Wednesday 30 April 2008

I Actually Have a Job

What is it with people in shops and businesses telling me to come back in the middle of the day? Do I look like someone who doesn't have to work for a living?

Let's start with the Post Office, though really, I don't expect too much from them. Obviously it's in their customer charter to be as obtuse, stupid and unhelpful as possible in their dealings with the public. I no longer bother to get annoyed when they tell me to either go there between 9 to 5 to collect parcels, or send a delegate (ie a wife). I've now accepted that Post Office procedures were laid in stone in the 50s when you were either a) a housewife or b) someone who is married to a housewife. "That's ok," I say pleasantly to to the Post Office worker on the other end of the phone. "I'll send the little woman to collect it when she's doing her errands." Don't worry, they don't take offence. They either don't speak any English anyway, or don't give a shit - normally both.

But as I said, it's not just the Post Office. Last Wednesday the bus dropped me at my stop at around 7:00, somewhat later than usual, and I dropped into the beauty place just across from the bus stop, to make an enquiry. The girl at the desk was only a trainee, and couldn't help me. "But come in during the day, there'll be someone you can talk to then!" she said. I let that one by, but she kept saying it as if it was going to totally solve everything for me.

I don't understand. It's a mostly residential area and it was late in the evening, so if she'd wanted to make any assumptions at all, surely she would have assumed I was on my way home from work (which I was). I was wearing pinstriped trousers, for God's sake. I don't think the situation screamed 'housewife who's free to pop in at any time.' I suppose she could have thought that maybe I work really close by. But why would she assume that? I itched to explain the concept of 'employment' to her.

Am I seriously that well-dressed that people think I'm an heiress or a trophy wife? Or maybe I look unemployed. Uh-oh.

I guess my best option is to take the afternoon off so that I can pop in for a quick consultation with the daytime receptionist. You don't even get paid maternity leave in this country, but I'm sure work will understand when I explain my skin needs a beauty treatment. Thanks for your help, lady in the beauty parlour!

Monday 28 April 2008

Anzac Day

On Friday I was optimistic enough to board a bus with the intenton of going to the markets. Of course, being Anzac Day here in Australia, the bus detoured before we got to the centre of town and started heading somewhere entirely not near the markets.

I got off before I ended up somewhere in the remotest suburbs where I believe they still worship the sun and eat people*, and found myself in a square in the midst of a bunch of boys in kilts. The Anzac Day parade! For a moment of horror I thought I might actually be in the parade, and flattened myself against the nearest building until they'd gone past.

I think it was getting started just as I arrived. Pretty soon the boys in kilts were marching in tight formation and playing the bagpipes. They were wonderful! I called up the Man who was still out of town, so that he could hear them play. I think he could; I certainly couldn't hear him over the din! They really were fantastic. It quite brought a tear to my eye, to imagine all those sweet, fuzzy-cheeked teenage boys practicing earnestly in their bedrooms for the big day. My Scottish grandmother would have loved it.

Actually it brought more than one tear to my eye; I could feel myself getting all choked up and emotional and it was pretty embarrassing. Remembrance Sunday and Anzac Day parades and services always get me worked up. As I wandered the streets with my shopping bag, trying to find a way through to the markets and pretending I had something caught in my eye, I wondered why it was affecting me so much. Then I realized - it reminds me of my grandparents, now all dead. (Either that or I'm a big softie.)

My paternal grandmother - the Scottish one - never showed much interest in World War 2 nostalgia, but she did had a soft spot for the bagpipes. Grandma was not the most refined of ladies, and my mother, who came from gentler stock, would marvel at her brashness. My mother was especially tickled to discover the two greasy cassettes (stashed away in a greasy drawer) of bagpipe music, the covers depicting some Highland dragoon in full dress uniform, playing with gusto. I never heard Grandma actually play the tapes, or any music besides the radio, but I liked to imagine I inherited an appreciation of bagpipe music from her. (No, I don't have any in my music collection. Be realistic now.) If she'd been standing next to me on Friday, I imagine she wouldn't have shown any outward pleasure but would have started earnestly telling me all about the Scottish National Guard, if there is such a thing, and naming the songs with a knowledgable air.

