There’s no other way to put it. I didn’t realise how much of a bad Easter weekend I was having till yesterday.
It’s 7.15am, the clouds outside the large windows are thick and dark with promises of rain, but all is still. Within, the fluorescent lights are a harsh, glaring contrast to the subtle darkness of outside, and there is a din of greetings, football criticisms and post-Easter cheer.
But I’m unhappy. Miserable almost.
Where do I start? With the tragic news I heard about my phone? Or my run-in with the law? How about the alienation I’m having with Darkman? Or wait, should I talk about how I was almost sent to a watery grave? No…
Financially Challenged
Let me start with my tragic case of BROKENESS. Yes. I was skint the whole of the weekend and a couple of days before even, which is very unlike me. No matter how little I have, I always make sure I’m not in a beggar-type situation before payday. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have savings, my little HoneyPot, as I like to call it, but I’ve gotten very good at pretending it doesn’t exist, so it upsets me HEAVILY when I have to dip my hand into my little honey pot. And what upsets me more is that it’s almost NEVER my fault. Everytime I’ve been really financially challenged, it’s because I lent out money to someone who I’d thought would never disappoint me, and they did. I’m yet to successfully borrow money and get it back at least a week after I was supposed to get it back. It usually stretches into weeks, with correspondence with this ‘friend’ fading to zero, as the said person tries to avoid me. Currently I have a LOT of floating cash out there, and I made a decision on Thursday, as I pulled the ATM card for my HoneyPot account out of my wallet, that I am never borrowing anyone money again. I don’t care what they think of me. I don’t care that these people are some of my closest friends. Call me stingy, whatever. I refuse to have my plans ruined, my phone creditless, and my HoneyPot dwindling because someone somewhere thinks, ‘oh, she’ll understand’. On Thursday night, I sent out venom-filled texts to the 3 people owing me and got meaningless promises and excuses in return.
Sigh.
My N95 is down the toilet. Literally.
My folks travelled for a relative’s wedding on Wednesday, so my sis and I basically had the house to ourselves. I went to the gym 3 more times since my last post, and they went quite smoothly. It’s a good feeling, working out, considering the way I sit in the same place for 12-13 hours of the day. On Friday, I got a call from the dude I gave my phone to fix, and he told me that I should just forget about it, that he’ll get me a new one, but much cheaper. At the time, I think I was really pissed at Darkman, I cant be sure, I’ve been pissed at him a lot these days, so I didn’t really digest the guy’s info. Or maybe I’ve just blocked it out, I don’t know. Basically the phone’s gone.
Road Safety officials Should be Hanged and Quartered.
In the course of that night, I had yet another irritating call with Darkman, and woke up sort of early to do some chores so that I could see him before heading off to a beach party. He, however, didn’t feel the same way and 1 ½ hours before I was set to leave, he hadn’t even had his bath. I angrily told him to stay where he was, and waited for my friends to come over instead. The party was titled Alcohol, Ladies and Sand 2. The first one was last summer. I made everyone contribute to the fuel, cos Alpha Beach is not beans. At Mobil office, we jammed traffic, and someone suggested I pass a shortcut through Oniru. Big mistake. As we passed, we were stopped by Road Safety officials. Guess what they asked for.
Caution signs and fire extinguishers. I mean, WTF??? I showed the guy the caution signs, but really didn’t know I had an extinguisher HIDDEN in the boot. Hello, it’s my mum’s car after all. They said I should show them my papers, but it was mostly insurance copies, and the guy proceeded to ask for the vehicle license slip. I almost told him he was crazy, but said instead that I didn’t have it. The part that mattered was stuck to my windscreen. He made to tear it off, but me and my friend blocked him, and I got livid. I told him he shouldn’t touch it. He said he needed something to hold until I paid my ticket, I felt like telling him to kiss my big, black hiney. He already had my driver’s license. After much cursing and spitting, and telling them they were all stupid for asking for something as unimportant as that when there were accidents out there causing traffic. Finally, angry and hot, I called my mum to ask if there were other copies of the stuff they wanted to confiscate. I refuse to pay 4k for no good reason. Because she was at a noisy place, I couldn’t tell her the full gist, and I wish I had, she would have told me about the extinguisher was in fact, there and all this would have been avoided. But whatever, you know. What’s done is done.
Party Poopers
We got to the party, where finding a non-alcoholic drink or water was impossible. It was too damn hot to savour any thing else, and after over-dosing on goat meat and barbeque fish, we went to stand by the water where there was breeze and easy conversation. It was another Babcock University re-union, but I didn’t see as much craziness as last year, alas. It was during that party that I was once again hit with the reality that there are a lot of sluts out there. There’s nothing sexy about walking about with half of your butt showing or in a scrap of cloth that barely holds everything in. I believe you must have an aim when wearing such, like bedding a rich man’s son or something. It’s disgusting. We were staring like idiots, and we were chicks, imagine those poor guys! Some artist named Shenk (is that correct?) came, and one of his lackeys came and asked me and my girls if we wanted to see him, and I was like, who the hell is he? The lackey seemed annoyed that we weren’t wetting ourselves with excitement, but I would have felt the same way if it was an artist I KNEW. Unless he’s Hayden Christanssen, or Justin Timberlake.
My car got stuck in sand, but we rescued it and headed home at 7.30pm. Easter Sunday sucked. NEPA had been using us to play games all week, taking and bringing the light every 10 minutes. But that day, we saw no light at ALL. And it was scorching. I drove around, unsuccessfully looking for an open salon, then came back to stew. Desperate, my sis and I went to see a late movie at Silverbird, but couldn’t find an open filling station, so I drove home with my fuel on reserve, scared the car would stop on 3rd Mainland Bridge. It didn’t.
Weddings, Traffic and all the Reasons why I Hate Lagos.
Monday was the height. I drove around again, unable to find an open salon, and jammed a pointless 90-minute traffic at CMS. Guess why.
A (insert anger-fuelled expletive here) WEDDING. A bloody wedding. EEEEUUUURGHHH!!!!!
The parked cars stretched for miles, and reduced the 3-lane road to ONE. It was the bottleneck from hell. I was pissed. I’m so not having a large wedding. What’s the point of blocking the streets of Lagos and approaching bankruptcy for an event no one will remember in 5 days?
I also realised the cover for one of my tyres had flown off. Great. I decided to branch the road Safety office, which I only found after 15 minutes of fuel-burning, and I was told I had to pay to a bank (my mum insisted I get her documents back). Vexed, I decided to go home. On the bridge, the caterers from that stupid wedding were passing and they had a convoy of road safety officials (oohh, I hate them now). And they just had to pass by my side. The last bus hit my car. And I almost crashed into the railings. My heart stopped while I tried to swerve my car back into normalcy. Already angry, I got REALLY angry and drove like I’ve never driven before. I was speeding, over-taking like a lunatic, hell-bent on catching up with that convoy. I did a good job, I had them within sight up onto Maryland where I got stuck in traffic. And I calmed down a bit, and thought, ‘what’s the point?’ before turning off and carrying my still scary looking hair to the salon down my street (where I should have gone since).
I hate frigging holidays.