this is quite possibly the saddest phenomenon going.

Go ahead. Flinch at the notion of a man having sex with an imitation woman and classify him: Lonely loser. Pathological creep. Misogynist. Potential rapist. Sicko. True enough, some men who have sex with Real Dolls are creepy — not the kind of guy you’d want to be alone with — and many are tragically lonely. But some defend their Real Doll fetish as being no different than a 3-D version of a Playboy centerfold. Then there are men who are disfigured or infirm and can only have sex with a prosthetic lover. And those like Davecat, for whom a Real Doll is a “teddy bear with benefits.”

i’ve seen these featured on hbo’s “real sex” series, and there was a whole show dedicated to them on telly here the other night (okay, I just realised that makes me sound like I watch a lot of sex shows. really, i don’t). there is obviously a huge market for fake-human, dead-eyed sex dolls.

the appeal? I suppose i can understand how there are lots of people out there who just aren’t gettin’ any, whether they’re socially defective in some way, or just through circumstance. what i find really depressing about the whole thing is that I have the feeling part of this is due to the disconnect from “real life” that it’s so easy to experience these days. i mean, most days, we spend more time interacting with computers than we do with humans. that may be a wild generalisation, but i think it’s a fairly accurate one. i truly believe it is possible to grow up completely ignorant of general social mores, physical human cues, true relating on an interpersonal level. these are things you only learn through years of experience around humans. but these days children are spoonfed television while they’re pre-verbal. they can be homeschooled and kept indoors on computers and video games to such a degree that they are nearly insulated from *life*. then you hit those awkward teen years, when you don’t really understand how you feel about the opposite (or same) sex, and fear of rejection is so painfully acute. so you beat off to magazines and manga-zines. suddenly you’re an adult, and you’re expected to already have figured out the rules of dating and sex and it becomes to embarrassing to reveal your lack of experience.

i can totally see that happening – and then turning to this not-so-niche market to satisfy their desires. It’s like when you were a kid and used to practice kissing on your pillow, just on an older, wider, and much more expensive scale. i can almost understand that.

what i can’t understand is those people who try to “normalise” it by pretending it’s just another kink. because unless you consider it “normal” to have sex with the equivalent of a dead (albeit silicone) body, it’s soooo not. these are the people who describe their “relationships” with their dolls. They anthropomorphise their dolls to an extent which is really skin-crawling. and if they are capable of twisting their brains that way, i shudder to think what else they’re capable of.

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Summer is well and truly over here, which makes me more than a little sad. Two weeks ago I was wearing shorts and sandals, and now I am wearing cords and a turtleneck. It happens just that quickly here. The duvet is back on the bed, the space heater is at the ready.

I suppose i hate it so because it always happens without warning. in new england, you have several weeks of gradually cooling temperatures to get you used to the idea that the tan is going to be fading, and the flip flops are going to be put away. The leaves start changing, and the air gets crisp in the mornings. Kids start going back to school, apples are back in season, and the sailboats come out of the water. By Halloween you need a warm jacket over your costume.

But here, nothing seems to change. There are no turning leaves, no cider donuts and pumpkins. Nothing gets brisk – it just gets wet and cold and extremely windy. You don’t smell neighbours burning their rake piles, or lighting their woodburning stoves. There’s no real Halloween to speak of, so no candy corn or jack o’ lanterns.

I miss walks on the beach and spooky decorated houses and yellow school buses. I miss hot spiced cider and little trick-or-treaters and fall foliage and foggy mornings. I miss pumpkin bread and picking apples and that funny-coloured maize you hang on your door and frost on the grass and the smell of smoke in the air. I miss bracing hikes and acorns crunching underfoot and l.l. bean sweaters.

I miss fall. not autumn. i miss good ol’ new england fall.

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I will share a few memories of new orleans which are making me pretty sad right about now.

I first went when I was in louisiana visiting my friend beth. i was really good friends with beth – she was a borna and bred new yorker with a natural southern twang to her. we’ve lost touch now, but she lived there and i’ve been thinking about her a lot because i know she’s probably mourning her city right now. in any case, i went to visit her in nearby lafayette, and we decided to spend the weekend in n’awlins on the spur of the moment. she rounded up some friends-of-friends of hers, and we headed off over the river. we had no reservation, but ended up at this b&b straight out of a movie, with the dripping wisteria and the veranda and courtyard. we wandered the city aimlessly and she got a tattoo of a gryffin and a crescent moon (n.o. being “the crescent city”) just because we happened to walk past. we hung out with the locals drinking all night long, at this little den off the back off a wrought iron staircase, with candles and curtains and lots of strong rum, and when it got warm we went for a 3am swim under the stars, and spent the morning watching the sun come up over the mississippi. 24 hours that are as vivid as if they were yesterday.