My Grandad on my mother's side was an avid viewer of World War 2 films, and enjoyed recounting yarns from the war to my two brothers, who just loved his stories. We never heard anything from the 50s, 60s, or 70s, but boy did we hear about the 40s! He didn't bore all and sundry with his memories, but if you were at my grandma and grandad's house in the late 80s/early 90s, and everything had gone quiet and my brothers and Grandad had disappeared somewhere, you could bet you'd find them in the study, Grandad slowly and thoughtfully telling some tale, and the two little boys happily playing Lego at his feet and occasionally asking for clarification of some detail of the story. Grandma Baines wasn't all that bothered about the stories, but there was one she loved to tell jointly with him, about the time when they were newly married, and she'd gone to visit him when he was stationed nearby, and she drove out of the barracks with him hiding in the boot of the car so that they could enjoy a day out together! It's an especially good tale if you know how upright and ladylike she is. I can just imagine the soldiers at the gate letting her out with a respectful wave, and no idea about the illicit cargo in the back!

On Remembrance Sunday, Grandad would sit in his armchair in front of the television watching the parade, televised live from London. Grandma also seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes they'd exclaim in recognition as the BBC presenter introduced yet another set* of marchers, and Grandma would reach across her armchair to his and he would clasp her gnarled old hand in his big strong one and they'd smile at each other. My brothers would comment knowledgeably whenever they could - they still have an amazing knowledge of World War 2 trivia! It must have been very nice for grandad to have such a receptive young audience for his memories, but then, he was a good storyteller.

I never really wondered why Grandad never went to London to march wearing all his medals. We were Oop North, and London was a long way. Grandma and Grandad never went out much anyway. Then my mother told me some time later that he wouldn't have wanted to march even if he had lived closer to the capital. He may have only told my brothers about the fun stuff, the camaraderie and the cool planes and the generals' cunning tactics, but he had a lot of bad memories tucked away in his head too. Once after we were all in bed, he'd become very maudlin and told her about his friend, who'd been sitting right beside him wherever it is they were (my mother doesn't remember the details) and suddenly his head was blown off. I think he may have had a lot of anger hidden away in him, and marching in pomp and circumstance with his shiny medals and being congratulated by the establishment would have seemed hypocritical. Grandad was a bit of a philosopher and had quite the rebellious streak in him. I wish I'd had more time to ask him about stuff like that, but I was 18 when he died, and had only just stopped being obsessed about my belly fat and wondering if I was ever going to lost my virginity all the time.

Grandad's ambivalent attitude towards military pageantry and the Man's rabid pacifist stance I guess help explain why I am rather uncomfortable with the whole Anzac Day thing. Sure, I get all teared up when I see the shrivelled old men walking slowly but with such pride in their old uniforms, and I think of all their young pals who didn't make it, but are not forgotten. But I feel a deep discomfort every time some smug politician pontificating about how 'the Legend of Anzac Day will live on'; it feels like the tragic event of thousands of young men being sent needlessly to their deaths is being used to justify the rather boorish nationalism that is popular in some circles of Australia right now - and why?

I also feel uncomfortable when the sacrifice of that (WWII) generation is held up as an example to us younger people of how we should obey our politicans and the Establishment - Anzac Day is a military celebration after all, and the military is not known for its accommodation of dissent and free spirit. But didn't most of those boys (and girls) go to war because there was little choice? Wasn't the war for them mainly about survival, and making sure their friends survived with them? My Grandad's favourite tales were of the times he and his pals had adventures where they got one up over their superiors, and had fun under the radar of the authorities. He was no lover of military hierarchy.

I also hate how politicians of all persuasions use these events as an opportunity to puff themselves up and make themselves look good. I hate that they use the tragedy of war to make themselves look good and raise their popularity ratings.

