Where the small resembles the large when the large was small (except in the love of Disney. The large, when small, did not love Disney)

Kittencat has end of Christmas term ill. Not too badly, but she's coughing, and sneezing, and wheezing like an old horse, and generally reacting to the disruption to routine and piling on of junk food that school apparently feel is necessary in the run up to Christmas. All manageable with lots of sleep, calpol, cough linctus, Karvol and Vicks Vaporub, and although not yet well she's significantly better than she's been for a few days and is currently bounding about in her bedroom with soft toy Elsa, replacement soft toy Anna (original Anna broke, and my mend job was considered grossly inadequate), and newly acquired soft toy Rapunzel. We went to the Disney shop yesterday. We were supposed to do Christmas shopping, but town was busy, the child less than well, and I promised her we'd go to the Disney shop when we did our Christmas shopping. We didn't do our Christmas shopping. Christmas shopping is boring. Seeing the delight in a child's face when they find something they love and will treasure indefinitely is not boring, though that too is a rare shopping experience. I mostly hate shopping, but that was quite fun. Oh, and we also went to Paperchase, and she chose a diary, and a pen, because she's enamoured with the idea of a book you can write in every day and write the date at the top of the page.

She slept all the way home, on purpose, and then ate some tea and slept all night. Kittencat needs a rest these holidays and lots of sleep.

Tales from Motherhood.

I have the thing where the child just headbutted me - accidentally - in the lip, my lip slammed into my bottom teeth, and those teeth obligingly punctured my lip in several places.

Living the dream.

Hello you

It's been a while, hasn't it? I didn't die or anything, in case you were worried. I know, you're relieved, right? Sorry for the radio silence, I've been a little busy/wrapped up in stuff/generally uncommunicative. So how we going to do this, a brief catch up then go for a beer? AWESOME.

So, where did we leave things? It's been a funny old year. I told you about the concussion, right? Did I tell you that it meant I had to postpone all my exams and coursework and shit? Yeah, the plan was to do them all this year whilst working at an honest to goodness part of the grown up human race again job, and I started doing that, but... Well, I seem to have found myself in a spot awesomely suited to me. I found a job where being me is actually considered a major plus in my role, and I'm progressing better than they expected for the length of time I've been there. I'm enjoying it immensely, I'm working with people I like in a company whose ethos works well with my own. But seriously, do you know how hard it is to find a job where being me is actually a good thing? Where I don't need to dial back and pretend to be quieter, less? I freaking love where I've landed. And I've realised that studying was giving me none of this. Nothing positive at all. So I'm leaving my course and I couldn't be happier about it.

So that's the work/study situation. The child is glorious, she's started school and is a major smarty pants, but you knew that, right? She can read properly now, and has made me buy her a dictionary and an encyclopedia. Because that's what 5 year olds like, right?

Boys. Still haven't met one, at least one that's available to be interested in me, honest about it AND I find suitably attractive in a sexy way. Settling for just sex wouldn't work, because who someone is tends to be the defining factor as to whether I find them attractive, and just friends doesn't work, because a relationship based on just friendship is, well, just friendship. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because life is good.

Friends. I can see them again! I'm out of the habit of making plans, so it's early days, but I'm seeing people again and it's fun!

So, how are you? Really? Let's go and get that beer and you can tell me all about it!

A memory

Some years ago, there was drunkenness, on the scale required to achieve merriment in Jilly's, and a boy, who may have been an interesting boy, and I were talking. And then he said, "Kiss me, Kate" and I burst with laughing, because of Cole Porter, and he was upset, and aggrieved, and that was that. 

But really, I can't really blame myself, because in the same situation, I'd do it all again. It would be impossible not to. If you proposition someone with the name of a well known musical, you can't really expect anything else.

Oh and

I just made falafel. But it tasted really good, because I fried them in beef fat.

It's been a while.

Hello you old Latvian bot you, how've you been? It's been a while, which means I've probably been significantly less, or significantly more stressed than the happy medium of nicely slightly. But yeah, how've you been? Did it work out with that South American bot?

