Today (or should I say yesterday, Wednesday?) was a big day. It was officially the end of the last term of my final year. I have exams and a teaching placement coming up, as well as a research project and an essay - but I am mere months away from OBTAINING MY DEGREE. It seems incredible to think that this was my last day of teaching "ever" (apart from when I start my Master's, haha). Time is a wriggly caterpillar - sometimes it squiggles along, very speedy, and you follow with your eyes, conscious of the rapid movement; sometimes it basks wearily, slumping as if beaten down upon by the sun and at other times, it heaves the many compartments of itself efficiently over the leaf. Very often, we miss the latter because we bounce between extreme activity and then none at all. I think it's very handy when we do though, since it reminds that Time does not stop and start in blocks of 'routine' as we do, but is ever flowing.
Er... not too sure where that came from. Blame the fact that I'm delirious from a heady cocktail of sleeping late, waking early, reading a book on the Internet, and seeing TL. Seeing TL is a fine way to get drunk without the alcohol. I think that if I were with him in company and he held eye contact, my knees would bid me a speedy farewell. I'd like to remonstrate with them, but really, it just doesn't work. What chance does my brain have against someone who actually made my pulse race for a day and a half - yes, a day and a half! - after we first kissed?
It's not just the end of an era at university though. It's the end of a destructive era for me, I hope. I realised that I was running from dealing with family-based issues (which are probably the source of any depression I may have), because my previous relationship was very co-dependent and so if you like, my bad feelings about myself were inflicted upon me by a proxy - my ex. This time round though, I have a super-awesome libertarian, really great blog-readers and friends and I've realised that writing might help more than I've given it credit for previously. I made an appointment with the doctor for next week, and then jumped around shrieking happily. Ironic, much?
I also made an omelette yesterday. Yes. It wasn't bad at all, and next time, I'll remember to put the cheese into the beaten egg so that it's even better. :-D Resolutions have been taken - not promises made, because breaking promises brings on guilt, whereas you can't really break resolutions. I mean, you're resolving - you're essentially steeling yourself to try to do something, rather than committing. I think that's why they're called 'New Year's Resolutions,' so people don't have to feel bad if they fall off the wagon!
1) I will continue to write.
2) If I'm sinking, I will admit it - even if it's just to my blog. People ARE capable of love. The world is not a cartoon, and I will not be 'put down' for being stressed.
3) I'm going to the doctor, the lady doctor. I laughed when I realised that not even at the fucking doctor's was I safe from my family.
Anecdote time: my doctor is a Sikh man (so, like my family). A couple of years back, I was a bit chesty and over from abroad, so my dad took me to see him. On a previous occasion, I'd seen him with stomach trouble and just mentioned that I hadn't eaten much and hadn't been eating properly because of my stomach being weird. He said breezily, 'Well, you've gained weight.'
... So anyway, I asked him when it might clear up - politely as always - because it'd been around about 2 weeks, and I don't generally do illness. He essentially revealed in a hectoring way that he didn't know - that it could be up to a month or something. He and my dad were sort of sporadically making conversation at this point, I think. He said my nose had gotten sore (of which I was, unsurprisingly, aware), probably just from blowing it too hard. I asked if that was the only reason why it was so red, 'because,' I said, 'it does seem redder to me than previous times when I've had a cold.' I don't really get colds, and maybe I sound like an ignorant prat, but is that really such an awful thing to say?
He became exasperated. 'Well, you probably did before, but you just don't remember it. That's why you think it's worse now. We tend to remember significant events in our lives. Illness is hardly a significant event, is it?' Withering gaze. 'I mean, in conversation, we retain only 40% of what we're told.'
In the shallows of my mouth, the cry of Arrogant tosspot! died bitterly on my tongue. This was swiftly followed by the rejoinder 'Well, next time you want to show off to my father, you might as well just fellate him - and not in front of me either, PLEASE.' Still, my dad is slightly hard of hearing and rarely ever tuned in enough to other people's conversations to have realised what was going on. Even then, it's not like I can count on his - or any of my family's - support. I kept quiet, stunned. My suspicions about him wanting to show off were forthwith proven when he and my dad engaged in a sort of random and automated braggadicio-bout of what community work each had done. There was a strange sentiment to it, as though they were in reality striving for the same thing, but by nature falling into a wearied machismo routine of competing cockerels.