i was so struck by it, that when i came time to celebrate my 30th birthday, i knew where i wanted to go. my friend jo and i spent a whole week there over christmas (my birthday being the 25th, hers being the 28th) and it was amazing indulgent excess. we stuffed ourselves on muffalettas and crawfish etouffee. we hung out playing pool and drinking and getting naughty with strangers on Christmas eve. we played scrabble in little cafes and wandered through graveyards. we had our fortunes told, did ecstasy and coke, drank the best water in the world at a little electricity-less bar lit only by candlelight, and danced our asses off in a corny 80s club. we took photos and made lists and walked all over creation. we stayed in a really grim hotel, and a really nice one. we committed one felony, and several misdemeanors. we bought fuck-me boots and got our hair did. we had cafe au laits and beignets at dawn by the river.

it was gothic and vibrant and noisy and atmospheric and fragrant and hectic and lush. weighty with history. effervescent with life.

and now it’s drowned. and the sorrows of the people are mingled with the waters of the delta, tears and river as one.

it will be reborn, and rise from the depths, in accordance with its history. if there’s any city where things can be certain of coming back to life, it is new orleans. ghosts are the life and the heart of it – nothing stays buried for long there.

but until then, my poor sweet city, may you have peace

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bad religion were fantastic. and I will never make fun of kerryn for bringing earplugs to a gig again. premature hearing loss is no laughing matter.

i should never enter a mosh pit. I am way too aggro as it is. i made a serious attempt to break this little snot-nosed 18 year old’s ribs with my elbow because she was being annoying.

i first wore red chuck taylors in 1986, with a safety pinned jean jacket, and bangs (which i cut myself) standing straight up in the air. nearly 20 years later, I still see them being worn by kids who think they invented punk.

bad religion released their first album in 1981. I’d estimate more than half the crowd last night was not even a twinkle in their pappy’s eye then. tracey (bless!) was one year old.

< *creak, shuffle, creak, shuffle, sigh...*>

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why is it when you’re hungover, the universe insists on torturing you with a flashback countdown of all the previous evening’s humiliating highlights *as* you are trying with every ounce of might *not* to lose your proverbial lunch?

Actually, I was not so much hungover, as in the throes of the worst migraine i’ve ever had in my life. I can make the distinction because it waited until *after* i’d had my restorative egg and bacon bagel sandwich miracle cure, and gone outside to catch a bit of sun, before it blindsided me. i went from feeling relatively okay, to violently wracked with pain in about 5 minutes flat. it was the strangest sensation – it hurt my head to have it lying still in any one position, but moving made my brain feel like one of those floating compasses with the spinning and bobbing bits inside. it felt like someone was overinflating my head, with this curious pressure radiating from the inside. i had goosebumps and sweats. my heart was palpitating and i was moaning out load. and of course, i was suddenly remembering every embarassing thing i’d done or said the night before. because thinking i was going to die just wasn’t bad enough.

as i spent an hour writhing around and clutching my skull, i started to get really scared, never having experienced such a strange kind of pain. when my hands started to tingle and my speech got fucked up, i started to think i was having a stroke.

and then, on the verge of asking jonno to take me to the hospital, it was suddenly gone. like a massive vise had just been taken off my head. i was finally able to take a long nap without worrying about never waking up.

it was so bizarre. i’ll take the worst hangover over that, any day…

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Relaxing in the sun this morning with a bloody mary and a good book. Ahhhhh.

Bloody marys make me miss real brunches though. Brunches with quiche and bagels and salmon and fluffy scrambled eggs and asparagus and wine and croissants and fruit salad and waffles and savoury potatoes, and of course, bloody marys (the spicy kind, with plenty of worcestershire sauce and horseradish).

Back when I had a house, I used to love to do big sunday brunches for a few of my friends who’d stayed over (usually from a party the night before) and then eat in the garden…there’s nothing better.

if I had a garden, i would soooo love to have a brunch

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it’s unbelievable how your sense of smell can just whip you right back to a particular time and place from out of the blue. this morning, i was walking down the street on my way to the tube, and suddenly got a whiff of perfume from the woman walking in front of me.

and suddenly I was 13 again. you see, for a while during puberty, i was obsessed with fashion magazines. i pored over them as if somehow i could become thinner, more beautiful through osomosis, just by reading them, or figuring out what the right outfit to wear was, or finding the perfect kind of makeup to hide my awkward ugly duckling stage. i thought there was some kind of magic in those pages, and i desperately wanted it to rub off on me, transform me into anyone but the gawky teen i was. and not just any regular teen fashion magazines. not “seventeen” or “ym” like my friends read. no, i read “vogue” and “glamour”, and particularly “elle” – which were largely just catalogue-sized advertisements for a lifestyle i couldn’t even begin to dream of affording. slick photos of the jewelry and tans and couture of the elite. yet i longed – not so much to look like the models, or wear the clothes… i probably couldn’t have put what i longed for into words, but it was undoubtably linked to a desire for comfort and confidence in my own skin. something which i wouldn’t find for many more years. something which, even now somedays, i have only a tenuous grip on.

