The Birds and The Bees

To clarify from the title (yes it was a semi-intentional suck-you-in) I am not in the least bit confused about sex. Just how the hell a man-woman relationship comes to exist and then stays afloat...



Today I think, for the sake of honesty, I will make a quick pit stop (hopefully my answer will extend beyond it) through one of the most cliche responses to this question. Afterall women confuse men and men (through women often seem less inclined to admit it - preferring instead to just blame the man's stupidity) confuse women. However I am going to extend this to... men AND WOMEN confuse the hell out of me. What part of life confuses me the most? Relationships.



AH! I know I'm sure I've stumbled into yet another cliche with that one. Actually... I may not have. Considering how many people I know with boyfriends/girlfriends - I generally don't count husbands/wifes because they interact with one another a little bit differently - it is possible that I am the only person on the planet who didn't get the 'How to Date' starters kit.

Date night

I am going to come right out and admit to not being the most social bunny going. Personally a few hours sitting on my bed watching a movie or reading a book (I live a single room so everything is done while sitting on my bed or at my desk) is preferable to a night out on the town. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate company or even mind taking my movie watching to town every once in a while.



Anyhow, so the dating thing. I am confused by a very large number of aspects of the whole social construct. Some relating to how I manage to have a guy I like like me - and I seem to have a penchant for the silent types. To use words out of the mouth of one of the guys I've liked, it was a while ago so it might be accidentally paraphrased 'I don't really like anything, I don't relax, I don't stress out, I don't really feel much of anything.' Now doesn't he just sound like a bundle of fun?



Others include why it is that morons have boyfriends. Yes, clearly it is because BOTH sides of the relationship have very low expectations of what they were looking for. Even still. Some of the most frustrating women I have ever met seem to acquire boyfriends with such ease. I really need to extend moron to include absolute bitches - you know the ones that have more male friends than girlfriends because they have a use and abuse personality. I assume being easy helps them but still.



I could go further with that one but it basically leads into my next confused issue. The serial dater. This is perhaps more understandable outside my living environment - though still not a lot. The girl that will date one guy for three months then dump him for his next door neighbour. I clearly don't understand enough about these matters to understand how a person could 'date' multiple people in our workplace. You know the name, rank, service, degree stream and personality of just about everybody. How can you date every single one of your guy friends - certain s words do come to mind, generally prefixed by the word dirty.



I'll sway away from mentally recounting all the sluts (opps did I just use that word) i know and move onto a different aspect. How does one start dating. This is clearly an area I am not alone in being unsure about - afterall there are endless dating sites in existence not to mention ploys like blind dates and speed dating. Nevertheless an answer is yet to come to me. Accepting an offer sounds like the best bet - hell thats one I've done before - but the trouble is in getting the offer.



My prior experience in any of this. I am going to admit to going on a single very awkward almost date not long before I started year 12 - we simply became good long distance msn buddies after that one. Since then I have had a few male friends, and a few male friends I had horrendous crushes on (I hate the word but when you are pathetically liking people who show very little interest [in that way] in you what other word is there) and one very bad response to (after liking him for 3 years) admitting to one of my closest friends I liked him - we never really spoke again.



Ok now I've bitched, moaned and groaned with all the finesse of a hormone induced high school girl. Which I am not nor have been for many years just to remind anybody who read this thinking 'ewww desperate school girl'. I am not a school girl nor particularly desperate. Merely tired of people ^ see above mention of s word ^ saying stupid things like 'You are so lucky to be independent and self-assured without a man.' I just like to think that yes I really am more attractive to somebody out there than a sex-addicted, money-wasting, sickeningly girly-girl with the personality of a toad.

I'm Moving On

My Dearest Plinky,



You seem to have got me good today. 'Describe something I lost and I want back.' I can think of a few petty things I wouldn't mind having back - my old purple phone after I left it at a motel, my comfy shoes that died of old age and hell even just my old copy of the first ever Australian Mills and Boon Duet I had a couple years back. But I can't think of anything significant, something life changing to talk about for this topic.

Friends

It isn't to say I haven't lost things. Haven't outgrown, matured past or outlived things. Pets have died, grandparents have died, toys have fallen apart, friends have grown apart - particularly post school. But even the bigger of those things like family and friends I may miss but I don't want the back.



So that is going to sound strange to a lot of people. Isn't missing something to want them back... yes and no. Sure you can say it would be nice to have them back, but life moves on. The things you'd have to do to go back there generally (to me) make it not worth it.



