gone

Today I got a letter from a solicitor in Kirkintilloch (a town about an hour from here).

He regreted to inform me one of my authors had died.

A guy I'd spoken to not three weeks ago, though we'd never met face to face. He was on holiday in Samarkand.

It puts things in an odd perspective.

ah, the english countryside...

We spent this afternoon planning our roadtrip to Kent. For some reason we both really love looking at big old maps and shopping for rental cars and planning on what cute village we might want to have lunch in to break the 12 hour journey.

Plus, we also have this childish habit when our attention spans have dwindled.

One minute we'll be looking at the map discussing the most direct A roads, and the next, we spot some place with a silly name and we're off on an infantile gigggling spree to find the most ridiculous towns and hamlets imaginable.


Kibblesworth, Fockerby, Wombwell, St. Quivox, and Zeal Monachorum are honorable entries, but today's clear front winner:

Horton-cum-Studley, in oxfordshire, near Wormingstall and Oddington.

epiphany

I had a revelation while brushing my teeth the other morning.

Liam is the only person I have had sex with more than once. Is this because:

a, I have/had committment issues
b, I have catholic guilt problems
c, I am/was a ruddy whore
d, my vag has a Cinderella complex

I like D best.



I also like the fact I looked bloody amazing at the press conference yesterday, made all the major press- and the next morning proceeded to fall down a huge flight of stairs, sprain my foot, bleed and cry in front of burly construction men. My gumpish natural grace is reminding me I have not eshewed my roots entirely. At least it's better than the other way around I guess.

shopping

It is crunch time. I have just tried on almost every dress in my wardrobe. I have made outfits, made lists and now armed, I am ready to shop.

and there is much to be done.

the target: have something spectacular, stunning and appropriate to all my summer functions. planned encounters include:

Monday 9 June - Directors Private Preview of the Festival Programme - champagne reception for major donors

Thursday 12 June - Programme Launch - morning press conference, The Playfair Library

Tuesday 1 July - Queens Garden Party - high tea with royalty, Holyrood Palace

Saturday 5 July - Iain & Janes Wedding - guest

Saturday 9 August - Book Festival opening party - evening soiree

Friday 19 September - Kate & Jimmy's rehersal dinner - bbq?

Saturday 20 September - Kate & Jimmy's wedding - maid of honour, Meadowbrook Hall

Saturday 25 October - Carol & Heidi's civil partnership & Leeds Castle reception

Friday 31 October - Anika & Justin's Rehersal Dinner - bowling?

Saturday 1 November - Anika & Justin's black tie wedding - Chicago Wyndham, greeter


That 5 month run includes 10 major semi-formal functions. My mostly retro secretary wardobe does not pack enough ammunition for this kind of campaign. And my second in command, god love him, thinks I look good in everything. There is only one solution. Guerilla tactics. And a credit card.

(I act like this is a military operation because I treat all retail outlets as hostile territory.)

So, with a little finessing of the god saving little black dress, little white dress and a few lucky purchases all I need now is:
- a gorgeous dress ( this one I think)
- navy satin peep toe shoes ( like these?)
- a great handbag (this? or this?)
- an chunky onyx or black pearl necklace
- a strapless bra
- a hat i can meet the queen in
- brown heels (I already own these, but they are a little work-ish, if very sexy on)
- an amazing jacket/wrap (possibly in fuscia or copper)

And that is all. Which is good, because the two flights to america, two trips to kent, a chicago hotel, 2 rental cars, 4 wedding presents and lord knows what else means my budget is fucking ridiculous.

Am I good or what?

culinary creations

I keep thinking I should get a hobby. Take a class, join the gym, do something social and stimulating. But the thing is, I already have an entertaining preoccupation. I am absolutely obsessed with food.

Which is odd, considering i spent the first 23 years of my life being the pickiest eater in the world (no vegatbles, no condiments, no seafood, no sauce of any kind but pizza, no food can touch each other, no fruit but apples and grapes, and pretty much anything with vibrant colours is suspect.) I ate a lot of chicken and mashed potatoes, and sometimes ramen noodles.

