treefroggirl

posted by Thomas on Aug 31

When I was nine, I rode my bike everywhere. I was fearless.

Then when I was 18, 19 I had a nasty spill on a bike which resulted in a nasty scar on my left wrist and a healthy fear of riding bordering on phobia.

I didn’t get on a bike again until January 2005 when I was on vacation in Maui with a bunch of friends and we did the sunrise bike ride down Haleakala. I whinged the entire way. My wrists were killing me. Something just seemed wrong. I was unhappy and fairly certain I was going to die. It wasn’t until around mile 30 that one of my friends noticed that the handles on my bike were twisted wrong and fixed it. It had been so long since I was on a bike, I had just assumed that there was something wrong with me. It never occurred to me that the bike was messed up.

Yeah, I’m a rocket scientist.

Stuart has been after me to start riding, but I really don’t want to. You have to have serious balls to cycle in this town and I just don’t got ‘em.

His bike is a fold up military mountain bike that is folded up more than is used. Yesterday he took it out for a bit and I met him at The Nightingale for dinner.

I’ve been on a healthy kick since I came back from my moms. I’m trying to only eat fish and lots of fruits and veggies and I didn’t drink all week. I’ve decided that I would let myself drink one day a week, but that didn’t mean I could get lashed and Saturday was going to be my day this week.

Cut to:

Three pints of ale and a glass of wine from 5 PM to last call. Isn’t the most I have ever drank, but it isn’t the least.

Stuart and I had had a stupid fight earlier in the evening, but we had made up. I mention this to explain why when he suggested that I try out his bike when there was no one around on our walk home I agreed. The drink in me also didn’t hurt.

Then bad things happened.
1. The bike is too big for me. This will be important later.
2. I try to peddle, but something isn’t working quite right. This will be important later.
3. Stuart starts pushing me like I’m five, but he is pushing me too fast so I shriek at him to let go.
4. He lets go.
5. I try to peddle. I can’t.
6. The bike gets wobbly due to lack of forward movement.
7. The bike is so big and I am so short, I can’t get my feet down on the ground.
8. I fall over and go boom.

After Stuart lifted the bike off of me and made sure nothing was broken or bleeding and after he texted and twittered the event, he told me that he had forgotten to unfold the pedals.

I feel like I have been hit by a train. Not a big train, but a little one. I’m fine other my arm feels dislocated and I have a serious mondo bruise on my arm and elbow that I can tell is going to be really pretty in a day or so.

Like I said. I’m a rocket scientist.

*Duckie in Pretty in Pink

posted by Thomas on Jul 31

I am using reading plays as a way to avoid writing one. I am telling myself that it is research. That I am studying form. Structure. Character. Exposition.

Bollocks.

I’m avoiding working.

Guess reading plays is better than watching Big Brother.

Here is another little blurb of what I have… if you’re interested…

ANDREW
What’s your novel about?

TALIA
Ahhhhh. . . It’s hard to talk about.

MAX
So don’t.

ANDREW
Don’t mind him. He was raised by wolves.

SARAH
And orangutans.

TALIA
It’s. Um. complicated. So in Japan, there are these kids that shut themselves in their room when they’re 13, 14, 15, whatever, and they just don’t come out.

SARAH
They just stay in their room?

TALIA
Pretty much. Some stay in there for 15 years. They’re called hikikomori. And their parents just take care of them. Modern life is just too much and they hide.

ANDREW
Your novel takes place in Japan?

TALIA
No. My main character is in San Francisco but he’s a western hikikomori. He’s been hiding in his room for 10 years. And. . . did you read about the German cannibal?

MAX
There are so many joke opportunities here. I simply don’t know where to start.

TALIA
So this guy put out an ad. He wanted to kill and eat someone and he met someone that wanted to be emasculated, killed and then. . . um.. . consumed.

ANDREW
Sorry. . . when, when, when you say emasculated. Do you mean?

MAX
Yes, she does.

ANDREW
Fuck me.

TALIA
So my novel is about this guy in his early 20’s that has shut himself away in a room for ten years and his relationship with a guy he met one the Internet that he’s asked to kill and um. . . eat. Him.

Pause.

MAX
It’s a comedy I take it.

SARAH
How do you think of that sort of stuff?

TALIA
I must admit I have a bit of a twisted mind, but I got it from the paper. If you pick up any paper there are tons of stories right there.

SARAH
I read something the other day that I thought was so amazing. So sad. This Thai woman got on a bus to go shopping in Malaysia and she got on the wrong bus coming back. So she ended up miles and miles away. No one could understand her because of her dialect. She ended up begging and was sent to a homeless shelter. She was there for 25 years. And she would sing this song, no one understood her until these health exchange students came to the shelter. And they heard her sing and they were from her region and they understood her. She told them what happened and 25 years after she was lost, she came home to her family.

