21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter four.

When I was younger I had almost no depth perception. This was caused by my optic nerve being under developed at birth. This also resulted in some pretty hilarious accidents.

I would bump into door frames while walking through through doorways

I would try to grab things that were really far away

But possibly the most embarrassing and memorable of these is the day I tried to ride my bike through cement power pole.

I was so excited that I was riding my bike by myself with no freaking trainer wheels!!!

My Dad took my brothers and I out for a bike ride. He used the excuse that it would be fun but I think he just wanted to get us out of the house so we'd stop driving him crazy.

I hadn't quite mastered the straight line and kept looking backwards at the squiggly lines my tires made when I rode over the grass.

Of course no-one had yet informed me of the dangers of looking backwards while biking forwards.
As you can probably guess, I was about to learn first hand the true value of looking where you're going.

Dad called out to me and I turned around to look at him, as I did I noticed I was about to hit a power pole. I didn't have time to go around. Then I noticed it was one of the pole with the hole in the middle and suddenly it dawned on me, I could go THROUGH THE POLE!

It all seemed perfectly logical until my tire went through the gap.

I suddenly noticed my handle bars were much wider than the gap in the cement power pole. Unfortunately I realised this about a millisecond before the handle bars hit said cement power pole so of course I had no time to stop or turn away, merely stare in horror as the painful outcome of my foolish assumptions unfolded before me.

My handle bars hit the sides of the cement power pole, my bike lurched forward and I was propelled face first into the pole. Much to the delight of my brothers and the shame of myself.

Reemerging from the depths of Time

Wow.

So it's been quite awhile.

I must admit I've had several issues getting back into this.

I originally stopped writing because I became severely depressed when I discovered my cat Frei was not only dead that also, a) he had been poisoned and b) Dad found him,buried him and then didn't end up telling me for a whole week. I kind of spun off in this awful cycle of "I should've been there for him and I wasn't.It's my fault he's dead and if I can't even take care of a cat how can I expect to take care of anything else"

I was starting to pull myself out of this funk when I was asked to house sit for some church friends. A couple of days after I arrived their rat started to look really sick. I managed to contact them and they told me he was dying and the only thing to do was sit and wait for him to pass away. This ended up in a "I am the Angel of Pet Death, nothing can survive my presence" thought pattern which really just deepened the depression. 

After the rat was dead I realised that maybe this was a good thing, it gave me the time to mourn that I didn't have with Frei.

That kind of pulled me out of my funk. But by that stage I didn't have the courage to front up to you guys and admit how slack I'd been. 

So now it's been over a month since my last post, I've done almost no work on 21 Chapters of Childhood and it's all just kind of gone poo.

However. The end of the year is going to sort of be a new start, I'm moving out of home into a flat near Uni and I'm working on plenty of costumes and it's all sort of looking up from here.

Everything should be sort of back on schedule from here.

I'm still alive!!!

Hey guys just thought I'd make a post to say hey, I'm still alive! honest!

It's been insanely busy with trying to organise my party and German Play and essays and exam preparatons (sort of) and work.

I have been working on some awesome stuff to continue the "21 Chapters of Childhood" saga but I wanna make sure I flesh them out fully with proper artwork before I post them so you have decent stuff to read.

Here's a pic of my self that I cartoon-ified of me as Asuka Langley Soryhu (or Shikinimari, if you're watching 2.0) just to bribe you for patience.

Also, I have glasses! I got them on Tuesday. Here's a pic of me wearing them that I took just now and uploaded, it's 250 am. So be gentle with your judgement. 

Until next time!

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter three.

Children are cruel.
Especially when you are extremely short, have frizzy, curly brown hair and serious social ineptitude.

My first day of school was traumatic. This is fairly evident in the fact I still vividly remember it.

My primary school was made up of several buildings placed in two rows to kinda look like a giant equals sign. Each building had two classrooms back to back and it's own toilet block

So I arrive on my first day and my Mum takes me to my classroom to meet the teacher.

Then something awful happens, while I'm utterly bewildered by these strange, feral creatures my Mum calls "other children" the crafty tart sneaks out and ABANDONS ME!!!

                               

                               

I was very quickly shaken out of this clearly terrified state by the teacher turning to me and demanding I "Stop being such a baby!" I very rapidly became a pro at disguising fear among elders. 

The next onslaught came at lunch time when I no longer had the teacher to act as a buffer and security blanket between my self and The Others.

It was days before I was able to work out some sort of rudimentary communication system with these strange beings. I couldn't understand a word they were saying except that it seemed to be a jarbled mix of English words but at 10 times the normal speed.

                               

But back to my first day. The key thing that was missed out on my first day was a tour of the school and an explanation of where things were.
One thing I most definitely had not expected was multiple options when it came to toilet choice. Most homes have one kind of toilet and usually only toilet one per room.
This wasn't helped by the fact that the toilets, while separated into Male and Female, did not having signs on the door indicating which was which.

When lunch time came it was followed swiftly by the call of nature and I sought out the place to do my deed.
I found what appeared to be the communal bathroom and went in.
On my way I noticed that the toilet was in a stall and the wall by the door was covered entirely in shiny metal which had a trickle of water running down the center.

I though there must be a broken pipe or something.
I went into the stall, made my sacrifice to the tinkle fairy, washed my hands in the sink and walked outside where I was met by a circle of The Others, all giggling and staring at me.

The one wearing purple seemed to be their leader.
She pointed an accusatory finger and me and yelled amidst a fit of giggles "She went in the boys toilets! She did!Are you boy or a girl!That's the BOYS toilet!"
"N...no...it's... it's boys and girls..." Foolproof defense Jepha, foolproof.
Despite my excellent defense the taunting continued.
"The new girl goes to the toilet in the boys toilet!What a weirdo!"

