29th March, 2008 (5:22 pm)
The Bit About Drifting Apart (8)
I went out for dinner with some friends last night. They’re old friends; people I grew up with post-school, friends who’ve pretty much seen me at my worst - drunk and irritating, vomiting in nightclubs, stumbling into gutters . . . you get the picture. I was looking forward to catching up - we all have kids now, mostly all married, and it’s harder to accommodate friends as you get older; inevitably your free time shrinks, and what time you do have seems committed to boring adult things like decorating and cleaning and goddamn ironing. We only seem to see each other at kiddie parties, so I always grasp at the chance to sit down with them outside of a venue with climbing equipment and a day-glo interior.
It was all very lovely; calm and relaxed, lots of laughter. We caught up on love and life and all the bits inbetween. The friend to my left told us all about her Easter weekend, during which she stayed at an exclusive, cosy little vineyard, just her and her husband, and spent £275 ($550) on a ‘few’ bottles of wine. I almost choked on my steak.
Last weekend I was coding websites, playing Guitar Hero and eating my own body weight in chocolate. There’s the distinct possibility that I didn’t change out of my PJs the entire time. Any “spare” £275 I have lying around and catching dust either goes towards my credit card debt or my PS3 fund.
It was at that point that I realised that I no longer had anything in common with this woman.
Comments: (8)
27th March, 2008 (5:05 pm)
The Day With the Break (8)
I don’t mean to ignore you. Honestly. It’s just that every time I sit down to make an entry - say, complain about work, update you on our lovely Easter (my BFF came to stay with her husband and little G), or whinge about how fat my arse is getting perhaps - I read something like this and realise that I have really have very little to complain about. Nothing like some random act of insanity to make you grateful for what you have.
I’m on leave from work now for a little over a week. I so, so need it. The plan is to churn out at least another 5000 words of my novel (it’s probably three-quarters finished now), paint the downstairs cloakroom and hall and do other mad things like sleep and read and pander to my insatiable need to get five stars on all medium songs on Guitar Hero III. I also need to try to clear my waiting list and launch the site’s new look.
I live such a crazy Rock n Roll lifestyle.
But enough about me. How you doing?
Comments: (8)
12th March, 2008 (10:01 pm)
The Bit About the Truth (29)
If you could ask me any question, no holds barred and truth guaranteed, what would it be?
Comments: (29)
11th March, 2008 (6:29 pm)
The Day With the Pondering (6)
There’s a massive queue in Tesco. All the checkout lanes are packed, even the unreliable self-service ones, so S and I settle at the back of the 10 Items Or Less lane juggling our goodies - sushi for me, a spiderman lunchbag for him - as we wait it out. I’m already late for work, having been longer at the Speech Therapist with S than I’d expected, but if I don’t buy S a spiderman lunchbag after my promise that I would THE WORLD WILL IMPLODE. So I stand there muttering to myself, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other and glancing down every 3.3 seconds to check that my little man’s still there. (I have an irrational fear of S being snatched - well, he is gorgeous - so I spend the entire time clinging desperately to his hand while he huffs and puffs and rolls his eyes, like I’m the most uncoolest, rubbish mummy EVA.)
Time ticks on, and we’re still there. Only occasionally we shuffle forward. The old dear in front of me is glaring at me in that bewildering way old dears do - as though my very presence is offending her - and then just as I look up from my 3049834th glance at the chocolatey strands of my little boy’s hair, I catch an absent glimpse in the trolley of the guy in front of her.
It looks like a shopping list for one. A newspaper. A tiny, sad-looking loaf of bread. Two bananas, a pint of milk. There’s a small packet of bacon, one plain yoghurt tub and one solitary danish pastry. Then, perhaps a calculated afterthought, comes the finale - one giant bottle of cheap, supermarket-brand whiskey. It’s massive, dwarfing everything else in the trolley. From one, quick glance at the broken capillaries on his tired face I know that it’s a standard on his list, maybe even a daily, and I wonder what the hell has happened to that man that has him battling the grannies and over-wraught mothers in Tescos first thing on a Tuesday morning - maybe every morning - just for a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Comments: (6)
9th March, 2008 (5:15 pm)
The Day With The Brief Update (6)
I know. I’m rubbish.
I’m wandering around lost in an inspiration desert at present, affecting both my fictional and non-fictional writing, and I’ve been seriously ill again with my stomach and bits, which - a year on from my first surgery - is too depressing to contemplate in any great detail. I’ll post a brief update eventually, I promise - and hopefully before my return to my consultant in a few week’s time. I’m just so sick of him hinting at a hysterectomy - I’m only thirty-fucking-one. Fuck off. Leave me be - so until I can think about it without snarling and spitting and getting pissed off, it’ll be useless trying to commit it here.
Otherwise, all is okay in Vixxville - work, home, life, kids, man, friends. Japanese is still hideously hard and I’m going to fail my ass off. My writing’s stalled, but my Constant Readers - a handful of my nearest and dearest who have been carefully selected to read, review and reduce me to tears - have given better-than-I’d-anticipated feedback on the first five chapters, which surprised me in ways I can’t even tell you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still suck - A LOT - but apparently not as badly as I’d first feared. It’s all progress. And my sex scenes rocks. Heh. Awesome.
And I still love my little man with every fibre of my being. My Mother’s Day was so glorious, and he so stunningly gorgeous - “Mummy, you can watch Wrey’s Anataney AND play ‘Eetar Hero ALL DAY TODAY it’s MUTHER’S DAY!” - it was hard to fight the temptation to wrap him in flatbread and gobble him up.
Comments: (6)
