Yellow Snow

My new flatmate may one day find out about this page (everyone is talking about it, after all), so I shall have to be diplomatic in all that I say about her. Unfortunately, her one major fault is that she’s not Meetie, and so it doesn’t really matter what she does to try to ingratiate herself to me by giving me lifts (in the CAR), lending me good books, and letting me eat her food, because I will always want to scream ‘get the hell out of my house!’ whenever I see her. Given that she is actually really rather pleasant, I should make more of an effort. But I’ve been a bit of an arse to her ever since her schoolboy error of referring to Meetie’s bedroom as ‘My room’. Foolish girl. Every time I come home and she is there, there is an battle that rages within me between the O.G who desires to be pleasant and welcoming, and the O.G who wishes to turf her out in the street in her pyjamas before catching a plane to London and dragging Meetie back by the ear lobes. As I have not performed the latter, I feel that my rage is commendably under control.

In unrelated news, I have two glorious friends.

Allow me to elaborate.

Loss, one of my good friends (despite the fact that her original geographical placement is Belfast – dirty Northerner), took me out for a birthday brunch (a BRUNCH I say. How cosmopolitan am I now that I have reached the dizzying heights of twenty-fourdom?) and presented me with a card. Now this, despite your inevitable ‘oh of course she gave you a card, it was your birthday’ eye roll, was no ordinary card. Inside it informed me to keep 13 – 15 October free for I was to partake in a MYSTERY weekend.

My delight was unparalleled at this unorthodox gift. A month and eleven days went by and the day of the mystery descended. All Loss and Corduroy would tell me was that I had to have my bags packed and be at my house at 5:45 p.m. ready to go. So Loss and Corduroy turned up at my house at the appointed hour, told me to get my passport and informed me they were taking me on a weekend long trip to London to see Meetie!! Need I inform you of the amount of screaming and jumping and head rushes which ensued?

I was swept away to a hotel in London , spent all day Saturday with my new favourite people and Meetie and then out to dinner in the evening where another surprise awaited me – Bunny! Now I am aware of how little that means to you so let me explain. Bunny is yet another of my friends who has taken it upon herself to move to London within the last couple of months (I have decided not to take all these emigrations personally, but warning bells are beginning to ring. I dull their peals with rum and cotton wool). It was a splendid evening with only a little debauchery to repent of later.

Ah yes, the weekend was glorious and I have told the story to any person foolish enough to give me the time to tell it. You are now included in that category. The only glitch in the proceedings was having to return to Dublin at the end of it. I’ve had a whole two weeks without any exciting surprises. I keep expecting to be invited onto a treasure hunt, or have flowers delivered to my home, or even a measly surprise luncheon. Nothing of the sort.

Until these events take place, I will happily entertain myself with this.

O.G – Don’t you wish your friends were hot like mine?

I had a rather disconcerting lunch with John Players this afternoon. It was one of those impossible conversations that left me reeling with all those thoughts I try so hard to repress and they mainly congregate around one overriding thought:

What am I doing with my life?

All these questions inevitably lead me to the B track of my mind which is, despite this metaphor, NOT shaped like a tape:

I’m wasting my life.

Perhaps a Monday is not the best time to address these issues. Perhaps a Tuesday evening would be more suitable. Perhaps my penchant for over exaggerating issues is heightened by my impending birth day. Perhaps if I ignore the issues long enough, my life’s meaning will assume a recognisable shape and land on my lap as I sit in front of the TV at night trying to find a suitable replacement for Big Brother. I can no longer loiter along the well trodden path of ‘sure I’m only twenty-three’ because I’m quickly approaching twenty-foursville. And we all know what twenty-four is – Mid Twenties. And Mid Twenties means I should be well on my way towards a career that fulfils me, a marriage that verifies me as a worthwhile human being, children that indicate my status as a fertility goddess, and a mortgage which firmly places me under the banner of ‘settled and sorted’. Unfortunately, the only thing going for me in this department is that I have the full (the full) set of Nigella Lawson’s cook books (thanks to L’Irlandaise) and an ESB bill in my name. And, despite what you may think, neither of those things is worth bragging about.