TALIA
That’s amazing. See that is a novel or a screenplay right there.

MAX
That’s the saddest story I have ever heard.

SARAH
Isn’t it?

MAX
Your wife is gone for 25 years. You think you’ve gotten rid of her and then she comes back.

posted by Thomas on Jul 21

I want to volunteer for a once a week gig at Amnesty International. I’ve long respected Amnesty and even considered doing some volunteer work for them when I first arrived here, but they were asking for more hours than I could give. This position however would be perfect as it would be blogging events and would be on average one evening a week. They are asking for a writing sample in a blog style describing an event.

I’ve been looking at old entries to see if I have a jumping off place that I can use. I have tons of blogs where I get up on my high horse. All you know I have that. I don’t have so many that are talking about an event and the ones I do have are usually about how drunk I was.

Flipping through my archives has been an interesting experience.

1. Some of what I wrote doesn’t suck.
2. Some of what I wrote really sucks
3. My weight has shot up big time since I moved here and I’ve lost and gained the same ten pounds over the last couple of years.
4. I fall down, get stepped on, cut myself and cause general injury to myself a lot.
5. I whinge about not writing or that I am writing or wanting to write. A lot.
6. It seems that I lost a few readers that I had in the early days. Either that or they are lurking. I’m guessing they got a bit tired of the entries that really sucked or me talking about trying to lose weight or how I hurt myself or getting pissed or writing about all of the writing I’m not doing.
7. The moments where I could kill Stuart are very funny on paper.
8. I need to work on my 100 things about Nicole category and my blog roll.
9. I need to clean up the entries that came over from blogger because there are all these strange characters in them that make it difficult to read.
10. I blog a lot about things I need to do that I never get around to.

posted by Thomas on Jul 7

wine
lastnight
keyboard
spilled
on
imy

iamaklutz

thisisntme 
tryingtobe
clever
likeeecummings
except
different

ifthiswasfauxeecummingsiwouldbetalkingaboutsexpretendingiwastalkingaboutakeyboard

keystrokes

and

pressingbuttonsand

what

…not.

andtherewouldbe

space

youneed

space

withsex.

Thisis
no*space*bariamanidiot

becauseof
wine
notdrank
spilled
wine
Notcryingoverithowever.

Friedwinekeyboard

sosad

youdiscover
you
need
a
space
bar
quicklywhentryingtowrite

Sonowineedtogooutandbuyanewmackeyboardbecauseihaveamacathomewhichiknowsomewillthinkisbadbutidontcareihadamacsincetwothousandthree

itriedpoppingthespacebarupandproddingtheguts
thepartthatmade

space

butstusaidthaticouldelectrocutemyselfifikeptdoingthat

soi
stopped

posted by Thomas on Jun 19

Given my natural talent for hurting myself, skydiving, bungee jumping and crossing a road in Vietnam are activities best left to others. I often have some phantom bruise on my body earned from running into an invisible wall and the not so invisible ones.

Once in my apartment in LA, I stepped on a pile of newspapers that were on the floor, managed to lose my balance and fell backward, smacking my head on the floor. I lay there for a few moments. My cats crawling over me. . .mewing in that, ”Oooo! You’re down on the floor. . . are you dead yet so we can eat you?” way that cats have. And I knew. I saw with absolute clarity that this, someday, was exactly how I was going to bite it.

You read it here first.

If stubbing your toes were an Olympic Sport, I would be the Nadia Comaneci.

You don’t believe me?

Guess how I broke my ankle eight years ago? (Those that know, pipe down.)

Answer: Walking down the pavement (sidewalk) in Greenwich Village.

And so. Because Dear Reader, random, freakish injury is something I am terribly well versed in, it so happened in the wee small hours of the morning, I won a trip to the A&E (ER for my American readers).

Last night I had some people over for dinner. It was a no partner’s thing and Stuart was a doll and didn’t raise a fuss when I kicked him out of the house as it gave him a chance to give his father his Father’s Day present. (I don’t normally make it a habit to arrange dinner parties he doesn’t get to attend. He was supposed to still be in the US but had cut his trip short and come home early.)

Had ten people over which is always a bit of a military operation cooking for that many. Especially when you have a mix of low carbers, vegetarians and normal folks that are quite happy to eat whatever you give them.

Was a really fun evening. Wish I could have even more people over but space and my culinary ability is tapped out methinks at 10 bodies.

