#blu queue

[^ Secretly loathes dry towns with a burning passion]

Will check in at servos and such with updates on how everything's going.

Behave in my absence kids, don't sass your mum, be good to her and don't make me wrangle all you when I get back cuz I will NOT be in the mood for it and you WILL catch these hands.

See you tonight or tomorrow, depends how much driving stamina I got on 4.5hr sleep.

Like a ghost.

That's me right now.

Has been for a few weeks--since Christmas, really. But for right now, sitting here and drinking this beer, it's worse for some reason.

I think I'd forgotten what loneliness felt like.

It doesn't hit me until now when I'm sitting here in Darwin and trying to sleep after spending the past 3-ish days in multiple different major cities, but I'm lonely.

I got maybe a half-hour of sleep, and then I woke up and went out on the balcony for a bit to have a smoke, and a beer, and I've missed the taste of VB. I've missed the smell of rainwater in the Top End, and the squawks of cockatoos in the mornings, and fresh meat pies, and Jatz, and golden gaytimes, and vegemite, and heading to the shops barefoot.

And back home? Oh.

I've missed the sounds of dingos, and the chitter of flying foxes, and feeling thunder crawl through my skin on every roll. I've missed the whistling kites and the smell of wattle--it's summertime down south, and the wet season here up north, and some of the wattle is blooming. I've missed the blue kookas and the sweetness of cluster figs and the trumpeting of brolgas and the crunch of waterlily stems, and the saltiness of croc meat, and playing two-up with my brother but hiding it from my boy because gambling is a bad influence.

Call me insane, but dare I say I've even missed the flies and mozzies, though there isn't many right now because of the wet.

But I also miss Misty. I miss Misty desperately. I woke up and panicked for a second and called out to her so she'd come to me, and then I remembered where I am, and that she isn't with me. And, iunno, but that made me really sad for a few minutes.

The beer's good though, and I get to watch the sunrise. But I can see clouds on the horizon, and lightning, so it looks like a storm will be rolling in by the time I have to be up and about. Hopefully it rolls in fast and gets gone faster and doesn't ground my flight.

Can't wait to be home.

Fun answer? At the first gun show I went to as a kid, there was a bloke there who made and sold knives. And he had a business card that said "If you can count how many knives you own, you don't own enough." And I hate counting, so any time I get my knives together and can stand counting long enough to finish counting them, I figure I don't have enough knives and it's time to get another.

Real answer? When I was twelve I was kidnapped and almost murdered and now I've got a Complex about it.

Somewhere upward of fifteen...ish? Most I don't use, but all I keep sharp and ready just in case I need them.

I haven't done a count in a while.

I've only brought one to Australia--my KA-BAR--but on my person, at most times and especially when doing bounty work or hunting, I have:

KA-BAR (left hip; for general survival knife purposes)

Hunting knife (behind KA-BAR on left hip; for gutting and skinning large wildlife like pigs, roos, and deer)

Buck 110+ (right hip; for skinning small wildlife such as cats, dogs, foxes, and rarely rabbit)

Stiletto (right boot; for last-resort self-defence)

Swiss Army knife (right pocket of vest; for general bullshit)

Machete (sling on back; for chopping wood/clearing scrub)

When camping I'm usually wearing my daytime clothes, and I sleep on my back with all knives on except the stiletto (as I take my boots off to sleep) and my machete, which lays in its sheath next to me.

Nope!

Well, yes. Which I why I practise harm reduction. This is the only time I've ever used cocaine more than once in a two-week period, and I'm not doing it again after this. I'm only doing it because it's a big event, I was nervous, and it was offered to me. I will not have access to it after this and I prefer it that way.

Cocaine has a maximum 14-day tolerance period. This means that from the moment you do cocaine, your body immediately develops a tolerance to the substance for the next 14 days. If you were to do cocaine again in that time, you'd need to up your dosage to get the same effect. This is how people become addicted and dependent on cocaine. After a week of doing cocaine, your tolerance drops by half. After two weeks, your tolerance is back to baseline.

I don't do cocaine regularly--prior to this I've done it three times before, if you include last night. Cocaine has a wonderful initial high and rush, but the offset--the "crash"--is dreadful and not something I usually figure is worth the high. The crash is usually what gets people to re-dose and therefore get themselves addicted on cocaine. You get irritable (this is called coke rage), you'll get sudden intense craving for it again that will drive some people to re-dose, you get a depression that feels downright dysphoric and dissociative, and I personally have gotten headaches.