When People I Barely Know Completely Restore My Faith In Humanity

   So lately I’ve seen a lot of statuses on Facebook that… irk me somewhat. Maybe because I’m an opinionated person. But whatever. Let’s have a look at some of the culprits, shall we?

   It gets better. Here’s a status posted by a friend of mine. I’m not going to print screen it because it’s hugely long, but I’ll cut and paste. Good luck if you manage to read all of it. I’ll be honest. I only got halfway.

“Hi, Mommy.... I' m your baby. You don't know me yet, I'm only a few weeks old. You're going to find out about me soon, though, I promise. ... Let me tell you some things about me. My name is John, and I've got beautiful brown eyes and black hair. Well, I don't have it yet, but I will when I'm born. I'm going to be your only child, and you'll call me your one and only. I'm going to grow up without a daddy mostly, but we have each other. We' ll help each other, and love each other. I want to be a doctor when I grow up. You found out about me today, Mommy! You were so excited, you couldn't wait to tell everyone. All you could do all day was smile, and life was perfect. You have a beautiful smile, Mommy. It will be the first face I will see in my life, and it will be the best thing I see in my life. I know it already. Today was the day you told Daddy. You were so excited to tell him about me! ...He wasn't happy, Mommy. He kind of got angry. I don't think that you noticed, but he did. He started to talk about something called wedlock, and money, and bills, and stuff I don't think I understand yet. You were still happy, though, so it was okay. Then he did something scary, Mommy. He hit you. I could feel you fall backward , and your hands flying up to protect me . I was okay... but I was very sad for you. You were crying then, Mommy. That's a sound I don't like. It doesn't make me feel good. It made me cry, too. He said sorry after, and he hugged you again. You forgave him, Mommy, but I'm not sure if I do. It wasn't right. You say he loves you... why would he hurt you? I don't like it, Mommy. Finally, you can see me! Your stomach is a little bit bigger, and you're so proud of me ! You went out with your mommy to buy new clothes, and you were so so so happy. You sing to me, too. You have the most beautiful voice in the whole wide world. When you sing is when I' m happiest. And you talk to me, and I feel safe. So safe. You just wait and see, Mommy. When I am born I will be perfect just for you. I will make you proud, and I will love you with all of my heart. I can move my hands and feet now, Mommy. I do it because you put your hands on your belly to feel me, and I giggle. You giggle, too. I love you, Mommy. Daddy came to see you today, Mommy. I got really scared. He was acting funny and he wasn't talking right. He said he didn't want you. I don't know why, but that's what he said. And he hit you again. I got angry, Mommy. When I grow up I promise I won't let you get hurt! I promise to protect you. Daddy is bad. I don't care if ... you think that he is a good person, I think he's bad. But he hit you, and he said he didn't want us. He doesn't like me. Why doesn't he like me, Mommy? You didn't talk to me tonight, Mommy. Is everything okay? It's been three days since you saw Daddy. You haven't talked to me or touched me or anything since that. Don't you still love me, Mommy? I still love you. I think you feel sad. The only time I feel you is when you sleep. You sleep funny, kind of curled up on your side. And you hug me with your arms , and I feel safe and warm again. Why don't you do that when you're awake, any more? I'm 21 weeks old today, Mommy. Aren' t you proud of me ? We're going somewhere today, and it' s somewhere new. I' m excited. It looks like a hospital, too. I want to be a doctor when I grow up, Mommy. Did I tell you that? I hope you're as excited as I am. I can't wait. ...Mommy, I'm getting scared. Your heart is still beating, but I don't know what you are thinking. The doctor is talking to you. I think something's going to happen soon. I'm really, really, really scared, Mommy. Please tell me you love me . Then I will feel safe again. I love you! Mommy, what are they doing to me!? It hurts! Please make them stop! It feels bad! Please, Mommy, please please help me! Make them stop! Don't worry Mommy, I' m safe. I'm in heaven with the angels now. They told me what you did , and they said it's called an abortion. Why, Mommy? Why did you do it? Don' t you love me any more? Why did you get rid of me? I' m really, really, really sorry if I did something wrong, Mommy. I love you, Mommy! I love you with all of my heart. Why don't you love me? What did I do to deserve what they did to me? I want to live, Mommy! Please! It really, really hurts to see you not care about me, and not talk to me. Didn't I love you enough? Please say you'll keep me, Mommy! I want to live smile and watch the clouds and see your face and grow up and be a doctor. I don't want to be here, I want you to love me again! I' m really really really sorry if I did something wrong. I love you! I love you, Mommy. Every abortion is just… One more heart that was stopped. Two more eyes that will never see. Two more hands that will never touch. Two more legs that will never run. One more mouth that will never speak. repost If you’ re against abortion. “

   Yeah. That was hard to read. Anyway, I know some people are opposed to abortion, and that’s a whole other can of worms I don’t want to open right now. So let’s deal with the first status first.