At this point I start to cry, just a little (I lie, I was bawling my eyes out.But wouldn't you?)
"No... see...that part is for boys *points to shiny wall dripping water* and the other one's for girls..."
Another solid defense from future Wonder-Lawer, Jepha.

Needless to say the horrendous taunting continued until lunchtime ended and I was once again safe under the watchful eye of the teacher until the end of the day or they forgot about the whole thing, whichever came first.
At the end of the day I decided was NOT fond of  this whole school thing.

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter two.

When I was 12 years old my Mum had her first baby with her new partner. She's now 8 and drew a picture for you all. This is Karlia's picture that she drew by herself on MS Paint with no help from me cos she's THAT awesome!

Sorry that today was such a short post but I had my 21st family party to attend and I have a longer post coming for you tomorrow promise. It's about my first day at school.
Hope you like Karlia's Picture!
Here's a picture of the two of us I took just now, we're all snuggled up in bed listening to the rain outside! Cosy!

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter one.

So tomorrow is my 21st birthday and I figured there must be some sort of way to mark such a momentous occasion on such a public forum as teh blogosphere.
The answer is apparently 21 short stories from my life.
There is no promise of any sort of linear time line to these stories despite the fact that goes against my blog title.
The idea came to me at about 3 on Tuesday morning so it may turn out to be an entirely horrible idea and I withhold the decision to pull the plug on this at any stage.

 ON WITH THE SHOW!!!

When I was younger, I wasn't all that fond of clothing. Now, I'm not talking about when I was 1 or 2, I'm talking about when I was 5 or 6.
I was Pedobear's dream come true.
The first chance I got I would discard every item of clothing my parents had forced upon me and would then take off at lightning speed, or as fast as my chubby little legs could take me, it's all relative.
These actions were not reserved for in the home either. In fact my favourite place to display my nudist tendencies was my Fathers workplace, Street Electrical.

One particular day, Dad was unable to find anyone to take care of my brothers and I, so he had to take us to work with him. This also happened to be the day a rather large client was coming in to take a look at the workshop and potentially make a rather large, expensive order.

As soon as Dad took his eyes off me for a second I was naked and off like a shot.

A few minutes later Dad caught me and began the process of putting all my clothes back on despite my protesting. He was about half way done when we heard a sudden crash form the back of the van were Dad had left the boys sleeping in their car seats, figuring that was the place the could get into the least trouble.

Within the space of fifteen seconds it had gone from relatively calm to all hell breaking loose.

My brothers had managed to pull a tray of nuts and bolts out of Dad's storage rack on the side of the van, spilling them everywhere.

I was once again running joyously naked and free throughout the shop and Dad was standing there not knowing where to even START trying to put it all back together.

This is where the boss walks in.

Imagine you're the boss of an electrical supplies company, bringing in a large client who plans to make a very expensive order for good and services from your establishment.

You're showing him around the place to prove his needs are in capable hands.

Then you walk in on this: (click to zoom in)

Luckily the client himself had young kids who he'd had to take to work so e completely understood and laughed about it with Dad afterwards.

However Dad didn't take us to work with him again for many,many years.

This blog post took me way too long to write.

Was trying to think of a clever segue/entry to this story but screw it let's just go with a cold opening.

When I was in high school we had a totally awesome pot belly wet back fire place. For those of you who aren't familiar with fireplace design, it's a big black box that looks something like this:

It has a door on the front for loading wood and a little round hatch in that door to leave open if it's dying down a bit to let more oxygen in.

Once Dad showed my brothers and I how to load it properly,we were allowed to tend to the fire ourselves.
Dad made the mistake of keeping a fully loaded squirt bottle full of methylated spirits next to the fire and teaching us the equation; meths+fire=awesome! Which is true but potentially extremely dangerous to teach to your 16 year old daughter who is also a budding pyromaniac.

One night I was home alone as Dad and my brothers were away for a week at a school camp.
It's pouring down outside and pretty cold so I start loading the fire, soak everything in meths then light it and smile broadly at the satisfying "whoooosh!" sound.
After awhile the fire starts to die down a bit so I open up the door to put more wood in but get slightly distracted by the pretty dancing flames, I'm talking moth to a flame here.

I thought I should be kind to my friend the fire and give it a little extra help. By help I mean I had a little game of "Let's see how big a controlled burst I can get by strategically spraying meths on different parts of the fire".

You may have noticed by the above pic that I was wearing my lovely, snuggly, flannel dressing gown at the time. I should also mention how amazingly flammable flannel is. Back to the story.

Naturally the several sudden spurs (heh) of flames causes a few embers to escape from the safe confines of the fire box. This goes completely unnoticed by myself until one lands on the sleeve of my dressing gown.

This is where all hell breaks loose.

I notice my dressing gown has suddenly become extremely hot and developed the ability to glow, this is quite unusual for a dressing gown.
I look down to see my sleeve has become wonderfully adept at setting itself alight and my first instinct is "Cover the ember so it cuts off the oxygen and dies" unfortunately my choice of flame cover was poor in that I used my other hand to try and pat it out. My hand naturally gets quite painful because it is being burned by the ember so I remove it which then means there is no longer anything stopping oxygen getting to the ember and my dressing gown is even more on fire now.

The next few moments were a furious blur of the following thoughts:
"holy crap my arm is on fire!"
"Damn it my hand freaking hurts!"
"Oh shit how do I get to some water without setting everything else on fire as I run past?!"
"Shit! The fireplace door is open!"
"I'm still on fire!"

If someone had looked in the window at that point it may have looked something like this:

I don't remember how I eventually put it out, all I know is I had a wicked burn on my palm and was hella carefully around the meths from that point onwards.