But do not be alarmed that this entry will contain nothing but a continued rant of my purported failings for I, like a child throwing a tantrum, am easily distracted. Orthoperplexis has invited me to her house for tea. And, even though she is proposing to put cashews into the curry instead of raisons, I have decided to accept her invitation with nothing short of jubilation. Curry! I was going to have my usual meal of gravel in porridge, but this delightful invitation has pricked my taste buds into a frenzy.

In other news

This week Roosy and Loss have deserted their cats once again for the sunshine of France and I am looking after their house. Loosely translated, that means I will be draining their liquor supplies and relieving them of all their food (even the stuff they’ve tried to hide). I will then be hauling my delighted derriere to the Hilton for Saturday night as my father has decided* to treat me to a room for the evening as a birthday present- hoorah! And I don’t mean sharing a room with my two little snotty nosed brothers, I mean A ROOM TO MYSELF. If you fancy coming to join me, I’ll be the one lounging around the steam room in a bathrobe with a Catherine Cookson novel and a box of Quality Street.

* I harangued him continually until he eventually gave in.

O.G - Classy lady

It’s a soggy Wednesday afternoon and I am in foul form. There is very little point in explaining kindly to me that it is a sunny day and the right side of the week, because I am irreconcilable. My boss is away and I have nothing to do, which is dangerous territory because it leaves me with my own thoughts which are often morbidly depressing.

This state of mind is not helped by the sweet nothings that are being very audibly exchanged on the phone between my manager and her fiancé. I can only hear one side of the conversation, thank God, but it is enough to inform me that a person’s idiocy is directly proportional to how much in love they are. She is currently cooing ‘how much do you love me?’ followed by ‘how much is immeasurabubly?’ and then ‘well I love you immeasurabubububububly!!!’, all of which is punctuated by giggles and cooing noises. How can this madness be sustained?

There is a very distinct chance that my tolerance levels are directly proportional to how foul my moods are and I am being entirely irrational. You can all sit on your high horses and say ‘now O.G…’ in warning and paternal tones, but if you were in my position, you would be rolling your eyes too. If one of Zoomtard’s latest posts is anything to go by, he is in that camp as well (you can hear them across the hill cooing and making up little names for each other (which rhyme, no doubt)) although even his love-filled declarations, whilst being slightly nauseating in content, are mild compared to Aubergine and Gladys (and less audible also).

What is the reason for this foul mood? I need a house mate, and not just any house mate; a Golden House Mate. Because unlike Big Brother, I cannot simply vote people out when they annoy me: I have to live with them for a whole year. Apparently, though, Golden House Mates are as difficult to find as hen’s teeth. Hen’s Teeth. So if you are a well paid, generous, Christian girl with a penchant for cleanliness and making meals for fellow house mates then give me a call.

Aargh.

On a more pleasant note, I did hear a man speak in church on Sunday and I think what he said is going to revolutionise my life a little bit. As hyperbolic as that sounds, there is possibly a large element of truth to it. His name is Greg Boyd (an Open Theist apparently) and the minister of a church in Minnesota called Maplewood. He has recently been in the New York Times for his controversial statements that the United States is not a Christian country because it does not look like Jesus. However, I am much less interested in his latest proclamations than I am in the conference he just gave in Trinity Church last weekend. Unfortunately, I did not go to the conference because I knew nothing of this Gregory from America and decided that I wasn’t going to waste my weekend listening to some Yank talk about Jaysus. And I wish that I had.

I went to hear him speak on Sunday morning in Trinity Church and came away excited, enthused, and convicted.

His talk in a nutshell:

Don’t judge.

His talk in an eggshell:

God gave humans one main job: to look after the world and to love others as He loves us (ok, i admit that is closer to two) and it is His job to judge the world. When we pass judgment on other people, we are elevating ourselves to the position of God. Greg suggests that Jesus’ assertion for us to deal with the plank in our own eye before removing the speck in our brother’s is not a minor teaching but serves as the foundation of Jesus’ teaching on how to love others. Whatever is going on in our own personal lives, we are to consider as a plank of wood, no matter how trivial we may think it is (greed, selfishness, pride, etc etc), and to consider WHATEVER it is in anyone else’s life as a tiny speck. If we live like this, then Christians will be known as the most loving, accepting, and selfless people on earth and will therefore look like Jesus. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?

