Daily Prompt – Good Tidings

Present-day you meets 10-years-ago you for coffee. Share with your younger self the most challenging thing, the most rewarding thing, and the most fun thing they have to look forward to.

Ten years ago I would have just recently turned 22. I’m not quite sure if I was still in my share house with the lesbians, or in my share house with the girl with cerebral palsy.

Apr 28 – Crisis Mode

Do you keep calm in a crisis?

I think that’s dependent on the actual crisis itself. The other factor here is that everybody has their own definition of the term ‘crisis’. Generally speaking, it would need to be quite extreme for me to consider something a crisis and I think that I’d be okay.

I’ve been through more than more my fair share of bullshit over the years, found myself in some less-than-ideal situations unfortunately caused by other people, and although at the time it feels like the entire world is crashing down around me in an extreme path of pure destruction, I feel like I’m going to have a complete breakdown and yet somehow, I come out on the other side. Not necessarily without taking a few knocks along the way, but I manage to end up okay.

Jan 15: Grace Under Pressure

“Courage is grace under pressure” is a famous quotation by Ernest Hemingway. Tell us about a personal moment of your grace under pressure.

Personally, I find it hard to exude grace under pressure when you’re a Scorpio. I don’t do grace. I just get revenge. I’m the person that you don’t want to cross, because I’ll go out of my way to take you down.

Sidenote: the reality is, I sound scary, but I’m really not…

When I’m under pressure, I’m trying to keep it all together, and / or I’m ready to cut a bitch.

I remember one particular time when I was living in a share house with a couple of girls, I was away at my friends place, and was informed that my current housemates, both girls (and closeted lesbians), had both decided to move out whilst I was away, and not tell me.

This information came from a mutual friend of ours who thought that what they were planning was just plain nasty.

She then followed up that bombshell with ‘…and I think they’ve trashed your room too…’. She couldn’t give me any further information because she’d only heard them make passing comments about it, but didn’t question them. She just knew that something was up.

I had to go home. I had to confront these bitches about what I’d been told and whether or not it was correct.

I returned home and they were gone. Both their bedrooms were half-empty, and then I opened the door to my room.

The smell was… I can’t even… It was like the smell from the rubbish at the local markets that’s been sitting in the hot summer sun for a week. Ironically, it was the middle of summer, and all my blinds had been left open, so my room was like a hotbox.

It was completely trashed. All my clothes had been pulled down, and strewn all across the floor, along with all my other belongings. It was like the room had been burgled, without anything actually being taken. But the smell, oh dear god, the smell…

The worst part was, that no matter how much air freshener I sprayed, it didn’t go away. It was still there. It was so overpowering. As I started to clean my room up, I still couldn’t find the source of the smell. Not being able to find the source of the horrendous stench of death started to drive me crazy… a couple of hours later I started to discover them… piece by smelly piece.

The first was the opened meat that they so graciously left in the pockets of my jackets, and inside my shoes. Because I kept my shoes on a shoe rack under the window, they were in the heat constantly.

That was lovely. And seeing as how I was the only one who actually ate meat, I knew it was mine. They would have put it in there whilst it was frozen, and then let it defrost in the heat. Hence, I ended up with several pairs of ruined shoes.

Then there was the rotten vegetables. They were put in amongst my socks and jocks drawer. They sprayed my doona with tuna juice, and then put the doona cover back on it!! I found some chunks of tuna amongst my shorts… at least they used the whole tin…!! The pinnacle of it all was finding a watermelon throughout my bed. Chunks of it had been put under my pillows, and then the rest was just left in the cling-wrap and left under my bed.

I literally couldn’t believe what they had done. I was beside myself. Nobody deserves anything like that – they had gone too far, and I wasn’t having it.

I’m not going to say that we didn’t have any issues prior to this happening. We’d been having some heated conversations about general things, like them not paying bills on time, but getting angry at me when I don’t pay on time – which wasn’t a regular occurrence. I’d get angry at them for not paying rent on time, and because I was the main contact, I was the one who copped the abusive phone call from the real estate agent as a result.

