Saturday 24 October 2009

A letter to myself




Dear Livy-turning-17,

Hi. I see you there, in your purple wrap round skirt with the metal belt and the white vest top, getting ready to go out with Paul. Don't spike your hair up. Really, don't - ok, you already did. No problem, Paul is going to tease you about it enough tonight that you'll never do your hair like that again. You're excited for this date; it's with one of the many boys you always secretly liked who never seemed interested. A friend of the popular people. Tonight will be kind of a rush. He'll give you a Sugar Ray CD as a birthday present and you'll watch a film and share popcorn awkwardly, and he'll hold your hand, and you'll joke around and tease each other like flirting friends do.

Only... by the end of the night you'll be over it. He'll say goodbye and give you a hug and by then - in that four hour time period - you'll have realised that he's just a boy. Vulnerable and crude and not worthy of your swooning daydreams. He'll say, "We should do this again sometime", and you'll say "Nah." Don't say you won't. You will. You'll become pretty well-known for that in the next couple of years, by the way - shutting boys down with characteristic bluntness. I know, you never thought you'd be capable of it, but you are.

Speaking of boys, remember when your friend Sarah was seeing that guy and you went with her to watch him playing football at the park? You dilly-dallied around the swings, hidden behind a bush, watching and kind of wishing that tall dark haired one would take his top off. Well, I've got news for you. You will see him shirtless many times in the years to come. His arms and chest and smile will become as familiar to you as your own. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Wait and see.

Let that get you through the rest of your youth. You worry too much about school dynamics; you wish too much to be more popular than you are. You're sometimes embarrassed that you are clever and know the answers. You feel all misunderstood and broody. You're kind of a geek that way, and lots of other ways too. Speaking of which, you're going to wish that you'd plucked your eyebrows and used a lighter shade of concealer. Your future self will really stress about that, which proves that you'll never really grow out of your geekiness and determination to make a big deal out of things that don't matter.

You have big dreams. University and then a law qualification and a big city - New York, ideally. You'll even obsessively watch 'Friends' and 'Sex and the City', and you'll love them and imagine the sophisticated life you'll have in that amazing city someday. Such a cliché dream for a school girl, but you want it all the same.

Not going to happen, but you should keep dreaming. Just keep your options open. Remember that there are lots of 'right' choices, lots of ways to realise your potential, and that some things matter more than money and prestige and style.

Anyway, Ms Liv, all those things you're wishing for will come. You're going to grow up, and soon. By this time next year you'll be two inches taller, and have a figure. You'll finally have had kisses you can look back on without wanting to die. You will date. You'll move to Manchester, which isn't the same as NYC but you'll like it. You'll try new things and grow up in more ways than you can imagine.

Eventually, you're going to change your mind about pretty much everything you think you know, politics and people and religion and music and philosophy and parenthood and more. You'll barely recognize yourself in about eight years' time, but don't worry. You'll still be a geek.

Love 25-year-old you

P.S. You WILL grow into your nose. Have faith.

P.S.S. You'll never grow into your gangly gorilla arms. Get used to them.

Friday 23 October 2009

I have something to say...


Are you listening?

I HATE Munch, the annoying cow from the Munch Bunch adverts. She is a stupid, fugly idiot. Honestly with her cheerful demeanour and ridiculous giggles, I really want her to DIE. The bit where she infers that the kids have grown like three inches in a matter of seconds because they ate some yoghurt? Really?

And I'm done.

Friday 16 October 2009

I may not even invite him

So we have begun what I foresee to be the very long process of wedding planning.... as you can imagine, my wedding has been planned since I was 6 years old and got my first pink note book so therefore, I am not particularly worried... we just implement my well thought out plans, perhaps leaving out the Jason Donovan performance at the reception (although I bet he is a steal at the moment) and Bob's your uncle!

Unfortunately S has decided to weigh in with ideas - I mean whose wedding does he think it is! So I have had to implement some quite strict rules, namely that I will assign him tasks.

Task number one was for him to decide a theme for the table names.

He pauses.

He thinks.

Then....

'Dead relatives!'

Things I've done that you might not have

1. Faked 52 orgasms on stage.

2. Run three miles immediately after eating three steaks and half a cake.

3. Gone on a date with a man who only talked about his favourite meats.

4. Gone on a date with a man who said he 'couldn't wait to watch me sleeping'. And not in a cute way.

5. Gone on a date with a man who had an alarm on his watch that went off 5 minutes before Neighbours was on.

6. Made S leave the cinema in the middle of 'War of the Worlds' as I was convinced the man sitting next to us was a suicide bomber.

7. Chased Anneka Rice through a field only to find out she was actually just a stable girl who bore an uncanny resemblance to Anneka Rice.

8. Asked for a school and a fish at a French railway station.

9. Gone out in the snow wearing a mini skirt, crop top and open toe sandals.

10. Dressed all in black and gone out in the middle of the night to draw pink icing smiley faces on windows.

11. Stood through the sunroof of a limo while driving through San Fransisco.

12. Successfully navigated down a mountain side on skis in a blizzard.

13. Successfully translated between a German family and a French cashier at a Paris metro ticket booth.

14. Received a love note from a grown man who sat behind S and me at the cinema and tried to get S to switch seats with him, before passing me said note. (He apparently sees S as no serious threat. Funny.)

Monday 12 October 2009

Random thoughts from people 20-35 years old

Honestly, I nearly wet myself when reading these. My friend J sent me then (wait, that sounds like a boy which J would not appreciate, she is a girl whose name begins with 'J' and rhymes with 'mulia').

I can't stress how much I agree with all of these.

- More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realise you're wrong.

- Have you ever been walking down the street and realised that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

- I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

- Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook
people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

- There is a great need for sarcasm font.

- Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realise I had no idea what the f*** was going on when I first saw it.

- I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.

- I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

- How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies". (As an interesting side note, you should try having a 'v' in your name...)

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

- Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Trousers ? Trousers never get dirty; you can wear them forever.

- I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired. - Bad decisions make good stories.

- Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning that just got the red bike that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

- Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem ...

- You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

- Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

- I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.

- I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'

- I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

- I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

- I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

- Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...

- I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

- The other night I ordered take away and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic cutlery. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat b******d before dinner (the worst thing is, is that when ordering an obscene amount of food from a takeaway, I will even pretend to speak to other people in the background or wonder outloud to myself, for example: 'What did she want... oh yes, and a chicken chow mein'.)

In which I have some exciting news

Yes my lovelies, last week, after precisely four years, forty one weeks and one day, my delicious boy Mr S asked me the second most delightful question a girl can hear (after 'Would you like me to buy you those shoes and bag my dear?). Yes, he asked if I would marry him.

After the obligatory pause (it's good to keep him on his toes), I of course replied with the affirmative.

And so I find myself with a beautiful diamond ring on my left hand. After telling family and friends (my Nana's exact words: 'What carat gold is it?' 'It's not gold Nana.' 'Oh Livy... it's not silver...!' 'No, it's platinum.' 'Thank God.') and being asked a million times when the wedding would take place, we developed an automatic response that we are just going to enjoy being engaged until Christmas and that we were in no rush, two maybe even three years.

Unfortunately, I got distracted in Smiths on Friday and ended up buying six bridal magazines and a pink organiser.

So yes faithful readers, Bridezilla has been unleashed. Now is eight bridesmaids excessive....?