Get the christmas presents yourself.

I never really understood how much I loathe christmas shopping.   

Until I met the hot geek (J).

He drives me fucking insane.  Seriously he makes me crazy.

And not the good kind of crazy, I’m talking about the eye twitching, lip curling kind of crazy where it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to put my hands around his throat and throttle him.

I have quite a large family.  I have 4 brothers, 8 nieces and nephews and more cousins than I care to try and count.  Our family has a kind of unspoken understanding that we don’t do big Christmases.  Not because we’re tight with money, but because there are just so many of us.

Christmas wasn’t really a big deal when we were little.  We didn’t have tons of spare cash and Mum and Dad were always really good at just getting us one or two things, but the kind of things that we really wanted.  In my case it was my pink and purple bike.  My younger brother Daniel wanted some huge crayola pen set because he was the gay creative one.  Michael, the youngest, wanted a pellet gun.  He got a spud gun.

Really – what self respecting parent is going to give their 7 year old a pellet gun????

He was more than a little miffed until he realised that firing a piece of potato at my thigh had the same effect as a pellet.  Fuck, those little bits of potato hurt.

But I digress.

J’s family on the other hand live for christmas and buying presents.  They love to see peoples expression when they open their gift. 

Christmas for them is huge.  His mum normally hosts Christmas at her house and has everyone over.  There’s the Hot Geek, Keira and I, his brother and sister, his aunt, his cousin and a couple of uncles.  The house isn’t huge so it always feel packed.

Keira is the only ‘small person’ in the family and the expression ‘Christmas is for kids’ couldn’t be truer where the J is concerned.

He loves christmas, loves christmas shopping and could literally spend hours just wandering around the shops, looking at stuff and thinking about who it would better suit and pondering whether he should buy it.

He’s like the chalk to my cheese.

We have a really large town centre jam packed with shops and two really big shopping malls. One of them hosts 2 large department stores each spread over 3 floors.  For me, the thought of aimlessly walking around either of them and occasionally stopping to look at something fills me with dread.

Everywhere is busy with people walking really slowly with no real clue of what they want.  The town is full of children crying because they’re bored or tired or screaming because they’ve seen yet another Ben 10 action figure that they absolutely must have. 

Going shopping normally means taking Keira who flat out refuses to get into her buggy and be pushed because ‘she’s a big girl and doesn’t need a buggy anymore’.  The flip side to that evil coin is that having her walk around means that I’m constantly having to stop to wait for her to either catch me up or to drag away from a shop window kicking and screaming.  Why do I have to justify to a screaming, tantrum throwing 3 year old that she does not need a giant 70′s inspired space hopper?   

 I can not bear it.

 I like lists.  Call me an anal control freak all you like, but I like lists.  I like to know what people want in advance so I can go and buy it.  So I don’t have to stand behind the woman with 2 trolley loads of gifts who is still contemplating whether she’s bought the right thing whilst the less-than-bothered check out girl is ringing them through the till.

I like lists because I know that I didn’t buy something for the sake of buying it and that I’m not likely to receive said gift back in about 4 months time for my birthday. 

Is that so wrong?  Am I really weird?

Perhaps I’ll just do all my shopping online.

Just call me The Grinch.

fugly isn’t even a word. fact.

Check out my friend.  And I do mean her, not her breasts:

Look thats her - on the left!

For the record: the chap giving us the ‘v’ in the background is J.  I’ve cut him to spare his blushes.

Back to the point at hand.

She thinks she’s fugly.

What the hell is fugly?  It’s not even a word.  I know it’s not a word because I googled it and anyone whose anyone knows that google is the place to go when you want to know something.  Well, actually you go to wikipedia first and then do a google search – but hey, whose arguing.

Fugly still isn’t a word.

She has this boyfriend.

He is, in her words, the best thing that has ever happened to her.  And I’m inclined to agree.  Her last boyfriend was a first rate asshole.  No wait, thats too tame:  he was a complete and utter tosser who deserves no happiness after the way he treated her.  Knobhead.

