Expectations vs Reality of Adulthood

When I was a kid, I always thought that I would feel differently about things when I grew up. Now that I’m at an age which classifies me as an adult, I realise how misled I was in my expectations of what it would be like to be an adult.

Expectation 1: Adults aren’t scared of anything

Expectation 2: Adults read the newspaper for fun.

Expectation 3:  Adults have an endless supply of money. 

Expectation 4:  Adults don’t have bedtime. 

 

Expectation 5:  Adults don’t have to eat vegetables and can eat pizza and chocolate for every meal.

Friday morning escapades

Sometimes I say things, only to later on find myself in situations which make me regret that I ever said those things.  On Thursday night I passed a comment about how I hate getting stuck behind slow drivers on my way home from work, and that if people can't drive at the speed limit they shouldn’t be allowed on the road.  Oh how I regret that I ever said that.

On Friday morning I was driving my usual way to work, when suddenly I heard a loud noise that was partway between a bang and a pop.  This was followed by some less loud – but equally as concerning – screeching scraping noises.

My initial concern was that part of my engine had exploded.  My Dad has been reminding me for weeks to check my oil and water, and for weeks I have been consistently forgetting to check my oil and water.  If that was what was causing the noises I knew there was noooooo way my dad would be coming to my rescue. 

I found a suitable place to pull over, and got out to inspect my car.

The good news was that the noise definitely wasn’t caused by my engine exploding, but the bad news was that I wasn’t going to be making it to work on time.  I wasn’t happy.

I gathered the tools out of my car and got to work.

It didn’t take long for me to realise this wasn’t going to be an easy task.  The person who last did the nuts up on that wheel must have possessed super-human powers, because they would not budge.

It was more than my pathetically noodle-like arms could manage.

After several attempts, I managed to loosen it by stamping ferociously on it.

The next two nuts loosened in much the same way.

The fourth and final nut proved to be the most difficult.  Nothing would persuade it to part company with the bolt.  I even tried kicking it kung-fu style.

After many frustrating minutes and countless attempts at loosening the bolt, I found myself with the jack in my hands, mercilessly beating the nut loosening tool.

It wasn’t helping to loosen the nut, but it was certainly making me feel better.

Just when all hope was lost and my desperation was at its worst, an angel arrived.

She pulled over in her Postman Pat red rural post van, and offered to help me.  Apparently, rural post vans are prone to flat tyres, making her an expert tyre changer.  She was so fast and efficient that if she ever grows bored of delivering mail she could consider a career as a formula 1 racing tyre changer.

I made it to work half an hour late and considerably dirtier than I normally would be, but in an excellent mood all due to the kindness of a stranger.

That evening, as I drove home with my tiny space saver spare tyre on, I was forced to regret that I’d ever said those words about slow drivers.  With my spare tyre restricting me to only 80km/hr, I was now that slow driver holding up all the traffic.

A lunchtime delicacy

During a recent summer holiday, my Mum and Dad thought they would be spontaneous and go out for lunch.  After wandering the streets for a while, they came across a nice looking restaurant and headed inside.

The waitress was very friendly and efficient, and came to take their orders.

Possibly delirious from the heat, words came tumbling out of my Mum’s mouth before she had time to realise what she was saying.

Luckily, she was able to maintain composure...

...For all of three seconds.

The waitress, in a state of confusion, took their orders to the kitchen while my Mum tried to calm down.  By the time her food arrived she was almost back to normal.

A Somewhat Unusual Christmas Celebration

My Christmas morning started off how I’d imagine most households would begin their Christmas celebrations.  One by one my family got out of bed, wished each other a merry Christmas, had breakfast, and exchanged gifts.  We began the preparations for Christmas lunch and awaited the arrival of my grandparents.

It was after lunch that things started to get a bit weird.  My brother had been rummaging in our Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs and emerged with a strange horn-like device.

The device was one half of a set of ping-pong ball poppers, which are designed to fire a ping-pong ball at an alarming speed. 

My brother, clearly intrigued by the device, proceeded to test its limits.    

He soon concluded that it was indeed too dangerous to be fired randomly around the house. 

He re-entered the cupboard, and a moment later reappeared holding the most unusual object I have ever seen.



This gigantic, hollow, chicken-shaped object used to be a cat bed, judging by the amount of cat fur found inside it.

My brother’s game now involved attempting to launch the ping-pong balls into the chicken’s mouth. 

It was highly amusing, but soon became too easy.   My brother disappeared once more into the cupboard to find the second ping-pong popper.  The second popper was given to my Dad, and the challenge became to fire the ping-pong ball to each other and catch it in the popper.  My brother (for reasons unknown to the rest of us) wore the chicken cat-bed as a hat.

It didn’t take long for this to turn from a two player game into a whole family effort.  My grandparents, and even my mum (who I always thought was the most normal one in the family), took turns at blasting ping-pong balls at each other.

At one point during the ruckus, I stopped to wonder if this was how other families celebrated Christmas. 

Whether it involved chicken cat-beds or not, I hope you all had a fantastic holiday.

Merry Christmas!

I love Christmas! I'm like a super excited four year old at Christmas time.  Here, I got you a present.

You're welcome.  I hope you like it. I put a lot of thought into it.