and when i was 13, i still went to church every sunday with my parents. how very pedestrian, i know, but true. i was a regular churchgoer against my will. and after the service was over, my parents inevitably had some sort of coffee club or meeting to attend, or just wanted to hang around talking to their friends for hours about things i couldn’t have cared less about. as a 13 year old, i just wanted to get as far away from the scene of embarassment as quickly as possible. so i would ask my dad for the keys to the car, and i would go to the drugstore and spend $3 of my babysitting money on the glossy and seductive “elle” magazine, and go study it in the back of our family minivan, while waiting. waiting for my dorky parents to tear themselves away from the dorky church. waiting to escape my geeky suburban life. waiting to be free of the adolescent angst which i couldn’t even name but carried around with me in my spine everyday. waiting to be a swan.

the point of all this, is that “elle” always had a certain perfume sample in it with a very distinctive smell. i wish i could remember the name of it now, and i was more than half tempted to stop the woman this morning and ask her what scent she was wearing. but that smell this morning transported me from a 32 year old woman in London to a 13 year old girl in the back of a minivan in Boston, in the blink of an eye.

and it kind of blindsides you to know that you can suddenly feel that way again without any kind of considerate warning, with no control over when or where it happens. and it’s unnerving to know that our emotions only remain hidden at the whim of our senses and memories, that they can surface so suddenly and acutely, and that they’re only a whiff away.

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so i’ve spent most of today nursing a serious hangover – the kind of vivid pain which is meant to teach you a lesson about treating your body nicely, and not poisoning it with insane amounts of fruity alcohol. haven’t been truly drunk in a while, and now i remember why. fell (quite literally) into bed at 3am, and woke up in seriously sad shape about 6 hours later.

in any case, i have spent what little energy i have noodling around on the net listening to music and find fun playlist stuff (check it out at the sidebar) and through following a long winding series of links, ran across this artist named matisyahu, who does what he calls “Hasidic reggae”. i’m not making that up. he’s a lubavitcher jew from crown heights, brooklyn, and lists amongst his influences Bob Marley and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

All of which would just be anecdotally funny, except that the man has some serious skills. have a listen here and you’ll see what I mean. he could be straight out of Kingston, Jamaica. he’s starting to attract attention, and for good reason.

And in the “it’s a small world” category, as i was reading about this guy, i notice the photos are by my photog friend seth kushner, who i knew back in nyc, and who used to use me and my ex for models, when he had particular stuff he needed for his porfolio. (i was a little more arsty-looking back then.) i’ve checked in on his work from time to time to see what stuff he’s doing, but this is the first time I’ve accidentally stumbled across it out in the public domain.

i think back to the kinds of things i used to do, and the person i was back then. it makes me sad – i’ve faded at the edges where caution and convention have crept in. i’ve lost my edge. and it’s happened to everyone i know, not just me. it’s the erosion that inevitably occurs with time and hurt and the weight of responsibility – erosion of that layer of fearlessness and bravado you used to wear as protective armor, and enabled you to be a wild and crazy as you wanted. and the thing is, you don’t even appreciate it while you have it. no one even tells you that it dissolves with tears.

i want her back. that girl was fun, she did wacky-and-sometimes-stupid things, but never stopped *doing*. i want to tell the people i meet now that i didn’t always used to be this boring, i used to have lots of interesting friends and we did interesting stuff, we did, really we did. i want to hold on to that girl that didn’t give a shit about houses or babies or fiscal responsibility. the one that danced and drank and did drugs and took dares and moved 3000 miles across the ocean just to see what was on the other side. she was *here* not so long ago. i know she was.

shout out if you see her. meanwhile, i’ll just be over here detoxing my liver.

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was going to write a nice long blog about all kinds of stuff, but instead I wasted all my energy and typing skills arguing online with someone about racial profiling and the “shoot-to-kill” policy, so now I’m really quite tired. (there’s a certain point of the day where i am a good typist – it’s usually after about an hour or two of warmup, lasts for all of about 24 minutes, and everything just goes downhill from there…)

i hate arguing with someone who not only can’t follow your line of reasoning, but who can’t even follow their own! you know, they start changing their argument halfway through – or as soon as they realise your logic whips their ass. or… they make a big giant circle with their argument, and don’t even realise they’ve arrived back at the beginning. or… they shift the topic of argument right underneath your feet, you know, the goalposts are constantly moving, because they either forget what the original question was, or they realise they don’t know enough to debate coherently. that’s what my energy was wasted on today.

me – I love to argue. and i love it even more when i’m defending a position i don’t even believe, or playing devil’s advocate. i like to bait people and nitpick, and summon whole theories out of thin air, just to be contrary or try and huff-and-puff their argument down. but most of the time, i won’t argue unless i know a lot about the topic. i wait until the deck is stacked in my favour, and then i get into the ring. but once i start, i want to go the full 10 rounds. i want to see some substance and originality in the counterpoints. i want to see something heavy-duty behind the facade. i want to see what the argument and arguer are made of.

mostly i just like to make people concede, admit i could have a point, or bow out. if you can’t stand the heat, get outta the kitchen. i like to be challenged, to try to think my way out of a corner. i like making my brain work against a skilled opponent. and then, after my victory, i like to get in the last word.

but even more than winning, i like to be *right*.

