“Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free til they find someone just as wild to run with them.” ~ Carrie Bradshaw

Recently I caught up with an old friend, we grew up together... then apart. When we were 15 all she wanted to do was drink and party and give blow jobs ~ being the stubborn little mole that I was, did none of it, simply because she told me I should. So I spent my high school years sober and innocent and my Friday nights watching re-runs of the Bill with my parents.

 I was crush-less and date-less and regarded men in the same way I do my asthma; an unpleasant fact of life that, for the most part, could be artfully avoided through extreme prevention methods (in one case medication in the other a non existent social life ~ though sometimes they were interchangeable).

 I skipped puberty; I was never distracted by boys, I didn’t have mood swings, yell melodramatically at my parents that “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” or “I NEVER HAVE ANY PRIVACY!” had acne or braces.

So I was kind of shocked when I had a little epiphany the other day; the universe is finally taking its revenge and I am experiencing a late puberty.

I am distracted by boys ~ Its Pathetic

A 19 yr old, intelligent woman who goes weak at the knees at the sight of a beautiful man, stutters, then has her head drained of ANY witty or even vaguely intelligent remark, is ridiculous.

I can’t take myself seriously anymore, I could be studying or at an interview or at work or just walking along to street and (like the other day) trip over a crack in the ground and inelegantly stumble over and graze my knees on the pavement (while walking past a busker). In my defence he was playing “I wanna hold your hand” by the Beatles

*drool*

I have “dreams” 

If I was a teenage boy they would call it something different(and less dry;) ) but my version is FAR less “seedy” (double entandre *snap*)

Usually the dreams are of myself and a beautiful man eating a picnic lunch in a park.

Raunchy right?

Mood swings

My step mother is going through menopause ~ sometimes, JUST sometimes I can match her swings and usually it is my POOR, BEAUTIFUL Father who bears the butt of it

example

Bridie: Daddy! how was your day??

Father: yeah good, hey Brides how are the pizzas at your new work?

Bridie: How would I know? are you saying THAT ALL I DO IS EAT PIZZAS? 

ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT??

Father: *cowers behind the side board* 

4.I have put a a poster in my room

My friends rooms are COVERED in posters, remnants of there teenage (and current) obsessions. I have FINALLY joined them, and as a result, had a discussion about “ruining the walls” with my rents ~VERY TEENAGER~ poster: $13, scotch tape: $3, being able to sleep under the watchful eye of Ringo: priceless :)

I have found the enterprise in all the things I condemned my friend doing.

I am SO hypocritical ~ I remember telling my friend that “drinking kills brain cells” and “Sorry, I respect my liver too much to drink”.....and something about kissing being feral disgusting....

BHA! AH HA HA HAAA!!

oh, jesus......

So my other anecdote for this post is about Tuesday, thats right Tuesday. 

Tuesday, I had a date planned ~ his name is Michael, he is a physics student, he studied at Lyon University and he plays trumpet......

Right about know you SHOULD be thinking:

“Bridie, this is poor form, giving out the personal details of someone to the general public just to satisfy your own sick twisted Blog related fantasies”

Let me clarify, He stood me up. 

Not the opposite of “sat me down”.

HE. DIDN’T. SHOW. UP. TO. THE. DATE. AND. LEFT. ME. ALONE. AND. REJECTED. ON BRUNSWICK. STREET.

biatch.

Approx 4 hours AFTER our scheduled time I received the following text message

“Brides, really sorry about today. Yesterday I was in a car crash with a truck - not hurt just really shaken. How about next week? xoxox”

Firstly, our date was at 11 and I received this message at 3 

Secondly, I TRIED to call him at about 11:45 but there was no response

Thirdly, I txted him asking what was going on at 12 and there was no response 

Fourth and finally, WHAT THE FUCK?

oh and 

Not just ANYONE can call me Brides! its a nickname that I adore and thus only people I adore can use it.... not just any Joe Blow.... so when he started off the text message with it, I felt as if he had over stepped a rather (in my mind) OBVIOUS mark and one date was WAY too soon for nicknames.

A friend of mine suggested that I send back a message like:

“Yeah, next week sounds good; on Monday I am busy stabbing his guy who stood me up with a ridiculous excuse ~ but I am free all week after that ;)”

That last few months have left my ego severely damaged ....... the worrying thing is that bad things come in 3s. So all I can pray, is that by the end of the year I actually HAVE some Ego left.

So my reason for releasing Michaels personal information is, since I am never going to see him again, I want to give someone else the opportunity to spit in his general direction or something equally dramatic.

Besides this, I am developing a collection of empty water bottles, in an attempt to SAVE money. I keep buying them because I keep forgetting to fill them up and bring them out with me ~ so I keep buying them when I am out.  So instead of SAVING money, I am just creating a rather ugly feature in my room... it is defiantly NOT attractive and my cleaning Lady turns her nose up in disgust when I let her in and she sees that since her last visit I have amassed more bottles. 