I think I may have had too much sun today? But yeah. Hello blog thing. There's some stuff I want to write about, but not today, as I want to write some proper thoughts about proper topics. Maybe even edit and spell check BEFORE I post. I know. No really, I know. But not tonight. Tonight I'm tired. Kittencat and I spent the day traipsing around Chester Zoo, which is actually the first zoo I've been to in memory where I didn't spend the entire time walking around feeling immensely sorry for all the animals (which is why I don't, as a rule, go to zoos, and why this is KC's first experience of a zoo). We went with my parents, and my nephews who both looked like the Unabomber, and were referred to as Unabomber 1 and Unabomber 2 for the entire day. Only by me, because I'm dead mature and cool and shit. KC and I are going to go back another time, and not just so I can see if she'll continue to call the porcupines "pontipines". My child is too fucking cute sometimes.

It is weird when

you log into your blog online idiot no one reads diary thingymabob (this thing, here) at around the same time that someone is actually reading it. It's strange. I have no idea who you are, or what you think when you read my ramblings. It's just as well you're only a bot, otherwise I'd get self conscious or something.

You know the thing

Where you're stressed to fuck, your whole existence is one big massive ball of uncertainty, ambiguity and who knows the fuck what, but you get to put your arms around someone, when you go to bed you lie close to them and there is no uncertainty, no ambiguity. That small reprieve from the rest of the world, with someone who knows you completely, someone you know completely, and there is nothing else there in the dark, just that, and you have, nay you are peace? I fucking miss that sometimes.

Midlife crisis

So this afternoon I seem to be having a mild stress reaction. Again. What seems to be helping is a compilation I bought on a whim last year care of Digitalis Recordings. Have a looksee.


*It may or may not float your boat, but it's soothing my brain, and calming the trembling nausea that has, for the afternoon, claimed my skin. My stomach still churns, but slower, my head is still troubled but no longer quite so pained. I would that I had a less physical response to stress, but I'm grateful for the respite this brings.

There are always three choices

In any situation, there are three choices. Accept it, change it, or walk away.

Achievable might be optimistic, but I can try.

These deadlines are not looking like the most likely thing ever.

Head injuries rule. Kinda

So it's essay season again. And I lost a week because I turned myself into more of a blathering idiot than normal. But placement is over, there is a deadline Friday, one on Monday and one next Friday, and, because I'm not really well yet, I'm not in anyway worried, or overthinking, or in any kind of self defeating spiral of crazed last minute. 2000 words on sociolinguistics for Friday, 2000 words on psychological theory related to health behaviours on Monday, and a clinic pack for my video viva on Friday 27th. Totally achievable. Probably more so than usual, due to the lack of stress and the current obsession with classical music, interspersed with a bit of drone.

Ambition

When I grow up, I want to be Ron Swanson.

So I concussed myself and broke my nose

By walking into a door. Beat that, motherfucker. (The challenge to beat that also extends to those who have no Oedipal issues).

So yeah. For the past week I have been woefully incompetent, for the most part blissfully and ignorantly so. For the first seven days, I wasn't really able to stand for more than a few minutes without getting horribly dizzy and unduly, excessively tired. Complex thought has for the most part been beyond my capacities, and when attempted has rendered me preternaturally hungry. Yes, I have been eating pretty much everything in sight. And it was delicious.

Mostly, I have been much better over the last 48 hours, though my thought processes are still slow, I still tire easily and I'm still eating like I'm at an overpriced all you can eat buffet. What's striking though is that I'm able to articulate my thoughts in written form more easily than verbally. Articulating well defined conversational sentences is proving tricky. I lose where I'm up to. I pause. I hesitate. I struggle to find the right words. I was never a great orator, but at least I could maintain the flow of my ideas.

I'm also a little blunter and more honest right now, for all my lack of spoken clarity. A friend wryly suggested that isn't really possible. I can only apologise in advance.

There is truth in fiction that cannot otherwise be seen.

I've always loved novels. And history. And philosophy. And my favourite means of accessing history, and philosophy, and religion, and politics, and life in general has always been through fiction. The nuances of feminism, the raping of the world by colonialism. Perspectives on life, seeing events with a broader view than you could ever achieve through personal experience. I haven't read so much recently, the breadth of books I have to read has made a pleasure into a duty, a chore. 

Let's change that. Unless it's a tome the length and breadth of Middlemarch, the majority of books only take an evening to read. Occasionally two. An evening a week for a book that is nothing to do with speech therapy is a small goal. Goal is the wrong word. Pleasure, reward.