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yesterday, j became a full fledged british citizen. wandsworth council had a special ceremony, with the mayor and invited speakers. jonno stood and pledged his allegiance and loyalty to the queen. and watching this, you start out thinking how corny the whole thing is, and you’re impatient for the formalities to be over. but somewhere along the line, amongst the parade of beaming new citizens, amongst the snapshots and family applause… somewhere in there, you start to get an appreciation for what a big deal this really is. for jonno and most of my friends, citizenship is a convenience – you put in your requisite time living and working in the uk, and acquire a nice new passport to make your travels and lifestyle a little easier. but for some people, this is the fulfillment of a dream. this means something better for their children. this is something they’ve fought hard for, because it *matters*.

it’s a humbling reminder not to take one’s fortunes of birth for granted. not everyone is so lucky as me.

a few pics of the newest citizen.

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overall, a peculiar kind of weekend!

friday evening, j, k, t and i went to a local open-air jazz festival. we brought wine, cheese, olives and bread and enjoyed some bluesy music to unwind from the week. really nice.

saturday, the newly nicotine-free j woke up at 7:00. which meant that *I* woke up at 7:00. we headed up to woolworth’s to pick up the new harry potter, then did some grocery shopping for the bbq on sunday. i came home and scrubbed the bathroom like a madwoman, did mountains of dishes. after burning off some energy, i spent the day in the sun reading with cocktails at the ready, and then we decided to go have a meal and catch a movie in wimbledon. as we were getting ready to leave, a woman was hit by a car outside our front door.

we didn’t actually see the hit, but heard the unmistakable sound of human hitting car and ran out to the balcony see what had happened. it looked like the woman was walking out from behind a bus in the crosswalk, just as a car came flying around the corner. she was hit hard enough to be thrown over the roof of the car, and leave a skull size imprint in the windscreen.

i have been waiting for an accident like this to happen, as buses just come flying around that corner, barely even tapping the brakes, taking the curb edge with the tyre, and I’ve almost been hit several times myself. now that there’s scaffolding up for demolition, it’s even harder to see any pedestrians around the corner.

luckily the woman appeared to be relatively okay – there were some emts from the local hospital right there, and lots of witnesses. but it never fails that when there’s an accident, all my adrenaline and emergency training starts kicking in, even if other people are already involved. it took a few minutes to shake off the effects, and wait for the police to arrive.

after it was clear that all would be okay, we left for our dinner & movie date. we went to see “war of the worlds”, and as much as i hate tom cruise, I’m really glad I saw it. it’s the first movie i have actually been scared by in ages. in fact, i can’t remember the last movie where I was frightened, and this one definitely had my heart pounding. spielberg is a master of building tension and edgy atmosphere, and the scenes were creepily similar to my childhood nightmares. thoroughly enjoyable.

sunday i woke up and made some potato salad and pie for the bbq. read more harry potter. cleaned up beer (the plastic bag split just as j was putting the sixpack on the counter, smashing several coronas all over the kitchen floor), and fired up the grill. all the band was there (k, stef, alex, and marco) along with significant others and assorted children. we stuffed ourselves silly. Chris and ton brought by their 4 day old jude john, and I spent several hours monopolising the baby.

i will also mention (though it still seems a bit premature to boast) that i am currently on my 3rd non-smoking day. needless to say, i have been more than a tad bitchy this weekend, and this also explains my cleaning frenzy, and why I am updating my blog at work, rather than doing… you know, actual work. in 72 hours, I have worked my way through about a kilo of mint imperials (you can always get teeth fixed – you can’t grow new lungs!) also, saturday (the morning j woke up at 7) was perhaps the longest day of my life. i was up from 7 am to 2 am, and even when you’re not looking at the clock every 20 seconds, nicotine withdrawal warps your perception, and time just slows to a standstill. I was so disappointed in myself after last time – i’d done so well for a month, and one big trauma sent me scrambling back to the ciggies. really stupid. anyway, i’m pretty darn determined this time. my sense of smell is already returning – it’s rubbish collection day, so my morning walk to the tube was pretty ripe. the joys of london. also, i have become the most accident prone person on the planet – my co-ordination is pretty bad at the best of times, but after this weekend, i am just all kinds of discombobulated. i swear, sometime i feel so disoriented, it’s like i’m high.

finally, j’s sister carey had a baby girl on Friday! I am now auntie to Rachel, of whom i am awaiting pics. there’s just babies sprouting everywhere these days…

jude john w.