   First of all, it’s very rare that a rape is a stereotypical “opportunist stranger” case like the one in this story. In most instances of sexual assault, the rapist is generally someone known to the victim- a relative, neighbour, family friend, partner etc. Keep in mind that spousal rape has only become recognised relatively recently. So chances are, Diane would have been more likely to have been raped at her friend’s house than walking though a dark alleyway.

   There is also the religious factor.  Again, a whole other can of worms. But the implications of this are actually rather nasty- the second girl that was attacked did not pray, and we can assume that she was not a religious person. The message here is not “God will protect you” but “God will protect you but only if you follow him.”

   Rape is a horrific thing that no one deserves to go through, regardless of their spiritual beliefs.

   This is, of course, a fictional story, written to illustrate a moral, but I’m not liking the moral that I’m getting from it. The legend is also discussed here, at snopes.com.

   Which brings me to a more positive point: Facebook statuses that restore my faith in humanity. Enter Doris, a girl at my school. Although I’ve had little to do with her, we have some mutual friends, and this came up on my Facebook newsfeed.

   Doris Holzel, you made my day. Thank you.

Mid-Year Resolutions

   Ok, so it’s almost September, but it’s never too late to make mid-year resolutions, which are kind of like New Year resolutions, but considerably more realistic.

For example:

·         New Year resolution: Eat healthier to lose more weight

·         Mid-Year resolution: Stop hanging out with my gorgeous fun friends who also turn up at my house with a 10 pack of donuts, a three litre bottle of coke, duck noodles, and a packet of Doritos because they were on special at Alpine Supermarket. Except for when seeing said friend means dancing really badly/highly inappropriately because at least that’s exercise. And that wasn’t a very fair statement, considering I’m the one who asks Hannah to turn up with all the food, so I owe her HEAPS, but if it balances it out, health wise, I’m the one who encourages her to dance, so it may just be ok, as long as I buy her fuckloads of food next time.

   Now that I’m salivating at the thought of duck noodles (don’t judge man, they’re amazing. And so affordable, 49c a packet!) I shall try to distract myself with my list of mid-year resolutions, which I can’t guarantee I’ll stick to.

·         New Year’s resolution: Get to know my birthfamily more

·         Mid-year resolution: Stop bullying David (and occasionally probably getting on William’s nerves)

   I’ve actually been doing pretty well with this New Year’s resolution, considering I managed to get back in contact with my brother who I hadn’t seen in forever, plus David came to stay a few weeks ago, and you know he had the time of his life.

It snowed.

This is us Skyping his girlfriend. If you look closely, you can see him using a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs as glasses. How he got a girlfriend, I don't know.

    But seriously, there’s now a page on Facebook, thanks to me and David’s girlfriend, called Tagging David Solin in Everything because he’s so rarely on that we like to bully him so that when he does go on, he’s got fifty notifications or so. Funnily enough he liked the page.

   I also give him shit about looking like a goat. This isn’t even mean, really. I mean, look at him.

He's even got the freaky rectangular pupils like goats have.

   But David’s actually a really awesome brother and I feel really bad that I’m mean to him so often when he’s always really nice to me and idolises me for reasons I don’t quite understand (No David, that’s sweet, but I’m really not cool at all) and freaking got me the Owl City album for my 18th birthday. (To be fair, that was September last year, and he only got it to me in April this year, but you got to give the kid some credit for trying.)

I fucking love my brother. And Owl City.

