LeishBlog

Another eventful Sydney weekend for Aleisha…..I realise talking in 3^rd person is pretentious so Aleisha will no longer do this in her blog. On Friday I resigned from my job. It was a tricky decision but I thought about it a lot and it is time for me to move on to other things.

There was nothing very dramatic in it all and not really blog worthy material to talk about but I do feel like a weight has lifted from me and it is about time that I get my arse into gear and find that TV job somewhere out there that has my name on it!The weekend was pretty cruisy. Saturday I stooged around and had a clumsy day breaking most things that I came across… glasses, a coffee mug and annoyingly a carton of eggs all over the kitchen floor. Eggs smell funny. 

On Saturday night I met up with the TV AFTRS crew that I spent a year with in 2004 training to be creative and wonderful hungry Jacks drive thru workers/ tv producers. We are a jolly crew and always have a fab time. It was great catching up with them and I am pretty sure both Joy and Suzy will be running networks pretty soon.  On Sunday I got up and decided that I should rearrange my room. I had heaps of actual work to do but of course reorganizing the furniture was vital for procrastination. This turned out to be a pretty exhausting because I am lazy, I couldn’t be bothered unscrewing my bed, so I attempted to flip it around in the small room. It didn’t work. About halfway through the move I began screaming in frustration. I had managed to get the bed stuck at a right angle after levering it up on my shoulders. I was the only one home and my roars of frustration must have sounded like someone was being murdered. After a while I nearly gave up and decided that maybe I could just sleep on the floor underneath the hovering bed but I’m not a pushover so I gave I one last try. A monster effort but it looks good.                                                              Later on I headed off to IKEA with my friend Justin to replace most of the broken items that I have managed to rack up over the weekend. I did notice that IKEA has become the sort of place where it is a requirement for customers to have at least two children. One in an off road style stroller that takes up most of the conveniently wide walkway and the other kid just running riot, slamming into things, trashing the joint and then screaming because they shat themselves.  I get a little bit irritable with mums and strollers who just stop for no reason, holding everyone up. I believe that because they have had a human being the size of a basketball devastate their nether regions (and I am sure have caused their once perky breasts to slump). Because of their sufferance, they feel it is their right to punish us in the everyday. Don’t get me wrong if I reproduce one day I too will take up this right but for now I shall continue to bitch and moan.                                                                                                                                                       Justin and I didn’t really fit the IKEA mould…actually maybe Justin did because he is gay and spent a lot of time ohing and ahhing over various pattered furniture and cushions, which is nice because he had just moved to Sydney.  The other thing I noticed about the IKEA people are the fighting couples; 

WIFE:
No Graham! The carpet in the lounge room isn’t ‘wine’ coloured it’s called ‘crimson….and I spent a lot of time picking it out.,..don’t you ever pay any attention…… 

HUSBAND:
What does it matter? It’s just carpet! 

WIFE:
Well maybe Graham if you spent more time tending to my carpet I wouldn’t need to focus my attentions on this! 

                                                                           

Mmmmmm, can’t wait for that! After eatng some IKEA meatballs, I relented in the end and purchased a small step stool object to use as a bed side table.  It took me about 4 hours to assemble. Hopeless. Absolutely Hopeless.

This weekend was jam packed. On Friday night I acquired some sneaky tickets to see the queen of break-up songs Lily Allen. I regularly sing along to Lily while straightening my hair in the morning, after the flatties have gone to work, attempting a mock chav accent while trying to convince myself that I have a quarter of her coolness! SAAAD

Moving on…..flatmate Mick and I met in the city, had some drinks and after much indecisions decided to chow at a Japanese Korean joint where both of the dishes that we ordered contained greyish shredded beef, but even they tasted nice and lined our stomaches appropriately. I made Mick promise that I couldn’t get too dunk because I was worried that the door bitch might question the legitimacy of how I acquired the tickets and being intoxicated, I wouldn’t be in the usual smooth talking liar Aleisha mode that I so often rely on. As usual, after over worrying, we walked straight into the gig, no questions asked, and our wrists were imprinted with ring worm infected stamp.

The gig was great. She looked good sounded good and the audience all appeared to do a lot of singing while they straightened their hair as well, because they did a great job at harmonising along.

After the gig we took off to Ruby Rabbit, drank more and met up with a work mate of Micks, Dre who was charming, American and had a bevy of women swanning around him. I usually feel pretty confident in social situations, I scrub up ok, but these girls were miniature, had their racks out and there was something about the whole situation that made me feel pretty irrelevant and superfluous. I don’t like feeling like that.  I could write a whole other blog about the virtues of having self respect and not getting my tits out in order to get a job or ahead in life but it’s not worth it. I know I am a catch and I can put a sentence together so, fuck em.

Ok, that is now off my chest. Phew.