But now, I am a gastronomic fiend. I know all the best menus in town, I concoct elaborate three course dinners, I peruse cookbooks in my spare time, and actually tinker with reciepes to improve them. It's becoming a problem.

Part of it is the perks of my psuedo-glamourous job is being wined and dined in rooftop gardens, burnt out castles and chic bistros.

Part of it is a combonation of my health problems and my legacy as green champion mean I am more concious of my ingridients so I am sourcing all local, organic produce to create amazing options.

Part of it is I just grew out a lot of my self inflicted barriers and complexes when i jumped ship and started this new life.

Now, I could wax poetic about my current top five favourite recipies I make brilliantly:

- roasted sweet potato, rocket, & walnut salad with garlic-lemon chicken
- sweet red peppers stuffed with puy lentils and mozzerlla
- homemade strawberry shortcake
- baked pumpkin cheesecake
- homemade leek and sweet potato soup with chili cheese croutons.


or my five favourite edinburgh foods:
- edmame beans sauteed in soy sauce & ginger with a hint of chili
- italian flat bread with carmalised balsalmic reduction
- a top sirloin with rocket on multrees walk
- pechkam's platter of grilled halloumi, pineapple, courgette and breads with a selection of dips: houmous, red pesto, green pesto and peanut satay
- spinach, artichoke and chili chicken dip

But i am really very excited about my vegtable box - my weekly delivery of local produice straight to my door from the nice farmers down the road of this seasons harvest. My first shipment included:
-3 pears
-3 apples
-3 bananas (they have a greenhouse)
-2 kiwis
-2 onions
-1 sweet pepper
-6 carrots
-6 fat cup chestnut mushrooms
-1 giant head of purplish spinachy lettuce
-2 ears of corn on the cob
-and one massive bundle of rhubarb.

I am so excited. I have never had rhubarb. So I have supplimented this list with a jaunt to the local farmers market for meat, bread and the rest of the veg so tonight is going to be a burger feast (with sauteed mushrooms and corn on the cob) followed by rhubarb and raspberry crisp with toasted pecans. it's fucking amazing.

turning point

life just seems better when there is sunshine.

and also, because I have instigated a selfish experiement. And no, I am not stealing candy from babies or demanding pool-side ice cream in a crystal goblet. I'm just trying harder to do things my way.

The benefits of this include:
- I am getting an assistant at the office. (Squeaky wheels and all that.)
- I am feeling better because i am eating more meat (instead of making everything vegetarian for Liam, we are finding ways for me to get my much needed iron when my blood count is haywire without making him eat it too.)
- I took a long weekend just because I needed one, not because there was a family function to attend or an event I was expeted at, and get to do things like go to the movies on a monday afternoon.
- I am wearing what I want and feeling happier because sometimes polka dot pinafore dresses need thick tights with them. Just because it's cold doesn't mean I have to dress down.
- I do my non-computer work outside in the garden. the vitamin e is helping my skin while the freckles are helping my sprits, and I'm not getting any less work done- possibly more as i find office chairs uncomfortable.
- I do the grocery shopping. Which sounds silly, but Liam's on a budget crunch, so if I want to splurge on baking 3 dozen cookies and having fresh aparagus for dinner, I can if the spending is mine and no one is put upon.
- I make sure I read for half an hour. every day. it's good for the soul.

and also, now i am being more proactive and feeling more alive, my long lost libido is back. I cannot tell you how disturbing it was to not want sex for the last month. I was starting to wonder if I had been taken over by aliens. Or if this illness was actually eating my sanity and every socio-chemical reaction my hormones obligingly provided on a continual basis for the last decade. it was fucking disturbing, but I am back in action and feeling oh so much better.

And while I may still need an ultrasound, and I may still have weirdly fluxuating body weight and mood swings, I feel more in control. I feel more like me, and that is priceless.

today:

today I...