   Plus when Simon broke up with me immediately after the formal (who does that?) and I turned up at William’s doorstep with all my bags, bawling my eyes out because I was still upset, he made me pasta (he understands that pasta cures everything! Just kidding, it was the only food he had at the time I think. Which kind of makes it an even nicer thing that he did that for me. Even though I couldn’t eat it all and insisted he have at least half of mine. He didn’t need telling twice) handed me a beer, watched shitty movies with me and let me bitch about Simon for hours until I felt better. Then when I went to catch the bus home and missed it by five minutes, he let me stay at his that night, even though when he went out to work, I found a bottle of red wine in his room and shared it with my cousin who’d come to see me, and all he could do in the morning was laugh at me for managing to find alcohol he’d completely forgotten about. (God knows what it was doing there. William doesn’t even drink red wine.)

   And despite me being probably annoying and stealing his awesome ring, or at least the only one that fitted me (I wear it on my index finger, and it’s still kinda loose. It barely squeezed onto his pinky) he still talks to me. Who does this? The other coolest brother in the world, that’s who. Which is why I ought to be a bit better to him too. To be fair, I wrote him a pretty awesome birthday letter, though as he’s moved and I don’t actually know his address, I haven’t sent it yet, and he turned twenty four weeks ago. On the other hand, it has rainbows and stuff, so you know he’ll be stoked when he eventually gets it.

It may contain narwhals, too.

I told you it was awesome.

·         New Year’s resolution: Blog more

·         Mid-Year resolution: Blog at all

Yeah.  Sorry. I’ve been shit this year. I think I’ve developed a social life or something, plus there’s been school etc. The only reason I’m taking the time to make this a decent blog post is because I have a free Sunday in which to do this, and I felt bad that I hadn’t blogged in ages. Here, have this pretty apology picture to make up for it:

You're welcome.

·         New Year’s resolution: Get a boyfriend

·         Mid-Year resolution: Remain single

   Did I mention Simon broke up with me immediately after the formal? He even gave me a rose beforehand (William reckons his mum put him up to that) which I still have, mostly because it’s dead, and clearly so is our relationship. At least he never tried to convince me that “alot” was an actual word.

And this, folks, is why you never have a relationship tree, either. You will forget about it, and it will die, and it will be a really bad look and an incident you don’t feel comfortable discussing with your significant other. Which is worrying considering how important communication is in a relationship.

   Well that was an epic caption. You’re welcome. I’m going to have my third coffee today and listen to Nirvana. Fuck yeah.

Why Hannah Le Sueur is amazing

She is not holding a gun to my head and forcing me to write this, I swear.

I swear I will make an effort with my illustrations in the future. I'm hungover, give me a break.

   Anyway, Hannah is a pretty awesome person. "Oi, hurry up and tell your readers how sexy I am or I'll actually shoot you."

   In the interests of personal safety:

To be honest, it is much easier to illustrate your blog when you just write over photos in MS Paint. THAT'S NOT CHEATING.

   This blog post was just an excuse to put in some sexy pics of Hannah. I apologise. This sort of shit will never happen again.

I lied. In a more positive note, my paint skills improved over the course of this post.

Why Disney's The Lion King is the Greatest Movie Ever

   Look, I grew up on this stuff since before I can remember. Actually I can remember some things about when I first saw Lion King. I was rather young, so I cannot accurately recall what I thought of the plot, the characterisation or the fact that the actor who voices Mufasa is so perfectly cast that if anyone else had done so, I may have not even liked the movie at all (and I love Lion King) but I do remember the day I first went to see it in the cinema. Because that’s how you saw movies back in the day before you just downloaded them off the internet and watched them when you were bored.

   I went to the movie with a girl called Lasmai, who was my best friend at the time. I remember we had a popcorn fight throughout the entire advertisement section at the beginning and getting severely reprimanded by my mother. Or her mother. Or whoever’s mother was burdened with the task of looking after us while we were at the movies. I remember little else except thinking the songs were cool, and crying once (oh no, spoiler alert!) Mufasa died in the stampede. I can’t think of a single child that does not cry during that scene. I can think of a few adults who still cry when they watch that bit. (Well, William and I do. But it’s so sad.)

I'm not even taking the piss now. I still cry in that scene. He just lost his dad, fuck you Scar!

    From that moment on in my young life, I was obsessed with lions. They were my favourite animal ever, the first exhibit I had to go see when I went to the zoo, I could recite a million and one facts about lions, and for my seventh birthday, I remember one girl giving me a present wrapped in lion wrapping paper, and I cannot even remember what she gave me, I just remember the lions.

