I bet she reads Dan Brown

Dearest bikini waxer,

I appreciate that you make an effort at small talk to make me feel that tiny bit more comfortable while I'm naked from the waist and you're tearing hair from my delicates.

Sure, a little chit chat can certainly alleviate the atmosphere to some extent. After all, it hardly feels natural having a stranger spreading hot hot burning hot wax all around the place. Boyfriends dont get that personal. A little talk about weather and what you did this weekend helps me relax. But bikini waxer, today you failed in a big way.

I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR YOUR CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT THE FREEMASONS WHILE YOU'RE TOUCHING MY VAGINA. Please, please, keep the crazy to yourself until my pants are back on and money has changed hands.

Also, the wax was too hot.

MY VAGINA AND I ARE SCARED OF YOU.

Best regards,

Charlotte

the super twatty awards

a special shout out to all the twats who've made my life fun these past months:

1) snippy cake shop bitches who give me eye rolling attitude aplenty because THEY PUT THE WRONG DAMN TAGS ON THEIR OWN CAKES and thusly it is my fault for asking for the wrong thing when CLEARLY the cake that looks like lemon meringue and is labeleds lemon meringue is NOT ACTUALLY LEMON MERINGUE! IT'S MY FAULT Y'ALL! sorry about that.

2) people who've done one alliance francaise course and therefore feel they are better authorities on the french language and culture than the french owner of the french cafe i work in. he calls himself a 'fraussie' (pron: frozzy). which is now my new favourite word for 'cumshot'. like: "so i was going down and then he fraussied without warning me and some of it went up my nose".

3) work colleagues that get caught stealing prescription medication from other colleagues (by me), and then launch a hate campaign against me because i was in the wrong place at the wrong time. as if i want to be in that position. i mean, if i go to hr or my boss it will be a huge big deal. and he's been there for 10 years so it's gonna get hushed up and i'm gonna get moved to a different department.

3 twats for you, but there are hundreds i've forgotten about now.

fambly, the friends that are forced upon you.

I'm sure that by now I have given you the (entirely correct) assumption that my various family members exhibit a wide range of psychotic phenomena and would certainly be an excellent psychiatric case study and perhaps cautionary tale for 'the youth'. But every now and then they will surprise me with a genuinely sweet or normal act. Or a completely bizarre act that nonetheless is hilarious and makes you chuckle, shake your head in amusement and say "you guys".

As I mentioned in the last post, I've been averaging about a recipe a week from the 500 cupcakes book. The aunt I live with is a keen cook, in fact most of my family are, and she has been solving a few cupcake related dilemmas, e.g: cakes not rising properly. While the initial hypothesis was that there was too much sugar in the recipe, after consultation with another more reliable baker (Rose Levy Berenbaum, author of several blasphemously delicious baking bibles), she proposed some changes to the basic method which have indeed resulted in much fluffier cupcakes. And I think the rising problem is a simple matter of getting the right size patty pans. For science!

Anywhatthefuckimpostingaboutbakingiamanoldlady
andnextpostwillbeaboutthedogjumperiknitted
yesitsfuckingamazingillpostphotos. So it's helpful to have a family that is interested in kitchen experiments. Unfortunately we are bad at giving constructive criticism, advice or feedback without it coming out as an insult. So I was wary when I got home from work tonight to find a little note left on top of the tin of cupcakes I made on Tuesday (vanilla with chocolate rum icing - which I created myself, I am a golden god! - if anyone cares). The dreaded feedback!

OK cupcakes, 6/10. Prefer more wholesome - less fluffy (nice touch with the heart shapes). :-) Uncle.
P.S Could do with deeper choc icing.
P.P.S - the pineapple ones* crystallised a bit on the bottom after 3 days.
P.P.P.S - when's the next batch - can't wait!!

*the last batch were pineapple upside-down cupcakes

They make me ragey, they make me teary, they make me kick-things-in-frustration-y, but you have to kind of sort of find it within your cold dead heart to love a family who will give you this kind of feedback on your cupcakes.

fluff

> I got woken up early Saturday morning by a man yelling at the neighbours to SHUT THE FUCK UP. The annoying part being that I couldn't hear the neighbours making any noise at all, but his yelling was loud and clear and probably woke up more people than just me.

> The yoga instructor at my gym has some kind of accent, I like when she asks us to grip our chins. The chins are located between your knees and ankles.

> I deleted all the music off my ipod, now I have to go through the painful process of adding it back from the CD. Yeah, CD. Does anyone remember those? Because yeah oops I also deleted it all off my external hard drive. Today I added Brian Jonestown Massacre, Broken Social Scene, Bright Eyes, and Bouncing Souls. What? I used to be a skater punk. Now I'm just emo. I think I can just listen to these 4 bands forever and not bother moving on to C. Right? Riiight.

> I dyed my hair dark again, since being blonde is expensive and also my hair needs a little recovery time from constant lightening and heat styling. Poor hair. It's led to a lot of unsolicited opinions: frankly I don't care for the hobo at the tram stop to tell me what haircut would look better. I also dont care for people at work to be all like "hmmm, I think I like it". I don't give a fuck if it personally offends you and your cats. It's my hair, on my head, the worst it is doing to you is occasionally entering your line of vision. So what makes you think I care if you (think you) like it or not?

> I bought a book - 500 cupcakes. I have tried 3 recipes - malibu & pineapple for my friend (it's her favourite drink), chocolate with buttercream icing (not for the diet conscious, the icing is exactly what it says on the tin - butter and cream), and pineapple upside-down cupcakes. The next ones I want to do are peanut butter & choc chip, and honey & lavendar. Just have to wait til pay day so I can afford the massive amounts of butter that go into these things.

