It's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light...

Cantabrians, Treat Me (http://www.treatme.co.nz/Christchurch) has a deal for a $79 dentist check up and clean. I totally took that, since as a poor student I can't usually afford the dentist. Now to book in before heading to the US. Which is difficult since much of my time before I head off, we're going South to Fiordland. Though if I don't use the booking before I head off, I have until the 2nd of Feb. I'd like to do it before though. YAY dentist!

Guy Fawkes was awesome. I hate fireworks and since I live two houses away from Firework Park, I decided to partake in some Bravery Vodka in the form of vodka and oranges. Better than anything else where you can taste the alcohol, bleh. Apparently I spent a great deal of time hugging people and clinging to Alison's leg. And Woot says I nommed his ankle. I also professed my love for Simon about 20 times and called him pretty, according to him. Spamming Tumblr askboxes is so classy. Hey, at least I'm an affectionate drinker. And now that Guy Fawkes is over, let's just NOT have more Bravery Vodka. Until next year.

I have to say, it did help. Instead of screaming and hiding and crying, I was lying on the grass and staring up as the fireworks went off above me. It was pretty.

Now if only all my friends were well again, that would make me happy! In the meantime, I will settle for walking to the store once it's open, and purchasing and eating a chicken. Yep.

EDIT: DENTIST BOOKED for Wednesday at 9:30am. Woot! Now to the store for chickens!

EDIT 2: AUUUUGGHHHHHHH I opened the door to let Helios Tiberius Fassbender in and a white-tailed spider FELL ON ME! AAUUUGGGHHHH HEART-ATTACK SPIDER! So I killed it in the midst of my freaking out and then felt bad I didn't just trap it under something and relocate it. Sorry, spider. But pls no falling on me.

A friend of mine is fundraising for medical expenses and other things, and doing five dollar drawings. She's amazing and talented (examples of her work can be found on the post) and frankly deserves all the money. I've known her since about 2004/2005. She's honest and awesome.

Her fund raising post is here and her art is more than worth it. Give it a look.

Still no running water, though people on this side of town are starting to get it back so this gives me hope we'll have it soon. Our stores are still going strong though. We even have five bottles of our original stash left, and we've been boiling up the stuff we got from across the road. I am so glad it's there so we can replace what we've been using. If this goes on much longer we would have run out and we stockpiled water like mad. It just goes to show that even when you do prepare, sometimes it's not enough.

So. Guys. If you can? Have emergency kits. Even if you live in a place where you think they won't be necessary. We used to think they weren't absolutely necessary here even though we had one, because the dangerous fault lines were in Wellington and on the West Coast, not in Christchurch. And then a previously unknown fault ruptured. You just never know. If you're someone who can afford an emergency kit (and please know I completely understand that not everyone can), it's responsible to have one. It means emergency rations of food provided by whatever disaster relief happens to be around can go to the people who can't afford to have an emergency kit in a disaster and who need it far more, instead of getting used up on people who should and could have been more careful. It's just goddamn socially responsible, okay? It's caring about your fellow human beings while taking care of yourself too.

Put some tinned food and toilet paper and no-wash anti-bacterial hand cleaner and batteries and flashlights/torches and candles and matches and blankets and anything else you think you might need (including pet food) in your kit. And keep clean water around and replace it often (use the old stuff to water the garden or wash the car or...something). Hell, in Melbourne a couple of years ago, some kind of plant exploded and it left part of the city without electricity and running water for days and that was just a random malfunction without any natural disaster cause. So be prepared. Please. Be as prepared as you can be. The ability to have extra food lying around in case of an emergency is a luxury and if you can, please just do it.

Sorry. Preachy. But I can tell you first-hand how important this is. Never assume this doesn't apply to you. Be safe, lovelies. Gosh, this isn't even what I came here to do. I was going to talk about how I can't write fiction because it feels so utterly useless at the moment. And I got on my soapbox instead. Oh well.

I used to spend my life in my high school theatre. There were days I could be at school from 8 in the morning until 9-10 at night. I didn't drive until I was 21 because instead of taking driver's ed, I was doing everything I possibly could in that theatre. I ate, slept and breathed that place.