   At the same time, I developed an obsession with all things Lion King. Our neighbours had the soundtrack on cassette tape (yes, cassette tape) and we made a copy of it. Every single car trip as a child, we were damn well listening to The Lion King, when my mum took me to the video store to hire a movie, we were hiring The Lion King, whenever I played with my toys we were re-enacting the opening scene where Rafiki is presenting the young cub Simba to the kingdom. I played Rafiki, if you want to know.

   My parents even ordered a custom-made Lion King book, with my name printed in it, for Christmas one year. I was stoked.

   While I was belting out more Elton John hits than a gay Idol-contestant, I still refused to watch that one scene where Mufasa dies. I would run out of the room and yell at my mum to come and get me once the hyenas come back in to chase Simba away from the pridelands. She called me silly every time, but I still couldn’t watch it without crying. Poor Simba, all alone in the world, having to leave behind his family even though he was still so young.

   Yeah, I can see a link between The Lion King and adoption. Perhaps that is why it affected me so profoundly from such a young age. It actually came up the other weekend when I was staying at my brother’s.
   We were watching The Lion King 1.5 which is pretty much the same thing as the first one, but from Timon and Pumbaa’s point of view. (Hey, why not milk the cash cow, the original is still a quality movie.) When Simba comes to them, there’s a particular line of Timon’s:

It does sound rather daunting.

   Then suddenly, William and I had a moment of revelation- Timon and Pumbaa are gay! Our other small discovery was that Simba was pretty much adopted by them. This is actually pretty cute. I didn’t pay much attention to the rest of Lion King 1.5 as William and I were too busy making adoption jokes to pay much notice.


   PS- Just so you know- I get to make adoption jokes. It’s one of the few advantages that come with being adopted.

William is the Shiz

   I may have written about William a few times on here. Like the time he was saved by a multi-coloured elephant. But there was very little to write about when I hadn’t seen him in years.


   This changed recently.

   Let’s thank the cheap wine at the afterparty. I forget what we ended up drunk texting about (I do remember, I’d just rather not explain in excruciating detail. It may have been about a guy. He may have encouraged me to flirt with said guy. I was barely forming a coherent sentence by then though, thankfully) but at some stage, he suggested I come to see him sometime.

   A week later and I was on a bus to Dunedin.

   Look, I’m fucking stoked, ok? I’ve idolised my brother since I was old enough to figure out who he was (adoption tends to cloud the issue somewhat) and I’ve resented him for the past few years for his lack of contact with me. Didn’t make me idolise him any less, of course. It just upset me, was all.

   He hadn’t changed much. I lie. He’s a considerably more functional (and hygienic) person now. Multiple jobs tend to force you to be so. He’s still wonderfully sarcastic and somewhat opinionated, though. It reassured me.

   I know that anything I write on here is never going to do it justice, the way it felt finally seeing him again. A year ago I would have given up anything, literally anything, to see him again. The thing is, adoption leaves you with a few after effects, one of which being a fear of abandonment by family members. You rationalise that it is entirely possible that they could just never see you again, because… well. You feel abandoned. You start to think of all the ways things could have been different, and that if only you were good enough, then you would have deserved a family, and they’d welcome you back with open arms.

   I got past the fear of abandonment phase by replacing this fear with stoic acceptance that I was probably never going to see William again, and to prepare myself for a life without an older brother. It was bearable at first. I lie. I was horribly hurt by that acceptance. I’m glad David started talking to me, that helped me cope, a little. I’ve hinted somewhat at William about how hurt I was by the ordeal, but now we’re talking again, I don’t need to explain anything. He gets it. Besides, I think he had his own stuff to deal with.

   I clearly remember around October last year, Ellie and I celebrated the end of school (just before exams) by going on a road trip to Dunedin, and seeing my brother David. We were casually walking through town together at night when I saw what I knew was William, walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. I asked David if it was him- to be fair, I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, and David said he didn’t know. (David wears glasses. I don’t know if he’d appreciate me mentioning that on my blog, but as far as embarrassing stories go, there are worse ones I could tell, so he ought to be grateful!) I had every intention of yelling out to the man on the other side of the street- I know it was him- but then the “acceptance he will never talk to me again” kicked in and silenced me. I knew it was him, but I figured he wouldn’t want his little sister embarrassing him like that.

