If I had to chose her or the sun, I'd be one nocturnal son-of-a-gun

 Listening to: Angus & Julia Stone- For You.

This post is long over-due, but in all honesty asides from insane levels of stress, I've had nothing to write about. (Unless you don't mind hearing me get over-excited about meeting and greeting royalty).

I've had a lot of difficulty sleeping lately, if I'm not staying up all night not being able to get to sleep, then I'm waking up from dreams that are making it hard to stay asleep. I'm not talking about night-terrors, but just really uncomfortable dreams that I can't stand to be in anymore and I do my best to wake myself up. Last night's dream is still fairly vivid, I remember being in an almost derelict style/colonial mansions type thing, in a living room with exposed wooden floorboards, dark wood fireplace, and big bay windows; There's a lot of sunshine, but it's coming through masses of bedding that have been hung across the room- it looks like white sheets are covering furniture that's been left behind in a house-move. There's a guy sitting naked in a bathtub infront of the window, and he has two girls next to him in the tub, and they're mocking me, splashing me with tub water while I'm lying alone and in a bed trying to sleep through the morning. Then at this point I was half-waking up in real-life, but still dreaming at the same time, and as I rolled over in reality and my dream, I found this guy had climbed into bed with me, and was stroking my hair to get me to go back to sleep, acting like my boyfriend, but very defnitely not him. I curled into him, and things fast-forwarded through scenes of us playing chase through the hung-up laundry, dining with parents and then sharing a bath- but out of loathing to have fun with this guy, I woke myself up. I was in such a bad mood with myself this morning. 

I highly resented my inability to pass one night of decent sleep: getting to sleep easily, not having a nightmare, and then not being woken up by the sunlight streaming through my curtains in the morning (I've taken to wearing an eye-mask for this reason). And now I resent my subconscious for plaguing me with insufferable dreams. The traitor. I need to do a little dream translation to make sure everybody keeps up I think.
- For the last week or so, this guy has been appearing in my dreams in some way or another, at first he was just faceless, and then adopted different faces of the people I know, and now whenever I look directly at him in my dreams, he changes his look so I can never actually yell at him and tell him to leave me be. He used to just follow me in my dreams, watching me as I walked about, but it seems as though the more time passes, the closer he gets, the more contact he makes, and last night's dream was the most we'd as much "spoken" and touched. Then last night, he'd actively (as in literally ) pushed out someone I was dreaming about, and replaced them to be able to taunt me about trying to avoid him and then tried to put the moves on me, and told me he's been falling in love with me- another reason why I was annoyed, I hate the idea of being any guy's "floozy"- I don't get on with men who need more than two hands to count romantic conquests on before turning their attentions on me. Makes you feel like you need a shower after just a look. And this guy had two bimbo's sitting in a bathtub with him!
It feels like I have some dream-dwelling stalker/bully, every time I see him I feel angry or annoyed, and he'll be interfering with the other people in my dream or trying to get me to cheat on my "boyfriend" (a few nights ago he tried to seduce me in a boat/secret den style room).

I think I'll have to amazon some dream interpretations book, and find a way to be rid of him, at this level of exhaustion, I need to sleep or I will plain keel over and die.

I know this is all very melodramatic, but I am so very very tired.

I bought myself some flowers to cheer myself up the other day,
and it worked, they looked so unbearably pretty

Starstruck! The Royal Couple

I shook hands with the Royal Couple today! I have to say, they seem so tender with each other, it made a brief handshake really worth a cold, cramped wait worth it!

Look how close I got! He was really sweet with the
2 yr old girl next to me who was super excited
to see a "real-life Princess" Adorable!!

I have yet to see her in an outfit I didn't like-
I'm guessing one of the perks of royal living is an outstanding wardrobe

The butterfly, the ostrich, the monkey and the snob.