When I was in my final year of high school and I was on my way to rehearsal when I saw a little girl in the hallway behind the theatre, crying. She was about eight and I went over to her to ask what was wrong. She said her mother was supposed to pick her up a half an hour before that (why she was being picked up at a high school when she was 8, I still do not know) and she was scared that her mother had been in a car accident. I asked if her mother had a cell phone and she nodded, so I led the poor girl through to the speech office so she could try calling her mother.

When there was no answer, and the girl started crying again, I told her we should go out to where she was supposed to be picked up and I would wait with her.

I ended up waiting with her for nearly 45 minutes. I kept her calmer than she probably would have been by talking about stupid things and telling her ridiculous stories about myself and my very strange friends. Her mother eventually came by and the girl hugged me and they went on their way. I have no idea why the mother was late, or what happened, but I never saw the girl again and I don't remember her name.

What I do remember, was that I was late to my rehearsal. I knew I would be, and since one of the advantages of my crazy brain is that it traps things inside its cage of memory, I had the entire play memorized already so I figured it would be okay. The director wasn't pleased however, and he informed me of this. I told him I had been waiting with a scared, little girl, and he asked me why that was my responsibility.

You know...if that's how you think, then I guess it wasn't. My responsibility was to my cast mates and my director and despite the fact that I was never late before and always went above and beyond to help and be do whatever I could to move the production forward, I was still late this time and that had inconvenienced people. I still feel like the right thing to do was to stay with the poor girl. What about my responsibility to help out another human being; to care for someone who was scared and alone? If I had been that scared little girl, I would hope someone would have extended the same kindness to me. I just apologized and we got on with it, but I never really forgot that.

I'm not someone who can pass people by. Which is why I am the one who ends up sitting with the homeless person on the street who passed out and hit their head on the pavement so hard they are bleeding into their eyes, while they wait (for over an hour) for the ambulance to come. The amount of people who walked by that day, averting their eyes so they didn't have to see, makes me feel ashamed. I don't ever want to be that kind of person. It's why I'm doing what I'm doing, despite the fact that I am not okay. The helping people is as natural as breathing. It's not going out of my way, because helping people is my way. It's everything else that's the problem. Forcing myself to leave my home, when it's the only place that I feel safe. Forcing myself to talk to people, even though I'm terrified of it. All that functioning as if I don't panic about every little thing, that's the hard part. It makes me feel like I have no right to act like I could actually help. I feel barely human. Sometimes I feel like giving up. But I won't. I can't. I'm taking responsibility. I just wish it wasn't so hard.

Alison was supposed to go to bed but she just came out here to get a drink and there is no way that we could possibly ever explain the conversation that just occurred between us, but it was epic hilarity though it was the kind where you had to be there and now my stomach hurts from laughing. It was pure ridiculousness and we both laughed so hard, and I feel like I might vomit.

And then I thought, "you know what? I think I feel like this at least once a day." I think living in a house where you laugh so hard you think you might vomit at least once a day is pretty damn awesome, no matter what else is going on in my messed up little world.

Long live the LFoD and all it's denizens, past and present!

EDIT: For more examples of why the LFoD is the greatest place on Earth, I present Alison's Overheard in the LFoD tag in her journal which is chock full of hilarity and quotes.

My head hurts from laughing.

I was feeling down today (LONG story) so I decided to do something constructive to take the feeling away (social work training, oy) so I wanted to make a post of all the photos of people and places and things that mean something to me. And when I started to plan it, I realised just how long it would be if I put everyone into it. And that made me feel so amazing, you have no idea...

I did it anyway deciding I would only use photos I have taken myself (or by my family since I wasn't at the reunion to take those and I didn't take the ones of me as a kid, but you get the point!) to cut down on spamming random Hugh Jackman pictures ;). Not everyone that should be here is including my friends in Australia. Woot, Peter, Laura and Ness, I have no (not blurry) photos of you!! And there are other friends who aren't on here, but be that as it may, here it is. Some of my happy things.

( To me you are perfect )