   For months afterward I hated myself for not talking to him that night.

   Recently we’ve been communicating via Facebook. Well. He commented on a few wall posts and statuses of mine, but look, after two years and me being all prepared to never hear from him again, that’s practically full-blown conversation. Anyway, I drunk texted him at some ridiculous hour before burning some pasta, and spent the weekend at his a week later.

   I had a fabulous time by the way. We watched The Lion King and The Lion King 1.5 (basically the same thing but from Timon and Pumbaa’s point of view) and caught up on what we’d missed over the past couple of years. It was awesome.

   As an aside, I know one of my friends from Summer Gathering, Rachel, has been dealing with her own similar issues with a foster brother. Just to let you know Rachel, don’t accept that you’ll never see him again, even if it’s been years. Anything, as I have learned, is possible in time.

Annabel goes to the formal, burns a kitchen

   So in the weekend, I attended the school formal. As an aside, I looked pretty darn good, too.



Damn good, indeed.

   The formal went wonderfully, everyone looked great and had fun, no one got kicked out for turning up intoxicated, etc. So, a wonderful night. Yes. But that is not really what this blog post is about.


   After the formal, there is always an official afterparty. For, I presume, legal reasons, I must constantly clarify that the school actually has nothing to do with the afterparty; just that it is organised by some of our students, and tickets are sold at school, much like the private 18th parties we have here. (Everyone pays up to $10 for an 18th ticket, and that barely covers the costs involved, and I didn’t have one for my 18th. Afterparty tickets, on the other hand, are around $40, so they can afford to do a pretty good job with it.) Again, I’d like to clarify that the school is not involved at all with the afterparty, it is a private function, and as such, minors may bring alcohol with their parents’ permission.

   Let’s also clarify, I am not a minor.

   There is, however, an alcohol limit- four RTDs (must be below a certain alcohol percentage), six beers or one bottle of wine. If you are serious about your drinking, you will realise that, short of smuggling in a hip flask between your breasts (as one girl did a previous year, and let me assure you, she got caught) you will quickly realise that the wine is probably the most alcohol you can bring. In our binge-drinking culture in New Zealand, one might expect that everyone would bring the bottle of wine: the advantages to the seasoned binger are obvious: they can be cheap as chips and are an effective way of getting trashed, if you so desire. However, a majority of our binge drinkers are like this:



Keep it classy.

   These… "drinkers" will not touch wine with a ten-foot bargepole, let alone their mouth. They are not drinking alcohol to enjoy the flavour- you can get fizzy drinks that taste the same. They are drinking with the sole intention of getting as wasted as humanly possible. Keep it classy, yo. Anyway, no matter how dedicated they claim they are to drinking, they wouldn’t be caught dead (or, more likely, passed out and surrounded by their own putrid vomit) with a bottle of wine because “ewww, wine tastes disgusting!” On the contrary, I quite enjoy a nice glass of chardonnay.


   I had no intention of getting trashed at the afterparty. Mostly because my mother had kindly offered to take me home from it when it finished at around six in the morning. (To be fair, it started at one, so that’s not half as bad as it sounds.) I just wanted to have a few drinks, dance terribly and have fun. So no, I did not bring my bottle of cabernet sauvignon just to get wasted and be tagged by people I don't like in a whole lot of photos on Facebook (as a small consolation, at least I’ll be the most sober one in the pictures, but once you’ve been drinking red wine from a bottle because no plastic cups appeared to be provided, your lips are generally stained a dark purple and you don’t look too sexy by then anyway) and had quite a bit of fun. But the night was long, so I had some more of the wine, and next thing I knew, I was getting into my mother’s car at quarter to six in the morning, giggling loudly. I was rather more intoxicated than I intended to be.

   Upon arriving home, I decided what I needed more than anything was pasta. Unfortunately, in my somewhat impaired state, cooking pasta was not something I was altogether capable of. (My drunk texts to my brother’s friend, which I discovered the next morning, showed that I clearly believed otherwise at the time.) I got a pot of water boiling , put in some spaghetti and waited for it to cook. I also realised I had been dancing for approximately ten hours, if we also include the formal into our calculations, and I wanted to lie down for a second because my feet were sore. You can already see what a disaster this was going to be.