I had originally intenteded to write a list to encapsulate my day for the edifciation of my readers and review and digest what has happened. Like I so rarely do now, I was intending to be pithy and clever and reinvigorate my sense of self with silly nothings. But sadly, I'm coming up blank. Let's try again.

Today:

Today I "woke up" for the third day in a row without really sleeping. (I am actually starting to have daymare type situations. My inner psyche is having a field day)
Today I decided which dress I am wearing to my sisters wedding. (it's fucking ace)
Today I had liam's homemade risotto for lunch (yum chessy asparagus & broccoli goodness)
Today I wore my favourite j crew stripey scarf.
Today I started a very very good book. (the mysterious benedict society - a kids book of course)
Today I found out I wasn't invited to a party I usually get invited to every year.
Today I finished everything on my list of things to do.
Today I decided to take a long weekend and recover my sanity. (it will hopefully be filled with snack treats and naps)

No wonder I am feeling slightly dissatisfied. That is a really fucking mundane list. I am some Zeroes version of Ally McBeal or some other day-job having psycho-babble sitcom woman. It's a little sad. I have not concquered mountains or empires or discovered lost civilizations or invented a new type of flan. I have no been inspired or explored something or experimented beyond my boundaries. I have, in all honesty, done nothing of import and feel slightly smaller for it.

But maybe that's just the never ending grayness sweeping the city starting to seep into my soul. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

a rather unexpected detour

I am feeling better. Not actually because anything has changed, but you can only be angry and petulant and not doing anything about it for so long. It gets really boring.

I went back to the doctor Friday. I brought my list of everything that seemed weird or felt wrong. I was brave enough to read it out and not miss anything and just trust the doctors.

She still thinks it's just stress induced ickiness, but after a month it's time to look at other options. I've been referred to the hospital for a stomach ultrasound and had to send a sample to the lab.

You thought peeing in a cup was hard - try using a tiny plastic shovel to fill a testtube with your own faeces. The medical profession delights in demeaning us all I am sure. They better have a fucking good explanation at the other end, that's all I 'm saying.

In other news, it is springtime. I spend my afternoons in the office garden sifting though paperwork and generally trying to take it easy.

Okay, we interrupt this regualrly scehduled update:

I am watching The Secret Lives of Mammals (I can't get enough nature shows) and have just witnessed two hedgehogs doing a mating dance. It is truly weird and somehow really cute.

I love hedgehogs. I don't know if it is coincidence or inspiration that the beanie baby that has my birthday (yes I still know this, I don't know why) is a hedgehog. I think I still have one somewhere from my aunt karen.

I have to go - there is an armoured armadillo/echindna like thing. A pangloin apparantly.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=Z1&q=pangolin&um=1&ie=UTF-8

Freakin sweet.

lost

I am angry. So angry.

For days, even weeks I haven't really registered how upset I am. Flipant, coarse, cruel even.

I tell myself I am stressed, or frustrated, or tired, or emotional, hormonal, disappointed and scared. But really, I am just completely fed up and crabby all the time.

It is truly horrible and I am sorry for anyone who has to be around me.

And I am terrified, because I don't know how to stop, and that part of me doesn't want to. I have no idea what I might destroy if I keep being this ugly version of myself- and part of me doesn't care. Like those times you eat a whole tube of pringles or don't put on sunblock just because you can't be bothered, half knowing you'll be sick and regret it all later.

Sometimes I don't know where I've gone. And the worst part is, I am not sure I want to be found.

a rather disgusting confession

So I have this theory; there are some things everyone just assumes you know. That through some cultural osmosis we all glean an infinite amount of knowledge.

And I don't mean nebulous things like how to comfort the bereaved or how to tell if someone's laughter is from euphoria or desperation. Small things, simple things. Which I guess is why they are so easily the unmentioned.