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At work today, a few minutes to noon, several hundred people in my building filed outside and stood on the pavement. Shopkeepers, pedestrians, cyclists all came to a standstill out in the sun.

At twelve, a church bell tolled. Traffic halted. There was no speaking, no horns. It really was silent. Eveything stopped, and life was momentarily put on pause.

Two minutes is a long time when you’re really being observant. When you’re observing. Two minutes must seem a lifetime when you think you’re going to die.

When a crisis happens, and everything is chaos, people are dying, and you’re scared with no idea what the hell is going on as the world seems to be crumbling around you…it feels like life should just stop.

And today at noon, it did.

photo from guardian.co.uk

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not-so-big news on the job front: i got a “promotion”. why is this only not-so-big news, one might very well ask? well in the first instance, i didn’t want the job to begin with. i was basically offered (dumped) a whole new workload, just before I went to south africa. i had two choices, namely a) say no (and you’ll just have to imagine the strikethrough on those words because i can’t seem to create that effect in blogger, and saying no was not an option) or b) agree to do the work and get a new job title. the fact is, i was gonna have to do the work anyway, so why not get the “promotion” that went with it?

why do i keep putting the word “promotion” in quotations? another fine question. well, dear reader, i don’t think it’s really a “promotion” if you have to apply for it. yes, the council can’t do something as simple as “promote” someone. they have to create a whole new job post, then advertise it, then make you apply for it, then make you interview for it (assuming you get shortlisted). did i mention i am already doing the work anyway? and have been for the past 2 months? now granted, i should take this all with a grain of salt, because i was, in fact, the only person stoopid enough to apply. so really, it was me vs. me. if, after jumpiong through all those hoops i *wasn’t offered the job*, or *didn’t take the job*, i would still have to do the work anyway. to compound the idiocy, I was supposed to take a test – luckily i was exempted from that somehow – and i was supposed to be formally escorted to the interview room.

i work on the fifth floor of the building. the interview room is on the seventh floor. i come in at 8:30. the interview was at 9:00. they wanted me to go downstairs to the reception on the main floor, so they could escort me back upstairs for the interview. if that doesn’t just beggar belief, i don’t know what does.

the council is *not* that formal. i basically show up at work wearing pyjamas most days. so i really have just *no* clue what this kind of rigamarole is supposed to accomplish.

the other reason it’s not a “promotion”, is that i get no real pay rise to go with it, as i am on the highest spinal point of my payscale, and the new post will start me out at the lowest spinal point on the scale directly above it. I think it works out to something like £50 per paycheque.

so, yep. i basically went through all this insane myriad nonsense, to get a job i don’t even want, for the princely sum of an extra £1.60 per day. not even enough for a stinkin cup of coffee.

Aside: when I was home, my sis gave me a pair of work pants that she doesn’t wear anymore. I’m wearing them today, and they smell like the Body Shop’s “White Musk”, which is what she bathes, shampoos and perfumes herself with. Everything she owns smells like it. It’s kind of comforting.

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so we are getting a new flatmate this weekend, a “friend of a friend” dealio. which, don’t get me wrong, is infinitely preferable to the stream of strangers our old flatmate was parading through the place, in an effort to fob off responsibility for next month’s rent. call me old fashioned, but somehow i think *I* should get a say in who gets to share my shower, overhear me having sex, or see me bleary-eyed and hungover on a saturday morning. i’m particular like that.

in any case, all of this was set up the week i was on holiday. j emailed me in massachusetts to tell me “a”, the new flatmate was moving in over the bank holiday. his email consisted of the single sentence “that guys is kind of moving in, and arlene is kind of moving out.” and because this is the father of any future potential babies i might have, and because i now have the legal god-given right to blame any major or minor disasters on *him*, i decided not to freak out about this, trust his judgement, and just let him sort it out.

did you read that sentence? this is major – i voluntarily abdicated control. without a gun pointed at my head.

so when i got home, i asked him what the plan was, what this guy was like, etc. and all of my oh-so-casual questions were answered with a typically vague, “i don’t know?” i could’ve asked how many heads this guy was sporting, and gotten the exact same answer. which is boy-speak for “i neglected to get any specific detail, *but i’m certainly not going to admit that to you*.”

so saturday, this guy “a” calls, and j is having a lengthy conversation about meeting up, and directions. and after he gets off the phone, i enquire what all that was about, and he says “i offered to help him move his stuff on monday.”

my immediate histrionic overreaction is, “oh *FINE*, i suppose that means we can’t *do* anything on monday now, why didn’t you tell me about this on friday, blahblahblahblah…”, followed by an surprisingly mature and prompt apology for taking his head off. (of course, the sum of my plan for monday was to sit around on my fat ass eating chocolate luckycharms straight out of the box, but *he* didn’t know that.) and although i did sufficiently apologize, i did also take the opportunity to point out that no matter how long it was *supposed* to take, it would in fact, end up taking all day. this is just how these things go. i’ve done it enough times to know that even if you are only moving five boxes from a block away, the time-space laws of moving dictate that it takes exactly 10 hours.