After I'd extricated myself from the parade and done my shopping, I met one of the Man's friends for a couple of drinks. He was in town to participate in the parade, as he's a fighter pilot. We talked a bit about Anzac Day and Remembrance Sunday (the British version, a dignified event that doesn't come with gurgling voice-overs about 'The LEGEND of the ANZACS!!') and he told me what it was about for him. It was simply about remembering the fallen, and the lost friends. Politicians may enjoy the opportunity for posturing, but when don't they? They kiss babies and smile for the cameras every time they open a hospital, but it doesn't mean that hospitals shouldn't be opened, or the war dead shouldn't be remembered.

I did feel a bit better about it after I went home from the pub. And I've never had a problem with there being a day to remember those lost in war. I just hate when it's hijacked by people with another agenda, and when it's used to make war seem glorious. I feel it's used to justify a rather silly nationalism.

Yet, Australia's ability to celebrate and express patriotism is one of the things I admired most when I first got here. The British are so whingey and desperate to make themselves sound sophisticated that they are terrified to express any love for their country. Can poor Australia ever win?!

Anyway, it's all over now, and I have to go finish cleaning the oven. It really stinks!!


*I'm a city girl!
**Platoon? Division? Troop?

Friday 25 April 2008

Feline ill

Poor kitty is sick.

I woke up this morning and opened the front door, as usual, expecting to see her happily trotting halfway down the hall by the time I got the door shut. She was there all right, curled up on the doorstep, but she didn't get up right away. She got to her feet slowly, poked her head through two of the bars on the outer door (just a metal grille), then another two. It was as if she had decided she couldn't fit through, which she normally does with no problem at all.

So I opened the outer door and picked her up. She give a sad little meouw. The fur round her throat was all bloody and matted, which gave me a scare, and she had a cut above her left eye. I carried her to the lounge room and she just sat huddled up, not making any move to her food and water. I brought the heater into the room and switched it on.

The Man is away for a few days (Hurrah! The house is mine!!) so I had a panic for a few minutes in the shower. We don't have a cat carrier, I can't yet drive, I didn't know when the vet opened, was Kitty going to quietly expire while I got ready in the bathroom, etc.

In the end I called my neighbour, her 'real' owner, who lent me the cat carrier and drove me to the vet at 8:00. Luckily we were seen right away. Kitty had a shot of antibiotics and another for the pain, and her bloodied fur was shaved off. Wewent home on the bus because I couldn't find a taxi. She let out a little sob every now and then but was very good, though it must have been a traumatic 12 hours for her.

I was so late into work! I am also not going to ballet this evening, in order to take care of the convalescent. That is a very big sacrifice for me, so you must know I love this cat.

Meanwhile, the Man is plotting Revenge against the cats who did it to her. We know who it was because these two cats are contstantly round our house bullying her. They don't even live on our side of the street; they just come to torment her. They were especially bad last night. I had to chase them off the roof with the hosepipe early in the evening as they were ganging up on her. Then soon before I went to bed I caught one of them sitting on the ledge at our front window. I half expected to be woken up in the night to hear yowling on the roof, but I never expected to find poor little beaten up Kitty sitting quietly on the doorstep the next morning. Apparently this Revenge involves fire crackers, air rifles and cat traps, or so I was told over the phone line from Queensland.

$148!

(I thought that merited its own paragraph.)

I can't wait to get home and check on her. I really don't want to be here at work today.

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Pretty Thin?

Lately I’ve been enjoying reading the Sydney Morning Herald with my lunch, in the communal area at work. You can tell this by all the tomato-coloured stains that spatter its pages after 1 pm every afternoon. I have learned many exciting things. On Thursday, as I was shovelling pasta down my throat as fast as I could, I read an article about pro-anorexia websites, and how they’ve been damaging teenagers’ delicate young minds. What a melting-pot of the bizarre the Internet is!

I decided to investigate. (Hoping meanwhile that my employer doesn’t actually that employers’ regulate internet use – it would be so embarrassing to be caught surfing for bulimia tips. I can just imagine them thinking “so that’s why she eats so much”) I discovered an exciting world of pro-anorexia websites (or the jauntier ‘pro-Ana’, as The Kids are calling it these days). I was looking forward to being shocked, appalled and disgusted, and I must say it only partially fulfilled my expectations.