My best example of this was vaccuuming as a child. My mom would yell and yell and yell at me for vaccuuming badly as a kid. That I didn't bother, that I wasn't paying attention, that I should try harder. But I wasn't being negligent, I just didn't understand. I saw her vaccuum, we both assumed I knew how to do it. But i thought it meant push the big loud machine around over every inch of the carpet. I didn't realise it meant make sure the carpet was clean. (kids never think to ask the all important why until it's apparent whatever it was didn't get done.)

Well, anyway, it's happened again.

In all my illness, and all my rage at being in pain, unfixed and feeling desperately alone in my misunderstood body and raging hormones, I've begun doing some very minor research. Looking at options, cataloging symptoms. And I spent a good chunk of time this morning on webMD with their oustanding gynocological 'symptom checker'.

Sample:
Do you have abdominal pain? (click yes button if yes), and so on.

Well, it turns out I didn't know I have constantly, for as long as I can remember, always always always had a yeast infection. In fact, pretty much if I am not bleeding, I am growing a kins-creature of mushrooms in my nether regions.

Somewhere in 7th grade I was told (probably in an awkward car conversation with my mom) every woman's body goes in cycles and your discharge and everything changes, you just have to get used to your own pattern.

I assumed the fact it's weird and icky, and kind of hurts for the two weeks between periods was just kind of how it went. Itchy and dry was the opposite of wet anyway, which made sense I guess. (In hindsight, I could perhaps have reexamined this theory somewhere after 13, instead of taking it as law, which is a different semi-fatal flaw for another time.)

But jesus, how did no one ever tell me? How could I not have known this? How did no one in charge ever check? How have the doctors never asked if I had a propensity to these things?

Nonetheless, it is yet another piece in the weird, hormonal puzzle of my existence which I am taking great comfort in. Is that twisted or what?

something borrowed, something blue...

So, perhaps it's this time of year, or the fact I'm having a tough time of it, but I have been more than a little retrospective lately. Feeling nostalgic, missing people I've not thought of in months or even years. Suddenly remembering random occurrences and long lost feelings I'd half-forgotten I ever had.

like i'd cryogenically frozen moments in time for later use, and now they are all de-ziploc'ed and it is simultaneously awesome, and totally trying my patience.

And while a certain nostalgic charm often graces my empty thoughts, I have never before felt guilty or shy.

I have written previously on the value of falling for someone you already know and like and the pitfalls of finding yourself lost inbetween friend and girlfriend, feeling undervalued in both.

This habit of mate/crush has been a mainstay of my social existence, mostly because I'm not sure I know any other way to do it - a point i hope to rectify in my as-yet-un-written bible of adolescence and all the other shit no one ever explained properly.

And now, feeling nostalgic and reminiscent, my tendency to relive old memories and call old friends out of the blue, has a slightly more loaded context. Or at least in my head it does.

Of course I can call, reconnect and event reacquaint myself with old friends when ever I like, whether single or committed. Only an idiot would think I'd forsaken all my past lives for this one.

But to randomly email, or run into an old pseudo-crush is infinitely weird somehow. If it was actually an ex, it would be completely normal, and completely over. But when nothing ever really happened (and i can't even remember now if I actually wanted it to), it means I don't really know what protocol to follow.

Here is the kind of internal monologue that can run through my head:
Can I still banter? Is that allowed? Is that a mixed signal? Am I capable of bantering without flirting? Because I really don't want to flirt. I really don't want to make this weird. Or confusing. God I hope he doesn't think I'm flirting. But then, if I am markedly unlike my old self, that must be weird too. Do I seem stand offish? Because I am really glad this happened. I just don't want it to be weird. I am being so weird. I am ruining it. I wish I could just say 'sorry i don't know how to be friends with you because secretly, all those other times, I was just trying to impress you/make out/get laid. And i don't want that anymore (sorry), but I still think you'e a cool guy. Do you think we could work this out somehow? sorry I'm such an idiot."

I suddenly feel like i'm in high school all over again. Every hair flick and eye movement is supposed to mean something, but i haven't the faintest clue what, and I am paralyzed I'll accidentally convey something I didn't mean.

