Cherry Ripes should be longer

Hi kids, I have been the Slack of Blog, and it's because my head has been buzzing with so many things that I haven't been able to chuck any single thought onto internet paper and thusly have brought nothing to the interwebs.

I guess the second reason is that my boss of work is so houndingly that I don't really have many spare, non-interuptive, blog moments.

Anywho, hi. Cara and I came back from working at the Falls Festival for New Years. I don't reckon I've ever had such an understated midnight. The headlining band, Kings of Leon, did a quick 10, 9, 8, at 11:56pm and then quickly continued with their rocking and their rolling. We did the pash, hugged our new friends and then it was all done. We were exhausted, working at Falls was probably the hardest, longest, most frantically I've ever worked in my life and the hot days were hardcore, with little respite. That said, I've come out the other end, super content and planning to do it all again next year armed with hindsight aplenty.

Christmas was actually ok. For the last few years it gives me an almost unbearable stress that makes me want to hide away from the world for two days. I think I don't cope with the way that it becomes Not About Me, or more specifically, all about what totally old dudes and chicks want. I was especially getting anxious because I've been having totally no days off from work, and was all set to spend precious, precious freedom sitting on various couches at various places waiting for hours until it was the socially acceptable time to leave.

There were four family things; the first one was with my Dad, his partner and his new, tiny little childs, my sister and Cara at Yum Cha in the city. My sister was all eye-rolling when the little childs came along, I think she wanted Dad's attention all to herself, but having the kids there meant that the whole thing was wrapped up in an hour. It is hard to converse when kids are stabbing things with chopsticks, but I was cool with that, talking is totally overrated.

The second thing was lunch at my Mum's place. I was totally not looking forward to it because my Mum used to be a bit of a psycho. She's totally been alright the last few years, but 34 million times bitten, twice shy, etc. It was cool though, she cooked many foods (usually I have to grab something to eat on the way there and the way back), the convo was tension free and it was actually kinda fun. Whooo! Cara and I escaped just when it looked like they wanted to settle in for the afternoon so we had totally gotten out while everything was still sweet.

The next two things were Cara's things. I'm usually not a massive fan of these things either, mainly because they usually go for 10 hours and once everyone has done the appropriate small talk with me, I'm usually discarded by all - which is fair enough, why small talk a non-blood when you can hang with your cuz who used to be your very best friend until they moved interstate (for example). It's a huge cliquey family. This year though, I actually had an alright time, we were still there from 10am to 6pm which is crazy long and a bit boring, but obvs I've been in the family long enough to be in the gang now and there were some family peeps that didn't have their usual gang there so they hung with me instead. Cara's family things are Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Christmas Day was the long one, Boxing Day is usually harder as the family numbers got from 20 to 40 and the dudes I should hang out with are super occa/boring. Luckily, Cara also felt a bit out of place, we got outta there after the appropriate time so we could live LIVE! Boxing Day had a few more family peeps that are falling out of the clique these days, so I had friends again, it was cool.

The other thing I don't really like about Christmas is presents. I find it a bit frustrating because we all have monies to buy things that we like, and the peeps I should buy things for I don't know well enough, so everyone gives each other random token things that nobody likes. It just seems silly to me. Anywho, Cara is one unemployed bum right now, so she did it all. WHOAAA! How much does she rock? So much!

So, that was rad also, giving this Christmas the highest rating since I was 11 years old: 7.5