my husband is just way too nice. because not only did he volunteer to help this guy move in, he also helped arlene move out. and i am a big believer in moving karma, i.e. that it pays to help other people move, because you will then reciprocally be helped in moving. it’s just a good-universe all-around nice thing. this is why i drove jo’s u-haul from boston to new york, and why i once flew to Louisiana to help my friend beth move back to nyc. it’s why, after offering to help my friend shelley move to a new apartment two miles away in brooklyn, and we showed up at her doorstep at noon to find her emptying her closet into garbage bags (hangers and all), i bit my tongue, helped her empty her fishtank, and made not a peep when, at 10pm (!), we still had not actually gotten anything into the truck. moving karma is *real*.

which is why, when i finally go back to living like a married grownup and we get our own place, “a” and arlene will be first on the list of people i call to help us. and if they don’t want to suffer the wrath of the moving gods, dammit, they’d better smile.

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it’s only sunday afternoon, and I can already pronounce this bank holiday weekend a bust.

my body has decided to rebel against the modern convenience of airline travel. meaning that i have a kick ass case of jet lag. which is stupid really – you’re supposed to get jet lag going *to* the states, not coming *from*. however, being the little iconoclast i am, i’m doing it backwards.

flying home, i was all prepared to be awakened at 3am with enough hunger to eat off my own arm, prepared for cement-weighted eyelids by 10pm, prepared to wake up at 4:00 and try to keep myself quiety entertained for the next 5 hours while everyone else slept. so when none of the above occurred, and i freakishly assimilated back into eastern standard time without a whimper, it was a bit anticlimactic.

coming back, i foolishly thought i’d managed to somehow blissfully evade the inevitable. so i wasn’t too concerned when i was unable to sleep on the plane, chalking it up to being seated between the aforementioned mr-fat-ass and mr-dog-shit-breath, and surrounded by 4 screaming children. not to mention the mistake of eating the airline food which made me feel like an overinflated innertube. (and I will shamefully admit here that yes, i farted on the plane, however i was wedged between the travel companions from *hell*, so really, i think my little silent emissions were far less offensive, in the grand scheme of things.)

so i got home, and unpacked immediately (because i am *that* anal sometimes), checked my email (because i am that *pathetic*) and was suddenly hit by the impulse to sleep like a mack truck carrying an oversize load of bricks. yet, i resisted mightily, refusing to give in to the demands of my poor sleep-deprived travel-weary brain. my body was pleading for a nice soft pillow, or even a semi-warm flat surface to curl up on, but i *denied it*. ha! I made it stay up until the ungodly hour of what it, in its poor addled state, perceived to be 4am, a full 36 hours awake. i was victorious!

and now the bastard is making me pay. because the past two mornings i have woken up well after midday. which is fine, when you’re twenty and think devoting 14 hours a night to sleeping is a worthy, even noble cause. but after the age of 30, you realise that sleeping that much means you are *missing your weekend*, and that it means the workweek only rolls around that much faster. plus, you have adult responsibilities to take care of, like cleaning the gutters, or defrosting the freezer. not that i do any of that shit, mind you, but someday i will have to.

and i was awake til 3:30 last night. poor j was falling asleep at 2, and i am all wide awake, and bored and antsy, like i’m hopped up on massive quantities of coke, trying to make him stay awake with me, engage him in conversation about the nuclear threat of north korea, or get him to play chess (which he doesn’t do anymore even when he is awake, not because i suck at chess , which i do, but because i am the world’s worst sulker), or coax him into having sex. the poor thing is not even coherently following my sentences, but i’m trying to convince him he’s in the mood.

my body is finally getting it’s revenge. and not in a mildly-annoyed-uncooperative way.

it is stomping on my brain with combat boots, and saying, “hahahahaha! take *that* you mutherfucker!!”

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so the reason i didn’t blog the weekend update (in case you were wondering, and I know you were) is because it wasn’t very exciting. Friday night dinner. Saturday night drinks. Sunday afternoon, drinks in the sun. All caught up.

Last night was the last poi class – well, not *the* last class, but my last class, as I am going to miss the final one next Monday, being that I’ll be in another country and haven’t yet learned to time travel. I wish I could say I am a poi master (mistress??) now. But whilst I was not the worst student in the class (an honour reserved for the dorky looking guy who always stood waaaay in the back), I was not the best. I have a repetoire of about 12-15 tricks now, which is more than I had going in. But I still hit myself in the head/eye/knees. a lot.