I'm mostly blowing it out of proportion. But i guess my history and habits are on my mind, and its' the one thing Liam and I never talk about. And half of me doesn't know how to bring it up, and half of me doesn't know what to say if I did. And either way, I'm not sure he wants to hear all of it. (the part where I have slept with people I still count among my friends, some we've even had over. the part where I have done stupidly stupid things and hurt myself. the part where i don't know how to have male friends, and i miss it, and i don't know what to do with myself.) Which is just horrible of me. Horrible and selfish.

It is a coincidence we're exactly on the two year mark? Have I always been this scared and only now just realised?

I am such an idiot. I think it's time I figured some shit out.

Stalking as an Art

So I completely forgot I had stat tracker. Mostly because I hit my free limit about 6 months ago and it stopped logging visits so I could no longer be the slightest bit committed to the geographical distance represented in my readership or excited by the pie chart of how long my average visitor stays with me.

So, the honeymoon period was over, and I continued writing to no one at all, unaware anyone was reading.

But I forgot I sneakily started a new account for the same blog - which I have only just rediscovered (and gladly, now it just erases old data with new instead of dying when i hit my limit). And let me tell you, exciting ridculousness abounds.

On 15 April at 00:38:17 someone on a Windows XP in Erlanger Kentucky (I could give the IP address, but that's just some fucked up CIA shit) googled 'cute nyphette' and clicked on one of my entries - probably thinking it was exciting porn. How disappointing.

To be fair, The Nymphette Cycle and pretty much my life circa late 05 and early 06 was like a shady, sad soft core comic-tragedy. But I don't think he (of she, let's not be sexist) was shopping for recounts of STI testing and the after math.

Perhaps I have invented a new genre of anti-porn gritty realism? I am the Fellini of blogging.

Perhaps this stat counting is going to my head after all.

For reference, other google searches where you can find me include:

drill down 5 10.64% scottish clichés
drill down 3 6.38% scottish cliches
drill down 2 4.26% the girls guide to 21st century sex
drill down 2 4.26% cliches of scottish
drill down 2 4.26% possibility=poetry
drill down 2 4.26% orlakiely.co.uk
drill down 2 4.26% nymphette
drill down 1 2.13% what is the british equivalent to americana
drill down 1 2.13% swaying with nausea
drill down 1 2.13% fanatacist
drill down 1 2.13% exhausted not tired
drill down 1 2.13% my heart´s highlands
drill down 1 2.13% cliches about scottish
drill down 1 2.13% marks and spencer christmas bells
drill down 1 2.13% having my period for a month
drill down 1 2.13% meaning for mention not
drill down 1 2.13% i have been on my period for a month
drill down 1 2.13% i've been on my period for a month
drill down 1 2.13% my heart's in the highlands v
drill down 1 2.13% voicemail of death
drill down 1 2.13% nymphette cute
drill down 1 2.13% the couple of the girls guide to 21st century
drill down 1 2.13% tea-duffy
drill down 1 2.13% girls guide to 21st century sex blogspot
drill down 1 2.13% power ballads list
drill down 1 2.13% girls guide to 21st century sex porn s
drill down 1 2.13% kiely tipping velvet
drill down 1 2.13% leather & lace sex
drill down 1 2.13% http://thevisforvixen.blogspot.com/
drill down 1 2.13% world forgotten children of the 80's
drill down 1 2.13% office politics resolved
drill down 1 2.13% mgd putter
drill down 1 2.13% orlakiely.co.uk.
drill down 1 2.13% the script to my heart's in the highlands
drill down 1 2.13% triva fun
drill down 1 2.13% scots cliches
47 100.00%

Voicemail of death is my favourite.

Perhaps the google searches which yield your blog are some kind of freak personality litmus test. a ouija board of virtual existence.