So only three paragraphs in I've almost worked out what it is I'm talking about. My school friends. Its funny how you don't believe you will lose them after school. I don't have the same close group of friends I had at school any more. Sad and often after a weekend of doing uni work I am in my room going stir crazy and I miss them. I'd kill for a msn conversation like I had back in school. Hell, right now, sitting in my family home (I'm on holidays), I'd kill to have friends abound to catch up with.



So why don't I want them back? That wouldn't solve any problems. Friends are nice its true but to have them as the friends I had at school I'd need to still be here in town, still live at home, still have things in common with them. I like my life as it is now too much to want that. I don't want what I had in the past, I want new and different experiences now instead.



Yours in Boredom,

Peaches

Ten Years Might As Well Be Eternity

Oh dear Mr. Plinky... I may have to go back to thinking up my own blog ideas at this rate... And that never goes too well - who wants to listen to me ramble about my love of the creeks (and their general lack of water) while on car trips. FINE I'll answer your question. "10 Years From Now, What Do I Hope My Life Will Be Like?"



Straight of the bat I'll admit to you my intense hatred for contemplating the future. Hell the six months goal sheets I have to do for work are enough to get my knickers in a knot. All that self-improvement bullshit about being directed and committed because I have a goal to reach. Goals = stress = me stressing out = no progress on goal = more stress = less progress... and so the vicious cycle continues - until I probably have a mental breakdown or something. All in all plans about the future = goals = stress even when nobody is going to give me a pass fail grade for it.



Moving right along. 10 years is a very, VERY long time. Though I try to avoid mentioning my age most of the time I am going to have to say that that is more than half (just) my life. Thinking back to ten years ago. I was in grade 5 at school. That was before I lived in the US. Before I went to high school. Before I moved out of home. So many life changing decisions happen in ten years.



And not to play devil's advocate - I don't play the role that well but all the people answering this question with I want to be a millionaire. Lets just be a little more realistic shall we? Unless you want to give me 400 words on how or why you'll be a millionaire - then I might (emphasizing the might) listen. Where do I want to be in ten years?



Well we are talking about what do I want to have achieved before I'm thirty. I'd like to not be doing the job I'm doing at the moment... Stuck here till I'm 27 but that isn't so bad... I'm just not sure it is where I want to spend my entire life. And leading into my next aspiration I'm not sure its where I'd like to be when I have a family.



To reference my saying millionaire was unrealistic. I struggle with visualising wanting to be married by 30 as anything more than a pipe-dream. I don't even have a boyfriend. I suppose it is not that different from saying I want to be a millionaire... After all anything could happen - I just don't happen to lust after something as petty as cash (no I am not above making lame puns).



So presuming I do find that lucky (more likely unlucky) somebody I wouldn't mind a child by that point in my life. Think in the 3 year gap between leaving my job at 27 and the magic 10 year from now border. And a dog. It is amazing how much you miss pets after having them growing up. Some days what I want most in the world is a warm, furry body to cuddle and seeing as my taste in men does NOT run to hairy I am thinking a nice lapdog would suit me well....



Now I am suffering from the - my responses sound like every other normal human being - dilemma. As we all know I dislike falling into the category of lame, predictable and unoriginal but to be perfectly honest I don't have any great life aspirations. A man who loves God and loves me, frequent contact with my best friend (I would love to be living in the same town for once), a job I can bear... I am at heart a ridiculously mundane human being...



Mostly 10 years from now I'd just be content with still being alive. With nobody around me dying of a terrible disease or being killed in car accidents, bike accidents, ski accidents or freak toe-stubbing or door closing accidents.



I've got no idea what the future holds. I leave that sort of hard core planning up to God. I hear he has some pretty extreme spread sheeting programs on his computer so I'll leave the mundane planning aspects of my life up to him. Hears to whatever the future holds!!

Unlimited Resources... What Else Would I Need?

Ahhh... The resources we live to find them, we live to develop them, we live to discover new ones and more than anything we live to use them up faster than we can do any of the other things combined. Half the fun of life is coming up with ways to do things with less resources - or so the greenies keep telling me.



Today I am answering the Plinky question 'If you had unlimited resources what would I create?' and in my usual way I am not going to tackle the question head-on with all the elegance of a mac-truck but rather lure it into a false sense of security and take its hidden treasure when it least expects it and share it with all of you kind people. For those of you unable to see the Robin Hood analogy there... I can't help you I've already wasted far too much of everybody else's time.