So I need to pack tonight – going to ma on thursday for some sun and fun on the cape with the preggo sis. she’s still trying to wrangle sox tickets, and I am still praying to the baseball gods. I am there til next Friday, when I arrive home just in time for the long bank holiday weekend – woo hoo! k8 has already invited me to go swimming at the ymca with her – sounds like i’m in for a wild time.

ever notice how many people cry in public? I’ve seen several lately and am wondering if there is a sudden outbreak of emotional display spreading like wildfire across the city, or if they’ve always been there, and i, in my constant state of obliviousness, have just not noticed. i myself have certainly never cried in public. nor have i walked from the west end to waterloo in the pouring rain to avoid taking the tube while sobbing hysterically. certainly not.

had an “away day” at work today, which consisted of yet more carers lambasting the entirety of social services for failing to perform miracles. i felt like standing up and saying “you whinging crybabies don’t know how good you have it! if you were in new york, you’d have to lug your child’s wheelchair up and down four flights of stairs, and be thankful you even have a wheelchair or stairs to lug it on! now quit your bellyaching and let us do our jobs!” luckily, i did not say that. though i did think it *really, really loudly*…

i need a break. a kit kat break.

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so the weekend is officially underway – and sometimes it just goes by so so fast, it’s all a big blur, and at the end of it, when someone asks you how it was, you find yourself grasping at straws to explain just how you managed to fritter away 36 whole hours of freedom with nothing to show for it.

last night was interesting. the neighbours cooked a lovely szechuan dinner of eggrolls, prawns and spinach and we sat in the kitchen having the most intellectually stimulating conversation i’ve been a part of for a long while. seriously – we talked about globalisation, and race relations, and the politics of china, and religion, and world bank debt. at times it was a tagteam effort, two against one (me being the one), and at times, there were about three different conversations going on, and they all diverged and re-merged, and we were at this for about 3 hours.

it was a great mental workout – which is good, because sometimes i can actually *feel* my brian atrophying.

anyway, after that, we unwound with a little chris rock – underneath the hysterical histrionics, there’s always a bit of a moral to the story, or a political nugget to impart. I’ve seen him interviewed, and he really is one smart cookie. As well as being one goddamn funny motherfucker.

okay, it’s later now – we just got back from seeing “the hitchhiker’s guide to the universe”. which was entertaining enough, but i suppose you had to have read the book. from what i can gather, it’s one of those novels which can leave a profound impact on your psyche, if you happen to read it at the right point in your life. everyone has one of those books. for me, it was “illusions: the adventures of a reluctant messiah” by richard bach, when i was 16. i won’t go too far into the storyline (because you really did have to read it) but it deals with the concept of the return of the messiah in modern times, yet at the same time, challenges the precepts and tenets which every major religion is founded on. i remember feeling like my brain had just exploded and expanded at the same time. it was a “big bang” effect. anyway, there’s no way a movie can live up to that.

tomorrow we’re off to bristol to visit some old friends of j’s who own an inn, so it should be fun. supposed to be nice weather as well, and i haven’t been to bristol yet, but i’ll tell ya all about it when i get back…

enjoy the rest of the weekend – and if you’re reading this and you can see sun out the window, for god’s sake get outside!

ciao, bella.

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Took my first poi class last night.

FOr those of you unfamiliar with poi, they are weighted balls, covered in streamers, suspended by cords or chains from the fingertips, and derived from use in Maori dance rituals. They are also sometimes lit on fire, and used for “fire spinning”, a hypnotic display of dancing/weaving circles of flame. Last Halloween, while at a house party, I watched a guy do fire spinning, and said to my friends, “I’d love to learn how to do that”.

So for Christmas, Santa left poi in my stocking, and I (being the safety conscious girl that I am) decided to take a class for beginners out in Camden. Last night was the first lesson.

I’m thinking I may need a wee bit of practice.

I curse my mother and my maternally inherited lack of hand-eye co-ordination. I curse my clumsy, stiff, and unco-operative left wrist which rotates as smoothly as a ballbearing coated in tar and shards of glass. I curse the inventor of nylon streamers.

I am pretty sure I was the only one whose poi were actively trying to strangle her. My poi are sadistic as hell.

And I actually have a poi-related injury – a big ol’swollen and lumpy bruised knuckle, which I have no idea how I got.

It’s fun. But frustrating. More frustrating than snowboarding, because it looks so deceptively simple. At least with snowboarding, there’s the element of danger, and the adrenaline rush in between spectacular crashes. There’s not much adrenaline in hitting yourself repeatedly about the head while streamers are wound around your neck and tangled cords yank out great clumps of hair.

It must be hilarious to watch. I’d pay good money to see a video. My ponytail elastic kept flying across the room. I kept tripping on the streamers (dangerous, with my walking abilities pretty iffy at the best of times, certainly without charmed poi snakes binding my ankles together). Streamers entangled with another girl’s poi streamers. Errant poi sailing wildly into the wall, like a deranged fluorescent comet. Interspersed with huge chunks of time devoted to trying to unravel randomly created master-level nautical knots which have magically fused two poi into one giant nest of string.

However, I am sure that in no time I will soon be weaving and spinning like a pro. And then I graduate to fire!

In the meantime, I should probably invest in a helmet.