Odd title for a post right? But it DID catch your attention. Today, I'm looking at the animal farm (literary reference!) of people you probably don't want to know.  I start complaining, get a little ranty, but to redeem myself, pretty pictures and smiley faces for the awesome weekend I had :D

By human nature, we are always quick to forgive, or more readily, forget "the bad"- be it bad memories, bad feelings or the bad in people. But then why do some people so readily lump the bad and the good, and cast aside entire entities? You break-up with a boyfriend, and all the "I love you"'s instantly transform to "I hate you"'s or "don't-give-a-damn"s and all the good memories you made are tarnished by this thick and heavy haze, and you find yourself cringing at ever feeling the warm-fuzzies at that time. Even speaking non-romantically, when you fall out with a friend you tend to get hung-up on all the terrible, awful things they did that caused the fall-out and all the lunch-break gossip sessions, laughter-induced belly aches and storm weathering become a distant memory. And even then we don't need a huge conflict like that to bring about a shift of your perspective, sometimes people evolve and progressively become more disagreeable- monkey to man/ man to monkey, whichever you think is worst (the latter for me, I frickin' hate monkeys, chimps and apes). I stumbled upon this this week, and it got me thinking...

...once we find ourselves in a good place, it's just too easy to forget the tough little road we had to get through to get there. I had a really shitty couple of weeks a little while ago (hadn't you noticed?), I felt like I was under a barrage of misfortune and fuck-ups, and it really felt never ending; every day I was pleading for a little respite, for one GOOD day, or even a day in which absolutely nothing happened, good or bad. At the time it felt like I was far from any kind of "break", but when things did eventually calm down and I got a chance to get away from it a bit, I find that partly out of relief, and out of a desire to push away from any and all sources of fuck-uppery I was falling out of touch with someone I really should've kept close to. I'm paying penance now though, bridges are being rebuilt and hopefully things will return to normality and a hunkydory state soon. I digress.

The proverb actually had me thinking about those who deliberately deny any kind of struggle to get to where they were. Those who when graced with a hand of good fortune, adopt a "holier than thou" attitude towards the pitiful underlings they may have passed by at some point, or hide their head in the sand when something ugly involves them. If I could host a dinner party right now, I would bake the largest Humble Pie the world has ever seen, and cut some very larges slices to serve to these certain people. Even if they had to be force-fed. I even took the time to draw out some etiquette guidelines for said dinner party, which I'd have to insist that guests were well-versed in before attending.

I don't want you to look down on me from your pedestal and feel sorry for me because I am "less fortunate". I do not envy your position whatsoever, and hand-on-heart promise that my side of the grass is plenty green for me. Do I look unhappy? No. Really, no.

I don't want you to waltz around and try to give me any little pearls of wisdom you have recently acquired since you revelation. I personally think you are working with a horrendously faulty logic, and as far as I can see, the way I'm doing things is working out very nicely for me.

I don't want you pulling a look of disgust if you disagree with something about me/about what I'm doing. Once upon a time, you were very happily in the same boat as I, and I'm not too convinced you've changed so profoundly that you wouldn't secretly enjoy cavorting with us plebs once again.

I do ask that you don't try to force on me any of the goods you are trying to peddle. If I were looking for a new idealogy, I'd go find it for myself, or if I wanted a new and conflicting opinion on X/Y/Z I'd do my own research. Don't "do me a favour" and tell me what I'll end up thinking is what you're already thinking. Shortcuts are for cheats. Or for achieving optimum efficiency when navigating through your current OS on PC or Mac.

I do ask that you realise that when you did go through hardships, you didn't go through them alone. But you did then leave others to weather hardships on their own. Or when others kept silent about your faults and flaws, you never paid the same courtesy. They say don't bite the hand that feeds, but maybe these hands won't feed the mouth that bites anymore.

To cut a looong rant short, I think there's a lot of importance in the idea of not forgetting nor forsaking your humble roots, which my parents bellowed when I turned my nose up at the idea of visiting slums in Vietnam on a family holiday. But with a little bad-ass story telling from mum, not only did I learn that she is IN FACT made of tougher stuff than your average (actual war stories here), but my mixed heritage is something to boast about (half of it kicked American butt at some point, right?).

-Moral story telling over-

I had an aaah-mazing weekend this weekend past, with out-of-bubble visitors coming in for a birthday weekend, which lead to ultimate milkshakes, brownies, beach walks and belly-aching humour. During a grey saturday afternoon we attempted to venture out for a sunny beach walk- thoroughly thwarted by persistant clouds, but eventually we had a window of 30minute sunshine, yielding these glorious snaps:

Loverly. 

I may even venture out of these books tomorrow to go and snap a few shots of the Royal Couple tomorrow, they're conveniently in town for the University's 600 birthday. But only if the weather's fine, I don't fancy being trampled and rained on for a sneak peak of anybody.