Genevieve Frances Strange Swale, Ily.

This is Genevieve, and I adore her.

  Genevieve is pretty awesome. I could call it the end of the post right there, because that in itself says enough. But no. I am not done.

Her brother Ainsley, me and Genevieve

   I met Gen when I moved to Invercargill four years ago. I don't remember how we met, other than it was at a school sports day, and apparently we got married. Stop laughing! We were 13! We went to youth group and school together, and her mum used to drive me around everywhere when I was at boarding school, and I used to spend my weekends at her house. She drank ginger beer and thought she was drunk from it (because it had the word "beer" in it, of course) and was madly in love with Dan Carter (still probably is) and wore excessive eyeliner, and could quote Harry Potter (Fred and George were our favourite characters) and wanted to stalk Gerard Way.

   We sang to The Veronicas and drank coke and ate corn chips. She cooked me stir fry and I told her what a great stir fry maker she was. We laughed at her brother and he laughed at us. She introduced me to Naruto and Charlie the Unicorn and James Blunt, and I introduced her to utter insanity. I'm lying there. She was not sane when I met her.

   As you may have gathered from my verbal diorrhea above, we have shared many memories together. In the interests of clarity, I shall attempt to write about them.

• My Fourteenth Birthday Party- Absolute insanity. We had a whole lot of balloons sitting around the living room and she decided we'd draw on them. Or I decided. Or something. Anyway. Jason couldn't be there (sadly, as I thought he was the bee's knees at the time. Not that he's not the bee's knees now, I just don't see him so often now we've both left Invercargill.) And- where was I? Majorly sidetracked. Anyway, we drew his face on a balloon, my cousin punched a lightbulb, and Genevieve was drinking ginger beer and thought that it was real beer and that she was drunk. Pretty much a recipe for disaster there. Anyway, most houses in Invercargill haven't got stairs, but ours did. This excited her somewhat, and next thing I knew, everyone was sliding down the stairs on a cardboard box, or a sleeping bag, or something. Awesome.

• Our Ridiculous Roadtrip to Dunedin- She was staying with me over the holidays. My mum decided to take us to Dunedin. Insanity ensued. We decided we were going to find my older brother, and wandered around Dunedin while I tried to remember where his flat was. We got there eventually but no one was there, and he wasn't responding to any of our texts. We were going to leave him a message on the door, but all we had on us to write with was lipstick. I had this image in my mind of poor William trying to scrub it off with a toothbrush, and realised I couldn't do that to him. We gave up. On the way back we went the long way down the coast, where there was no cellphone reception, which frustrated her immensely. She coped with this by whacking me with her cellphone. We stopped at a beach to watch the waves. My mum told us that apparantly every seventh wave is the biggest. We tried to prove this, but then realised we weren't capable of counting to seven. All in all, an awesome trip.

• Assorted Sleepovers- Crazy stuff. That is all I have to say.

• Her 16th Birthday- I'd moved from Invercargill by that point, but she had her party in Queenstown so I could join in. We went on the Earnslaw and I got the whole boat to sing Happy Birthday to her. She was utterly humiliated. Later, we all went back to her place in Invercargill and watched Naruto until we were all asleep. Good times.

• My 16th Birthday- We went to Auckland to see Panic at the Disco and stayed with my grandad, who's absolutely lovely but can't cook. At all. Uncle Andrew offered to feed us, and Gen still thinks he's amazing. The concert was awesome, not that we could see much. Panic at the Disco is one of those bands you just can't hate after seeing them live. Not that I hated them in the first place. They're pretty awesome.

• The Veronicas- Went with our friend Siobhan. It was also in Dunedin :) Great concert, great night, and Jason from before met up with us too. Awesome.

Siobhan, Gen, me and Gen's mum at The Veronicas

   Gen, you're amazing.