This week: Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat.

Fuck off crumpets

I don't want you. I really don't.

I fucking love crumpets. With blue cheese, and mushrooms, and possibly a poached egg on top. Basically nearly all the things that make me ill, on one plate. Most delicious thing ever. Regarding this, I feel that I need instruction. So



Dear self,

Don't.

Yours sincerely,

Woodcat

I hereby promise myself

That I am going to do the thing I've been telling myself I will do for about the last six weeks. And I will do it by the time I am 34. Which gives me about three weeks.

Sounds fair.

OW

If you ever needed an illustration of how bad sitting for long periods makes you feel, leave writing an essay to the last minute, then write it sitting in an armchair. Your back will ache. Your legs will ache. Your arse will either ache or go numb. After a couple of days, you will be dying for exercise. I absolutely guarantee it.

Candour

Cattenberg and I today had a conversation reflecting on how a dysfunctional relationship can make you value your own company above all others, and conversely how once you are removed from such situations you value the company of others immensely. When everything is wrong with your closest relationship, the last thing you need is more people, you need space, isolation, to escape. When there's nothing to escape from, that's when people become a pleasure again.

A life lived in fear

Is fucking stressful, I'll bet.

I thought I had a free day on Wednesday. I forgot I signed up for an exciting talk about dementia. Go me, rocking the extracurricular shit.

Right. Placement starts tomorrow. I have reading to do, and placement clothes to prep. I should probably look up where I'm going. It's in Congleton, I know that much at least...

There is much to do before I sleep. You want to come and make me cups of tea? You can slob on my sofa and read or watch films inbetween times. Just a brew every hour, no conversation. No awkward silences, just silence.

I will be 34

In less than a month. I haven't celebrated my birthday in 6 years (just in case you're wondering, it didn't work, I still aged), and a few months ago I felt like I should, but now it feels daunting and I am severely tempted to stay in my shell and pretend it isn't happening.

Maybe we shall skip that day on the calendar, I shall age, but it shall go unmarked.

Or

Maybe we shall go to The Magnet/Sandbar/somewhere vaguely pub shaped on Friday or Saturday night, and see where the night goes.

Either way, I will be going to Watter + Holy Sons + Lilac & Champagne on 08/02. Which is not my birthday. I will already be 34 by then. But since I've been calling myself 34 for about four months already, there's little point in splitting hairs. Buy a ticket, come with x

There's still a long road to travel

But the words are coming, content is landing on the page in vaguely ordered splatters. The deadline is in sight, thankfully so too is the end of the essay.

As regards the last post

Fuck it. A pity party isn't going to get my work done. Lets roll.

Even though my brain's finally working better than it's worked for years

Even though my brain's finally working better than it's worked for years - thanks to all the vitamins and controversial nutrition, yay, butter! - I still have the mindset of failure to overcome. When you've been told you aren't good enough all your life, even though you fought like hell just not to sink, it's hard to remember that it isn't true. I have an IQ around 140, a highly analytical brain, and I can do this. But yet. I'm floundering in the remnants of the learned behaviours, the learned expectations of when my attention issues were at their worst. Which is arguably most of my life. Although I've largely fixed my capacity for abstractions and logic so that I can see answers clearly, rather than struggling to fathom them as though looking through a barely translucent screen, I still sit here with the haunting uselessness of the sinking weight of the inevitability of failure. Because for so long, that's all that was expected of me, because it was all anyone believed I could do. Me included. And for all that I've made massive inroads this year, I still have to spend a certain amount of energy consciously undoing the attitudes instilled in me over the years, the expectation that I am a failure. I am not, and I never was. But because you walked in my house for all of ten minutes and reinforced all of that old shit, now I am sat here, impotent, fearful of work I know how to do, staring down failure like a rabbit in the headlights.

Cheers. Fucking cheers.

Urgh.

I have stress nausea. One day I will be calm, collected and cool under pressure. And truthfully, if you were you were bleeding, or in a mess, or there was some kind of crisis, I'm good with that. Give me a deadline, and a piece of work that I can easily do, and my head explodes.

Essay season.

