#many text

part 2 of the thing

The first thing you should know: I have seventeen food intolerances, and most of my family are in a similar boat. Our visible reaction symptoms vary, mine being primarily chronic eczema. I was the first to be tested, as at the time we were running out of options combating said eczema, which was at the time was not responding even to the strongest possible prescription steroid cream legally available (a cream that came with all sort of warnings about how if any got in my eye I was to seek medical attention immediately, which was great seeing I was applying it onto my eyelids (as well as my entire face, neck and arm) 2-3 times a day). Anyway, when I removed my allergins from my diet my ‘atopic’ eczema was all but gone in six months, so my mother and her sister (who already had autoimmune conditions diagnosed) basically forced the whole family to get tested, including my grandparents, who live in Tasmania. And sure enough, my mother, one of my brothers, my aunt, one of her daughters, and both of my maternal grandparents had a range of mysterious medical conditions (including but not limited to Barrett’s Syndrome, an undiagnosable condition similar to Ross Rivers or Lyme’s Disease, and chronic pain) that miraculously improved or cleared up entirely when they removed their allergins from their diet. Of course this has been more of an adjustment for my grandparents, who have been eating normally for 70+ years. Plus their symptoms are in things like my grandmother’s kidney issues, i.e. equally dramatic but not as immediately obvious. Her health had taken a turn for the worse about a year ago, before she started removing allergins and it got a bit better, but now she’s gone back to having "little cheat days" on her allergins pretty much every day and her health is going backwards and it is really worrying. This has been a bit of sticking point for my mother and aunt, who have recently been having conflict with my grandmother over her love of bacon (unfortunately pork is one of her allergins).

Second thing you should know: I am obsessed with this theatre company based in my home town that primarily does adaptions of book, especially classic literature. My drama class goes to see a certain number of plays every year, and when I found out the company was doing a second season of their adaption of 1984 (which I never got to see) I was super excited. I emailed my drama teacher before school even started to see if we could go to the show, which would take place a few weeks into the third term. And because my drama teacher is awesome, he got us tickets.

Third thing you should know: my paternal grandmother (not the one allergic to bacon) passed away about a week into the third term of this year. I won’t go into detail, but it was all very sudden and of course awful. Also her funeral was on the same day as 1984, so my mother ended up taking me to go see it a few weeks later because I had been looking forward to it for seven months and damn it I wasn't going to let a spot of death get in my way.

Fourth thing you should know: as you can probably see, both my mother and I react to grief and death by making stupid and often inappropriate jokes.

Fifth, final and probably most important thing you should know: Anyone who has followed me for two seconds has probably realised that drama is my favourite subject. Also that I kind of adore my drama teacher. Anyway, in year ten when we were picking subjects drama was my #1 preference, and my drama teacher knew that, as does he know that my parents are super supportive of my taking whatever subjects I want. So when my parents and I were doing this little information session and we went to chat with my drama teacher because why not. So we went over, and he jokingly starts trying really hard to convince me to take drama, and I'm pretending to um and ah like I don't know. It looks like a lot of work. Maybe I'll take physics instead. What's in it for me?  [the physics thing was a long running joke/issue, because that was my #3 preference and it ended up on the same line as drama, leaving me very disappointed. My #2, Math C, was on a different line thank goodness. I had told the head of campus, who did the lines, that if maths c and drama ended up on the same lines I would have to leave the school because that was physically not a decision I was able to make. However physics is just applied maths, which is my real interest, so I was always going to pick drama first, and both my drama teacher and the maths c/physics teacher know that]. So my drama teacher is kind of playing along, saying Oh, don't take physics. If we get fifteen people you guys can have your own class. [Which in hindsight would have actually been awful because our composite was awesome] We get to study all these classic plays you like. I'll even take you to see Wicked. Guys, I've never seen Wicked. I take singing lesson and I have sung at least four songs from that musical, I can recite the plot to you, and I am basically in every other way a complete fangirl for it, and I have never managed to see it. And I want to, so so badly. So I'm like Okay, deal. You take us to see Wicked and I'll take senior drama. Now, I don't know if he was actually being a little bit serious at the time, but he actually kept to his word. And earlier this week, almost a full year after he made this promise, he announces that the tickets for our class to go see Wicked next February had arrived. And I was absolutely ecstatic, because I have been wanting to see this musical for literally years.

And now, knowing all that, an exchange that would make zero sense without the over a thousand words of context you just read.

Me: Mr VH said the tickets for us to go to see Wicked next year have arrived.

Mother: So which relative has to die to stop you from seeing this one?

Me: They'd better not, I don't think we'd be able to get tickets later on this time.

Mother: Yes, and that would be rather unfortunate.

Very blog.

Got up at 6 to teach the walk-trotters in the 7AM Zones practice, which was super fun! I really like seeing how much people have improved, especially the walk-trotters. And I got to talk with my coaches quite a bit which was cool. It was very interesting to hear what they have to say in relations to Zones etc.

I also got an email about job things for the summer, so that's coming together! And CJ said if this doesn't work out she also knows some other people that need working students for the summer.