I hope you have a fantastic Christmas!

Scrooge McDuck turned hay fever into Special Agent Gibbs

Right now I’m between jobs.  Technically I suppose that makes me unemployed, but I prefer ‘between jobs’. It sounds less... hopeless. 

This means I no longer have the joy of a regular income, and my money spending habits are beginning to look a lot like that of Scrooge McDuck.  If I can’t justify that I absolutely NEED something, I won’t buy it.

So despite the fact that at this time of year I suffer mercilessly from hay fever, I have refused to spend my last few dollars on antihistamines.  I figured if I could just avoid nature until the hay fever season was finished, I wouldn’t need to waste my precious money.

It turns out it’s not that easy.  Hay fever is to me what Special Agent Gibbs is to murderers on NCIS.  It doesn’t matter how hard I try to hide, hay fever will hunt me down and punish me.

My untreated hay fever was so bad that my airways became blocked and I stopped being able to breathe properly.  Reluctantly, I made an appointment to go see the doctor, who informed me that my hay fever had evolved into a sinus infection, and prescribed me various medications to treat it.  The total cost of the appointment plus the medications added up to a lot more than the price of a packet of antihistamines.

Ask me the definition of irony.  I’ve got the perfect example.

Among the collection of medication were some tiny pink pills, which I was informed were steroids.  Apparently, steroids can be used to help open up your air passages.

Here are the things that I knew about steroids before I had to take them:

1.      They’re banned in professional sporting competitions.

2.      They make you buff.

3.      They can cause something called ‘moon face’.

Here is what I learnt about steroids after I started taking them:

1. They provide you with unlimited, constant, unrelenting energy.

I discovered the effects of steroids at about 2AM after my third dosage.  Despite only having been asleep for about two hours, I was suddenly awake and full of life.  I wanted to get up and do things. I wanted to run. I wanted to yell. I wanted to hit things.

Knowing that it was 2AM, that I had only had two hours of sleep, and that my house echoes so badly that any kind of movement, especially running, yelling, and hitting, would be sure to wake my sleeping flatmates, I tried to force myself to go back to sleep.

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

After counting sheep for an eternity, I finally managed to fall back asleep just as it was beginning to get light.

Later in the morning I awoke with the same intense levels of energy that had woken me during the night. It was like my veins were filled with liquid energy. I leapt out of bed and decided to go mow the lawns.

Generally, mowing the lawns is the kind of job that would exhaust me, leaving me crumpled in a heap of uselessness for the rest of the day.  But not today. Today the lawn mower had a hard time keeping up with me.

After mowing the lawns had failed to make even a dent in my excess of energy, I decided to pack up some of my things. I’m moving house, so I have slowly begun to pack away my life into cardboard boxes. Usually I find this job exceedingly boring and my level of enthusiasm matches that, but today my stuff was being packed so fast it was as though I had four arms.

When all that could be packed was packed, I was still finding it hard to sit still. I didn’t seem to be capable of doing nothing.

 I decided to clean the kitchen.  I did such a thorough job I don’t think the kitchen knew what had hit it.  I even pulled the things out of the cupboards and cleaned inside them.  By the time I had finished everything sparkled so brightly it hurt to look at it.

Having run out of things to do around the house, I tried to partake in one of my favourite activities: mindlessly surfing the internet.  The problem was I was still having trouble sitting still, so instead I ended up trying to see how fast I could type.  It turns out I can type really fast, as long as I don’t want to use actual words.

Towards the end of the day I finally started to calm down a little.  I was able to sit down to eat my dinner, and even managed to concentrate on one thing long enough to watch TV for a bit.

At about 10.30 I decided to go to bed. I climbed in under my duvet and discovered that I wasn’t the slightest bit tired.  I decided to read my book until I was tired enough to sleep.

I was reading until after 1AM.

Seven disgusting facts about cockroaches

I am terrified of cockroaches. They seriously gross me out. It’s something about the way their antenna wiggle about, and that scuttely noise they make when they move.   Plus there’s something unnatural about a creature that can survive for a week without a head.

Yes that’s right, cockroaches can live for up to a week without a head.  Fact number one.  Their brains are not stored in their head; instead a cockroach’s brain is scattered throughout its body.  The headless cockroach will eventually die from dehydration. 

Fact number two.  There are over 4,500 different species of cockroaches.  Some of these species have been traced back over 200 million years. That’s 200 million years worth of freaky antenna waving and creepy scuttleing noises.

Number three. Cockroaches leave chemical traces in their poop which attracts other cockroaches.  So if you find one cockroach in your house, then you know that there’s got to be others.  That one cockroach you just found has been graffiti-ing your house with faecal invitations to all its mates.

Here’s a fact that I know you’ll find interesting.  Female cockroaches only need to mate once in order to lay eggs for the rest of their lives.  It may be because I am exceedingly immature, but I can’t hear this fact without thinking up sleazy cockroach pick-up lines.

Some more disgusting facts. Cockroaches can hold their breath for forty minutes.  They shed their skeleton instead of their skin, and they have a second set of teeth located in their digestive systems which helps them to digest food.

A cockroach could out-survive you in almost any situation.  If you’re not afraid of them, you should be.