They had spoken about the two of them moving out and getting their own place together. I was upset by this, but reminded them that they had a few months left on the lease, and if they wanted to break the lease, they would have to find replacement housemates – that’s generally the rule of how things work in sharehouses.

After that, we were fine. I went on holidays thinking that we were all good… evidently I was wrong.

So when I returned home to find this… I honestly didn’t know what to do because I so full of sheer rage.

I figured that there was only one way to deal with these bitches… and that was to play their own game.

I sent both their parents photos letters with photos of the damage they had caused. I also filed a report with the police for damage of personal property, and sent the bill estimates for having things replaced, cleaned and / or repaired, to their parents as well. I also notified the real estate agent and told them about what the girls had done, as they had also caused damage to the property as a result of their actions.

Now, I had met both their parents, and developed a great rapport with both of them, so naturally they were both beside themselves when they saw the photos of the damage they had caused. One of the mothers was so disgusted by it, that she called the mother of the other girl, and they both agreed to pay half each to compensate me, which I was quite surprised by, and was very grateful for. In the end I used both their bond money to pay for the cleaning of the carpets. Sorry bitches.

Sure enough, I get a rather abusive phone call from one of the girls, going on about how dare I contact her parents, and embarrass her the way that I did, and that I had no right to send them a bill for the damage. At that point I informed them that I had filed a police report, and if they continued, I’ll be adding harassment to it as well. I also informed her that I had told their parents about the police report as well.

I may have ‘accidentally’ told the very strict catholic mother of one of the girls, that she was now actually dating the other girl, and the reason they moved out, was so they could get their own place together and further develop their relationship together.

That didn’t necessarily seem to go down too well either. oops.

After my discussion with the real estate agent, and the police, I didn’t file charges because their parents had compensated me for the damage of my property, but that didn’t stop me from giving a copy of the report, along with the photos to the real estate agent and the tenancy tribunal to have a black mark put against their name.

For some strange reason, they weren’t able to move in to their new love shack. And they couldn’t seem to get approval for any other places either, resulting in them both moving back in with their parents.

The best part was the phone call I got from one of them, acting as though nothing had happened and that we were best friends. I playfully went along with it, giving her a false sense of security. The highlight was her telling me her sob story about having to move in with her parents, and she hated it, and she couldn’t spend time with her girlfriend because they lived in different towns… and would it be possible for them to move back in with me, if I hadn’t already found new housemates.

Oh, it was absolute heaven. I quite calmly basically told her to go fuck herself, and send my regards to her mother, who had called me previously to see if I was okay.

Daily Prompt: Daring Do

Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?

This one time, (at band camp…. just kidding) I rescued a baby possum.

It was quite a few years ago. I was living in a share-house in Camberwell, and one of the girls that I lived with had a cat, Beauchamp. Beauchamp was a small tortoise shell and she LOVED attention. She also loved destroying the furniture and all-but destroyed one side of the couch.

This one day, the three girls and I were in our typical frantic morning routine. Racing around the house trying to get ready, fighting for the bathroom, and trying to eat breakfast. One of the girls, left for work, and the two (poorly) closeted lesbians and I were left.

I was in my room getting dressed, B was in the bathroom, and H was in the kitchen.

B walked out into the loungeroom wrapped in her towel to get her work shirt that was hanging up with the other washing on the clothes rack, and suddenly let out this squeal. As I walked out of my room towards the loungeroom, Beauchamp went flying past my ankles and straight out the back door.

I go into the loungeroom, and B is standing on a chair, in her towel, with water slowly dripping onto the carpet. Her face was white and her eyes had dilated to the size of dinner plates.

‘DON’T COME IN HERE’ she yelled. ‘THERE’S SOMETHING BEHIND THE COUCH!!’

‘What?’

‘THERE’S SOMETHING BEHIND THE COUCH. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS, I THINK IT’S A RAT!!’

H, appeared behind me. ‘A rat, you say. I bet it was that damn cat! Beauchamp? BEAUCHAMP?? BEAUCHAMP!!’ The cat suddenly appeared in the doorway. It arched it back and started to growl. The ears went back and the tail started flicking from side to side, and in an instant, it had literally dived under the couch. Then there was all this commotion.