I could play like this all day, but my head is ballooning and my gluten-wheat-dairy free life means I will yet a gain trek to the kitchen hoping yummy snacks I can eat will have magically been invented and hidden behind the stale oatcakes.

bibliographying

LibraryThing meme

In trolling my beloved and neglected Pajiba and their newish books listings, I discovered a link to a bookblog (and yet another promising review of the illusive sherman alexei book for the annals of YA fiction.)

Anyway, I stumbled upon this meme based the top 106 books tagged as “unread” on LibraryThing. I’ve used her categories to compare my readingness - and added 'unowned and unfinished' - because let's face it, people and libraries can lend us shit sometimes.



UNOWNED AND UNREAD
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
The Kor'an by Anonymous
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Ulysses by James Joyce
Underworld by Don DeLillo
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dubliners by James Joyce
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

a standard list of books one ought to have read i guess. equal parts books I have no interest in and books I've already read something by that author and was not inspired to follow on with their opi any longer. though I still think Cryptonomicon one of the best book titles ever. Oh, and Yann Martel, who I had dinner with once and he was lovely - does that count for anything?



UNOWNED AND UNFINISHED
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Odyssey by Homer
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift



OWNED BUT UNREAD
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I must confess, some of these are my beautiful Victorian leather bounds which are more for decoration and love of the book as object than any literary merit.



OWNED AND UNFINISHED

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - left at my parents house!
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Iliad by Homer -a terrible translation, I had to give up - a problem I really should rectify



OWNED AND READ
Emma by Jane Austen
Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


my high school nerdism served me well here


READ BUT UNOWNED
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

I still have Sonja's Kavalier and Clay - oops.


In sum: I miss grown up books.

sundries

The Good(ish) News:
- I have a rather exhorbitant Amazon gift voucher from my christmas present that I haven't the faintest clue what to do with. I am open to suggstions. The front runners right now are an awesome dustbuster or a Wii.

- I had the honour of accepting the inaugeral 'Green Giant of the Month' award at the office this week. A device implimented to encourage all of us to be active in our environmental policies and decision making. Perhaps I am a latent hippy after all. I should really get a picture though - it's awesome. A can of green giant sweet corn (nibbles original! it tells me) mounted on a wooden base branded with my new title like a boy scout would have learned to do with an electric drill. It's fucking amazing.

- It was nice enough today I had lunch in the park and treated myself to a waffle cone as I watched the water spray in our gaudy new-classical 10m tall fountain. It was very cheerful.

- We are making a concerted effort at getting a social life. Like going to things and being nice to people and returning phone calls. So far we have hosted and been invited to two dinner parties and no one threw up or yelled at us AND we've been invited back. Other than my niggling qualms we are totally couply yuppie freaks, it's quite nice. Liam even has a play date with the guys from said couples - they are playing retarded 'grown-up' boardgames. It's fucking adorable. And a bit sad. Maybe this should have gone in the bad(ish) section below.

- My bridesmaids dresses came. Long story short - JCrew hates Britain, so I had to order several, ship them to my dad's secretary, have her FedEx them here so now I can have a fashion show of scrutiny and immediately return the rejected. The fabrics are not as luscious as I imagined on some of them, but hopefully my dressing room weekend will yield results. More anon.


The Bad(ish) News:
- Ms. Kesler is retiring. After like 100 million years as the guru of early strings. They are having a whole banquet and concert and like charity fundraiser or something. It's kind of really sweet, and although I thought for many years she was out to kill me (or at least rip my metaphorical balls off and humiliate me in front of the semi-cute cellists and bass players), she was actually a really nice lady who dedicated her life to something inspiring and really quite sentimental.

So, I made a donation to the trust fund in her name that will continue to give smallish scholarships to mediocre child musicians to raise their self esteem and keep Blue Lake Fine Arts camp in business. (And lucky for me, the dollar is worth nothing, so my nominal donation looks like a whopper.). I feel like a magic fairy - 'you shall go to band camp!'.

- I am still ill. The medication they give me actually makes it worse. It's fucking ridiculous. And Liam, trying to be helpful and supportive, is insisting we home diagnose by altering my diet. I am current living without dairy (except that ice cream cone at lunch. whoops.). It is shit.

