Fun with food poisoning

So, my mother is overseas and my sisters are all living away from home. Since I cannot do the same, the resulting predicament is that my father and I are staying in a now rather empty house.

This is problematic, because:

a) My father is household-illiterate
b) He is also very specific about 'gender roles' (cue eyeroll)
c) When not busy working his ass off installing stuff until 8 in the evening he is out buying porn.

So the logical thing is that I should look after the house. Which spawns an entirely new set of issues.

Do the dishes - Fine. Mop the floor, vaccuum the carpets - Gimme some music and I'll be right on it. Scrub the toilets and showers - Okay, bribe me. Cook - ...

The thing is, my cooking is so bad there can be only one way to describe it, and that word is best known as 'genocidal'. Not adding to that fact is my spontaneous acts of creativity that eggs me to create exciting dishes like 'chicken in a bag', 'a single boiled potato' and the ever-popular 'shredded salmon surprise' (the surprise being that there is nothing else besides the shredded salmon).

Also, I am lazy. I just can't be bothered to think of new, exotic ways to cook crumbed chicken for thirty-five days. It also requires a substantial amount of willpower for me to get off my lazy ass and put the meat in the microwave.

So, dad gives me money and I go grocery shopping because he doesn't have time. This is either good or bad depending on how you view your glass of water. The good is that now I can plan what to cook days in advance. The bad is that said meals consist mainly of pre-packaged, 'heat-before-you-eat' food.

I have no qualms about eating vegetables. In fact, I don't really care about them. However, my dad is a health freak, so usually to subsidize his need for healthy food, I buy packets of stir-fry. COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF STIR-FRY.

So it comes to be that there is half a packet of Family Stir Fry sitting in the fridge on a fateful Monday evening. I had just written my Maths exam and was feeling pretty shitty as to my chances of passing. I spot some steak in the freezer and think, 'fuck yeah, comfort food'. So I fry this. Then I rummage around the freezer looking for some vegetables amongst the piles of what looks like gangrenous blue cheese, frostbite in a bag and enigmatic pyramids of black rot.

I find this bag of stir-fry, and it dawns upon me that this dainty packet has been occupying much of my subconscious mind for the past two weeks. "Cook me before it's too late and I become a biohazardous substance," it has begged me. Naturally, I have ignored its cries in favour of ordering pizza. So much for subconscious persuasion.

Anyway, I inspect this packet. The contents look soggy and soft. There are black flecks on the cabbage. The cucumbers are dried up. The carrots have whitened. And for some inexplicable reason, it occurs to me that this mix of spore culture is perfectly safe for human consumption.

What I do is I disguise the stiry fry with some tomato soup, coating it in a gooey red substance. As repulsive as it sounds, it tasted fine that night. Dad and I each ate half of the bag.

The following morning I felt great. Great, as in 'I would very much like to vomit' great. So I'm staring at breakfast (egg soup), and I think, 'what the hell' and I drink the lot. Suddenly I stand up and run to the bathroom, where I bring up the lot, along with some mushed bright orange chyme from yesterday.

Still feeling sick, I go to school to write my Afrikaans exam. About halfway through it, I stall because I think I am going to vomit again. I do. I swallow, because this is a logical thing to do. I finish writing the exam and call my dad and ask him if he can take me home as opposed to me taking a taxi because I am feeling really sick. Dad tells me he is also feeling sick and that he has vomited.

On the car, dad explains that he think it may have been collective indigestion. I nod sympathetically as I think of the two-week old stir fry. I lie and put forth my theory that it could be stomach flu. Dad agrees, and we go to the pharmacy.

I WILL NOT REVEAL TO HIM THAT IT WAS THE MOULDY VEGETABLES. I REFUSE.

Orgasmic fun with mineral turpentine

I have this very bad habit, and it is graffiti-ing desks with permanent marker or Tippex. I confess that I do not know what kind of satisfaction this kind of activity provides as I am sadly neither hardcore nor badass enough to be of the OMFG GRAFFITI GURU type. All I know is, after the teacher drones on for I while, I will get a nagging desire to write my guess for the winning lottery numbers on the freshly painted schooldesk I sit at.

Now usually I do get away with this, even when said desk is completely covered with my lame drawings and replies to the message scribbled by another deskwriter intoning "SAY AYE IF YOU LOVE COCK!" in bold white paint marker.

One fateful day, I was not so lucky. I was told by one of the teachers whose desks I wrote on to completely clear the desk of any and all pennings before I'd get owned by the school Board of Governors.

So today, wanting to atone for my misdeeds, I brought an entire bottle of turpentine and a cloth to school.

To make a long story short, a friend got hold of my bag and had some fun with it. After having said fun (which involved the swinging of said bag and copious pirouetting), she suddenly reported a certain wetness that was leaking from the bag.

Lo and behold. TURPENTINE! The whole bottle had leaked into my bags and drenched my books and things that I usually carry around in there. That was okay, I wasn't too concerned.

But then there was the smell.

It was pretty invigorating, sort of like the smells of fresh permanent marker. I breathed in a few lungfuls. My head started to spin. My face fell as it occured to me that I would be carrying this potentially narcotic object on my back for the rest of the day. I then sort of forgot about it. Nicko reported a headache and an inability to breathe, so I tossed it as far as possible from where we were sitting in Physics. Unfortunately this landed near Nick who asked me tentatively if the smell he was experiencing had something to do with my plans of making prison wine which I had informed him about last night.

Most of the time though, it was on my back.

And that is why I think my head felt like it had doubled in mass when I got home.

After a relatively unexciting meal consisting of mediocre stir-fry I had conjured from a packet, I came to the realization that I had misplaced my keys.

I set about searching for them, checking every nook and cranny and even searching inside my sock drawer for them. This went on for about a quarter of an hour.

It was then that I started talking to the keys. Mostly what I said to them included some or other variant of "Motherfucker" "Fucksack" or "Son of a bitch!".

I wandered in circles for the best part of forty minutes. I must've checked the same places around seven times, to no avail. The turp-induced headache made me wander around like a zombie with a headful of ale and a fistful of stupid.

Around my eighth visit to the computer room, I suddenly noticed the curtains were patterned with flowers. This seemed to me to be a sort of sign, and cue to pass out. I sleep fitfully for half an hour on the floor, dimly aware of my glasses digging into the side of my face.

Against my will, my eyes flew open. I realised I would have to get the fuck up and resume the search for my keys. This saddened me, as I saw that I was in a particularly advantageous position should I abruptly decide to wrestle the couch.

I found the keys. They were in my bag.

And I did manage to clean the writing off the desks. Even though I stripped off most of the paint in the process.