I had training to do the next morning so I didn’t let myself get too tipsy. Just tipsy enough.

All guests we gone by 1:30 and our cleaner would be here in the morning so I needed to do the dishes before she arrived and I left for work. I decided to clean before bed.

And so it happened that at 2am when I was three-fourths of the way through the dishes, I managed to gash the top of my right index finger. In the 10 seconds from it happening to my grabbing a paper towel to apply pressure, my kitchen looked like the Manson family had attacked me.

Okay. I could just put a plaster (band-aid) on it and carry on. Sure. I pulled the paper towel away to see if the bleeding stopped. Blood spurted like The Black Knight’s flesh wound.

Great.

Where do I go?

I called Stuart at his parents to ask for advice but he didn’t hear the phone. Don’t blame him. It’s two in the bloody morning.

What to do? I have zero clue where the closest hospital is so I dial 999 (911)

“Is this an emergency?”

“Well. No. Not as such. But I am bleeding and that’s not so good is it?”

She gives another number. I call. They give me the name to the hospital, St. George’s, which as soon as I heard the name I thought, “Oh yeah. I knew that.”

Take a mini cab the mile and half to the hospital (£7.50. Jerk. But I was too tired to fight his over charging me. I should have threatened to bleed on his backseat.

They look at it rather quickly. Tell me I will need stitches. And then I wait. And wait. And wait some more. What was odd is there were only two other people in the waiting room.

When they finally looked at me, the kid (had to be early 20’s tops) that fixed me up was great and I was sent on my way around 6. He was sweet and told me I was brave for taking the shot so well when he was numbing up my hand. (Which. Ok. I admit it. . . warmed me to him. Ooo! Look. I’m brave. But really how else are you supposed to take it. Sure those shots burn like a mother, but what choice do you have?)

I had to cancel my training this morning since I had zero sleep. Giving a class on Giving and Receiving Feedback would probably have not been a good thing.

The odds are high, that when my death (that will come from some random fluke accident like something out of a French farce) will be very funny to everyone watching.

Except to me. But hey. Feel free to giggle as I collect my Darwin Award.

posted by Thomas on May 31

Thursday night I wasn’t in the mood to go straight home, so I roped Al into going for just one. We left the pub at nine. All very civilized. I remember having three glasses of red. Al however said that there were four. Given what transpired next, I am inclined to believe him.

Three or four- That’s a lot of vino, but I can usually handle that. Not saying it’s a good idea- just that I can handle it. I usually however pace myself – especially when drinking wine. I will drink water between the glasses. Spread it out over six-eight hours. I also usually have food in my stomach.

But not Thursday. I drank four (large) glasses of red- basically a bottle if not more on maybe 350-500 calories. In three hours.

I woke up at 6 in the morning in bed. Naked. Luckily it was my bed and Stuart was lying next to me. I flipped the events of the evening Rolodex in my head.

Left the pub. Okay. Laying here in bed. Okay.

Left the pub. Bed.

Pub. Bed.

I was missing everything in between. This has never happened to me before.

Stuart had put a large glass of water and ibuprophen on the dresser for me so I took a couple even though I felt okay and drank half the water.

Stuart stirred and peeked his head over the duvet.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You were lashed.”

“Yeah. I don’t remember anything after leaving the pub.”

“You came home at 9:30 singing the French national anthem.”

“I was singing The Marseillaise?”

“See. I didn’t even know it was called that.”

“But I don’t know the words to The Marseillaise.”

“Well, they’re in your head somewhere.”

“I think I’ve watched Casablanca a few too many times.”

“I tried to make you go to bed but you refused. I tricked you by saying you would be more comfortable in your dressing gown.”

Something was coming back. “You undressed me?”

“Yes. And you weren’t very accommodating. You kept rolling around. Then you screamed, ‘Stop hitting me!’ Then you giggled.

“That’s funny.”

“I’m sure our neighbours thought so. Do you remember talking to your mum?”

“I talked to my mom?”

“Yeah, something happened with you sister. She had to have a second surgery. I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes. She’d called and left a message and you called back.”

“I called back?”

“At 12:30. You were sitting up talking really loudly and woke me up and I had to send you out of the room. I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

I can’t believe I can’t remember either. It’s rather scary. I did some quick research on the topic this morning and I found a really great article by Aaron White, PhD. Basically alcohol messes with your brain hitting the record button.

