Happy Birthday Wacky World! (And Tashcakes!)

I can believe that I've had this blog for a year. What I can't believe is that I've actually more or less lived up to my claim that something happens to me every week! Well, here I am, and still going strong, and now you have a good idea of just how strong a weirdness magnet I am.

I even baked a birthday cake to celebrate:

Well I kind of had to, since my other blog is a baking blog. Baking blog birthday without a birthday cake? Madness, I tell you!

Anyway, if you follow Tashcakes! you'll know my slight obsession with colourful food. So...

Boom.

Feel free to head on down to Tashcakes! for a few more shots of the cake. In the meantime, I'll appease those of you expecting a weekly funny story by giving you my slightly delirious Facebook status, posted at about 1am this morning while baking this cake and not sleeping (for the third night running):

'Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue: I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow cake. =D (Shut up I know it doesn't rhyme.)'

What a lot of my Facebook friends may not realise (but probably won't be surprised to hear) is that I was actually singing this song out loud. Over and over again.

 Happy birthday, The Wacky World of a Weird Girl! Here's to another year of weirdness.

Update: The Whittard Afternoon Tea Blogging Competition

Remember I entered the Whittard of Chelsea blogging competition? Well, I didn't win- but I did get a runner-up prize of three boxes of different teas. Words cannot describe the happy.

Check out pictures of my plunder on my baking blog Tashcakes!

Making an Utter Arse of Myself/ Awesome Shopping Trip

Two consecutive posts in two days! Do I get a cookie?

I went on a mini-adventure to find a supermarket I'd been meaning to explore, today. I'm not a huge fan of driving to new places because I have a slight irrational fear of one way systems (yes, really). Thankfully I'm also a dab hand at reading maps, so I've never gotten myself lost. Yet.

Anyway I got there fine, and had a wander around. To my excitement, they were selling a brand of ice cream I love I haven't seen for years. I searched for my favourite flavour: there were just two left! And they were on the tallest shelf and right at the back of the freezer.

Now, this freezer was the kind that sits above and a little back from an open chest-style freezer: in short, you have to lean over the open freezer to fish out what you want from the cabinet freezer. Me being only 5'4" and with perfectly proportioned (but all the same short) arms, my fingertips couldn't even reach the magical cartons of my favourite ice-cream, even with me leaning right over on the tips of my toes.

Determined to break my ice cream drought, the scientific part of my brain kicked in. Maybe I could grab a tub of another flavour and use that to poke it out? I gave it a go, but all I managed to do was knock one of the tubs sideways. What if I created a chain of tubs leading up to the ones I wanted at the back, and pushed them out by pushing the tub at the front of the chain? More ice cream tubs knocked over.

I tried a few things, knocking over more tubs and conscientiously righting them again, getting colder and colder by the minute as I dangled over one freezer with my head and arms jammed in another. Finally, with a tub of an unwanted flavour in each hand, I found a way of wiggling the two illusive tubs forwards inch by inch- by poking at them from underneath the grill-like shelf with the other tubs. After what seemed like an eon, I managed to wiggle them to the front.

Victoriously, I plopped the two unwanted tubs down, seized my prize, and slammed the freezer door shut. As I turned around, a fellow shopper (who had been behind me for the whole time, I think), caught my eye and quickly turned away, possibly seeing my grimly determined grin.

Off I went to the tills to pay for my prize, feeling like I'd truly earned it and that the day couldn't get any better. In front of me was a couple with a rather large weekly shop- I just had the two tubs of ice-cream, but being in no hurry, I took my place behind them anyway. The lady in front put the shopping divider town on the conveyor belt, and I smiled and thanked her (because I've always thought it the polite thing to do).

As about half of her shopping passed through the scanner, the lady suddenly turned to me and said, "There's an offer going on here where if you spend over £40 and you have a club card, you get this big bar of Toblerone chocolate- it looks like we're going to get one. But I'm on a diet! Would you like it, if I gave it to you?"

I blinked. "Wow, yes please- if you're sure! That's very kind of you"

"Not at all, I simply can't have it in the house- I'll just eat it in one sitting," the lady chuckled.

"I think you can probably see I'd have no qualms," I said, beaming and gesturing to my two ice-cream tubs' worth of shopping.

So now I have two tubs of one of my favourite ice creams, and a huge 400g bar of Toblerone for free.

Win.

Thank you again, lady!

~Fin~

Making an Utter Arse of Myself: Finding Narnia

Show me a mysterious door slightly ajar, an unknown corridor discovered, a hidden and romantic-but-not-too-creepy alleyway, and I'll be in it faster than a cat in a cardboard box.

