Christmas came early this year… in the form of a positively torturous family dinner.  My Mum has decided to go celebrate Christmas with her sister in Western Australia this year and I am not sure whose idea it was to have a family thing on in November, but who ever’s fucked-up little pea brain came up with the plan for us all go out to a swanky restaurant for dinner… well I’d sure like to smack them upside the head.  

The restaurant is down in Brunswick heads, called the Fat Belly Kat… lovely ambiance / personable host / delicious, fantastic, gorgeous food!  But with five small children in tow?   Holy snapping duckshit Batman…. never again!  We arrived good and early so hopefully the rug rats would be in a good mood – not too tired etc, and the kitchen was great in getting them all squared away early… but (and this is a big BUT) our meals were nearly two hours in coming.  We were snacking on breads, mezes and all sorts of yummies, but were were there for well over two hours, and the kids were running amok. 

The older kids were mostly okay… but Big Sal’s are only 3 and 18 months, and they just can’t be expected to sit still that long.  It was a dis-ars-ta from the minute we walked into the place.  Couldn’t keep them in their seats, no one happy with their little presents, and for a finale….. when FishyBob realized that everyone else’s dessert looked much yummier than hers….   well I swear, I have never in my life heard such a godawful noise emit from something so small –  unless you count that time we stuffed the rabbit in a bucket of water and it screamed in a rather alarming manner.  She kicked and screamed like you would not believe…  they must have heard her howling all the way up the Tweed Valley, she was a bee’s dick off apoplexy and our fellow diners must have thought we were performing some sort of medieval toe crushing torture on her under the table.  Would not have surprised me one little bit had the police turned up with claims of child abuse charges, or at the very least…. disturbance of the peace or some such shit.

By the end of the evening, some of us were huddled in our seats rocking, muttering ‘never again… never again…’  and I for one intend to do my damnedest to make sure we never do dinner with the rug rats again….. oh but do try the Fat Belly Kat if you happen to be down Byron way… just don’t sit next to any tables with highchairs.

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I called in sick today… turns out the ‘sick to my stomach’ from yesterday wasn’t just an idiom.  I’ve been heaving all over the place and now have the aching and sore back to show for it.   I’m totally in the mood to have a bitch.  And I’m sick and tired of bitching about work so here’s something that’s been inexplicably pissing me off lately…

I have tried and tried and I am totally failing to understand what is the attraction with plastering your car rear window with frangipani stickers?  Maybe it’s a throw back from my childhood where my 4Wheel Driving Mum and Dad flatly refused to follow the trend of obscuring the back window with a multitude of stickers of places they’d travelled to and had a sole lonely ‘Leave Straddie Unabridged’ sticker decorating the car for many years?  Maybe it’s cos I’m just not a frilly, floral chinzy sort of gal?  Or maybe it’s because I simply don’t identify any appeal in decorating your car in a commonplace poisonous weed of a flower?   I don’t get it… and every single afternoon I find myself in traffic muttering ‘more frangi-fucking-panis!’

Ban the litlle florally fuckers I say….

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mumble fuck… mumble fuck….

There is nothing quite so banal as breakfast radio.   And I resent having to wade through copious quantities of absolute mind numbing crap to get to the 30 sec traffic report.  This is the worst thing about my morning commute….. not the arseholes on the road who cut me off, not the numbskulls who cant seem to pick their fucking lane early, and not the morons who constantly block intersections in busy traffic.  Nope, as annoying as those piss poor wanker drivers are, it’s not these fuckwits that destroy my calm every morning…. it’s the radio hosts with the mentality of  seven year olds attempting to humour the masses that drive me nuts.

Somebody save me from the morning radio…  arghhhh!   If only they would just shut the fuck up!

I had an unexpected phone interview today.  I’ve never really been unemployed before…. I left high school and went to work for the Govt, and then every job I’ve wanted, I just walked into, so I’ve not had a lot of experience with the job hunting/interviewing thing.  But in the last month or so, I’ve decided I dont really like the current methods of the recruitment companies.  The way the recruitment industry thins out the crowd is a pain in the proverbial butt.

First you have to spend half an hour impressing them on the phone…. and you can hear the consultant rapidly typing away, trying to capture what you’re saying, which you know is damn near impossible, and I’m fairly confident half the time they can’t SPELL the words I am using, so no doubt if anyone went over those notes that they’d make much sense.

Then they get you to come in for a preliminary interview, which consists of perhaps some testing on basic computer literacy, (Which of the following is an input device – A) printer  B) monitor  C) mouse  D) disk drive),  an aptitude test (If Jane is on a train traveling at 60 mph….), a typing test (with a text guaranteed to put you to sleep), and  maybe a phone role play (Welcome to – insert fictitious company name here – this is Borys, how may I help you?) and the  group assessment.  😐

This is the bit where they sit you around with a bunch of strangers and watch how you interact with the group when given a bullshit task… like deciding what sort of people should be eliminated from entering the bunker with limited spaces when the world is going to end.  Fucking fun!  And the whole thing ends up wasting 4-5 hours of your life (unpaid) and very likely for a job you’re lukewarm about wanting in the first place.  And that is before you reach the panel interview where you’re traditionally expected to sit and blow sunshine up your own arse.  😐

I hate job hunting.  I know the easier route would be to go sign up with an agency and say – find me a job… but the prospect of working for an agency and then maybe having to swap and change roles all the time doesn’t really appeal either.    Sigh… maybe I should take Unc’s advice of some ten years ago and just get a job where I sit at home in my tracksuit and talk dirty on the phone all day…  🙂