Oh glorious treacle of tasks and negativity. Why do you impede me so when I want nothing more than to run away? Thrashing as I am through even the shallows, barely able to raise my thoughts or my limbs. A never ending fatigue from fruitless fury. A ceaseless reminder of ruthless rejection. 4 feet deep and I’m drowning in my own demise. Breathing in waves of molasses-like fears and expectations. Weighing me down though my body is lighter. Pulling me back through the steps I have taken. This is life, this is the state I have chosen. This is so much more weight than I can bear on my mind. This is not enough strength to get me through to the garden. It’s cold and alone here.
Still sticky with fever, or tangled in doubts. Waves just come dragging me over the ocean to another such desolate spot. No closer nor farther than any before from where I know I should be.
Monthly Archives: September 2013
Birthday things that came in twos and other adventures
Two..
Dog cards
Cat cards
Butterfly cards
Bike spoke lights
Books
Tshirts
Bags
Sweets
31 wasn’t a bad birthday. Midnight struck as my train pulled into Cambridge after an evening in London with an old school friend. We kept on chin wagging away until 2am came around and exhaustion started to set in. Lunch from marks and spencers, afternoon nap (not really optional just kind of passed out on the sofa) then just as I was feeling kinda pathetic and whingey SO convinced me to dress up and go out for dinner in town. Delicious watermelon juice and disappointing noodles later we went for some evening patisserie gazing and bought some fancy desserts and pootled home for a quiet evening.
Oh enthusiasm and positivity, how you fail me now that I attempt to continue writing. Let me break for another post. This one shall not be sullied by these most persistent waves of sadness.
Protected: Tickling the fettered ankle
Some sentences, accompanied by other sentences
Uh-oh.
The boiler is being silly and throwing up error codes…SO is telling me that it’s going to blow up and that if it does I wont be insured because I haven’t had the annual service done yet.
After last nights vivid and disturbingly unsettling dreams, those particular thoughts were thoroughly unwelcome.
Do you ever wonder, if you lost all external references, how long it would take for you to change? For example, if you only heard the sound of your own voice, how long would it take until the language you spoke to become severely deviated if not incomprehensible to your former self? How would you feel about your body if you had nothing to compare it to?
Im such a coward. I need to switch pills but I’m afraid of new and unpleasant side effects. I know I’m not allergic because I had to take that pill before for a different reason but the dose was different and it was years ago and now I’m scared. So instead of taking up my challenge to switch today, I stayed with the old one but, I did eat some goats cheese and pesto pasta (with lactase tablets) as an experiment. If the outcome is good, all is well. If the outcome is bad, nighmares and fretting over the boiler might not be the only things keeping me awake!
Today I was asked by the director of our unit if I was graduating soon. Erm, no….I’m a postdoc….im permanent staff…He was so embarrassed, I felt kinda sorry for him, then pointed out for future reference, to remember that the one with the red hair is a postdoc, and maybe we should instigate a hair colour-coding initiative for ease of identification!
I have this list of things I keep forgetting to do:
Pay phone bill
Book boiler service
Switch phone provider
Arrange for shower to be fixed
(SO is whinging about all of the above and quite frankly, I agree it’s very shoddy of me)
Also check when appointments and meetings are planned( one caught me by surprise today),
Book and Take bike for a service
I wonder how many I can tick off tomorrow….
not so sweet dreams
Do you have bad dreams? nightmares?
well as a general rule, I do not.
Last night was an exception though. I woke at 5AM afte,r round one of disturbing dreams. In said dream SO decided to sell or swap his car, but rather than go through a dealer, he was selling privately – the phone conversations had sounded a bit odd, but we drove the car over to one prospective buyer + seller’s house only to find that it looked delapilated with three brad new cars on the driveway. SO tentatively knocked on the door and when there was no answer we retreated, hoping we could get the hell out of that creepy place – sadly the house was indeed occupied and we were waved and shouted at by a short, elderly japanese man. This all seemed a bit weird, so when the guy said his f=driving might not be so good because he was sick – I offered to leave them to it and was told by SO in no uncertain terms that I was NOT to get out of the car and he wishes he had brought his friend with him for a second opinion. The old man drove off ok – he was taking turns and roundabouts at a faster speed that I was comfortable with and then he took a turn down a road I didn’t know – heading towards the river. When we got to the end of the road, he slowed down and drove down the dirt track that became a wide towpath and as I could see the path ahead narrowing and an extremely rickety bridge totally unsuitable for vehicles as the only crossing, I jumped out of the car onto the towpath just as he swerve the car into the river. Obviously my panic levels were pretty high at this point, but then I saw SO managed to swim to the surface, I stood still on the bank, but then I saw the old man took hold of SO and drag him under the water (purposefully)…just as I was preparing to jump into the river, I woke up.