And before you feel duty bound to comment that the above paragraph renders the initial two paragraphs as somewhat hypocritical, I am well aware of that thank you and there is no need for either of us to labour the issue. Go sort out the log in your own eye instead.

So I very kindly allowed my generous friends Roossy and Loss to pay €30 for the six CDs of his conference for me. How non-proud can you get?

If I listen to all six and am still enthused by this controversial so and so, I will write a post dedicated to him and his life changing suggestions. Until then, I will consider my critical nature as a plank of wood protruding from my face and smile sweetly at Aubergine and her cutesy wootsy woo assertions as I chant over and over ‘it’s only a speck…’.

O.G - Without you, today’s emotions would be the scurf of yesterday’s.

I am still in work and drinking out of a plastic beaker that used to have homemade carrot soup in it but was washed with fairy liquid and is now partly filled with coke. I do not like coke much but I dislike the taste of fairy liquid even more and am slightly bewildered as to how I willingly got myself into this mess in the first place.

More worryingly though, is the fact that I should have left ten minutes ago to meet friends at the theatre to see this evening’s performance of ‘The Constant Wife’. Whilst I am sure it will be very enjoyable and I will clap heartily at the end, I would much rather sit at home and read my new book which is clawing at my jugular in a rather enjoyable and disturbing way. Trying to explain to the hair dresser yesterday about how much I am enjoying a book about a paedophile was not easy. The conversation went something like this:

me ‘I’m reading this amazing book called Lolita at the moment. Have you read it?’
her ‘no, what is it about?’
me ‘Well it’s about a man who likes girls’
her (looking a little worried) ‘what, teenagers?’
me (squirming slightly) ‘no, little girls’
her (pause) ’so it’s about a paedophile?’
me (justifying it enthusiastically) ‘yes, but it’s really funny!’
her (trying to hide her growing fear) ’so it’s a funny book about a child molester?’
me ‘um’
her (with scissors dangling dangerously over my head ) ‘ehem’
me (weakly) ‘what sorts of books do you like then?’

O.G - at least she doesn’t have to justify herself to you.

Partly due to the intense lack of ideas floating around in my head, I have been rather negligent of late. Do not take this as an indication of my waning interest in voicing my opinions; that will never happen. Rather, you should blame Treesap and her dastardly departure (her departure itself was not dastardly, it was actually very welcome, but I thought a sprinkling of alliteration would impress you all. I am a graduate of Trinity College Dublin after all and should be putting my English degree to use more often instead of leaving it whining in my bedroom, pining for the days when it aggravated me daily with its inexhaustible enthusiasm for boring lectures, difficult texts and pretentious class mates). The stain that Treesap has left on the chair that used to be hers is entirely indicative of her continued presence in the office. Whilst she is now Gone and has been since 28 April, her incompetence has served to linger on in the form of little traps set everywhere for her poor replacement who constantly receives phone calls announcing some huge blunder she has made because Treesap’s only filing system was safely stored away in her head full of candy floss and carpet fuzz.

The cleverer members of my readership (and those who follow my rambling stories carefully (that will, of course, be all of you)) will have realized that I wrote ‘her poor replacement’ instead of referring to ‘Ryvita’. There is a simple reason for this and it is because Ryvita, unable to cope with the continued harassment to which she was subjected daily by Treesap, decided she no longer cared for it and left us. Treesap then got offered a job somewhere else and left us too, therefore orphaning our payroll department and adding grey hairs to my chest with the stress of it all.

Enter the ‘poor replacement’, John Players, who was reduced to tears in the first week thanks to Treesap’s legacy of hidden mistakes, misfiling, and misinformation. However, she has since hardened up: I used my P1 teacher’s tactic and made her stand up in the middle of the room on her chair until she stopped crying. Spare the rod and spoil the child, that was Miss McWhatwashername’s motto, and I thank her for it.

