have reoccurring nightmares where I’m crawling through tunnels trying to escape things and I have an INSANE fear of aliens. Really, just ask my friends and they’ll tell you that Lena is insanely frightened of aliens – especially The Greys. I despise going outside in the dark by myself at night for this very reason. I love looking at the stars at night but if I see any lights moving up there I’m inside like a shot!

However, I’m also intrigued by aliens. I have a strange fascination with anything that scares me and so I have a love of aliens and UFOs. I began researching them not long after watching Fire in the Sky and I can still fondly remember borrowing books on them from the school library and compiling a folder on aliens and UFOs.

Yes, I was a very strange ten year old.

It didn’t help that our neighbour in Woomera saw a UFO one night. Sure, they found weather balloon wreckage a couple days later (which I snuck into the firestation to see!) but that’s what they said in Roswell.

As a child it was like my worst nightmare coming true – at any moment I thought the greys were going to be shining lights on my house, pressing their horrible little hands again my bedroom window and abducting me to stick needles in my eyes while I screamed.

So there you go. That is my childhood trauma movie and, might I add, the childhood trauma movie of one of my best friends. Both of us were terribly frightened by that awful sequence in Fire in the Sky.

Go and rent it. Really. You should watch it. I’m sure you’ll see how it would scare a little girl and be responsible for years of build up and paranoia! And yes, please do share your childhood trauma movies! We all have one!

The story of why some people think I'm a satanist...

Let me tell you a story...the story of why some of the locals back in Norseman believe that the teachers have formed a satanic cult that worships satan at the cemetery.

No, I'm not joking. This happened. Really. Honest. What you're thinking right now is probably what I thought at the time.

Last year, when I was in Norseman, we had some new teachers move into town and myself and my friends being the nice people we are, we decided to take them out to a fancy dinner at the club (Ha!) and then show them around town.

We showed them the tin camels, the horse statue, the dump and the cemetery.

Now whilst at the cemetery we hopped out of the car, walked to the fence and looked in. We spent probably about two minutes standing in the cold and dark, peering through the gloom at the crummy town cemetery.

Eventually we got scared of some shadows and bolted back to the cars giggling and then drove home. This cartoons illustrates what happened:

Great story, huh? Totally fitting for a bust out of town rumours, right?

Well, somehow word got around town that we'd gone to the cemetery that night. It took time but word spread and the story of that night...changed. Warped. Grew.

Months later a parent accused one of my friends of holding satanic masses in the graveyard, of worshiping satan, of calling down spirits and all sorts of nonsense. He was upset, my friend, but he shrugged it off thinking it was just some kind of strange local silliness.

But noooo...the story continued to grow and another parent came forward to complain to the principal that a bunch of us were ripping up bibles on the highest mountain peak (Something that took us by surprise as we certainly hadn't been climbing up any mountains! Not in the middle of a school term! We save that sort of stuff for the holidays! Joking!), worshipping satan and attempting to summon ancient spirits. She claimed she was frightened for our souls.

Apparently this is what the townsfolk believed happened that night:

So yes, now a portion of the town think we're in a cult. Nice, huh? The whole thing is totally and completely silly!

I never win! (Lotteries, that is!)

Every now and again I get convinced I’m going to win the lottery. Usually this occurs when there is some sort of big jackpot happening and $50 million or so is up for grabs.

Despite the fact that I’ve only won money once ($40 on my first ever lotto ticket) I’m convinced every time I see those jackpot signs that I’m destined to win the lottery and of course I waste my dwindling money on buying a ticket.
Reasons why I believe I’ll win the lottery:

1. I should be rich!

2. I don’t want to work as a teacher in Norseman forever (Who does...?)

3. I’m lazy and want to hire people to do stuff for me

In the lead up to the lottery draw I allow myself to fantasize wildly about winning the money…ALL THE MONEY! I could do anything then – I’d give money to friends and family, I could quit my job and enjoy doing fun things and I could buy stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.

Of course, then I start to think about what if I don’t win all the money. I usually find myself thinking that I could probably handle winning a million at least…but any less then that and what’s the point? Sure, I could buy stuff but I’d still have to work :P

When the lottery night comes around I rarely watch it…mostly because I enter the lottery so rarely that I don’t actually know what time the draw is on or even what channels shows it. Usually I’ll have forgotten that I even have a ticket until I’m wandering past the newsagent and remember that I took a ticket in that HUGE MEGA JACKPOT.

I go inside…excited that soon I will be a multi-millionaire. I even practise my excited ‘Oh, I’ve won! Yay!’ expression. So I go up to the counter…scan my ticket and…of course I haven’t won.

I never win.  You’d think by now I might have realised that it just isn’t going to happen for me…but hope springs eternal. Hey, isn’t there a mega jackpot on this weekend too…?