So yeah, that fucking charmer? Not testing me for depression! Although this may sound terrible, I really suspect that were I to see him and not absolutely insist on confidentiality, he might find a way to suggest something, if not bring it up, to my family upon encountering them.
4) I made an omelette yesterday. With mature Cheddar cheese and fresh parsley. I fried up some shredded ham, sliced fresh spring greens (originally misspelt as 'grins'! Oh dear), a plum tomato and one large-ish mushroom. This I piled on top of the omelette, with two pieces of wholemeal toast and a very fine dinner was had by all.
5) I will keep trying new things with The Libertarian. In the space of just two weeks, or so, he has gone from having no strong feelings about wholegrain strawberry Biopot yoghurt, to actively encouraging me to buy it at Tesco, because 'it's only 30 pence more.' This, here, is proof of the goodness of the world. My lover adores yoghurt as much as I do now. I was also absurdly proud of him when I made one of my makeshift desserts (rhubarb and vanilla Biopot poured over warm golden syrup cake - SWOON) and he rapidly cleared it. Were I not so busy thinking 'Crikey, this is moist,' I would've shed tears of joy, I tell you. TL is of a, er, limited palate to say the least, but his heart is large and so I have converted him to many a cuisine and the journey ain't stopping yet, ohhhhhhh no.
(I apologise to anyone who is suddenly repulsed and morally outraged by my food-based burblings. I LOVE food and always have. Some people like to look at porn, or celebrity gossip late at night. I floss to cake recipes. Yes, that's right. Cake recipes. I actually emitted animal noises of wounded envy and desire when discovering that people, out there, have combined brownie and cheesecake).
Something I meant to do ages ago, but had neither the time nor energy to do - I think it's really high time that somebody either a) assassinated the Pope (why is it confined just to political leaders?!) or b) committed him. I'm sorry to sound so violent, but my patience wears ever thinner with this dangerous loon, who practises inefficiency, corruption and hypocrisy at Olympic levels and continually endangers public health/human rights/world improvement in the process.
This is old news, from the 18th. I just couldnae resist though:
The Roman Catholic Church believes marital fidelity and sexual abstinence are the best way to prevent the spread of HIV.
... On his way to Cameroon, the Pope said HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".
The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer".
SPIRITUAL AND HUMAN AWAKENING? FRIENDSHIP FOR THOSE WHO SUFFER? Oh, don't worry, woman-who-has-no-rights-thanks-to-our-religion-upholding-cultural-misogyny! If your husband cheats on you and then infects you with the virus, it's OK, there's nothing you can do about it - because it's YOUR FAULT in the first place! You clearly didn't work hard enough at putting him off sex in the first place and erecting the correct psychical walls of guilt and shame in his consciousness! You should have put him off sex, apart from procreation, and then none of this would have happened!
I mean, you've failed in your basic wifely duties and he may accuse you of cheating - for a betrayal has occurred, hasn't it? You've betrayed him, just like Eve betrayed Adam. He may as well cast you out. Don't even THINK about getting an abortion, you've got a baby to bear - and if you die, then that's just divine retribution, really. Don't worry about that latex thingy that could've stopped the transfer of bodily fluid that gave you HIV! God made it, he'll deal with it! *looks desperately heavenwards, then develops carefree glint in eye* And if he doesn't, well then, tough shit anyway. As long as the white Western world's safe, you darkies can go on dying en masse for all I care. I mean, sure, I can hold you up as an example of outstanding devotion when it suits me, but you lot don't have the money or influence to lobby international governments and 'do God's work,' do you? You're the foot soldiers.
"In the context of globalisation with which we are all familiar, the Church takes a particular interest in those who are most deprived," he said.
A particular interest in making sure that 2/3rds of global Aids victims continue to die in sub-Saharan Africa, sure.
He said it was the duty of Christians to help to build "a more just world where everyone can live with dignity"
... Just not the duty of Roman Catholics.
From a separate analysis:
The Pope said the "cruel epidemic" should be tackled through fidelity and abstinence rather than condoms, and that "the traditional teaching of the Church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids".