> Being cranky: I've started doing some promo work for a friend, but still havent been paid for my shift two weeks ago. And because I had to pay a massive giant huge credit card bill (really, how much did I spend?), I'm now overdrawn because my gym direct debit came out but I didnt get paid, from two weeks ago. And now it's a public holiday, so I won't get paid until Wed - if they ever actually pay me. And my real job doesnt pay until Thursday, because the accounts department is super lazy and think a public holiday is for everyone. Newsflash fuckers, I have to work it AND SO SHOULD YOU!

> More gym stuff: have been very unmotivated last week, but still getting all...body builder ish. I try to explain to my trainer that I bulk up quickly and she's all like "pah you'll be fine" because trainers never believe the people who own and are familiar with the bodies they are training. So now I'm all like "well now I have Popeye arms, fuck you, make my legs skinny k thx". I've been making everyone feel my abs because I've never had feel-able abs before. Woo! Feel-able abs! They are still coated in flab but beneath the surface they are ROCK HARD and slightly terrifying.

> It's cold. I'm tired. Whinge whinge.

things that piss me off: wedding edition

I had a friends hens night on the weekend. Very odd. I mean, I'm 24 and I don't feel like I'll ever be ready for marriage. It's just not something that I care deeply about. So I found it weird that a couple at my age (gasp, she is 5 days younger than me!) wanted to get married.

I mean sure, they share a mortgage, 3 dogs and a relationship of several years. But what's the rush to get married, particularly when said marriage is going to cost quite a lot of money which could be better spent on...oh I don't know, getting your windows properly sealed so your house isn't so darn cold, or perhaps put it towards the vast amount of food those dogs get through.

Even with parents covering the more expensive things, I would frankly rather they just gave us the money! Romantic? No. But practical. I've never thought about, planned, or desired a fairytale wedding with a ridiculous cake and ridiculous-er dress. What's the point? I don't believe it's just aversion therapy from observing adult relationships in my own family, this couple are both children of divorce.

It's more the expectation. I utterly refuse, I would rather end things than be hanging on waiting for a ring. If I started to obsess about whether he was going to propose or not, well I would quit that bitch and start a meaningful relationship with some cats. As if a piece of jewellery can validate a relationship, it will make everything better, and I deserve it for putting in 3 solid years. Fuck that attitude. You might as well get pregnant to save a struggling relationship, best of luck to you. Idiot. You could be with someone for the rest of your life and never get married, and it would be just as fulfilling a relationship, you would belong to each other just as much as if you had matching rings and a legal declaration of bondage.

(Ha, of course you could be married for the rest of your life and absolutely despise each other and fall asleep smiling in your twin beds, thinking of ways you would like to mutilate each other. Sounds like a good environment to bring children into...)

I really resent the idea that all women are just waiting for guys to say the L word, then the M word, then the B word. And having that portrayed in books, on TV, in movies, parodied, laughed at - aren't women WACKY, they all want this same crazy thing that guys definitely don't want oh god no, guys don't want to be TIED DOWN to a BALL & CHAIN, unless they're heartless lesbian ice-queens who are deliberately barren (hello, Julia Gillard). There are no other kinds of women! We are all the same! We are all caricatures. And that regardless of what a relationship is like, we are all just hanging out, biding our time until the timer ticks over that waiting period, usually about 3 years, and when that happens we must be proposed to or the relationship was meaningless and we should cut our losses and move on to the next victim.

ARGH!

So last night I had dinner with a couple of girls from high school, one of whom is the maid of honour (screw you, American spell check. English came from England first!) at the upcoming wedding. She & her partner have been together, oh about 3 years, and because her close friend is getting married, talk turned to whether she was going to get married anytime soon. But the questions seemed to have nasty implications, "so...whens it gonna be your turn?", like she is just hanging out waiting for it, that it consumes her every thought and she expects, nay DEMANDS, that her boyfriend pop the question soonest. The implication that the relationship was a failure, that she would be a failure as a girlfriend, if he didn't get down on bended knee in the next 6 months. That there are only two possible outcomes to a relationship, after giving the guy plentiful hints and enough time to get used to the idea, you either get married or break up.

And she said that if he proposed then she would say yes, but she wasn't going to ask about it and that it was up to him. An opinion which was loudly derided by everyone "what, it's HIS choice? Why isn't it YOUR choice?". But of course, unless she wants to do the asking herself, or put pressure on him until he cracks and goes ring shopping, then it is his choice. It is his choice if he asks her, and it is her choice if she accepts. Of course, she could choose to ask him. BUT. She is happy with how things are, she is graduating uni this year and hoping to get into a masters course. He has just bought a new car - which he has said to her will be an ideal family car, so it is not like they are not on the same wavelength here, in fact he is a little ahead of her on that one - and is angling for work promotion. They don't yet co-own property, pets, or even a herb garden. They are moving along at their own pace, yet because their close friends are getting married soon, expectant eyes have turned towards them.

How dare, how dare other people outside the relationship put that pressure on them? They endure comments from their friends, their colleagues, family members, and the poor girl got interrogated on Saturday by random strangers and relatives of the hen who had not even met her before that night. Why the hell do these people feel they have the right to foist their own expectations and opinions of relationships onto others? They are happy, leave them be.

Grr!



Of course, I'm just bitter because I'm 24 and NOT YET MARRIED! BOOHOO! COMMENCE SLASHING OF WRISTS! WORTHLESS SINGLE WOMAN!