30th September, 2008 (6:27 pm)
The Day With the Sadness (10)
I’ve been a bit of a funk lately. Let’s call it bad gunky: it’s not being emo exactly because I’m 32 and, obviously, far too mature to permit myself to wallow around in black clothes and thick eyeliner, tearfully relating to every wallow-y song in my iTunes library. And I’ve had a good couple of weekends - fun nights out with friends, lots of dancing and alcohol, and a wonderful evening with our friends from France who stayed with us last Saturday. But being married is just not remotely fun right now, work is simultaneously getting me down and getting on my tits, and - as my Twitter will attest - I’m having to choke back the urge to just jump into the car and drive until I run out of fuel and never look back. I’m sick of being ill, sick of my girlie bits eating me from the inside out and sick of . . . well, other stuff that involves family that I can’t write about here. I’m starting to get stupid and obsessive about food again - my number one anxiety cue - and that’s never good. It feels like I’m itching all over and just can’t scratch hard enough to make it go away.
We all know that this is not a happy place to be. And we all know that I’m a flake, and I’m stupid, and this will all blow over, possibly following a cake-like treat or a perfect bar of Galaxy. But for now I’m sad, and I don’t like being sad. Although I am by nature stroppy and confrontational and kind of terrifying, I’m not naturally sad. So I don’t like feeling like this at all.
Comments: (10)
24th May, 2008 (11:31 pm)
The Day Where A Lot Can Happen (7)
A lot can happen in a week.
The only way I can properly update you and not have my fingers fall off due to excessive typing is to default to bulletpoints. Yeah - lazy, isn’t it? But it’s that or completely forget to write this stuff down, so what you going to do about it, eh? NOTHING. That’s what.
- I should be out tonight. As I type this, I should be dancing inappropriately with a man I’m not married to and lining my guts with enough gin to ensure that my body rejects it, heaving and heavy, in the early hours of the morning. I’m doing neither of these things because S beat me to the vomiting; he puked all over his bed last night, following it up with rip-roaring diarrhoea that’s lasted forty-eight hours and counting. Awesome - not least because he was in my bed last night. So at midnight I was giving S an impromptu shower (much to his apparent annoyance) to slough off the vomit and M was changing the sheets and making a moonlight trip to the garage to put the bedding in the washing machine.
- My Japanese exam was shit. As many people do that “omg I suckz at my examz!11″ psyche-out and then pass (annoying, isn’t it?) I’ll save you the uncertainity by assuring you that no, I’m not exaggerating. It was shit - as was I - and I’m gonna fail. I’d care but let’s face it - I can’t do everything I do and expect to do all of it well. Some days I struggle to take a piss I’m so busy, and if some has to give I’d rather it be my silly language hobby, as much as I love it, than lose my job, my child or my mind.
- Work’s been bedlam. Like, crazy. I didn’t see my desk for nine consecutive days and that had nothing to do with leave - I was simply out of the office and in meetings all over the fucking country. I have next week off - see the next bullet - but it’s crap timing and if we haven’t have already booked our flights I would’ve cancelled my leave and try to make a dent in my To Do list I’m that busy. Everytime I think of what I have to do my stomach cramps up with guilt and concern.
Comments: (7)
4th April, 2008 (10:45 am)
The Day With The Boy Research (7)
Because I’m a dedicated professional when it comes to my fiction (?), I’m a strong believer in research. Proper research; research that involves going places I’d not usually go to, talking to people I wouldn’t usually talk to, writing off and asking weird questions to people in professions I’ve never had, reading books I wouldn’t usually touch - fiction and non- . . . even research that sometimes doesn’t even include the internet. (Crazy stuff, eh?)
Getting into the mind of a man isn’t the easiest thing to do.
