Leaves

I've only just noticed that leaves leave a mark.

I realised it first along High Holborn. The pavement in front of the Renaissance Chancery Court hotel is stamped with what appears to be fossilised leaves. Well, not really, but in my imagination I think of a great big 15th Century Oak dropping it's plumage, leaving a trace of itself for centuries to come. Of course, said plumage would have fallen into mud and piss and shit and all sorts of nasty with which it would have composted under the feet of legal types.

Now I'm seeing this phenomena everywhere, and I realise I'm generally unobservant.

7 Me Things

This boy has given me something to blog about: a meme. It's supposed to be 7 weird and wonderful things about me. I'm generally short on wonderful and long on weird, so my list is heavily slanted toward the latter.

-- Three times, while riding my bicycle home from school, I was hit by a car. I walked away from each collision with only minor injuries, but my bicycle didn't survive the third mishap mashup.

-- I've got no obvious physical anomalies (no sixth toe on either foot. no extra nipple compromising the symmetry of my chest), but if you have the proper medical knowledge and flash a light into my eyes you'll see I've got Drusen.

"What would normally look like a cobblestone street, in your eyes looks like giant marsh-mellows. It's of no real consequence, just make sure that no one tries to drill a hole in your head if you get into an accident. It's perfectly normal in your case."

When the ophthalmologist gave me this matter-of-fact news I was 9 or 10 years old. I begged my mother to buy me a medical notification bracelet so that no one would drill a hole in my head.

-- I was adopted.

-- In a map of central London in the back of a free tourist magazine that I picked up in the hotel where we lived our first eleven days in London, I highlighted all the streets I'd walked. I wanted to have walked every street, alley, mews, nook and cranny, and I wanted those walks to be represented on that map; which I held onto for just about 6 years. I've only just recently thrown it out in a fit of My Man-inspired cleaning.

-- When I get flowers, I get all very excited and rush to strip them of unnecessary foliage, tie the stems together with a string, and hang the flowers in the damp dark cellar.

-- I'm always a little bit sad at the end of my morning cup of coffee.

-- I am obsessive about eliminating unwanted hair. Tweezers, wax, razors are all instruments in my quest to be smooth.

Excellent

I am slackjawed chuffed. Bemused and flattered.

I don't know if I'm excellent, or if this little internet periodical dedicated to sometimes me and sometimes London even has moments of excellence, but Rashbre pimped me as "always lively" (I shudder to think how my recent posts must have disappointed!) and the compliment has made me feel warm inside, and slackjawed chuffed. Bemused and flattered. Thanks Rashbre.

Now, to pass it on. There are too many who are worthy. I will single out one who writes like the slash of a whip. She's smart, cutting and insightful. She's Jezebel.

Do it! Or, Buy it!

I'm late.

My intentions immediately jumped on the bandwagon, but I didn't get my arse in gear.

Better late than never, I say. (Many people say.)

If I've missed the window of opportunity to encourage you to write for this worthwhile project then I will assiduously make up for it by encouraging one and all to buy it!

My hat's off to the gorgeous Peach (and she is gorgeous, live and in person!). She's got vavavoom, even if she wears lesbian boots.

Digging My Way Out

Just like Uma Thurman pulling herself out of that being-buried-alive scene from Kill Bill, Volume 2, I emerge. A bit the worse for wear, dirty, bleary-eyed, and pissed the fuck off. But alive. I don't think I've walked into the diner and asked for a glass of water, but I'm getting there.

This is what happened:

Xmas was a heaven of non-work related responsibilities, and it seemed to last forever. January was a bucket of ice-water thrown in Santa Claus' fat face, particularly because my most adept and reliable 'subordinate' went on a well-deserved holiday, leaving me to pick up all the details that are normally well in hand. As soon as the reliable subordinate returned, my manager went on holiday and demonstrated confidence in me by listing me as the sole contact in his out-of-office message. Despite the sense of abandonment, I coped. I held down the fort without setting it afire. No one died. No one got fired. I was busy, but had it under (tenuous) control.

In February, a colleague kicked his heals a little bit like Gene Kelly and fucked off to the Caribbean for 25 days. Fucker. I was asked to step in during his absence. It wasn't meant to take more than a day a week. Who would have thought that a day is really three?

I'm not normally a stressed-out, uptight person. I'm actually pretty happy-go-lucky. I get things done, and generally agree that the more you have to do, the more you get done. Until, I learned, during this, my stressed out period, that the balance can tip, where you have so much going on and that you sit paralysed wondering what to tackle first while you tackle nothing and with each minute that passes you fall more and more behind and more and more emails populate your box, and you cannot focus, and you think you might puke, but instead you just cry in the loo and hope noone will notice your red eyes behind your fat-framed specs.

My Man kept telling me: "Don't let it get to you. You do the best you can. Work should never mean enough to disrupt you like this."

In my head, I know he's right. But make that argument to my gutt, and he's wasting his breath.

For someone who doesn't care so much about her job, I care an awful lot about the job I do. I let it define me; maybe because I'm not a mother; maybe because what I really want to be (a blogger! a dog-walker) lacks societal validation, so those other aspects of me don't count. It's the job that defines me, so when I feel like I'm doing nothing well, I don't feel well, and I cry a lot.