   To cut a long story short, I was awoken some hours later by my mother who informed me that I’d fallen asleep and the kitchen was full of smoke, but that thank god there wasn’t a fire, and that she’d saved the day. My brother persuaded me afterward that microwavable drunk food could be the way to go, except for the possibility of accidentally putting metal in the microwave. I have decided that next time, I might just make a stop at Fergburger instead.

Adoption Part III

   It’s time for another serious post I think. And by serious post, I mean adoption. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.


   I went to a play on Tuesday night, called Rita and Douglas. It was a play about the somewhat steamy love affair between the artist Rita Angus and the composer and pianist Douglas Lilburn. This is all entirely irrelevant, aside from the fact that I came home in a rather thoughtful mood. I grabbed myself some cheese and flicked the telly on to see if there was anything mindless and boring so I wouldn’t have to think so much that night. (I was tired.) Sadly, the only thing I found that was worth watching was Missing Pieces.

   Don’t get me wrong. I love the show. I really do. Sometimes I think about writing in to them to see if they can find long lost members of my extended birthfamily. I’m certainly curious. And I like how the commentary and their portrayal of the stories is refreshingly uncondescending. It’s not judgemental of the situations that have led to the absence of a family member, but it’s not overly soppy and emotional either. Also, they don’t use an excess of puns, which are well over-used on television at the moment. Especially by Mark Sainsbury. But I’m biased against him, mostly due to the fact that the “stories” he presents are not things that I would consider particularly note-worthy. For example, a woman that is working a job in what he would generally consider a male domain. Like anything to do with cars, for instance. Come on Sainsbury. Get with the times please.

However, Sainsbury and his endearing nose aside (Google it if you must), Missing Pieces is a damn good show. For those of you unaware of the concept, it’s a show that presents people looking for long lost relatives that they may have not seen due to adoption, divorce, or relationship breakdowns. They record a short video message for the relative, the Missing Pieces team try and find said relative, show them the video and ask if they want to get in contact. From what I’ve gathered, the answer is generally yes. Cue scenes of an emotional reunion. Or the first time two people have met, even. It’s quite touching, without being overly so.

On Tuesday evening, a man’s father said no about having contact with his son.

He was only a teenager when he discovered that his girlfriend was pregnant. However, her parents were about to immigrate to New Zealand with her (from Britain) and although the couple tried to stay in contact through letters, the girl’s parents wanted her to have nothing to do with the boy. When he was seventeen, it seems he had every intention of doing whatever he had to get to New Zealand and help her look after this baby, but he was only seventeen. She had a son. He was adopted out.

Thirty-something years later, the son is in contact with his birthmother, and through Missing Pieces, is interested in finding his father. They did find him, yes.

Things change, over time. People change. They grow up. They grow old. The boy who dreamed of following his girlfriend to New Zealand had become a man, with a wife now. Children. A job. Decades of responsibility.

“This is why it had to be put to rest all those years ago. I can’t do it. My wife knows. But my children don’t.”

I understand that, a little. I understand how situations change. My own birthmother is proof of that. I don’t really know what she was like when I came to be- it’s not something I’m ready to understand at this stage of my life. But at the moment, she’s just- normal. She’s married and has a normal job, and three sons and two houses, and she doesn’t look like the sort of woman to have had a secret, adopted daughter. A daughter who, in a sense, was also put to rest all those years ago. Of course she hasn’t forgotten- I know she can’t have. But she just continues, I think, like someone who has pretended to have forgotten. I imagine it must be easier that way. People ask questions. They’re curious. But people are also capable of being extremely insensitive in their curiosity. Sometimes it’s easier to just avoid that completely.

When the Pieces team explained to the son about why his father was choosing not to have contact, his reaction was nothing less than dignified. He said he wasn’t putting on an act, and that he wasn’t about to go home to have a cry (“I might have a few gins though,” he explained with a gentle chuckle) but that he understood and accepted that it could have happened. He’s not like me. I wish I could be more accepting of situations. But he’s an adult- well, so am I, but I’m not an adult adult yet. I’m still a teenager, too. But what watching it has made me realise that, although I have no idea where to start, I do want to find my birthgrandfather this year. Wish me luck.

In happier news, the next story was about a woman who found her birthfather, and he was keen to stay in contact. That cheered me up a lot.