Mostly I was left feeling baffled. The sites included lots of the kind of mad diet tips only teenaged girls will consider - I think we’ve all been there – and many pictures of the skinny actresses, pop singers and models that fill mainstream magazines. But I couldn’t find commentary on the dangerously skinny, or on anorexia to the point of hospitalisation, either for or against, so I have no idea what their opinions are on such extreme self-starvation. Mostly it was just typical young girl babble along the lines of ‘I want to be thinner’ and ‘Oh my God Paris Hilton is so thin and pretty…!”

So, what the hell is ‘pro-ana’, anyway?

This site, which was featured in the Sydney Morning Herald article,
http://www.prettythin.com/proana.htm was obliging enough to have a page actually entitled ‘What is pro-ana?’

This is the first sentence on the page: “Pro-ana was the term used to describe sites that catered to eating disorders (usually anorexia)”.* Now, on its own, I don’t find that terribly enlightening, but that’s about as specific as it got. It then continued:

“…it brought light to the whole movement and the anorexic rights issue, and
others who wanted to reach out for help with no where to turn was now able
to seek out others. Bad in that a sudden wave of people wanted to get
anorexia, and thought that being on the forums would give them the "ana diet."”

The writer talks about enabling people to reach out for help. Does that mean she thinks it’s good that anorexics were able to find help with their eating disorder? In that case she can’t be ‘pro-anorexic’, right? She says it’s bad that people wanted to ‘get anorexia’. On the other hand, she talks about ‘anorexic rights’. What the hell is that? There’s also this on another page:

“Anorexics usually have low self-esteem and sometimes feel they don't deserve to eat. The anorexics usually deny that anything is wrong. Hunger is strongly denied. They usually resist any attempts to help them because the idea of therapy is seen only as a way to force them to eat. Once they admit they have a problem and are willing to seek help, they can be treated effectively through a combination of psychological, nutritional and medical care.”

I don’t see how the Sydney Morning Herald can take offence at this site’s description of anorexia.

On the other hand, other parts of the site are devoted to dozens and dozens of pictures of skinny to dangerously skinny women. There are self-hate lyrics from Radiohead, the kings of dirge, and other emo poetry. The site’s visitors also send in ‘beautiful’ pictures of themselves looking skinny and bony. I imagine they spend hours and hours lying around at home, weak from hunger, studying themselves in the mirror and alternately hating/loving themselves. The narcissism of it all! Some sites talk about ‘haters’- presumably the people who scorn anorexics. But can they really wonder why other people despise them? These girls idolize ‘celebrities’ such as Angelina Jolie, Liz Hurley, Paris Hilton – those vain, greedy**, self-absorbed women who exemplify so much that is wrong in the West today. Take Nicole Richie, a woman whose luminous, inner ugliness is practically visible to the naked eye. This is the kind of woman whose picture they swoon over at Prettythin.com. To me, these super-rich celebrities may look thin, but I think they are obese in spirit. Anyone with such a big carbon footprint is fat in my book.

Now, I’m not trying to say I think it’s good to be overweight, or that an over-abundance of body fat is attractive. I don’t, and I think it’s a great idea to watch what you eat. Let’s think about food for a moment. Where does it come from? What is the relationship between the food we find on the supermarket shelves, and the environment? What impact do the all those cookies, flavoured drinks, instant this and instant that have on our planet? It’s no secret that if everyone had the same eating habits as we in the West do…well, it just couldn’t happen. There wouldn’t be enough land and resources to feed that many greedy mouths.

Food is indeed political, and I respect anyone who eats both healthily and ethically. Why not give up eating cage eggs? Refuse to eat pork and chicken unless they’re free range. Or even give up meat altogether – who knows how much rainforest has been destroyed so we can eat burgers?*** And what about milk? If you really think about it, dairy is a pretty morally disgusting industry. They forcibly impregnate animals over and over, then remove and slaughter their offspring, then do it all over again, just to keep the animals lactating. And as for convenience food…where does all that packaging go once you’ve eaten the contents? The easiest solution I can see is to buy locally grown fruit and vegetables, prepare your own food, eat meat and animal products sparingly and make sure you buy from humane sources.

