Guest Post: Well, That Was Awkward

Did you know that my most awesome Maid of Honour is also a blogger? Well, she is. Meet Miss K & her adorable blog, CuppyCakes. She's kind of magical, since she can guest blog for me AND be travelling around Europe with in a coach all at the same time. I have a very multi-talented friend.

Hi everyone.

So my dear friend Aly asked me to write a guest entry for her to post while we are away. YEP. I'm her travel-mate and MOH. I'm pretty excited about both things, to be honest. But really, I'm supposed to be blogging here and I generally am pretty crap at posting on my own blog, let alone someone elses.

Plus I'm watching the finale of Australia's Next Top Model. Cringing at the whole thing because it's just a little bit awkward to watch. They just had men jumping around with studded pencil cases strapped on to their chests! I'm sure that's what it was, anyway. It's kind of a painful journey to get to what you're ultimately watching it for... just to see who wins.

But that's not the point!

I thought long and hard about what to write about for this here guest post. Aly has quite a following, you see. I'm a little scared people will read it and then secretly tell her that her MOH is a douche. Especially when you find that I have elected to write about how stupid and clumsy I am, and how all my embarrassing moments tend to be really stupid things.

I've never got stuck trying to climb through a window, though.

But I've been thinking about all my embarrassing moments lately because a predictable part of this trip that Aly and I are doing, along with Julz from Melbourne, involves standing up the front of the bus on the first day and telling people about yourself. Including an embarrassing story, or a joke.

I'm not funny. I don't have jokes. I also don't really like to stand up in front of a bus and tell people I've not even met yet stories about how stupid I am. Last time I had to do this, I elected to stand there, staring out the window, claiming that I don't ever get embarrassed. Although last time I DID forget that Memphis was actually in Tennessee, and laughed at my introducer, because I thought he was wrong. That was a bit awkward.

Lies. It was all lies. I get embarrassed constantly. Mostly at work. Because I work in a pretty rough and tumble work place. We swear a lot because we work with animals and animals don't know if you're dropping f-bombs all over the place because the damn hose has that many kinks in it that you can't get the required pressure to clean the poop off their kennel floors. I also have a tendancy, in such a high volume animal environment, to hurt myself in ways that have nothing to do with animals. Needless to say, about 80% of the stupid and embarrassing stories I have, have happened at work. In front of people.

There was one time, for example, just a few weeks ago when I was trying to do some 'Open Paw' training with the kennel doggies, teaching them manners and whatnot. The only treats we had were these enormous great biscuits. I deemed them too big to give to dogs in high quantities while training so set about breaking them apart. This was not one of my smartest ideas. I struggled to break one piece, then it gave way and instead of just breaking apart and crumbling awkwardly all over the place... it snapped and took a large chunk of my knuckle with it. Yes folks. I took a chunk out of my knuckle with a dog biscuit.

I also sliced another knuckle open on a cage in our kitten section. The cages have drop bar things that you slide up and down to open and close their cages. Sometimes they get stuck. I reefed one to get it closed one Friday afternoon last year in the middle of kitten season, and sliced my index finger knuckle open. I did not realise at the time. I felt it sting and thought that it felt a little uncomfortable... then I looked down and saw blood pouring out of my finger. I had to leave the volunteer to finish up for me, while I sprinted off in search of a first aid officer. My whole knuckle ended up swollen and bruised and nasty looking for several weeks because the slice was so severe.

We also have some fun with the hoses. You see, we have the high pressure hoses in the kennels. Because how else are we going to effectively clean 36 kennels full of dog poop unless we can scoop the solid stuff out and blast the rest of it with something high pressured?

Just the other day, I was using this hose to fill up a watering can. We use the watering cans to go through and top up the water bowls in the kennels because that is easier than shoving a hose through a wire kennel gate. Plus, you can actually control the pressure of these hoses. I thought I had the pressure under control.

I didn't.

The hose shot off the hose reel, flipped about, blasted about five dogs in the face with water, and squirted me right up the back. SO I had a really obvious line of water up the back of my uniform.

Two of my co-workers were passing through while this happened, and saw the whole thing. One dropped to the ground laughing. Pointing and laughing. The other continued on her way, but giggled at me every time she saw me for the rest of the day. I kind of awkwardly shuffled and said that I totally meant to do it because work has this thing where we aren't allowed to squirt each other with the hoses, regardless of how hot it is. Totally meant to do it. Hah Hah. Hah.

Anyway. The most awkward part of it was the British kid that works with us, who is such a lad it's not funny, heard about what I'd done and asked me about it. I turned around quickly and showed him the obvious dark patches up the back of my uniform. He asked me a further two times to turn around and show him and I did not realise that he was asking me repetitively to turn around so that he could look at my butt. He also randomly asked me if I could get my elbows to touch behind my back. I tried, then realised it was a ploy to get my boobs to stick out more! Don't ever fall for that one, girls!

In all honesty, the hoses are the most awkward things in my workplace. There's so much room for accidents. You can set the pressure wrong while filling up a water bowl and end up saturated because you turned it up too high and the damn thing squirts water all over you. They also tend to get stuck on things like gates and fences, so you can be pulling the hose from one row of kennels into another, and the easiest way of doing this is throwing it over your shoulder and lugging it through to the next section. But then if it gets stuck, you either stack it immediately or you kind of pull it, expecting it to release and end up with a hose over your shoulder, pulling so hard you're almost on the ground with your weight on the hose and the damn thing won't budge. But then it gives and you stack it in an almighty fashion and pray to sweet baby Jesus that no one saw you do it.

Sometimes they also break. And you can be happily hosing away and the next thing you know, the water's not coming from where it should be anymore, and you turn around and there's a hose flapping about like a posessed snake behind you. Incidently, when you walk down the row of kennels later on, you are faced with half a row of completely saturated, but very happy looking dogs, all standing at the front of their kennels, waiting for you to do it again.

I've also been stuck with needles, stabbed by accident with microchipping needles, and have recieved many a cat scratch that has wound up infected. One time I even got e-coli in my blood system because I had an open cut and a puppy licked it.

It's incredibly awkard going through the whole work cover thing while the injury is really embarrassing. If you work with animals and you get bitten by a rottweiler, fair enough... if you have a chunk out of your knuckle because of a biscuit.... the first aid officers laugh. I have a reputation now.. if a first aid officer sees me coming, they know it's going to be an awkward injury.

Sigh.