And what (I hear you ask with increasing exasperation) does all this have to do with Yellow Snow? There was a promised link at the beginning and, to the inexperienced eye, it may look as if I have lost my train of thought. Not so. Like all good story tellers, I like to make my listeners work for the privilege of understanding my meandering ways. Or perhaps, like all bad storytellers, I feel the need to drag out irrelevant details to flesh out the narrative. Either way, the explanation remains untold and perhaps it should stay that way as it really is not that interesting. It has, however, entailed a sharp decline in my correspondence with neurotic friends and decrepit aunts and it is as simple as this – Office Morale.

Believe me it is as ominous as it sounds. It entails sitting in a room downstairs with members of staff and tell deprecating stories about myself in order to keep the conversation alive. I am, in essence, martyring myself daily for the cause which has been delicately labeled ‘Getting On With Each Other’. This means that instead of sitting at my computer at lunch times ignoring my collegues and antisocially surfing the compelling wave that is called The Net, I have to sit in a darkened room with a group of accountants and live through an hour of conversational persecution. You can see it can’t you? We all wear cardigans and ponytails and eat brown bread sandwiches. There are uncomfortable throat clearings every now and again as we each strain our ears for the releasing sounds of the telephone ringing upstairs. Much to our distress, it appears that all other offices are enforcing ‘Getting On With Each Other’ times also as the phone never rings. And so the hour ticks on. Occasionally someone says something that starts up a conversation, but more often than not it ends in awkward and nervous titters which die away and leave a cloud of scratchy silence in their wake.

And with a flourish of my fingers tipped with chipped nail varnish (red of course), I shall bid you good evening. If Dr Gillian McKeith is to be believed, no food may darken the door of my mouth past 7 p.m and I am dangerously approaching my stomach’s curfew.

O.G - will be drinking cocktails at the Mint Bar to drown her sorrows in the comfort of pretentious company.

Much time has elapsed since my last update, a quick flick around fellow furious thinker’s webpages will inform you of that. I will not bore you with the reason for this lapse in communication, unless of course you know me and are already aware of the freak tadpole incident which rendered me temporarily armless. But now, thanks to modern technology, stem cell research, and day time TV, I am back on my feet. Sadly though, I will never again be able to play cricket or use tweezers.

But enough of that and more of what is to come.

Now picture this, if you will:

A darkened stage onto which four people walk, each clutching an item. They position themselves in the four corners of the stage and stare out into the audience, their faces pale with years of suffering and torment (which is more perceptible as the lights come up). In turn, they each bring out their item: one has a book in which she is desperately seeking answers, one stares into a mirror and claws at her face, another swigs from a bottle, and the final character injects himself with heroin.

As a heart beat begins to sound over the PA system, they each look around and notice each other. Terrified of contact, but desperately needing love, they set down their crutches (with difficulty. You can see the agony in their faces) and begin to warily circle each other. One person reaches out to another but is rejected. Another reaches out and it has the same effect. This circular dance of torment becomes even more frantic as the heart beat gets louder until, with a dramatic ‘pu-dum’ it ends.

Silence reigns.

Then one of the characters, no longer able to cope without her crutch, breaks from the circle and runs back to clutch it.

They each do the same and the audience watch in distress as they realise that they characters cannot live without their addiction. What will happen? They do not have to wait long as within a matter of minutes, each character falls to the floor, killed by the very thing on which they depended.

But do not despair, for there is light. A single voice speaks out over the PA system with loud, dramatic, emotive tones and speaks prophecy over them, calling the dry bones to rise again. And they do! Each of the characters come back to life and take each other’s hands. It is a glorious moment as the audience realise they are no longer dead: they LIVE! But not only do they live, they are able to touch each other, they are no longer afraid. They stand staring out into the audience as new people and it is clear that the lines of pain have gone: they are free from their addiction. Applause fills the auditorium as the silence erupts into glorious jubilation. Bouncers are necessary to stop hysterical audience members from jumping on stage in order to hug each actor. A cry rises up from the people and, as one, their voices bubble forth the desire of how they too can be set free from their own addictions.