And that my friends, is all. Isn't my life thrilling?

rules and observations for the edification of medical professionals

1, Shouting your patients name down a 50 yard hallway from your office door makes them feel neither welcome or cared for

2, Holding the door until they arrive at your beckon call would also be nice

3, Do not open with 'What's wrong with you?"

4, listen.

5, believe your patient is a person - not a melodramatic hypochondriac looking to get off on wasting your time (your eyes give it away)

6, try and act concerned or supportive - at the very least make some effort at responding to their qualms

7, make more than a cursory effort at prodding the abdomen. it would also help that if indeed you ask a patient 'tell me if this hurts', it does, and they do, remember they deserve some response, explanation or comfort at this confirmation. it is disheartening to be ignored - especially when something is amiss

8, listen.

9, do not palm off all awkward patients to the nurse for 'blood tests' we all know don't tell you a damn thing other than how your blood is.

10, do not seize upon the first symptom and refuse any other possibility, ignore any enquiriy for an explanation and deny further evidence to the contrary

11, If you've got too much shit on your mind to adequately serve your patients, get another job you cunt.

I think I can safely say having been on my period for 3 weeks with a high level of abdominal pain and diziness, including nausea, headaches and muscle pain, this is not a mild case of stress induced constipation you fucking retard.



I hate the NHS - the day I get knocked up we are jetting it to america.

I am not myself. Or I am and I don't like it. Or maybe I am just lost.

But it really really blows.

I know I always dreamed of a job I could truly commit myself to - a thing I genuinely believed could change lives and make the world a better place and I could sit on my throne of aloof, producerly power and bask in the unwitting appreciation and anonymous, inherent goodness of the world. I could be separate, unscathed, safe and yet intricately linked and responsible for the inspirational and affirming moments that make life worth living. I was anonymously valued and instrumental to great things.

I always hoped more than anything I would have a partner. Someone who needed me desperately, loved me completely and was charmed by my faults and foibles. That took joy in carpe diems and loved small surprises. That shared my spontaneous passions and useless, strict criteria. That humoured my silliness and selfdoubt in equal measure. That cared for me and helped me be a better self as much as i showed them their unrecognised greatness.

Now, I have these things.

I am overjoyed. And overwhelmed. And disappointed.

And I really don't mean to sound pretentious, because it was a total accident, and in someways a total failure (do you remember the agony of liam back in the day?or all the idiots and pseudo-loves and kindred spiris that came before? the years of wallowing and fears about ever having work I enjoyed? the lack of faith in anything better ever coming along?)

But I now have a job and a partner than fits these descriptions. The things I spent my whole life wanting, reassuring myself if only I could get them, things would turn out fine.

The problem is, it isn't enough. Or I was wrong.

Or perhaps more aptly, I didn't take into account a career and a relationship do not make a life.

Somewhere in the inbetween while I was trying to transition into the kind of person that gets up at 8 every day and calls my mother on sunday and arranges a box at the theatre as a special weekend trip I forgot to be human. to be me. to be whole.

like i thought acting out this life could be my life. but it is so souless. so shallow.

i am coming to realise nothing can complete me. or save me. or occupy my time until i can look back satisfied on a lifetime of productivity and value.

it just doesn't fucking work like that.

and now i don't know what to do.

it's like that first realisation that no matter how good i was at school - how great i was at taking tests and being on time and feeding back the answers i knew they wanted to hear - someday it wouldn't work like that i was wholly unprepared for any other type of activity and it was just tough luck no one taught me how to do anything other than be a good student. or maybe it was my fault i never figured it out - but either way, one day I was great at my job- and the next day my studentship was pink-slipped and I was rendered obsolete. Groomed for a purpose no one actually needed.

And if I was weaker, or stronger, or someone else, or even my younger self, I'd scrap everything. I'd get a do-over and tell myself it'll all be okay, because I can make the change i want to be, and i can build the life I want to live and i can find it, whatever it is, and be free.