I believe that anyone who starts to care about all this stuff and eats accordingly will not only be a better person, but will become slimmer too. That’s the kind of diet website I would like to see. I may not follow all or even many of the above suggestions, but if these girls on PrettyThin.com did, I may not want to go to dinner at their house (would there be anything to eat?!) but by God, I’d respect them. They would deserve to be slim, and they would be beautiful. But if you pore over celebrity magazines, obsess over how hot Calista Flockhart is and how she wish you could be like Paris Hilton, gorge yourself on fatty foods then throw up afterwards, you are not beautiful. The whole ‘pro-ana’ thing looks pretty pathetic to me.

But who am I to judge, anyway? The best explanation I can come up with for the puzzling jumble of inconsistencies of the ‘Pretty Thin’ website is that it’s written by and for teenage girls, a group not noted for their common sense or indeed sanity. God knows I did some stupid things myself at that age. (Though I didn’t launch insane websites). Perhaps I – and the Sydney Morning Herald – shouldn’t take it so seriously. It's just a bunch of silly, incoherent little girls.


I should add that I do feel sorry for anorexics and bulimics and I hope anyone suffering from this seeks the help they need. I’m sure they’re not all awful people by any means. I just don’t think anyone should be glamorizing their eating disorders on the internet, or to themselves. An eating disorder is an ugly condition. They need to learn to love themselves, but not the disorder. And let’s not forget, for every teenage girl who martyrs herself to thinness, there is an awkward, overweight and unhappy classmate who is made to feel like even more of a fat cow. It’s pretty difficult to learn to like your budding woman’s body when your skinny peers congratulate each other over every pound lost and act all grossed out over their barely-there hip fat.

I will leave you with this thought from Pretty Thin.Com:

“Over time the media has blown this term way out of proportion and making it out
to be such rediculous ideals as "cults" and that the owners were "recruiting"
others into an anorexic lifestyle. The very notion that the internet will give
you an eating disorder is lewd to begin with.”

Search as I might, I could not find any lewdness. Foiled again!


*Catering to anorexics?? You could go broke doing that!


**though obviously not greedy for food
***I’m sure somebody knows, but I don’t

Friday 18 April 2008

The Dumbest Thing

In case anyone's interested, the Man and I did resolve our differences. Sort of. I was woken early on Saturday morning by the sound of hammering - he was fixing up our car - and he asked me what time I wanted to leave. I told him as frostily I could manage that I'd made other arrangements since he'd refused to take me, and he said he hadn't refused to take me...blah blah...so I ended up going with him and not with the nice lady from the orchestra. I never did get to tell him how furious I was, though, so revenge is still on the cards.

On Friday night, while we were still not speaking, I had the house to myself as the Man was at the pub watching footy. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to watch that evening's chick flick on TV 'The Sweetest Thing'. The announcer said that this was a movie for the girls. "Oh goody!" I thought.

It was clear pretty early on in the piece that this was the lamest movie ever. It starred Cameron Diaz and some other woman. Apparently they were supposed to be 28, but they looked at least 35 (especially craggy-faced Cameron Diaz) and acted about 16. A dumb 16. (Though that does average out to be 25 and a half…)

It started off with the girls going to a club, squealing a lot and telling their friend she needed to get out there and have sex with someone (I guess they haven’t heard of the HPV virus or other STDs, and at their age too, you really wonder). They knocked back drinks and talked about the men as if they were meat, kind of like men do about women. Only not all men, only the really slimy ones.

Are we supposed to warm to these characters? Who exactly is this movie’s target audience?

Cameron Diaz grabs a guy’s bum and when he takes offence, calls him an ‘asshole’. It is obvious that this is the film’s hero as he is tall and has twinkly eyes, and pretty soon she’s apologising, he’s apologising for having been offended at being molested and called an asshole, they’re grinning at each other stupidly and having conversations at a normal volume and apparently being able to hear each other even though they’re at a nightclub. He asks her to come to a party later that evening, and she says she might drop in. She doesn’t, and the rest of the movie is about her obsessing over him and trying to track him down, poor bastard. You can imagine how dismayed his mother will be when he ends up this white trash!

