There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

I woke up Sunday morning at 8:30 with the taste of Micky Finns and port making my tongue all fuzzy feeling and an incessant, dull headache that made me want to disappear back into my fluffy sleeping bag for another 5 hours. Yep, welcome back to the Kingdom of Fife.

Saturday was a day of joyful reunions: I finally got to see Scotland play in 6 Nations, which I haven't seen in a year, and they WON! I got to see my friend Blonde H and Amy who I also haven't seen in a very very very long time, and I got to experience my first proper night out since I've been back in the UK. In the wild, untamed town of Kirkcaldy.

After the dominating win over Italy in 6 Nations, Blonde H drove up from the Boarders to pick me up and off we went. Getting to the Lang Toon was no bother, but finding Amy's flat was an epic adventure since Kirkcaldians obvious don't believe in signpost or proper road identification. After driving down every bloody street we could find, we somehow magically found ourselves on the street perpendicular to where we needed to be. Amy was less than useful, and kept giving us directions based on where her old highschool or Asda were, as if we knew where those places were and could be helpful, but in the end we found it.

Now, because of when the game ended, when Blonde H had picked me up, and when we got to Amy's (3 hours later!) no one had had any dinner. So starving, we snacked on what food we did bring- Doritos, Chocolate fingers, Haribros, and pistachio nuts. And then followed it down with multiple glasses of Port and Blue Caribbean (our ghetto version of Cheeky Vitmo), Peach Schnapps and Lemonade, and of course, shot upon shot of Micky Finns. I'm sure my stomach was super happy about all this, but I was in no state to really care.

We got to the club by 11:30, and from there on, everything just kinda flows together. I remember some dancing, being terribly outraged that they don't serve tap water and make you fork out £1.40 for a bottle, and being told by Amy's friends that they hate Americans.

We stumbled out around 2:00 am dead tired and not looking forward to waking up 5 hours later. Poor Blonde H had to work the next day from 11-8. Ouch.

New Years Eve was sad and depressing rather than than celebratory- it was the gut wrenching day when I had to take Scottie to the airport, alone, and not know when I would see him again...ON OUR 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY! I know, I know, drama queen, but it was very sad having to leave him at the airport to wander off to his fate (can I add that we had to leave the house at 5:00 AM), a fate which turned out to be hellish.

There wasn't enough room on the plane for him, so Scottie was forced to pay $200 for a last minute flight to LAX. Where he stayed for at least 6 hours before boarding. Once off the ground, the plane needed to make an emergency landing in Chicago. After finally taking off once more, he made it to England, only to find that he had missed his flight to Edinburgh and had to fork out £200 to buy a new ticket.

This was all unknown to me.

Having dropped off my sweetie before the sun arose, I turned around to drive my sorry self home and mope. Having failed at going back to sleep, I decided I might as well head out of my leg of a journey. Since my family's version of New Years Eve is having friends over, eating pizza, and heading off to bed at 9:00 PM, I decided to hightail it back to the glorious Sonoma country to see my best friend from elementary school.

And proceeded to have 6 or 7 margaritias and two or three lemon drops. All in all, it was a fantabulously drunk night of party revelery, and I magically managed to NOT be ill OR have a hangover. Giggidy.

The next day one of my best friends from university drove up, and together we escaped reality and ran away to Humboldt county to get our fill of redwoods, rain, hippies, and hicks. And we got plenty of all of those. Stay tuned for the adventures of Shady and Missy on holiday.

So once upon a time I had this friend in High School. He was funny, super cool to hang out with, and we got along really really well in that God-I-Love-Hanging-Out-With-You-But-Not-In-That-Boyfriend/Girlfriend-Kind-Of-Way. This guy was the type you never felt embarrassed asking to Turnabout or Prom (and possibly Homecoming) when you had no one ask you and were surrounded by all your happy couple friends.

Anyway, I have not spoken to this guy in 4 years, save that one time 3 years ago when I ran into him and his mom on my way to get a sandwich on my lunch break and we talked for 3 minutes. Nada. He's not even on facebook or anything like that, so as far as I know, he could be dead, married, missing a limb, and I would have no idea. Right. So then today, I wake up from my slumber at 5:55am, hit the power button on my laptop, and go about my waking up routine while it warms it ancient self up. Once dressed and in the process of munching on cereal, I open my mailbox and low and behold.

Subject: How's life
So there's been this peculiar smell brewing near the copy machine at my work. It's affecting people's ability to work and no one can locate the source. In the adjacent room is a fish tank and Jim, our company fish, has apparently gone missing. It instantly became obvious that my boss threw Jim into the copy machine and stuffed his tiny body in the gears to conceal his ill doings.
He's been known to kill small animals and it's rumored he has bodies in his basement. No one will ever know what became of Jim, but under the copy machine were two dead rotting rats, holding hands, and crawling with maggots.
I love my job.

Tell me a story


That's it. After over 4 years of not talking, not exchaning an e-mail, and IM, anything. But it totally sums up my relationship with this guy and the kind of person he is. Ridiculous, hilarious, and making me laugh and be happy I know him.

Tell me a story.

How do you top that? I don't. I can't. So instead I also bleather about work.

Re: How's Life?
About a week ago, what I assumed was a female approached me at the reception desk of the hospital where I worked and asked me to phone Tanya for her to get her work schedule. She was a new nurse about to start work, so I phoned through and didn't think anything of it until she actually started working. Yesterday was her first day on the job, and as one of the other nurses brought her around to meet me, she introduced herself as Gordon. 'Hmm,' I thought, 'Well, in this day and age...I suppose some women prefer the name Gordon.....After all, Lexy changed her name to Alex.' But I couldn't help but wonder....what gender did it belong to and what was its original sex? Feminine voice, feminine facial features.....butch manly crew cut...could definitely get away with wearing flannel it flannel lumber jack shirts existed in the UK....something that could either pass off as super tiny titties or just normal sized moobs for a person that size....

I wanted to make it my secret investigation- discover its gender. All day on the way to work today I obsessed over what questions I could ask it without sounding too obvious. Would a butch lesbo answer differently than a gay man? Than a straight man? Than a straight woman? Sports? Cooking? Fashion? Cars? How do you lead a person into revealing what gender they identify with without sounding like prying douche?

Alas, before I could set my machinations in to action, Gordon approached me this morning, apparently to reintroduce himself as I was entering patient data into the computer.

'Hi, I'm Gordon.'
'Yes, I remember, how are you?'
'Good. I'm a trans-male. I'm not quite there yet, but hopefully in a few months you'll start seeing some real changes.'
'Ah. Well, if I'm around that long, I'm only a temp.'

And off went Gordon and there went a whole days worth of plans to spy, pry, and gleen.



So...tell me a story