eventually I drifted off to sleep but what awaited me wasn’t what I had in mind….I dreampt I was living in a shared house. The house was peculiar but the garden was great – huge and filled with flowers and a pond and all sorts of things. So far so good. I was in the kitchen with the girls chatting and drinking tea when another housemate came in, wearing gloves, she was ranting and showing off about something or other, and then went to drink from a glass. Before she could raise it I jumped up and yelled not to drink from that glass because it was broken (there was broken glass in it and a hole) I gestured to the hole with my thumbs, but instead of being grateful, she trapped my thumbs in the hole and crushed the rest of the glass down onto them, staring into my eyes as the glass dug in and the blood started to pour out. All that I could say was ‘can someone cal me an ambulance please’ yet the other girls were in shock and not responding – just staring gormlessly at the blood dripping all over the floor. Eventually, one of them snapped out of it, helped me and drove me to A & E where I promptly passed out. The rest of the dream involved rage and plots for retribution ( get her kicked out of university, report her to police etc) but no-one would take me seriously and I was haunted on a daily basis by the presence of this girl who would, quite happily, have killed me in that kitchen.
progress?
| Stage | Start Date |
|---|---|
| Manuscript under consideration | xth September 13 |
| Manuscript received | xth September 13 |
| Manuscript under submission | xth September 13 |
what’s this? manuscript gone out for review eh? woohoo. watch this space for ranting about unanswerable reviewer comments and frustration over the NEXT re-write. Who’d be an academic researcher eh?
Ooh. Also got two work branded drinking vessels this week! So it’s not all doom and gloom.
An account of my Saturday. Attending a wedding.
I made it through the whole day wearing heels without being crippled. I will admit that I made a reasonable amount of effort to look nice: I may or may not have spent just shy of £100 at the hairdressers on Thursday (yay new kerastase elixir variant and label m thickening cream) having dyed hair the day before and invested in not only new tights (without holes, ladders or inappropriate fishnet/stripey additions) and nail varnish (first time I treated myself to opi).
SO’s father told me I looked nice and the mother of the groom said my hair was almost as lovely as SO’s. There end the compliments and appreciation for my efforts. I already spoke to SO about wanting some photos because my memory is shocking and I am at the age where im not likely to improve and in my dotage it might be nice to look back and see what I failed to appreciate at the time. But. Of course he took no photos and when I mentioned it was told it wasn’t my day and I should stop being so selfish.
Sigh. Yea.
So what about the actual wedding aside from my lack of ego boosting? Well, it was cold, there was a bagpipe player outside the church, the bride arrived only 15 mins late, looking lovely in an elegant lacy dress and then the horrific service began. The vicar obviously feels the need to spread his evangelical message and try to saturate everyone with the glory of his god( small g ) against their will, if necessary. I felt utterly offended by the way he spoke and although obviously the couple chose a Christian church wedding, it is usually expected that there will be consideration made that some of the congregation may be atheist or Buddhist or Hindu or pagan or muslin or church of angry tortoise-badger cutlery collectors. The hymns were bad. I wonder why they chose those which are notoriously difficult to sing eg ‘,lord of the dance” or are just unfamiliar. I didn’t sing. Nor did I participate in the expected congregational responses prayers (but rather spent the time analysing the vestigial knee-jerk reactions which were drummed into me as a child but meant nothing to me).
Finally released into freedom! Got cold outside the reception venue waiting for bride and groom to return from some epic photoshoot then settling down at our prescribed table (hoping we wouldn’t be next to the obnoxious bloke SO Went to school with and whose wife with incredibly massive knockers on show who was annoyingly asking when WE would be getting hitched…) thankfully we were with a pretty decent crowd, friendly and pleasant. The couple next to me had their daughter with them, who first got stuck in the kiddie high chair needing screwdriver assistance to be removed, and then proceeded to tell us that she needed a poo; ok you think, it happens…but…five mins after returning to the table…same again…now youd be forgiven for thinking the kid had an upset stomach, but actually she wasn’t using the bathroom, just dragging her parents up and down the hallway knowing full well that they wouldn’t risk ignoring her!