Souls are refreshed, hearts are healed, and lives are changed.

Now I know what you are thinking – ‘which celebrated production is this? What world renowned actors grace which National Theatre?’ and my answer will surprise you. For it was no Tony Award winning show in the West End. It was a actually a small, Christian event.
‘But how could something so excellent be written and performed by amateurs?’ I hear you ask. My answer is simple – ‘the hand of the Lord was upon the author and all the actors’.

End.

There is the possibility that the full extent of my sarcasm and shame is lost on you the reader due to my ineffective authorship and for that I apologise. To have witnessed the full extent of this obvious, preachy, judgmental, melodramatic crap you would have had to have been in the RDS last night watching me and three others prance about the stage like idiots for ten agonising minutes. If anyone you know went, then please apologise on my behalf and redeem me by proclaming loudly that I HAD NO CREATIVE INPUT in the whole thing. My suggestions were thrown to the side in a callous display of disregard for taste (of which I have much). It was the worst drama I have ever had the misfortune of being involved with and embodied everything I hate about bad Christian drama, bad theatre, and bad acting all in one.

The moral of this story? Don’t say yes to something until you’ve read the script fully. Then run like hell.

O.G – back from the dead.

I spend too much time trying to think up pithy subjects on which to write and, given the astounding fact that this person has updated twice since my last entry, I decided to shove thinking and start writing. It is amazing what flows out as you write and I write that because I am confident that literary wizardry will immediately follow. Immediately.

There is a chocolate egg on my desk which does not belong to me and has already caused tears today. It is lying on its side attempting nonchalance but is, despite its feigned ignorance, well aware of the trauma it has evoked. I will explain, but in order to do so I will have to fly back in time and inform your ignorant minds of what has passed.

Two weeks ago, after a number of incidents, Treesap was fired. Ever since her fireage, the office has not been the same (think about when David Brent was laid off but without the bird suit and much more awkwardness. There you go. Now squirm like the rest of us have been doing and do it for two weeks in order to catch up).
Now, unlike many people would have in the same position, Treesap has decided to stay on for a while to train up Ryvita, her replacement. Needless to say, the last two weeks have been about as stressful as trying to curl your hair with ghd straighteners(it’s not bloody possible, they’re straighteners for crying out loud!) The tension has been gradually building until the entrance of Papua; our controversial egg. Those of you who have ever worked for a living will know the awkwardness of buying something for the boss and asking others to input financially. It ended up with Treesap angrily, and tearfully, shouting at Aubergine that she’d sue her for bullying.

Don’t you wish you worked where I work?

Papua will now be tortured for the distress he has wrought upon us all. He embodies all the anger and hatred in this office in his tiny, chocolaty head. Unfortunately his death is not what is needed to restore order and decorum to this Lord of the Flies-esque environment, but it will appease me somehow. Once he is gone, sacrificed to the god who pays my wages, some semblance of tension will be removed. Hopefully Treesap will find it in her heart to remove herself before Christmas or we’ll all be screwed by the inevitable bottle of wine which will sit under my desk in its frilly bag awaiting the disclosure which will cause my nervous system to implode.

O.G – demands that you have a Happy Easter.

I feel it is my duty to inform you all of a gross miscalculation of justice which has perpetuated within aeronautical travel unbeknownst to the innocent passenger. As I have been privileged to be party to this information, it is my duty to inform you all that each and every airline you fly with are out to kill you.

I appreciate that that may sound like a rather hyperbolic statement, but I must entreat you to listen carefully to the following safety announcement:

Whilst friendly, make-upped women with scraped back hair and sensible navy shoes appear to have your best interests at heart as they smilingly inform you to assume the brace position should the situation necessitate, do not believe them. The reason for this is not to give you the best possible chance of survival but is, in fact, designed to kill you. Bending forwards actually puts you in the most vulnerable position because your neck is not supported. Should a violent jerk ensue, the momentum of your entire body pushing forwards whilst your head is trapped against the back of the seat in front would easily snap your neck.
And the oxygen masks they so benignly inform you will fall from the ceiling should there be a drop in cabin pressure? Their use is simple - to get you high and disorientated so that crashing into a mountain is a much more pleasant experience. Lucidity in that kind of a situation would bring with it a degree of hysteria the air stewards could do without. Disorientated, calm, gurgling stoners bending over with their seat belts on leave the rest of the crew free of distractions and able to safely exit the plane (after playing a game to see who deserves the last parachute).