I've always loved the idea of secret tunnels and passageways, of portals to alternate realities and different dimensions. Once, as a child, my dad found me sitting on the stairs with my ear pressed to the wall, knocking on it and listening intently. When my dad asked me what I was doing, I replied that I was listening for hollow spaces, in case there was a secret door somewhere.

At work yesterday, on my way out of the toilets, I noticed that the wall opposite the entrance/ exit was at a funny angle. Not a wall: a door. I'd never noticed a door being there before, but there it was, slightly and tantalisingly cracked open. "Maybe this time it'll finally be Narnia!", a small, irrational part of my brain thought.

I crept up to the door, reached for the handle slowly, waited and... flung it open: 'Aha!'.

Alas, no Narnia, no Diagon Alley- not even a secret stash of toilet roll. Just a small space filled with pipes and cobwebs.

Not satisfied, and having a habitually scientific way of approaching things, I squeezed past the door and into the room, which was perhaps big enough to fit two people in with the door fully closed. I closed the door a little, experimentally. Nope, nothing: literally just a pipe room.

Trying to smother the faint sense of disappointment the irrational part of my brain was feeling, I poked my head out of the door to check that the coast was clear- just as someone walked into the toilets.

I froze, still with just my head sticking out. She stared at me, taking in the cobwebs in my hair, smiled nervously, and darted quickly into a cubicle. I hastily hopped out, dusted myself off, and walked very quickly back to the office.

(As a testament to how well my team member know me now, one of my colleagues noticed my flustered expression when I got back to my desk and asked "Oh Tash, what did you do?")

~Fin~

The Line Between Assertiveness and Rudeness

I bought some dried fruit from a market stall, today. There were two guys running it- one who seemed perfectly amiable who I was chatting to, and another who was quite mouthy in a way it was clear he thought was funny and edgy. As soon as I decided on what to buy, the mouthy guy brusquely took over from his colleague.

"So how much would you like?"

"Just a small handful, please."

The guy behind the stall grabbed a massive fistful of dried mango and stuffed it into the paper bag, to my dismay, and followed with a second fistful. He dumped the full-to-bursting bag onto the scales.

"That'll be eight pounds."

I gave an easy laugh to cover my annoyance. "I said a small handful! I don't think I can eat eight pounds worth. Can you make it about three pounds, please?"

Mouthy guy smirked and removed a small amount of fruit from the bag.

"Five pounds."

"Er- no, I said three pounds."

Mouthy guy grinned again. "Thirty pounds, did you say?"

"Three," I said firmly, trying to control my escaping patience. All I bloody wanted was a bloody bit of fruit. "If I can't eat eight pounds worth of dried fruit, I certainly can't eat thirty pounds worth of it."

"Okay okay, three." He finally took out enough of the bag to make a sensible amount of fruit, and I handed over a five pound note.

"Oh look," Mouthy guy said to his colleague, "She's given us a pound tip each!" The other guy gave a half-hearted 'ha-ha'.

"Sorry," I said, feeling my smile turn a little sharp. "I'm not that generous."

Mouthy guy finally stopped with the badly-constructed banter and handed over the change, and the other trader and I wished each other a nice day. Well, to seem less harsh, I wished a nice day back in both of their general directions. But really I only made eye contact with the less mouthy of the two (hah, take that. It's the small victories...)

Was I rude, by the end? I'm not sure. Not even sure I care. Hell, a few years ago I would have just accepted a gargantuan eight pound bag of fruit in order to avoid confrontation- but that's not me any more. I'm finding more and more that I'm able to take less and less crap. That can only be a good thing, right? I mean I've always wanted to be the kind of person who will treat everyone with equal respect and kindness, but there has to be a line between being kind and being a doormat.

Just last week I was in a bakery and this guy was completely blocking the aisle looking at something, bent over in such a sharp L-shape that his head touched one side of the aisle and his arse the other. My first polite 'excuse me' caused another gentleman to shift out of the way (and he wasn't really in the way to begin with, bless him). But the L-shape guy: nothing. My second polite 'excuse me' elicited no response from him, either.

My final attempt came out as a very acerbic "Excuse me". And by golly he moved- slowly and defiantly, but move he did- but not before giving me the most poisonous look I have ever seen directed at me. I mean it, too: I'm not in the habit of making enemies, but I'm pretty sure I made one, that day.

"Thank you!" I cheerfully trilled in a sugary-sweet voice, and almost danced past.

Again, did I cross the line of assertiveness and go over to the dark side of rudeness? Probably. Do I feel bad about it? No. Does a small part of me quite like this newfound power? Worryingly, yes.

In Which My Obsession with Cake Pays Off

Recently Whittard of Chelsea ran a competition for bloggers, challenging us to write an article about afternoon tea (Whittard's being purveyors of tea, coffee, hot chocolate and all related paraphernalia- therefore being one of my favourite shops). Ten people would be shortlisted and a public vote would be run to pick the winner.