With that note 

peace out

Bridie

xoxoxoxo

If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you ~ Winnie the Pooh

So, I am organising my exchange to France next year ~ a task which, in MY simplistic mind, sounded simple enough:

1) fill out a form A 

2) fill out form B

3) eat Pan au Chocolate in France 

pictorially represented as:

(eat your heart out Picasso)

But as it turns out, I have enough paperwork to relocate all the Camels in the Northern Territory back to Egypt (which would be one mean feat considering Australia has the largest population of Camels outside of Egypt *fun fact*). Literally (or sadly; i haven’t quite figured it out) I have spent more time on this paperwork then ALL of my first year Uni subjects combined(I only had 3...and a total of 8hrs a week.... but its still shocking)One of the last things to do is write a self indulgent essay about why I want to go to France and what I will achieve over there that I possibly couldn’t here. Interestingly though they ask you to do this:

“Honestly”

So i thought about it:

“Honestly”

and decided on these as my

“Honest”

answers:

Q. Give 4 reasons why you what to go on a cultural exchange in order of importance

A.

1.HOT FRENCH MEN

2.Pan au Chocolate/ Macaroons 

3.Paris 

4.To develop my language skills in an environment that forces me to communicate with native speakers bah bahh blahh!

Q. What are 4 things that you feel that you will find in your exchange country that you cannot find in Australia?

A.

1.HOT FRENCH MEN

2.Pan au Chocolate/ Macaroons 

3.Paris / NOT AUSTRALIA

4.An environment in which i will be completely surrounded by the language I am endeavoring to learn..blah, blah blerghhhh!!

I could go on, but basically all the questions are answered similarly...

I think, however, that such answers will not get me the exchange approval that I am after. 

 I love French men - not because of their beautiful dress sense or their gorgeous accents ~ they know what women want.

I remember a beautiful summer day in Paris and my friends and I were on an escalator getting out of the Metro, this gentleman pushed passed these other two girls and ran up the escalator to tell my friend she was beautiful, because she was, not because he wanted something, just because he thought she should know. 

Every girl wants to be beautiful, its one of the deepest desires of a woman's heart. The smart ones among us can recognise the un-rationalness of it, we can say “its whats INSIDE that counts” till the cows come home, we can pretend we don’t care what people think of our horrible bed hair and bags and hairy legs, but you know what? nothing tickles at a woman’s heart strings quite like being told she is beautiful.... as a feminist it is hard and sad to say...but true.

And this, my friends is what makes French men so “fan-didly-astic”;

 they know.

I don’t know who told them but they did the world a favour. Also, its not in the sleezy “man at a bar that smells of grog smoozing over to you and whispering it in your ear in the vain hope that he is going to get lucky” kind of way. 

The sad thing is I’ve only been called beautiful on 3 memorable occasions. STOP!!

I can hear the outcry of my gal friends who will maintain that they say it to me on a regular basis ~ but, i pose to those lovely ladies this:

Hearing that you are beautiful from your family or your friends is not the same.

 Simply because they love you, they KNOW you and they mix up the personality that they have spent yonks dissecting with the outer shell. They wonder WHY ON EARTH doesn’t everybody else see the amazing girl who felt my breast when I thought there was a lump or held my hair out of my face when I vomited or listened to my rant about the last ridiculous love interest ect ect .... I know I do anyway.

I look at my DEVINE friends and of ALL of them only TWO have wonderful guys that they deserve; one is being stuffed around by a complete wanker, another is falling in out crushes like its going out of fashion, one is getting too much sex and not enough love and AT LEAST two haven’t had sex in so long they are developing nervous twitches. And I sit here, in my queen size bed and wonder:

WHY, in the name of ALL THAT IS HOLY, some guy can’t see what I see????

Because I see, INCREDIBLY  clever girls who are going to the top universities in the country, they are swimming instructors, rowers, cyclists, skiers, koko black sales women, book store workers, waitresses, Dan Murphy’s check out chicks, lolly store workers, speech pathologists and scientists and designers in the making, they are Spanish, Italian, French, Hindi and Japanese speakers and they are SINGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and beautiful :) )

So back to my point, 

I have been on dates with 6 different men, 

4 of them were the one date, 

2 of them was more and

5 of them were terminated by me.

Now, in my dating life and after 19 years of living, ONLY ONE of these men told me I was beautiful.

 It would have ended MUCH, MUCH better for 4 of these men if they uttered those 3 little words:

YOU. ARE. BEAUTIFUL.

 ....phew!! all those numbers were intense.

So to finish off i have a horrible story to tell you all, it involves my friend who shall be hence forth known as 

"Santiago" 

(as in "where in the world is Carmen SANTIAGO?")

Now, Santiago had a steady boyfriend for yonks but never slept with him because "it didn't feel right" ~ fair enough. So Santiago went for drinks after work the other night and got slammed. Afterwards it was decided that the group would sleep over at another colleagues house which was near by. This colleague shall be known simply as 

"Dick"

(as in "penis, tool, wanker, one eyed serpent, pecker ect")

Dick had previously commented that Santiago was fat (which she most certainly is not). They all got back to the house and it was decided that the two girls would share a bed and Dick would sleep on the couch. One thing led to another and Dick ended up in bed with Santiago, the girl he previously called fat and slept with her. So Santiago lost her "V plates" to Dick and you know what? afterwards he rolled over to the opposite side of the bed and didn't touch her again ~ there was no nice cuddle or comfort or anything. Dick left my beautiful friend regretting and depressed on the other side of the bed, alone.

To the men of the world, this is not o.k.

It makes me SAD and ANGRY that DICK had no EMPATHY or KINDNESS in the situation. 

He truly lived up to his name.

love and peace out

xoxoxox

Bridie