Golden Girls Gone Wild

I had an email from my mother this morning, who is currently doing a spot of travelling in far away places, to tell me she landed in Tokyo safely and that it was 26 degrees Celsius and humid. I don’t know about you guys’ mothers but mine always likes to keep me abreast of the weather situation, at any given time, wherever she is, just in case of emergency. She’s British you see, therefore she still has this inbuilt wonder and appreciation of any weather that isn’t apocalyptic.

I have visions of being on some game show like, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and the question comes up, “What is currently 26 degrees and humid?” and I can glance at the choices and confidently smile and say, “Well Regis, if I’m not mistaken, ‘David Hasselhoff’s sweaty ball sack’ actually clocks in at a rather tepid twenty FOUR degrees, therefore, it would have to be C) the weather in Tokyo!” and everyone would gasp and applaud, fully impressed that someone should know something so absurd and Regis would be all, “Ah, I assume you have a retired mother visiting Tokyo?” and I’d be like, “Sure do Reeg. And coincidentally, she’s the one who told me about the Hoff’s sack!” and we’d all laugh and nod knowingly and ideally I’d get $250,000 (and some soothing salve for my mind after its imagination of Hasselhoff’s balls.)

My mother’s a touch eccentric to begin with and she likes to travel, so when she emailed me a few months ago and said, “I’m so tired of the rainy weather this summer, I think that Pat and I will take a little trip somewhere to escape!”, I didn’t think much of it as she and her best friend Pat are always going on little weekends here and there since they’ve now both retired.

One year they splashed out and went to Greece for a week, returning with tales of heavily moustachioed Greek men who called them “ladies” and plied them with Ouzo while they stayed out till ALMOST MIDNIGHT!

“Where are you going?” I asked, when I next spoke to her on the phone.

“Well…” she said. “We’re spending ten days in Tokyo, three weeks in Australia and a week in Hong Kong!”

So that was her idea of a “little trip”. For the record, my “little trips” normally involve a weekend up in Grand Forks to eat Mexican food and drink margaritas till I pass out then waking up with a bra on my head. And realizing “That’s not MY bra!”

Anyway, she was excited because Japan’s not like anywhere she’s ever been before and she wasn’t sure she was ready for the culture shock. To be honest, I’m not sure Japan’s ready for the culture shock of two sixty-something year old ladies trying to figure out the intricacies of sushi and vending machines full of secret alien substances. I’m sort of half hoping for entertainment’s sake, that she comes home dressed as as schoolgirl and sporting a Hello Kitty backpack.

Why Sleep is Important

I’m a laid back sort of person for the most part, but sometimes, especially when I’ve been a crazy insomniac for a lengthened period of time, things just mess with your calm demeanour out of pure spite. Like today I got visibly pissed off at some chocolate that wouldn’t melt fast enough. The audacity of that damn chocolate, man. I mean come on, I had COOKIES TO FROST! I wanted to EAT those stupid cookies.

I stood there over the stove prodding it with a wooden spoon (the chocolate not the stove - what would be the point in that?) and…it just stared back at me like, “Yeah?????”.

So I started muttering at it. Things like, “Oh. Oh, so let me get this straight, when you’re in my jeans pocket for more than two minutes you melt into a shitty brown pool of goo and smear all over everything but I lay you over a pot of humid, steamy, boiling water and you’re all ‘oh, hi, nice day, how are you?’ and display no sign of melting? You fucking fuck.”

It succumbed in the end. The cookies were good. Would you like one?

Also, did you ever wake up in the night with a jolt, because you heard an unidentifiable sound that you know wasn’t a regular floor creak or a car driving by outside and you’re all sort of freaked out and afraid to peer out of the covers in case you encounter some huge black mass with glowing red eyes, malevolently staring back at you, bending its crooked, bony finger back and forth beckoning you, with an evil, rotten-toothed grin on its face, sort of like Shane MacGowan's evil, psychotic, less-talented, incinerated twin, and you strain your ears to decide if whatever bastion of pure, undiluted evil that made that sound might still be hovering with psychotic intent waiting to snap off your head with its decaying incisors as soon as you pop your head out and so, as a deterrent, you put the pillow over your head and decide denial is the best policy but you can’t get it out of your head that maybe that foul deviant is wielding an axe just feet above your neck, and it might be better to be forewarned about such a thing, so you reluctantly decide to take action using the element of surprise to your advantage, so you take a deep breath and fast as lightning you move the pillow and the blanket off your face and sit up really fast, and yell something undeniably forceful like, “Please leave now, nasty, smelly creature of the undead or I will be forced to dig out my Bee Gees collection!” to totally catch him unawares (because I’ve heard that yelling combined with catchy disco tunes scares evil away) and when you do…there’s no one there?

That happens to me a lot.

This is why you should eat your vegetables and not be an insomniac, kids. Evil nightmares and long sentences.