Anyway we came home, further indulged in alcohol, sang along poorly to cds, danced a bit and my head hurt like hell the next morning.

Saturday I headed up to Newcastle to see the family. Belinda my cousin is heading to Kentucky for 8 months so we all got together to wish her well (she rocks).

On the train I sat 2 seats away from the closest likeness to Napoleon Dynamite I think I will ever see. He looked like him, sounded like him and was playing dungeons and dragons with his doofus friend. A couple of girls sat near them and attempted to crack on but they were too involved in their game to really notice (virginity boys…..get used to it!).

I sat mesmerised in this awkward display with my sunglasses on and my headphones on but no music on, for about half an hour and it was almost as good as watching the real Napoleon Dynamite. The crowning glory of the ride was when Napoleons mum called and he put her on speaker phone. 

NAPOLEON’S MUM

Darling are you ok? (Napoleons would have to be at least 19)

NAPOLEON

Yes mum…

NAPOLEON’S MUM

Are you in the middle of a game….oh I am sorry I know you don’t like to be disturbed?

NAPOLEON

S’ok

NAPOLEON’S MUM

Now darling I wanted to remind you that you have to move into one of the last 4 carriages of the train to get off at Cardiff station…remember because it is a short line….

NAPOLEON

(Silence)

NAPOLEON’S MUM

Do you understand? Please call me when you move so I know that you are ok? Aright darling, I will see you in 15 minutes, I’ll be at the gate….Love you….bye bye…enjoy your game…see you soon…bye bye…

NAPOLEON

Bye mum…I’ll call you…bye…see you soon….bye

GIRL ON TRAIN

Oh my God was that your mum? (to her friend) That was sooooo his Mum!!!

NAPOLEON

(To doofus friend) Mu m said she can give you a lift…. oh my god you’ve got the Grand master wizard card, I am so Jealous….

That mum on the speaker phone incident confirmed to me that Napoleon had no chance of seeing or touching a breast in the next 5 years. Bless.

 

On sunay we travelled to Tea Gardens/ Hawks Nest, the place of our idyllic childhood summers for a lovely big family lunch. It went by surprisingly without any controversial happenings except some juicy family gossip (one of my cousins has announced that she is no longer going to take her contraception…barf) and a bit of booze.

Belinda, Claire (her sister) and I became mildly obsessed with what Belinda termed as the ‘Asia Power’ pose. Don’t ask me what it means, it’s the sort of shit that I just go along with…look at the pictures.  All of our photos of the lunch are marred by this ‘Japanese family on holiday, doing the peace sign look’

                   

                            Even Poppy gave it a go.

I had fun.

I spoke to some Pelicans…..they told me the meaning of life (trust me you don’t want to know!) and then we headed back to the train station.

 

Philosophical pelican

For my trip home I had planned a bit newspaper action and then some Ipod time, in particular, ‘day dreaming about what life could be like’ with an upbeat soundtrack and then fantasising about what songs would be chosen to highlight my life in the  soundtrack of the Aleisha McCormack E True Hollywood story!

                                              .

This was ruined by a viciously malevolent bogan woman and her evil collection of toddlers.

I want you to picture a woman’s voice that is gravely, corse, a bit drunk and sounds as if she had been screaming at a football match and you might be getting close to what we heard for two and a half hours while returning to Sydney.

GRAVELY WOMAN

Nathan I swear to fuckin god if you don’t sit down I am going to belt you arse off.

It just kept getting better and better….

GRAVELY WOMAN

NATHAN  and JAYDEN For fuck sake! When you get home I am going to put you straight to bed (nice dramatic pause)………with a red raw arse!!!!

Now I am not making a mockery of child abuse, that’s terrible, it’s just that on the train, the woman never once touched the kids, she just threatened them constantly and said classic lines such as,

GRAVELY WOMAN

Fucking Jesus Nathan…this is the last time I am going to say this fucking stop swearing!!!!

Even though the entire carriage was scared of her (I certainly was!) there was giggling all round when that killer line emerged.  I went straight to my notebook and started writing it all down verbatim. It’s going to make an excellent stand up piece.

As I got up to leave, I couldn’t help buy sneak a peak at the woman. She was fat, yellowy peroxide hair; she was wearing skin-tights and a giant scowl. 

GRAVELY WOMAN

(Passing her mobile phone to a small child…presumably ‘Nathan’)

Nathan, see if you can make any sense out of your bloody drunken father….for fucks sake I can’t, he is talking shit.

NATHAN:

Dad how long till we’re off the train?

GRAVELY WOMAN

How the fuck would he know, Jesus Christ…..give me the phone….darls are you there?….fuck he’s fucking hung up, good one Nathan…you are going to bed as soon as we get home…..

 

And so ends another weekend in the life of Aleisha. Yehaaa.