I don’t pay €40 for my Ryanair tickets to Glasgow to be treated so callously. From now on, I will pay no attention to the safety announcements and shout abusive comments instead.

Care to test me on the accuracy of these allegations? A relative of a friend of my brother informed him these facts. I, for one, believe all third hand information that comes my way. And you should too.

O.G. Measures her self worth by the number of comments she receives

Allow me to preface this entry with the admittance that I stole the idea for it from this blog. I too had a strange experience a couple of nights ago wherein I was catapulted back into the days of short skirts and blue v-necked sweaters (you can’t tell, but I’m actually retching) and forced to stand on a stage and partake in the performance of a play I did many years ago. Of course I had forgotten all my lines and tried to make it up on the spot as the director stood horrified in the wings trying to hoarsely whisper out what it was I was supposed to be saying. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when I realised I was merely dreaming, but the director, actors, and audience did not realise (the feckers) and I was forced to continue walking around the stage shouting out whatever came into my head and hoping it would suffice.

This may have been brought on by the fact that I watched four hours of ‘E! On the Red Carpet’ that night. As Meetie, D and I sat in front of the TV., hurling abuse at Keira Fartly and criticising Michelle whats-her-face’s baaaaaad choice in dress, it occurred to me that there is something fundamentally rotten at the core of our society’s moral fibre for revering people purely because they are beautiful and skinny and rich and famous. According to Mr. Seacrest, Keira Fartly is the ultimate woman because women want her body. DON’T PRESUME TO TELL ME WHOSE BODY I WANT YOU INGRATE. And if I was to have anyone’s body, it certainly would not be Keira’s, it would have to be someone way skinnier…
Speaking of Ms Fartly, have you ever noticed she has the ability to show her FULL set of teeth whenever she smiles? If for no other reason than that, I think she should be thrown out of the acting profession. You heard me.

And while I’m on the track of ridiculing people, I might as well have a go at Biggie Smalls for his most recent lyrical malfunction:

I go, on and on and on and
Don’t take them to the crib unless they bon’in
Easy, call em on the phone and
platinum Chanel cologne and
I stay, dressed, to impress
Spark these bitches interest
Sex is all I expect
If they watch TV in the Lex, they know

Big up you phizzle. I ain’t got no jazz on you fo aiy’t. So break it, cos yo ain’t all that to yo Phille. Peace out. Ah me, there’s nothing quite like faux rhyming schemes to make one feel superior. However, Sir Small is worth millions and I work behind a desk in a cardigan. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt somewhere in there but I refuse to acknowledge it because sneering dismissal reads better than loving acceptance. Or even tolerance.

O.G - tired and wants to go home

My evening was spent gazing into Ralph Fiennes eyes last night, willing him to see me in the audience and become so overwhelmed by the intensity of my gaze that he’d stop mid flow and have to compose himself before continuing.

He did not.

But that didn’t hinder me from standing outside the Gate theatre in my full length, slightly off-white puffa coat sporting a yellow vest (just like your friendly builders next door are wearing) and bright red helmet as I leaned against my silver raleigh bike confident that I’d impress him with my nonchalance when he finally emerged. What I hoped would happen at that point is best kept to myself because it has become the plot for a film I shall write (and star in). needless to say it will culminate in a torrid affair between said Ralph and myself which lasts until his play comes to and end and he flies to New York leaving me, bereft, in his wake. However, I’d marry a nice Irish farmer from Louth and live out my days cackling in public and screaming at passers by about the time I was Ralph Fiennes’ lover whilst my husband drinks himself into an unconscious state because he can never live up to my expectations.

O.G – lost in her own imaginings