Mike's Gid

Last night I dreamed that my best friend Danielle and my mother taught me how to grow spiders.

I was told that if you plant a special carnation seed or something like that it would grow to be massive and hold two big spiders. So they threw it into the ground and immediately lost it.

The next big portion of dream was split between hacking up the grass at the bottom of my garden with pickaxes to try and find the tiny plant and moving the widescreen tv to the back garden for some reason, as if that would help.

Eventually I found the tiny roots, right at the bottom left edge of the garden and as soon as I touched them they bounced up into two big plants, complete with plant pot and two tiny spiders. I touched one of the spiders and got a massive fright when it jumped out of its skin and immediately became about 2 inches long.

It was cool though, the spider really liked me and it even had an on/off switch on top to stop it from escaping the terrarium and crawling down my throat at night.

So I think I'm well on the way to getting this done when I notify my current boyfriend and what I thought would be a simple, easy conversation (because we have an open, honest and supporting relationship like that), but apparently the rules change when it's something he's not actually happy about.

Which takes me to my next point. I spent the next ten minutes entangled in a moaning discussion about the whole thing to finally be told 'I don't actually mind what you do'.

Which prompts me to think: if you didn't care what I did, you wouldn't have had me on the phone trying to persuade you that it's alright.

Now don't get me wrong, this niggle with James is current, but it's fleeting and certainly not major. It just has me thinking in the grander scheme of things.

I just hate being bullshitted, and everyone does it. Thinking they're sparing your feelings, people in one line make things a hundred times more complicated. Example: I work in a job where I'm constantly lied to - 'I don't have time to do the survey', 'I've done it before'. Fine then, your name will be double checked and you'll be called and annoyed again when it's found out that you haven't actually taken part. If you don't want to do the survey, just say so.

I'll repeat it again: Seriously guys, JUST COME OUT AND SAY IT!

You'll make life so much easier for myself, yourself and everyone else.

We can all do better.

Sometimes, just ever so slightly sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to have someone slightly older and big and strong and grown up to take my hand and look after me, holding through the night and guiding through the day.

I wouldn't change what I have with James for the world and I love things the way they are, but what if the roles were reversed for a little?

Sometimes it makes me wonder about our place in life. I guess every dynamic between two people just 'fits'. Like everything feels right between you and the person you're with. I suppose that's why I'm fine with how things are.

I's just recently turned Christmas (about 32 minutes ago) and good thing it did. I mean, I don't mind Christmas eve, but you wouldn't want it to stay like that forever. No matter. Anyway, I really can't be doing with all of it. I even had the Christmas blues, right up until the moment Stef came over and we gleefully drank the night away.

If you think this is going nowhere, you're wrong. It's important to know who your friends are. Danielle has been there from so early on, and Stef since not long after that. James is a fairly new addition, but already I'm comfortable in perceiving the fact that he would give anything to make sure that I stayed happy. I have maybe one or two other slightly close friends, but the fact that the numbers are small does not burden me. I am happy in knowing that those who are counted, count.

Christmas is a time to know who your friends are. And damn it, I do.

I had only one tiny dream last night, which I just remembered and made me chuckle.

I was driving my motorbike up to the new roundabout on the A7 and I was wearing my new shoes which were so shiny and new that I slipped when I put my foot down.

Peace

I guess that's it Christmas now. I'm actually exhausted with all this blog stuff, but it's nice to know I have a chance to relax now I've no obligations to college or work.

I'm not feeling very well though. I have some sort of cough left over from an infection which closes up all my tubes when it happens. Anyway, I wake up last night completely choking from the inability to breathe. I'm talking literally not a breath getting in. At least the doctor gave me an appointment for long enough to tell me there's apparently nothing wrong.

College is going amazingly though, I've finally done all my backlog of work so I feel totally unburdened. However, I'm worried about work for some reason. Not sure why, probably cause I'm just lazy.

I need to sleep.

I've had a lot of blogs before which have gone nowhere. This one will probably be no different, but hey I'm trying.

A bit of backstory. Inspired my my kind friend Danielle, I've got my hands on two books:

101 Things To Do Before You Die (Richard Horne)

101 Things To Do Before You're Old and Boring (Richard Horne and Helen Szirtes)

Together they make my 202 things.

202 Things

So one of the things to do for the red book (old and boring) is to start a blog. So here I am.

I think I'll try and keep a log of updates as I struggle to get a few of these completed (photos, yay!)

That's Stef. You can have her your way.

She's trying to fill out her own books at the same time as I am.

Just so you know

I'll list things from 101 Things To Do Before You Die as white items, as per the colour of the book. 101 Things To Do Before You're Old and Boring will be red. You get the picture.

Things I've done so far

White 7: Be part of a threesome
White 51: Learn another language
White 59: Leave a job you hate
White 69: Learn phrases in various languages
White 75: Get a tattoo or piercing

Red 4: Learn to tell when someone fancies you (and when they don't)
Red 101: Decide what you want to be when you grow up

The less said about some of those, the better.

Things we did cause we're cool

So I had to find someone to help me. I got Stef cause she's easily swayed. ^_^

First things first, we thought we'd start with the easiest and quickest one to do - Red 3: Make an origami crane. Half an hour of wasted paper later, we decided to leave that for now.

Items like Red 7: Prepare yourself for fame (I'm going to be a famous singer who marries Jake Gyllenhaal, of course) and Red 39: Be a genius were easy, just forms to fill in.

So, in a search for a slight challenge, we set off to complete...

Red 2: Run the wrong way up an escalator.

Not as easy as you might think. Mostly because Stef was too embarrassed to attempt this in a place that was populated by more than two people at a time. So, we headed off to the Edinburgh Bus Station and ran us up some escalators.


This is Stef at the bottom of the escalator, being very good and all that.

This is her reaching the top, with my amazing photography skills.



This is the only picture of my own attempt, due to Stef's slightly less amazing photography skills.

I do assure you I reached the top though.

And I did it in only 6 seconds.



That's not it over though, the hard part will be running down an up escalator, so that's a task for another day soon.

Unfortunately for Stef though, I went off by myself and with the help of James and the Beanscene staff, I learned to do...

Red 3: Make an origami crane





And oh, what a bunch of cranes.





Ongoing items Red 48: Watch these films, Red 49: Read these books, White 52: Read the greatest books ever written and White 57: See the all-time greatest films are gonna take forever to finish and I'm not even going to bother telling you which ones I have and haven't ticked off yet.

And yeah, I guess this concludes Red 36: Start your own blog.

I've done so far:
White 7: Be part of a threesome
White 51: Learn another language
White 59: Leave a job you hate
White 69: Learn phrases in various languages
White 75: Get a tattoo or piercing

Red 4: Learn to tell when someone fancies you (and when they don't)
Red 7: Prepare yourself for fame
Red 36: Start your own blog
Red 39: Be a genius
Red 101: Decide what you want to be when you grow up