Food was dreadful! We had two non dairy requests on our table yet they seemed largely incapable of catering for this. My main was grossly overcooked pasta in tomato sauce. Dessert was fruit with some ‘sorbet’ which looked abd tasted suspiciously milky. I donated my favor sweets to the little girl that said she needed a poo every 5 mins because 1, she had fudge and didn’t like it 2, she was traumatized from being trapped in the chair and 3, although dairyfree they were not vegetarian!
By the time the speeches came around, the ibuprofen I took at tge church had pretty much been removed from my system so I figured a glass of bubbly wouldn’t hurt (after making SO check on his phone whether it was a deadly combo or not) and it made the dreadful best man’s speech slightly more bearable. What happened next was odd. About half of the guest seemed to be named and thanked for their individual help with things and handed them all gifts like an award ceremony! Odd. Oh well. I got SO to buy me a glass of overpriced wine and we watched the traditional Scottish dancing ( while SO had horrific flashbacks of when he was head boy for county team country dancing at school!) and I sat there annoyed that yet again I had no chance to dance and have fun because SO would rather eat acid coated glass shards than dance! But instead sat chatting to a charming Scottish lady.
Once the buffet was served and we had signed our names and a message next to an abysmal photograph of us (well actually SO looked ok and was uncharacteristically smiling, whereas I looked moody and awkward) as we entered the reception, we felt safe to leave without causing offense.
My goodness that was a long description! Are you still awake? Final summary: spent whole day thinking that most of the women there looked prettier and thinner than me and being annoyed with myself for repeatedly thinking this 😦 booooo.
Protected: I must be a terrible person
My trusty (ok not so trusty) stead!
He still needs to get some condition on him. His ribs are a bit too visible abd his top line and neck muscles are slowly improving. Mel on the other hand needs to lose some condition!
He is NOT impressed about wearing a flash noseband.
Please bear in mind that Casper is 28-29 years old and although a bit underweight he is well fed and healthy so no need to think he’s a poor malnourished sickly boy though I know if I saw someone else’s horse looking this way, thats what I’d be worried about…
He was really good today 🙂 spent the first 30 mins staring at melly of I made him walk alongside rather than behind. He did some lovely shoulder-in exercises when I was actually asking him to move across ( funny, he never does shoulder in at a canter when I ask him to!) one of us has our signals incorrectly wired! We had two arguments about the direction we were riding in. (both times he wanted to turn for home, surprise surprise!) but I was firm 😉 we had quite a few canters, only the first stretch of the first was a bit hairy buy then he took up the contact again and all was good. He gets so excited bless him, so at the end of a two hour ride I gave him the reins and said off you go, I’ll just sit whatever you feel like doing, and he shook off any remaining cobwebs with a brisk but not silly canter ( I would have let join gallop if he was up for it) and by the end he was tiring, we did a canter-trot-canter-trot transition change and he responded impeccably! I can barely beleive this is the same horse who mere weeks ago, was uncontrollable and scary at a canter (and who tried rearing up on our last ride) such a good boy. I’m proud that we are bonding and learning to work together. It’s a very satisfying feeling 🙂
What makes people attractive?
As I wandered past the opticians I was thinking – what makes people attracted to one another? what qualities to I consider attractive and subconsciously use to assess people? (I’m not just talking partners here I mean friends too)
Why the opticians? well – you see – um – I think the manager of the branch is cute – I don’t know why…he’s not super stunning looking I just always liked him since I first went to that opticians. I could envisage a world where he and I were friends and went out for coffee every now and then or something like that. I rarely get this feeling for acquaintances and for any connection to happen the other person has to feel something similar AND the circumstances have to be appropriate.
so what do I look for in a companionable human?
honesty, self-confidence, generousity, forgiveness, passion, spontaneity, appreciation, independence, fun /a sense of humour (laughing and smiling), expressiveness, imagination, acceptance
right – so if you are reading this (assuming you are someone I sent this link to and not someone who found it by google search or something) then the above apply to you. Woohoo! you made it through the subconscious selection process 🙂
what makes humans non- companionable for me (come on thesaurus- do your magic)?
deceit, overly self-consciousness, miserliness, holding grudges, indifference, restriction / controlling nature, disregard, dependence / neediness, over-seriousness / grumpiness / never smiling, uncommunicative, tediousness, criticism
yup – those people tend to get swiftly sifted out of my life because I fund their influence very negative and destructive. Well I found that a useful exercise – considering qualities and their antonyms. what about you? what qualities do YOU look for in people?
obviously I had to state that I means human because the first thing I look for in a companion is usually four legs and fur 😛
pickledsparklymooseduchess 