stupid things i have done

starting with today - this is unbelievable. i walked into an art shop in prestigious high street, armadale and had a look around. i saw some paintings, one large one [woman in muted tones] with picasso signed in the bottom left corner, and a couple of smaller ones as well [abstract]. prices were $600 odd for the larger one and around $450 for the smaller ones. then i saw a couple of monet water lilies, for around $400. they were signed too.

i went and asked the sales assistant, prefacing my question with a rider, "i know this must be a silly question" and then asked whether they were real. she laughed [not at me, i don't think] [no!!!]. and said "no, they're not". I thought she was joking with me. Because you see, i thought my question was stupid because either a] they were so not real or b] they were so obviously real. so either way i looked like a dick for asking.

i said to her, "are you serious?" [meaning, are you telling me they are NOT real]

this is really bad, i know.

she said they are copies, but done in oils, so it's like having a print but you have the texture of the paint.

i guess part of my problem was they weren't [to me] famously recognisable pieces. i guess that would be too pathetic, to have a copy of say starry night or weeping woman in your lounge room.

you're right, there is NO EXCUSE

but do you see what i mean when i say stupid?? i can't believe it myself, and i know i will lose all credibility over this.

in my own defence, sometimes i think my brain doesn't work very well for normal everyday type stuff like money and paying bills and sometimes the simplest human interactions, but is more suited to the complicated stuff, like writing a thesis. come on, i'm a scholarship girl, and i got 3 h1s last year. i'm bright, aren't i??? i got 98% in english in hsc. i blitzed the police entry examination [but didn't get further because i'm too blind]. i know enough about politics and sociology and psychology and theology and a few other -ologies to be able to hold my own in a conversation.

but i can be really stupid.

other stupid things i have done [this doesn't even include the stupid things i have said]:

really bad driving #1driven my car over the edge of a car park and then realised and stopped when it was virtually teetering and then had to get engineers from the office to come and solve the problem of how to get it back where it was meant to be


really bad driving #2backed a car over edge [again] of carpark thingy up near warburton. got out of almost teetering car in panic with daughter out of baby seat, and a nice man fixed that as well

the cameraput brand-new canon slr camera on roof of car, and drove off

the lemon tartdid same with a lemon tart [20 years apart]

the horse ridinginsisted on my first horse-riding outing at the age of 7 that i DIDN'T need to be led by the son of the riding school operators, and i NEEDED to turn my plodding horse around to enter that wood where all the adults are jumping over that fallen log. then DIDN'T let go and fall from my bolting, non-jumping horse until i was FORCED to let go by having a low-hanging tree branch wack me in the forehead. then i fell on a log with a broken branch which went into my leg, cutting my jeans. wouldn't let anyone look at it, got up behind one of the adults, who took me back to the "ranch" where i burst into tears when i saw my mum. she took me up to the house, got my jeans off me. i remember seeing a hole in my leg. doctor eagle who worked on sundays stitched me up [12 of them] but i my mum reckoned he was drunk after sunday lunch, because he did such a bad job. mum still apologises about not getting me plastic surgery. i don't care. it's a good story.

the rats
bought my daughter pet rats in an effort to stave off her demands for a puppy. we were living in our funky st kilda apartment at the time and couldn't have a dog. i think they became traumatised one day when i vaccuumed in the sunroom and then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. i looked and one rat was in the exercise wheel, only it was sped up like in a movie, mentally spinning until the wheel tipped sideways and the rat got caught, wriggled out and then was into the plastic igloo like lightning. they were timid after that, and bit my daughter and then me, so they had to go.

the hanging harvey errorthere was a competition at one of the early shopping centres when i was about 6 or so. it wasn't chadstone, but another one, one of the early 'lands', can't remember which one. the idea was if you got chosen you had to stand up on the stage, and whoever could blow up a balloon and be the first to pop it by blowing only, could choose whichever game they wanted, from the vast and exciting array on display. yes, mousetrap was there. yes, i wanted it. badly. so badly that i blew and blew so so so jard and fast that when i won the competition, a combination of stage fright and the dizzy spins made me say the wrong thing. hanging harvey. i have never gotten over it.

this is just a quick list, there are certainly more but this is enough for now