Alcohol primarily disrupts the ability to form new long-term memories; it causes less disruption of recall of previously established long-term memories or of the ability to keep new information active in short-term memory for a few seconds or more. At low doses, the impairments produced by alcohol are often subtle, though they are detectable in controlled conditions. As the amount of alcohol consumed increases, so does the magnitude of the memory impairments. Large quantities of alcohol, particularly if consumed rapidly, can produce a blackout, an interval of time for which the intoxicated person cannot recall key details of events, or even entire events. En bloc blackouts are stretches of time for which the person has no memory whatsoever. Fragmentary blackouts are episodes for which the drinker’s memory is spotty, with “islands” of memory providing some insight into what transpired, and for which more recall is usually possible if the drinker is cued by others. Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers than previously assumed and should be viewed as a potential consequence of acute intoxication regardless of age or whether one is clinically dependent upon alcohol.

There is one benefit of me not eating enough and going to bed without dinner. I was a pound and half lighter Thursday morning than I was on Wednesday. Maybe there is something with the whole starvation thing. (of course I am kidding. And anyone that knows me knows that would not be possible for me to ever do)

I told Al that I had a black-out.

He was surprised. “You must have been drunk!”

That made me feel mildly better that while my record button had been taped over, at least I was functional. . . to someone who had had four pints.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. Great. I’m hungry because I haven’ had breakfast, but other than that fine. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Are you kidding? That’s great. They should take your blood and study it. Do tests on you to find the secret to no more hangovers.”

While I don’t generally get hangovers, I really don’t fancy another memory gap.

Although, it would be rather fabulous, if deep inside me, are the words to The Marseillaise.

posted by Thomas on May 24

I’m a grumpy bitch. But you already knew this.

I’ve long been out of the closet about this blog, which is good on one hand and not so good on others as I need to edit myself. The problem with being a grumpy bitch is that I don’t edit myself enough and people sometimes get hurt.

Bad Nicole.

I debated all week if I should write this post, but have decided that since I still want to- then I should.

So yeah. Because I’m a bitch, I recently had one of my GRRRRAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH moments and clicked PUBLISH rather editing myself.

While I stand by much of what I wrote, I painted a group of people with a wide brush who did not deserve such commentary and were probably not aware of what was specifically winding me up.

So I clicked publish and I forgot about it and got over my grumpiness- for the most part- but the blog liveth on and some folks that were painted by the wide brush read it and rightly so felt that I had broken their trust by so publically ranting.

So since I publically ranted, I am publically apologising.

I am very sorry.

I was wrong.

And I won’t do it again.

This is not to say that I will stop posting the funny things that Stuart says. That stuff is just too good to not share.

posted by Thomas on May 7

Walking off the plane in DC onto the bus tram thing that will take us to passport control. I’m carrying my carry-on, hand bag and my rucksack with my very heavy computer. Rucksack is slung over my right shoulder. All of a sudden I feel a snap and I feel a bit free. I realise with a small amount of oh god why me, that the rucksack has managed to do what most boys I have been with are unable to do. . . unhook my bra strap.

I sit down next to my ex boss who is now my dotted line manager.

I reach behind myself up under the shirt and refasten the girls. There was no way I could do this manoeuvre subtly.

“Excuse me. My bag just unhooked my bra.”

Mark looked bemused and thankfully looked away.

posted by Thomas on May 3

5:30 PM
Pub with Al. I had been good not drinking all week other than the Monday marathon. Wasn’t in the mood to hang out with the work masses, as at the moment there are a few I could happily roast on a spit. Al felt the same way.

Round one. Guinness.

6:19 PM
Round two. Switch to Deuchars (which is a lovely ale)

7:30 PM
This is where we said we were going to stop. Cut to:
Round three and four (and I can’t remember but there may have been a five.)

10:30 PM
Hungry, we call to try and get a table at Bodean’s in Soho. No go so we call the one in Clapham but they’re closed for renovation. We decide on a curry. We also have a pint of cobra with our meal.

11:47 PM
Time to go home. I get on a train to Balham.

12:45 AM
I wake up in East Croydon. Fucken’ hell.

12:50 AM
Get on a train going to Clapham Junction.

1:08 AM

Arrive in Clapham Junction but there are no more trains to Balham. Consider getting a bus but not sure which bus to take.

Decide to walk home.

While annoyed at myself am slightly amused at watching the packs of drunken girls wearing the exact same outfit stumble down the street. There is an interesting energy on Northcote Road and I feel safe which in retrospect is incredibly dangerous.

1:47 AM
I’m home.

posted by Thomas on Feb 13

Head. Hurts. Can’t fkjdjfodsujfidsfjnmvcxv-02qief

>think.

Want. eggs

and grease. a vat- og of oh OH- head. I moved it.

neverdrinkingagainuntilnexttime