H and I crept up to the couch, and we could hear the cat clawing around and growling inside the base of the couch. Just as we lifted the couch, something dark and furry ran past our feet. We both squealed and dropped the couch and jumped up on the armchairs.

‘WHERE DID IT GO?!?!’

‘B – DID YOU SEE WHERE IT WENT?’

‘WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT THING!??!’

B was still standing on her chair, still in her towel, still dripping water. She was terrified to move. She was too scared to even look at the floor.

H saw the cat dart around the side of the couch and behind the back of the chair I was standing on. Next to the chair, between the chair and the wall, was a pile of old magazines. I could hear some scurrying around underneath a magazine that had fallen down in the space behind it, and I could hear Beauchamp growling.

I slowly crouched down on the chair, whilst H grabbed the cat. As I lifted the magazine, I saw it, and squealed again.

‘WHAT? WHAT IS IT?!?!

‘I… I don’t know, actually…” I saw this small dark brown furry thing, curled up in the corner. It certainly wasn’t a rat. I used the magazine to poke it. ‘OH MY GOD IT’S A BABY POSSUM!!!’

Just as I said that, Beauchamp clawed H in the arm, and she dropped her, and the cat tore around the back of the couch and grabbed the possum in it’s mouth and just as quickly, ran back under the couch.

‘BEAUCHAMP, NO!!!!’

H and I grabbed the couch, and completely flipped it over. We could see the cats back legs and tail hanging out of a hole in the base of the couch, and we grabbed her and pulled her out. H threw her into a bedroom and closed the door.

We saw the possum curled up amongst some of the springs, but couldn’t reach it to grab it. I didn’t know if it was dead, if it was injured, if it was even still alive. It was so dark, and I couldn’t see anything. I grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and stuck my hand in to try and grab it, but it let out this high-pitched squeal, and I panicked and yanked my hand out of there so quickly. In doing so, I cut my arm and the top of my hand on a sharp piece of broken metal spring. I grabbed a towel to absorb the blood from my arm, and as I did so, the possum ran out of the couch and under the arm chair next to me.

Without thinking we grabbed the chair and carted it out into the backyard. I wrapped my arms in towels, and grabbed the baby possum and yanked it out from amongst the springs.

Not the actual possum, but this is kinda what it looked like. Tiny and adorable!

It was curled up into a ball, and was so tiny, it fit into the palm of my hand. It didn’t appear to be moving and I thought it was dead. I examined it for any bleeding and / or puncture wounds, but there weren’t any and then all of a sudden, it’s tail started moving and it started squealing again.

Further down the backyard, there was a rustle in the trees, and then this giant possum appeared on the fence.

‘ahh, H, I think that’s the mother…’

‘But shouldn’t we take it to a vet first?’

‘I dunno. What if we put it on the ground and see if it moves?’

So we layed the possum on the grass and took a few steps back and just stood watching. It didn’t move. We thought the worst. B appeared on the back steps, ‘is it dead? Oh my god, why isn’t it moving? It’s dead, isn’t it!?’ She was a heartbeat away from bursting into tears.

The possum didn’t move.

‘B, grab a couple of teatowels and the shoebox out of the recycling!’ I wasn’t wasting any time. There was a vet just down the road, I was going to get them to look at it.

H confronted the possum on the fence, ‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Possum. Beauchamp did a really shitty thing, and we’re going to take your baby to the animal hospital. We’ll be back soon, so don’t go anywhere!’

We took the possum down to the vet. H and I were still in our pyjama’s and were barefoot, an I still had a towel wrapped over my cut arm, but we didn’t care. They took the possum in, and came out a short while later. It was just in shock, and they were giving it a bottle, and if we came back in a couple of hours, we’d be able to take it and release it back to it’s mother.

We went home and I called work, explaining that I was going to be late, and I made an appointment to get a tetanus shot later that afternoon.

H called me later that morning to say that she got the possum back and that it was fine. Not even a scratch on it. Phew!! She took it home and released it into the backyard, and it reunited with it’s mother a couple of minutes later.

I may have ended up with a few cuts on my arm and a tetanus shot, but it was worth it to save a baby possum. I felt so great after that. It really lifted my spirits.

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