Back on topic now. What would I build with endless resources? I'm going to need somebody to define resources for me. By some definitions that would simply be natural resources... and to be perfectly honest apart from the quote unquote 'World Peace' answer favoured at beauty pageants I'm not sure sure what I would want to do with MORE oil. Well LOWER prices perhaps... but I don't think UNcreating a monopoly of the oil industry is really an answer I want to pitch here today. The un makes it far too negative.



Another option for a definition of resources is to go hard core on the elemental side of things. In other words... you can have all the atoms in the world you want... You can even have 100 kgs of unununium (atomic number 111 apparently it has a less cool name but why would I remember it, I'm not a chemist) if your heart so desires. Yep... I don't know what I'd do with any and every element at my disposal... Make some squeaky voices for my shadow puppets with some helium perhaps? Attempt the ol' lead balloon trick? And then to really finish off the party with some sodium in the water jug explosions...



Another alternative for unlimited resources is to have all of the worlds INTELLECTUAL resources. Basically that would make you a super genius. As far as creating things go this is probably the best on to have. Though I reckon with even the worlds vast knowledge you wouldn't be able to solve any of the fun ones - like, sorry to pageant cliche haters for bringing it back up, world piece or energy creation. But it would be pretty cool to see how many scientists could have invented something by now if they knew that this guy over here had the missing piece of information.. I'm sure there is something out there like that... That would be a fun bit of creating though I'm not sure what exactly it would be.



Finally I'm going to go with the obvious answer to the question... yeah I had to get around to it anyway. I'm figuring for this unlimited resources would most reasonably translate into anything money can buy. To be perfectly honest at that point I probably wouldn't be creating much of anything... Except some awesomely long facebook statuses, blog posts, group text messages (and any other medium I could think of) about how BORED I am... Probably a good time to invent stuff you say...



Unfortunately I'm a big believer in the more you have the less you can see. I mean I'm not situating myself as Bill Gates (though I point out he too had his great spark BEFORE he had everything) so I don't have a any natural genius to back me up. So once I had everything I wouldn't be able to think past it all to something new or different. I would be too distracted buying that thing that guy over there has because I don't have one yet... I mean when you can buy jet packs and personal water hover devices (ah the things my roommates look at while procrastinating) you are too busy putting yourself in hospital for any inventing of things...



The reason most things get created is the lack of it and its usefulness (and once you need to USE something for something isn't it therefore a resource which means I get to have it in this alternate universe?). We create more fuel efficient cars and houses etc because we need to save natural resources (woot buzz words). We create remote controls and mobile phones because we have the inbuilt need to be lazy - and lazy people don't build new things... What is left in the laziness avenue? A machine that goes to sleep for you? There are drugs for that.



People are at their most inventive when they have no resources... Probably why this question works now I think about it... Imagination makes for fantastic solutions while reality just makes a very lazy SOB. I can still remember a time on a summer science camp where we (on a desert island) had to build something with a very straws, a sheet of paper - and unlimited sand. The other group did the practical thing... Our group basically dispensed with reality from the get go and made a very very epic surf board... Long story short - I've never been a designed and we lost design phase epically... We did however win advertising... This ability for me to spin shit isn't new... apparently I've had it for years.



And just as a bonus prize for listening to my rant (for this one has been a particularly good rant [I'm avoiding my ironing something chronic]). If I had unlimited resources - as it I was all knowing, all owning, and had whatever I needed at my fingertips - I would create a camera which was basically just a contact lens. Still capture (I wouldn't want continuous video which would make getting my perfect shot impossible). It would record the world I see exactly the way I see it... I hate camera flash.

My Tri-Colour Creation

Today I'm supposed to be drawing a picture. Apparently whoever is lending their crayons is being pretty stingy because I only get 3. That's ok though because I'm not a particularly good drawer at any rate and more crayons would just emphasise that fact... Or so I'm telling myself.

At any rate The point of this is to outline my crayon colours... Which is by far the easiest part of this... I mean what would I draw with my three crayons? Probably a lot of geometric shapes... Triangles, love hearts and smileys are about my limit in artistic flair... Unless you want a kite... lots of geometric shapes in a kite.

Purple
Ok... Seriously who didn't pick their favourite colour first? I love purple... Preferably a really royal purple colour... The deep rich one... I'm not a mauve person nor does lilac strike my fancy. Deep rich purple all the way.