It wasn’t too long before I was seriously wondering if this was a chick flick or actually one for the guys, in disguise. Share my reasoning, if you will:

1. Gratuitous states of undress. Because of course, girls can’t wait to get naked together. It’s what we do when men aren’t around, right? We strip off and talk about men and simulate sex, and giggle. It’s not just a male fantasy, it’s actually true!

2. All the women were tall and thin and had shiny hair. Now I would have been ok with this if they had made an effort to explain why they didn’t look like normal people. Like, maybe everyone in the friendship group was a model? That would be a bit contrived, but this is a movie after all, doesn’t have to be completely realistic. A token effort at least would have been nice. As it was, it was clear they were just meant to be eye candy for the guys. A film aimed at women would surely have had characters of different shapes and sizes – though still pretty – to appeal to us and imply that we are attractive whatever shape we are (that may not necessarily be true, but it would appeal to a FEMALE audience). Skinny women acting like porn stars trying to turn men on are not sympathetic to us ladies.

In one scene, the two dumb heroines are standing in their underwear, side by side in front of a changing room mirror. They lament being 28, and wonder where all the time has gone (I could have told them, don’t worry, your brains are still adolescent). Other Chick – the one who’s not Cameron Diaz – sticks out a skeletal arm and wobbles the flap of loose skin that she has where most people have arm fat. “Look! What is that?” she cries, and the audience is presumably supposed to laugh knowingly in a moment of shared sisterhood. It was at this point I started to talk out loud to the TV set. "You call that arm fat?" - shaking an arm - "This is arm fat!" And I've had it since I was about 16. And I have a perfectly normal BMI. I guess arm fat is a sensitive subject for me.*

*Note to the director: Women do not appreciate hearing skinny bitches lament how fat they are. Trust me on this.

3. Endless crass, crude sex jokes. These were not normal women, like your friends. They were boorish men in women’s bodies. Again, male fantasy! Women who will not only tolerate your bad behaviour but join in, and you can have sex with them too!

I don’t think I have ever seen supposedly 28-year-old women act so immaturely (except perhaps around Paddington). They weren’t fun-loving. They were retarded. They must have giggled vacuously until their throats bled. Not attractive in anyone over 20.


So I think we’ve ascertained that I was Not Amused. OK, I had a couple of laughs, but that was it. I am glad the Man was in a huff at the pub because I would have found the film even more embarrassing and cringe-worthy if I’d had company. And there was nothing else to watch except black and white documentaries and stuff like that so obviously I was trapped into watching it.

I will now leave you with some suggestions of some actually good chick movies:

How to Make an American Quilt
The Color Purple
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Boys on the Side
Charlie’s Angels
Never Been Kissed
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Thelma and Louise
Clueless

Saturday 12 April 2008

Skirmishes on the Domestic Front

I am furious indeed this morning. I’ve just had a fight with the Man. Or rather, he threw a tantrum while I was getting ready this morning. Then I got all teary eyed and couldn’t speak, not because I was upset, but because I was so livid. I get like that when I’m furious. I start crying, and people think I’m soft. But I’m not, crying for me is just a knee-jerk reaction. So inconvenient.

So anyway, I sort of sensed last night that the Man was spoiling for a fight when I got in late last night (after ballet class) and he was about to tackle the washing up. But please don’t imagine he stayed in alone all evening cleaning. Actually, he was motorbike helmet shopping. Bikes are all that he has talked about for the past three weeks or so. So either he’d just got in himself, and decided to tackle the washing up, or he’d been waiting for me to arrive so that I could feel guilty watching him do it. So I was all, “no, let me do it, a lot of this stuff is mine” and I said this several times, but he insisted. And I probably washed up the last time, so I let him do it, and went to bed before he decided to start a fight, because I know what he’s like.