Anyway, back to The Boyfriend.  He is a really nice guy.  Perfect for her.  They live together and everything.  I mean, they bought a cat together for Gods sake.  Nothing speaks committment like a dirty stinking cat pet.

But he’s a lot little on the lazy side and I don’t think he quite gets how it makes her feel, constantly having to nag his lazy backside into doing something.  And they’re not big things either.  Stuff like washing the plates, clearing up after himself, putting the laundry on or even putting the loo seat down (Keira does the toilet seat patrol in our house and God help Justin anyone if it’s left up).

Small things: Big nagging.

She hates it.  Doesn’t make her feel at all good about herself.  At all.

When we’re all together on one of our rare get together’s, I do (in my own kind of special way) try to hint that maybe he could be a little more considerate but it falls on deaf ears.

The constant ‘chats’ they have make her really down about herself.  Makes her feel that if he can’t be bothered to do the little things then he clearly doesn’t want to do the bigger things with her and she gets this mindset that she’s too ugly, too fat, not good enough.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

So I have this to say to her:

You are beautiful.  I don’t care what you tell me.  God gave you an hour glass figure that you don’t appreciate.  He gave you breasts that some women pay thousands of pounds to replicate and you have a heart the size of the universe and you are too quick to forget that.

You are the best friend anyone could have and those who have you as a friend, me included, count themselves lucky every day because of it.  You are funny, honest and more loyal than anyone of us deserve.  But you’re here.

Life and love isn’t about being tagged the hottest girl in school or work.  It’s not about fitting into the same size jeans at Posh Spice.  It isn’t about loving someone because they fit this crazy view of everyone must be perfect.

You’re not perfect – you have grey hairs for christ sake and I love you just the way you are

It’s called a ringer for reason

There isn’t much that really, really irks me. 

Except for people whose mobile phones are switched to silent all goddamned day.

Why?  What is the point?

If you don’t want someone to call you – don’t give them your bloody phone number.  Or in this case – don’t ask them (me) to call you.  Ever.

It drives me fucking insane.  Forgive the potty mouth, but it does.

J is single-handedly the worlds biggest perpetrator of such a crime.  Seriously, it’s like the biggest single cause of arguments in our house.

He drops me at work in the morning and I’ll be like ‘Have a good day baby, shall I give you a call over lunch’ and he’ll be like ‘yeah, that’ll be nice’.

Here’s what happens at lunch:

I pick up the phone, dial his number.  The phone connects and it rings.  Then it rings some more.  A few more rings.

Voicemail.

GODDAMN IT!

I hit redial, just in case it rang out before he could pick it up.  Although it rang for long enough I think to myself in a really shitty tone.

Nope – I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

It connects.  It rings.  And rings again.  Little more… answerphone.

This is not good.

It’s clearly sat on silent (again) and he‘s turned off vibrate hasn’t felt it vibrate in his trousers and hasnt’ bothered to check it.  Worse still, the phone is probably sat in his desk draw.

You can pretty much guarantee I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon stewing on the fact that he’s asked me to call and hasn’t bothered to answer the phone. 

I’m pissed by the time he gets home:

J: Hey you

Me: Hmm mm,

J: What’s up

Me: Where’s your phone

J: In my pocket.  Why?

Me: Is it on silent?

J: Yeah, but vibrates on.

VIBRATE IS NO GOOD TO ME WHEN YOU CAN’T HEAR IT!

Me: Vibrate?  Why is it on silent?

J: I’ve been at work

Me: You don’t check your phone?

J: I guess not.

Me: Please explain to me why you asked me to call you, then didn’t a) answer the phone and b) didn’t check it to see if I’d called – like you asked me to!?

J: Erm…..

Me: Why didn’t you take it off of silent when you’d finished work?

J: Is this a new angle to your argument because that wasn’t what you were pissed about a moment ago?

Me: Sorry?

J: I accept your apology.

Me: Shove it up your arse. 

The moral of the story is if you don’t want your girlfriend to be pissed with you when you’re home after a long day then take your phone off of silent or at least check it.

Phone ring tones: putting a stop to arguments since, well since forever.