Lime Green
Have you ever seen how good lime green looks with purple? They set each other off perfectly. If you need proof you should really check out my sheets... I have one set of green sheets with a purple doona cover and one set of purple sheets with a green doona cover... My life is complete... sort of. Oh and if my drawing is going to be lame at least it is going to be colourful

Black
Yeah I know... all the talk of colours and now I pick black? This is my sensible side coming out. I am a far neater colourer than I am a drawer... so to make the most of this skill *cough* I pick place to draw the outlines with. This is the crayon I think that defines me the most. I am a lover of bright, colourful and spontaneous but I love a little order. Like I mentioned before I am a geometric drawer.

Thank-You is a Reflex

I think I'm going to start by saying I'm a little disappointed by anybody that is finding coming up with a time they thanked somebody... Didn't your mother teach you better than that? Nevertheless turning it into an interesting story may be a little bit of an issue.



I'm assuming the correct answer to 'When was the last time you thanked somebody?' has to be the last time you said 'Thank You'. Assuming you aren't in the tendency of thanking objects (which I am but thats another story). Anywho, the last time I thanked somebody was actually pretty random.



I have the tendency to thank people when 'Thank-you' probably wasn't the right thing to say. I'll say it when the cashier asks for my money... Which means I feel awkward when I feel the need to say it again when they give me my change. But my friend paid for dinner tonight so that particular situation is not the most recent 'thank-you' situation.



The last time I thanked a person was in the elevator (I am on holidays - thankfully I don't have to use an elevator in my own home) and there was a girl with a suitcase in front of the doors. It was one of those awkward get in from one direction out from the other elevators. People are never expecting that and so she thought she was being well planned (she knew we were getting out at 4th floor and she was on 6th).



And anyway despite the fact that she didn't really move out of my way I thanked for it. I thanked her for being in my way? Pretty much. Not sarcastically or anything, just a well mannered reflex. After all those years of my mum doing the standard parent reminder 'Say Please... Did you say thank you?' I would really make her proud now.

To Experience is To Understand

Another Plinky post. That website is a lot of fun.
No offence to anybody but this, as a topic, is asking for some really lame answers. What's something you never believed until you experienced it? Because absolutely anything and everything would be a correct answer people go with their favourites.

Which is fair enough. Its fun to have an excuse to right about how you fell in love (and you can't tell me that isn't the most popular answer going) when you weren't expecting it. Or share your freaky stories about ghosts/shadows/voices/paranormal activities.

Which just makes it all the harder to have a truly unique perspective on the question at hand - and I'm a big fan of unique. But I will endeavour to avoid 'woe is me' tales of heartbreak. Instead I'm going to have my say about military indoctrination.

The military I have to say is a very sly beast indeed. It has, without a doubt, perfected the art of indoctrinating its personnel. Members who have been in a while warn you about it, before you get in, as soon as you are in, after you've been there 6 months. Your response is that you aren't indoctrinated yet - you are exactly the person you were before you joined.

Yeah... Right... Keep telling yourself buddy. Like you didn't have the phone call on day one when you had to explain out every other word out of your mouth to your mother/father/boyfriend/loved one - whoever you were lucky enough to have 5 minutes for.

Like you didn't have to force-ably stop yourself from marching the first time you were out in public after you joined. Or get the insane urge to stop that hippy who just walked past you and take him to the barber for a real haircut.

Suddenly, one day you are talking to one of your old friends from home and you've just had to explain what a drill square is for the 17th time and it hits you. Civvies are morons. There is nothing complicated about a drill square. Hell, you'd rather be marching around it a few times than eating rat pack and playing army (navy doesn't like playing army much). Its at that point you realise just how indoctrinated you are.

From then on you try and play it down. You avoid shaving on weekends. You make a concerted effort not to mention being in the military to people you met. You start buying clothes that wouldn't be allowed in the mess to wear on weekends. And still you slip up. You use that acronym without thinking. You use slang that is just a daily part of your vocabulary. You go out with your mates and keep even 75cm strides.

I never thought it was going to happen to me. When I joined up (and it was only 3 years ago) I figured that you had a choice in the matter. That you could dress like a sailor, talk like a sailor, work like a sailor and somehow not think like a sailor. I thought I'd still be the same me I always was. I'm not. For as long as I live there will always be a part of me which is military.