Oof

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Saw this on a friend’s blog and thought it was an interesting exercise.

10 years ago:
– I was 22
– living in Brooklyn with my fiance, just moved into our own flat
– just about to graduate from NYU
– had just quit my horrendous job working with troubled adolescent girls because I was working 50 hours a week and going to school full time, fiance lost his job (again) and I just couldn’t take the stress anymore
– was really unhappy

5 years ago:
– I was 27
– Living in a beautiful flat in Boston with my husband
– working as program co-ordinator for a day centre for adults with learning disabilities and about to quit because I hated it
– husband was unemployed
– was training for my first marathon
– about to go on a vacation where I would decide I was going to get a divorce
– was pretty unhappy

2 years ago:
– I was 30
– was divorced, just out of a couple of mind-fuck relationships
– had just moved to London 2 days previous
– was living in a city where I knew almost no one, shared a flat with a girl I didn’t know, and had no job
– was pretty excited

Yesterday:
– I was 32
– living in London with my brand new husband
– working for the local council as a project manager in learning disabilities, a job I sometimes think is okayish, and sometimes want to walk out of in sheer, utter frustration
– was looking at round-the-world airline tickets
– was overall very happy

Today:
– spent some time taking care of my plants
– got a parcel from my sister
– baked some bread
– worked on my website
– spent the evening with friends
– was overall very happy

Tomorrow:
– I’ll sleep late and have brunch
– send out my CV
– who knows? been meaning to get to the museum

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Oh my goodness, my sister Kate is pregnant!

She and Carl are expecting a baby in September. And while I am really incredibly happy for her, I am also sad. I’m sad because my baby sister is grown up. Sad because life is changing, and I am missing out on stuff. Missing my sister, and this unbelievable time in her life. Missing my nieces and nephews growing up. Missing my friends and their new families and homes. Everyone I know is having a baby – Kate, Alex, Tonia, Jessica, Jo. The big news in my life tends to be what trip I have planned, or what I did over the weekend. I sometimes feel my lifestyle and choices are frivolous and irresponsible. Everyone is more adult than me.

I’m 32 – I rent the cheapest flat possible, I have almost no furniture, and I live paycheck to paycheck. I have no pension plan, no career plan, and I can’t even drive a car. My biggest ambition is to run away and travel the world. And I am suddenly acutely aware of time – I used to think I had all the time in the world for anything I wanted to do. But the reality is, I don’t. Doing one thing potentially precludes doing another, or postponing certain stuff indefinitely. I can’t have it all.

It upsets me – I don’t want to feel like I am missing out on the really important stuff in life, just for the opportunity to have easy city breaks to Paris. I want to be there when Kate’s baby is born, and be the fun aunt who buys the clothes and music that mum won’t, and the one who commiserates when other adults don’t understand, and the one who encourages them to go abroad and skydive and run marathons. I want to influence them to do the things and live the life they want, even when their parents are too afraid to be supportive. I want to be important to them – I don’t want to be the aunt they never see and barely know.

And I’m sad because it means the end of doing things with just my sister, just because we want to. No more spending the day together just because we have nothing else we’d rather do. No road trips to New Orleans. When you have a kid, things have to be planned. And I will miss that potential for spontaneity and completely unstructured time together. Because those were always the best – I could drop by and we’d go to a movie, or take the dog for a drive, or a walk on the beach. I always figured at some point we’d have that time again.

My sister is having a baby. And I am 3000 miles away.

In other unimportant news: the weekend was a bit of a binge-fest. Kerryn had his b-day drinks on Friday night – jack daniels, tequila, and sambuca shots galore. I was surprisingly sober after 4 shots and 5 vodka drinks. My liver must look like a walnut. Kerryn on the other hand, being a) a big flyweight when it comes to alcohol, and b) being the birthday boy, had to be cabbed home the two blocks.

Sunday was a mixed adult/kiddies party, with hoardes of four year olds. Given our less-than-perky condition, more alcohol was required to make it through tha afternoon alive. A thoroughly enoyable and completely unproductive Sunday afternoon was spent in the pub, after which k & t came back to our place, i cooked some gigantic meatball subs, and we watched a movie into the evening.

Somehow it all seems a little less important today.

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this sucks. I am sick of being sick. I am so bored and miserable, I could cry. I missed my concert. I have sweated my way through 5 pairs of pajamas in 3 nights. Poor j has not had a wink of sleep between my coughing fits, and my shivering and moaning, and my inferno-like night sweats. I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to watch any more telly, I don’t want to sleep, and I’ve read every book in my possession. I haven’t ventured outside in 4 days, the sight of any more putrid “lemsip” makes me want to vomit, and i am so cranky i am annoying myself. I’m usually not a bad sickie – i generally suck it up and keep going with a minimum of moaning. But this makes me want to just curl up in a ball and die. not to mention i have a shitload of work to tie up before holiday, and I’ve only got 3 days left…assuming I live to see another day at council.

i may not make it.

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