This morning, he woke up apparently in a perfectly good mood. Then he called out that he couldn’t see the little jug thingy for using with the iron. I said something vague and went back to what I was doing. Only thirty seconds or so later, he’d found it, but was going off about how he would have helped me if I’d lost something, and how it must be nice for me to have someone who:

a) posts stuff for me at the Post Office
b) hand delivers a document for me to DIMIA. (Which is kind of on the way home from work for him.)
c) and erm, I think that was about it;

all of which he has done for me this week. Because he offered. Because he often finishes work around 2 or earlier (and we both start at the same time) and it’s more convenient for him.

I basically ignored him because there’s nothing I can do when he’s in such a jerky mood, and I’m damned if I’m going to apologise for accepting the help that he so happily (or so it seemed at the time) offered.

Though maybe I should have responded the way he wanted, because he then said he wasn’t going to drive me to my concert this weekend. Now this concert is way out of Sydney, and I wasn’t originally going to do it, but he encouraged me to, saying we could go down the day before, visit some wineries he’s been wanting to take me to, and stay with a friend. So I told the organiser I’d do it. And now he’s bloody pulled out at the eleventh hour, because he doesn’t feel like taking me now (said all prissy-like). I’ve had to text the organiser asking for a lift, and maybe accommodation if I have to go down the day before. I’ll probably have to stay with old, nerdy orchestra types, that is, if I can go at all. If I can’t, I’ll feel hideous for letting them down. Did I mention, I’m furious?

The weird thing is, apart from being angry about the orchestra thing, I almost like being furious with him. It makes it easier not to love him. OK, so maybe I don’t love him less just because of a fight, but I certainly like him less. And that’s good, because it’s not that great being in a relationship whose sex life took its final, tortured breath in March 2007. Yes, that’s right boys and girls, it is possible to not have sex for 13 months and not die. I'm living proof! Maybe I should donate my body to science?

So when he’s finally speaking to me again, and starts whining and accusing me of not caring enough, and only thinking of myself - instead of crying and saying he was completely wrong, like I used to, maybe I’ll tell him he’s right. I really don’t care that much.

In some ways I would so love to be free and single again. The only problem is loving him, and if I could get over that, it would be just fine.

I woke up feeling a bit guilty over a dream I’d had where I was having an affair with a guy at the office who I’m kind of attracted to. But now I don’t feel guilty at all. Hah!

Wednesday 9 April 2008

Bike? What bike?!

It turns out The Man has just bought a motorbike.

I knew he was looking to buy one, but the first I heard that he had actually bought one was this morning, while we were chatting at the bus stop. He said, "blah blah blah helmet blah blah Ducatti blaaah blah..." (I'd tuned out for a while, you know what it's like) "...blah blaaaah, and the funny thing is, I ended up buying it from the other guy!"

"Uhh, bought what, Honey?"

(Happily)..."My bike!"

So apparently, he bought himself a motorbike last night and never thought to bring it up in conversation the entire evening that we were together. Though he did send me a text while he was negotiating it. Actually, he sent another woman a text by mistake. What great communication.

So now I'm a biker moll, apparently!

Thursday 3 April 2008

Brain Death By Chocolate

The dear man reached a ridiculously large age on Tuesday. His loving nephew bought him a chocolate cake from David Jones, as I didn't have time to make him one. Though I did provide the magic* candles.

Now, I am such a huge lover of chocolate that it was to be expected that I'd be the one to do the majority of polishing off the cake over the ensuing days. But in this cake, I may have finally met my match! It has a top layer of very, very thick fudgy chocolate. And the chocolate is so incredibly strong I can barely eat it without being overwhelmed. It's like eating cooking chocolate, its cocoa content is so high.

I had my first, post-Man's-birthday slice last night. I tried drowning it in cream, but it was still pretty hard core. With the next slice I'm going to try melting it slightly in the oven before I pour on the cream. Vanilla ice cream may even enter the scenario somewhere.

Perhaps my system will adjust to this new, high-risk level of chocolatiness, my tolerance threshold will rise, and I'll be able to eat it neat. But how I'd love to be able to just melt it down and make it into two cakes. It's like someone concentrated the recipe accidentally.

Time to go home. I think my brain is rotting. Maybe it's the chocolate?


*The flames burn the same colour as the candles. Cool or what!