To my commenters, thanks for the nice words. You gave me warm fuzzies amidst the panic attacks.

No Need to Bury Me; I've already done that Job.

I am a zombie, a walking-dead, a deadone walking, deadly walking on stones I do not feel. Except, of course, when I am sobbing great, big, hearty, hiccuppy, guffaws-of-sobs in the ladies, when no one else is there for which I am grateful. Other than that I do not feel.

I am losing it. And all because I said. "Yes."

Because I'm a fucking idiot who doesn't think she has anything to prove but she must and now she is getting pains in her chest (which she ignores) and heading to the ladies to vomit tears into toilet paper and WHY? No one is dying. No one has been lost. There is just ooooo, too much to do .... because someone said, "yes"!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's difficult to breath. It's difficult to focus on the screen. It's difficult to like myself when I'm feeling so overwhelmed and so little capable. Fuck me.

This will pass.

Soon, I hope.

Cracks in Walls

I see a crack in our wall. It makes me think the house is going to cave in around me.

I'm normally not such a paranoid person.

It's the My Man's fault. He rages against the imperfections - big ones and small ones - in the walls around us, and the floor beneath us, and the roof over our heads.

The tap in the kitchen drips, and you'd think he'd been Chinese-water-tortured. Anger swells his "don't-mess-with-me-I'm-in-no-mood" forehead-vein. A hinge falls off a kitchen cupboard; the The Man blows a fuse. He notices every unnatural discolouration (the first hint of damp or a water leak). Each drop in temperature reminds him that the French doors are 'crap' and will need to be replaced.

He blames our particular flat for all its imperfections.

I complained first, but about the superficial: for the obvious shoddy workmanship in evidence around our flat, I blamed the Australian landlady's penchant for DIY.

If you do-it-yourself, it's just not done right!

My Man suspects the imperfections go deeper than mere botched DIY jobs. His suspicions began during the rodent infestation phase of our lives (an entirely different story) when we had to remove the panel that juts up against the bathtub. Underneath the tub, we found all sorts of construction related debris (and rodent faeces) that any reputable builder would have surely swept up and properly disposed of.

Surely!

Since then, with each cheque written for each new repair, My Man has grown to resent our tastefully decorated, comfortable, and clean flat. He is afraid of what lies beneath the classically modern (oxymoron?) veneer, afraid that scratching the surface will reveal something dark and dirty and rotting, or worse, something that disintegrates and blows away with the wind.

There was even a phase during which My Man considered moving house just to avoid our current bout of abode-al imperfections. He trawled the estate agent sites to see what we could get for our money. I hated this phase. The idea of moving again* does not appeal to me. I know at some point we'll pack up and go, but I want to minimise those occurrences, and it seems to me that moving house to escape house repairs is like running to escape life or fighting to keep peace or probably most like switching jobs to get away from work related headaches. It's futile. I am of the opinion that homeownership comes with homepainintheass projects. There's always going to be a leaky faucet (tap) or a rotting beam or a falling wall or a broken latch.

My Man doesn't entirely agree; he thinks our current flat is abnormally cursed. For now, at least, the moving-house-talk has abated.

Thank God.

I could probably live with the walls falling down around me.

An aside: when I was a teenager my best friend got into a argument with her little sister who, in order to prove just how uncool her older sister was, proceeded to compile a list (in a screeching, teenage sort of way) of all her older sister's friends (of which I was one) and the qualities that proved they (we!) were utterly ridiculous and so uncool as to be a source of embarrassment for this little sister. How could I have possibly infringed upon anyone's version of cool? The angry little sister of my best friend accused me of "living in la la land".

How uncool.

At the time, the accusation stung. With the years that have passed and my increased comfort with being uncool, I must admit, there's some truth to it: I am a bit oblivious.

And I have really bad eyesight and hate to wear my glasses.

All this to say that I could well imagine myself not noticing a menacing crack in the wall.

Except that My Man has made me paranoid.

*Before I was eighteen I'd already moved house 11 times.

NB: The house in the photo is not ours. Just a hyperbolic example.

Chatter on the Bus

The couple canoodle in the back of the bus. They are Asian, in the American-English sense (i.e. from China or Japan or one of the Koreas, but not from India or Pakistan).

But, are they really Asian (in the American-English sense)?

Their common language seems to be English. Both speak it with a foreign accent. Maybe he is Japanese, and maybe she is Korean. Maybe she is Chinese Malay, and he is from Hong Kong. Maybe their common language is a foreign language, and it is through this foreign language that they found the current fondness that they have for each other. Maybe he is French of Asian ancestry.

Whatever it is ... whyever it is that their sweet-nothings are giggled in English, it doesn't matter. They do not bother me.

Their sweetness with each other makes me smile. She gets ready to get off the bus. They make tender farewells. She leaves the bus and begins to walk away. He lifts his hand, ready to wave good-bye, but she doesn’t turn around.

I’m disappointed for him.

But wait!

She does look over her shoulder. His hand is still perched and ready for the good-bye. He waves. She waves. The bus drives off.