But I don't want to jump ship. I don't need to run away to find myself.

I like it here. I love him. And I am unwilling to sacrifice that. Perhaps this is growth, it feels like something bigger than selfish wanderings, but it also feels like a burden, a tie and weight tying me down and holding me back.

I don't know how to edit what i have into what I want - up until now, I've always just traded in and started over. It's so much easier when you have nothing to lose.

For the first time, the last thing I want is a clean slate - but I don't have any other methods of modification.

And admitting change is no small thing, and extremely volitile.

Will we still be us, if I want us to be different? Can I keep this job and be who I want to be? If I can't, can I still live in this town, just drifting? Do i still want to? Where will I go? If I go back to America, will he give up everything to come with me? Can I ask that? do I want to? Is that fair? Will he resent it? Will my dedication to my job destroy my commitment to everything else? Can I do a job that asks so much of my heart and soul knowing I don't want to give in completely anymore? Is there a future when I am the best in the country at what I do, and i don't want to do it anymore? Can I really say something so pompous? Does it even matter?

Will it ever be ok?

And I just don't know.

Sometimes I think so, but I am unsure if it's just persuasion and self-denial disguised as comfort and survival tactics, or worse - I am so wrapped up in it temporarily, I've forgotten quite how bad it is, and merry keep tugging away. And someday, far from now, I'll see the horizon, my repulsion will dawn again and in the meantime I will have lost or destroyed everything in the blindness between.

Sometimes I am hopeless.

news

life just happens sometimes when you are not looking.

Baby Gulliver is being born today. I haven't spoken to the parents, my colleagues, since they went to hospital, but just the thought of it makes me kind of glow.

It is March. The programme i said I was waffling with in October is still waffling. And I have exactly 7 days to finish it. Done, written, ready to print, no one moving, nothing changing, set in stone for August. fuck me.

My deadline is so strict because I am off another corporate jaunt to Italy the 31st - but this time renting a flat so I have some privacy, and spending my evenings with friends, which should make the whole thing infinately less nervy.

And the big news (even though it's not mine):

Anika is getting married.

She and Justin set a date, she's got a whopper of a square cut diamond, and even though they are paying themselves and I think her parents are still disowning her, I couldn't be happier for them.

So put it in your diary Grady's - Nov 1 in the Chicago Windham.

So that's

July: Iain & Jane (Liam's dad)
August: Festival
September: Kate & Jimmy
October: Carol & Heidi (Liam's mum)
November: Anika & Justin
December: Home for Christmas?

Can I possibly manage a state-side flight 3 times this fall? Jesus. or could I have more weddings to go to? Being a twenty something is fucking weird.

just another reason my sister is infinately cooler than me. or, why i will never been a government agent.

NASA's Moon Survival Challenge

Here are 5 important things you should know:

1, I have shorn my ShieldMaiden of Rohan locks. I hope some kid with leukemia who gets a wig of 12 inches of my hair will be ecstatic.

2, I am regressing into a love of shit sci-fi movies

3, My boyfriend loves both The Philadelphia Story and now, Romancing the Stone. If he wasn't a keeper before, his sharing my ironic love of Michael Douglas dancing in white pants seals the deal.

4, I am going to Italy at the end of March.

5, I am considering getting a mortgage. Is that sad?

I haven't been writing.

Not just here. But at all. Not journals, not letters, not emails, not postcards, not scathing diatribes on scraps of office stationary, not even badly constructed beginnings of novels or names for my non-existent band. Not anything.

I am bereft of words.

Life is just not writeable somehow. Which is ironic, considering my career.

But it isn't. It's too much. And not enough. And doesn't fit. And promises and takes and starves and grows.

See? Even I know how retarded I sound. It just isn't a literal kind of thing. It's like the epicness of opera but the quietude of an indy Cannes flick. It's everything and nothing and a sara-centred world devoid of a central character.

Perhaps I should take up dance. Maybe then it would all make sense.