I think I’m closer to a guy’s way of thinking than a lot of women; I’m probably more man than girl with the constant profanity, copious speeding tickets, fondness of bitter and my games consoles and inability to cook, clean or iron very well. I’m hideously pessimistic and overly sarcastic, and I have a directness about me that’s sometimes rude, although it’s never - well, rarely - intended that way. I have no tolerance of the simpering female - I want to shake her until her eyes roll in their pretty made-up sockets and tell her to grow the fuck up, get some balls. I admire women who stay at home with their families because I sure as fuck couldn’t do it - there’s been a tide of hostility towards women who ’selfishly’ choose their careers over their kids but I can’t help who I am. If I stayed at home 24/7 to be a Mummy I’d lose my mind, and my son would have a perpetually depressed and occasionally psychopathic mother. On balance, I’m probably doing the right thing for him and, as I’ve said before on numerous occasions, my son will grow up knowing that parents are partners in all aspects of a marriage. He’ll know that if a woman chooses not to work then that’s okay, just as women who chose to keep working are too; in the end, it’s all about respecting our decisions as women and mothers and ensuring that we’re all informed enough and confident enough to make them in the first place. Me, I’ve never, ever not felt confident in this regard. I am who I am and I understand myself well enough to know what happened in my life to get me here. I respect who I am even if I don’t like me sometimes.
Despite this, I know that when it comes to relationships, I’m 100% female. I know because I’ve sat for hours next to a phone waiting for it to ring and checking every fifteen seconds that it’s working. I’ve done the addicted-to-1471 thing. I’ve taken hours and hours to get ready, making my eye make-up especially smoky, my hair sexily tousled and picked my underwear with pain-staking care only to have the guy tell me I look ‘nice’, walk past me and spend the night vomiting into a gutter. I’ve starved myself to drop a jeans size. I’ve binged. I’ve cried in a nightclub when a guy wouldn’t dance with me. I’ve fallen out with friends over men. I’ve looked for affirmation of who I am from men, used sex as a weapon, and my sexuality as a tool. My breasts are singularly responsible for one pay-rise I’ve received, and gotten me out of at least two speeding tickets. None of this makes me proud. In a lot of ways, I can very much still be that simpering female I fucking loathe.
So when it comes to putting across the male perspective in a relationship, it’s not as instinctive as writing as my damaged, commitment-phobic female lead. I’d use M’s guidance but since he’s possibly more of a girl than I am and useless in this regard (we’ve been together fourteen years and even now, if I sit him down to talk about our ‘feelings’ he goes pale and sweaty), he’s possibly not a reliable spokesperson for his gender. I have a male proofreader who offers hints and tips and keeps me on the path and as helpful as that is, I need more to really understand the male perspective. So while not an exact science, I immerse myself in the lads-mag culture; I subscribe to a lads’ magazine and a mens’ magazine, watch Sky Sports and Bravo (after which I often need a shower) and I eavesdrop on as many male-only conversations I as can to really nail the nuances of how they interact. I watch them when they shop. I watch them in bars. I watch them arguing with their other halves, playing with their kids . . . I take every opportunity I get and learn from every one.
I won’t insult your intelligence by professing surprise that men are often crippled by the same insecurities as we are; of course they are, it’s hardly a newsflash. We’re all human, with our own foibles and worries, fat bits and fucked-up bits. But the some of the dating articles . . . Oh. My. God. You need to see them to believe them.
Don’t get me wrong; I know Vogue and Cosmo can echo similar shit (and I don’t read that, either) but . . . please. Check out some of the comments. Is it any wonder some guys can’t get a fucking girlfriend?
Some research just isn’t worth doing. Particularly if I wish to avoid ending up with a male lead I want to drown in a bathtub.
Comments: (7)
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)
26th March, 2007 (6:35 pm)
Random Thought #75 (7)
I’ve found a username and password post-ited (cool made up verb, eh?) near my PC, and I’ve not a clue what it’s for. It’s definitely one of my mine, though. I thought maybe that it was for a credit card account, but - checked it - apparently not. I’d chuck it away, but you can guarantee that the moment that I do its purpose will reveal itself. So I won’t, and therefore never know what its true purpose is.
Ah, sweet Fate. How you mock me, you bastard.
Comments: (7)
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