It's that time of the year, yet again. The time when attention issues become overwhelming, and anything and everything steals my mind away from me. Not this time mother fucker. I've vitamined myself up with the As and the Bs and the Cs and the Ds and the Ks, eaten a slab of excessively raw cow and a small amount of excessively dark chocolate, I have coffee and water laced with Himalayan salt by my side, and I am ready to hit this motherfucker right in the face!

And then start my essay.

I'm rebelling

The cult of the individual pervades every corner of modern life. We are all expected to be talented unique glimmers of astounding individualism. We are knowledge seekers, trend setters, interior designers, carefully crafting our own unique story, our own unique image. We create novelty, we are interesting, notable in our difference. When alone, we read obscure texts, or the current zeitgeist. We are up to date with current events, current tv, current film, current music. We play music, or sew, or paint, or knit, or crochet, or all of these things. We do these things to a professional standard. We post (professional standard) photographs online of ourselves drinking the newest microbrewery creations before anybody else, and the following morning post photographic evidence that we are better than hangovers, instead we are half way up a mountain. Every meal we eat is a gourmet extravaganza worthy of a Michelin star. When in company, we are casually well dressed, erudite, sparkling witty company, neither tee total, nor embarrassingly drunk. We travel to Asia, Iceland, anywhere considered off the standard tourist trail.

Fuck off. We aren't. Sometimes we are just people. Most of the time we are just people. We aren't good at everything. Sometimes we're creative, sometimes we're not. And it's okay not to be. I have no desire to impress anyone who is only interested in me because of my knitting habit, or my penchant for wearing corsets furtively under hoodies. If I read a book, it's because I want to read it, not because it's on someone's list of texts belonging to a canon of cool.

Mostly, I do not have the time in the day to keep up to date with all this stuff.

Actually, something changed today

My child, beautiful willful Kittencat, has a tendency to hypoglycemia. I've been aware of this for a few months; when nursery had an unexpected kitchen staffing problem and the management stepped in, for all their best efforts, the menu was basically a diabetics worst nightmare, processed carbs and sugar galore. My first clue to the excessive sugar being the problem was when Kittencat started to complain about excessively itchy eyes, as I had this all my life, and it magically vanishes on a diet with virtually no sugar. But Kittencat had several individual days where she was basically catatonic, no energy, high temperature, tendency to vomit first thing in the morning, and yet fine the day after, and it didn't immediately strike me that there was a link between these days and the sugar and the white carby goodness. I'm still falling back on the misinformation of my youth, so occasionally it takes me a while to draw these oh so obvious connections. But I am reading. And some of my reading touched on hypoglycemia. And this is exactly what is happening with KC. I'm reluctant to get her formally diagnosed, as that involves forcibly pumping her full of a shitload of sugar, but basically, if my kid has too much sugar, she runs around like she's batshit crazy, then turns into a lifeless little ill person, dizzy, nauseous, temperature, exhausted. The reaction isn't always within minutes and can occur the day after, or indeed be a sort of cumulative effect over a number of days. But my observations are generally seen to be the over application of a little knowledge, and I found out today that my mother thought I'd been explaining a series of bugs as if caused by food. She told me this because she realised she was wrong. Kittencat had jelly after her lunch, went batshit crazy, then limp and lifeless and temperaturey and nearly asleep for several hours on their sofa. And we talked, and my theory was food, and hers was viral. And I agreed it might be, but we'd only know if it persisted beyond the day. And I'll tell you straight, the mother, a former very well qualified nurse, was seriously worried about the state the child was in. As was I, but it's happened before, and we deal. And then, at 17:30, she sprang back into life. Colour returned to her cheeks, a fervent desire to eat replaced the nausea and she ate tea, and it was as if nothing had ever occurred. The mother was flabbergasted, and explained that because she'd never seen it, she hadn't realised that I was being anything more than an overbearing mother, applying limited knowledge with gay abandon. Fact is, I research exceptionally thoroughly when it comes to my child and her health.

While I'm unhappy that this occurred, because it's no fun for anyone, particularly poor little Kittencat, both I and my mother are glad she's witnessed it. If only so that we're all on the same page, and that I no longer get told to stop being so overbearing for insisting that Kittencat can't have sugary things more than one day in a row.

A New Day

January 1st. A new day. A new year. So much has changed since yesterday. The date for one. Happy New Year.