Guess who's been shortlisted?

Please follow this link and leave a comment at the bottom of the page to vote for my entry, which is number 8: 'Why Afternoon Tea is Awesome'. All voters get the chance to win a year's supply of tea, which spices things up a bit too!

I'm so excited! I say my obsession's payed off because although I haven't won yet, I'm still chuffed to have been picked for the final vote. I love writing, and although I write in these blogs for myself first and foremost, it's great to be reminded that my writing is enjoyed by others, too. Plus I've mentioned before in the story of how I won a Christmas in a box that I seldom win things, so I'm excited about that, too.

Look at it this way: the best case scenario is that I win a hamper of tea and coffee, and you win a year's supply of tea- and we can swim up to our eyeballs in caffiene.

Sounds good to me!

I Crashed My Car

In short.

This happened last Thursday- ten days ago- but I was waiting until I had the final outcome regarding my car before I wrote about it. Because I'm a bit of a completionist, apparently. However, since insurance is dragging its ridiculously bureaucratic heels about the whole process, I reckon I'd better get a head start.

Right at the end of my street is a cross junction that my family not so affectionately affectionately call 'The Gauntlet.' I almost always avoid it despite it being the quickest route home, knowing my little budget car to have the acceleration of a slug. For some reason- fate, God, sod's law, whatever you want to call it- on that Thursday, I decided to cross it.

Obviously, I failed.

It's a pretty nasty crossing that comes just before a sharp bend in the road, and consists of a main road running through two residential roads. There are several crashes per year on the crossroad, and they're almost all caused by the same thing: by somebody whizzing around the corner (which they are entitled to do since it's their right of way at this point), and colliding into somebody pulling out one of the residential roads too slowly. This is pretty much exactly what happened: I pulled out as fast as I could (like a slug), thinking it safe, and got very suddenly T-boned by a car coming around the corner.

It was such a loud, concussive BANG that I took a good few seconds for my brain to kick back into action: are the people in the other car alright? Am *I* alright? Are our cars alright? I turned to peer at the other lady driving and couldn't stop apologising, and we moved out cars out of the way. The lady who I crashed into- or rather, who I made crash into me- was absolutely lovely, and both herself and her son were unharmed. I was horrified that she had a child with her- he looked around ten or eleven years old. I could have never forgive myself if I'd gotten them both hurt. Thankfully though, they both were fine. Their car wasn't too bad off, either- one headlight a bit cracked, the bumper scraped and one of the screws of the number plate knocked out.

My car, however, had been turned into a very expensive boomerang on wheels. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Long story short, we exchanged details, I contacted insurance and baked some apology cupcakes for the lady and her family (who only live a block away), and got poor 弟弟 ('didi'- I named my car 'little brother') taken away to car hospital/ car heaven.

The day after the crash I took the train to work. Come midday I was sent home because I could no longer move my head around from whiplash. I should have known: I was buffeted around quite a lot in the collision, and whenever I suddenly do a lot of exercise I only feel it halfway through the next day. So I spent the rest of Friday like a very sore robot. Saturday and Sunday I went to Birmingham to visit some friends from my uni days, making sure I was careful not to exert myself too much. By Sunday my neck was a lot better, but this also made me notice the constant headache I'd had since the crash, which I thought was just referred pain from whiplash and gritting my teeth too hard during the collision.

So on Monday I saw my doctor, and it turns out I had something called 'post traumatic concussion', which is basically a bruised brain from being bashed about in the skull, not necessarily after a physical impact to the head. Crazy stuff, huh? Anyway, I'd been trying to function like a human being for four days with whiplash and a battered brain without really realising.

I'm still awaiting to hear whether 弟弟 is in hospital or heaven. The car's actual internal structure was damaged, the central door pillar being knocked inwards. However, insurance is having me jump through quite a few hoops before even declaring it a write-off. So jump through hoops I shall. In the meantime I have had to empty my account to buy a new car (I should have gotten a courtesy car being fully comp, but there was a small series of c*ckups on insurance's end), and wait until I either get paid out for a written-off car, or get my old car back all fixed up and then try to sell it. What a faff.

I was more annoyed at myself more than anything, once the relief that no-one was hurt had passed. I never thought that my first car incident would be my fault. I've been on the road for eight years and always worried about the arsehat driving too close behind me, or the idiot trying to overtake me on the left, or the parked driver suddenly flinging their door open just as I'm driving past. I never thought I'd make such a stupid mistake. Serves me right for getting cocky; from now on I'll remember to worry about myself, too. On the bright side, my new car may be the same model as the old one, but it has shinier paintwork, is a newer reg number and for some reason drives a lot better in general than 弟弟. I have named her  妹妹 ('meimei'- little sister).