Bull-fucking-shit, Benny. Seriously, is your dress laced with psychotropics? Since when does 22 million infected Africans = 'the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids?' EPIC fail.
OK, 3.05 a.m. Face melting. Will release my pincer-like grip now, and thank you all so much for your kindness, I LOVE Y'ALL.
P.S.: BBC Two is going to start showing The Wire! The fuckin' Wire! If you have not ventured forth into its glorious, glorious fictive terrain, then you MUST. Even The Times has counselled readers to get a piece of the action. Let's put it this way: it's routinely referred to by fans (including myself, I am guilty) as 'the best show on television ever' which is, granted, a little on the sweeping side. Just a little though. If The Wire by some freakish miracle, of the ever-hypothetical nature, were to transform into a person, then I would marry it and have its children. WITHOUT FAIL. Even if it involved polyamory. That's how good it is!
For those of you scared for my sanity - I'm going now. Really. Byeee!
9 comments:
How limited is his palate? Does he eat plenty of things, just not weird food?
Well, you should know - you've met him!
:-D
He doesn't seem to be amenable to pasta, rice or noodles which certainly makes my life harder, but also more interesting. I'm planning on forcing him to help me bake lots if ever we end up riding off into the sunset together.
But who would want to eat food like that? Everyone knows pasta is simply the discarded bits from fish.
Oh, would you HUSH, Mr. Disingenuous-in-the-Extreme! Pasta is made of egg, or wheat flour - you can think what you want, but that's just bad science.
Evil though it sounds, I have the very occasional urge to make him have just ONE bite of pasta, just so I can see his face. It's hilarious - he looks like he's just been robbed. It also looks perversely cute, and then I want to kiss him. When we went to Cambridge together, he was confronted with a pasta starter, and there was a partially-horrified, partially-imploring look in his eye that made me want to burst out laughing and tackle-hug him.
You're a bad influence, you are - well, I shan't let you be a bad influence on ME at least! ;-D
Doesn't like pasta, rice or noodles? What? B-b-b-how? How is he still standing, as in surviving? Does he eat red meat off the bone all day every day?
Jeez! What on earth does this chap of yours eat?! :-)
p.s. the rest sounds good...and MA in which subject?
Muhamad & Ala:
Oh, he's a classic Englishman. Meat, bread and peas or carrots pretty much everyday it would seem.
I'm becoming creative with my use of bread and potatoes, but thankfully he said that if we ever set up house together, I don't have to cook for us all the time. Which is great, because if I'm denied noodles, pasta and rice for the rest of my life, I will murder my tormentor. With the flat of a frying-pan.
I'm very relieved because he's not exactly adventurous of his own accord, but he's very willing to try things with me, and I've got him to like Indian food, so the end is not nigh! If he was one of those people who can't or won't try things, THAT would be more of a problem for me. I hate that sort of attitude.
My MA will be in English Literature... so, not useful really - unless I end up becoming a lecturer.
make sure it's wholemeal pasta...
(hell, that's what me & the kids eat...you tell him that if 2 small Scottish-American kids [aged 6 and 2] can chomp their way through multiple varieties of pasta, basmati rice, noodles and couscous, then it's about time he became more multicultural on the food front...!!)
:-))
Tatties are great, though, to be fair - family favourite dish being Tartiflette (but not with the screamingly expensive Rachoblon cheese)...but them that's *French* :-)))
Andy -
Trust me, I've tried to get him to eat stuff, and he does take a little before screwing up his face and expressing unhappiness. It's annoying, but as I've come to be more realistic about relationships and the amount of compromise they involve, it's not bad at all.
I mean, I could have a libertarian who dislikes a lot of things I enjoy, but who's never stopped ME from eating them and does try new things... or I could settle for someone like the seemingly very-common model of my sister's husband who needs to have his arrogance overlooked and his moods kowtowed to at all times.
My own father is a 'good man' by the standards of Asian culture, and he's still pretty emotionally childish. So I'm hanging on to the libertarian. He has repeatedly avowed not to deny ME of foods I like, and has adhered to this completely. Just to make sure though, I reminded him of my threat to murder him with a frying-pan this afternoon. It was well-received... ;-D
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