Fragmented

[Written at the beginning of April.

What were the nine words?

Words of love, and pain, and affection, and need, and an affirmation that Sati Marie Frost has plenty to offer the world, and you.

Perhaps one day, I'll tell you.]

Sometimes

life is easier to process

in fragments.

nine words

nine words
can break a heart
or make one whole.
they can creep down inside
and claw at you
or they can fill you
with such
Radiance
that your heart
wants to explode.

nine words
can fill my veins with crimson snow
or act
like a
phosphorus burn.
once spoken
they cannot be unspoken
but will consume me
until all their fuel is gone.

months later
i stare at
nine words
and
still
i do not understand them.
they could be greek
except
of course
i understand greek
better than i understand
You.

nine words
can confound
or make things simple.
nine words
make problems irrelevant
as all the issues
that came before
that came between
no longer matter.

because

nine words
say more to me
than all the others
you ever spoke.

nine words
can show me you
and can show me me.
because of those nine words
the path is clear
there is no other
possible way
for this to play out
and stay true.
to me.
to you.
and so
i pick up my suitcase
and i pick up my credit card
and i pick up the phone.

Coincidence Beats Me In The Humor Stakes

One thing about me that not everyone knows is that I really have a deep appreciation for the ridiculousness of the world. Sometimes I wonder if the reason why I'm not particularly funny, why I don't make jokes, is that I realize instinctively that nature and coincidence make this world more amusing than anything that *I* can think up.

I bought MP3 downloads today, from a Christian music shop. (I'm not much for religious music, but this is nice, it's just instrumental stuff that you wouldn't recognize as praise music unless you saw the titles.)

What made me laugh today was this:



Normally that wouldn't be funny, but given the context, it cracked me up.

Or maybe it didn't. Maybe I was cracked to begin with.



That's all I've got for you tonight, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Shopping At Westfield

The day before yesterday was good. Zia's a lot better than she was last time I saw her. Part of that's to do with the fact that the weather's warm, as she always feels a lot better when the cold isn't there to leach into her bones - much like Mom and me, actually - but she seems generally more stable emotionally. Which is good, although I'm not making any assumptions - after all, she was fairly well the whole time she was away at uni, and I thought that she'd got over the suicidal phase from her teen years, and then this winter just gone the whole thing started up again, which freaked the hell out of me. It's not easy to see your life get stuck on replay. And I worry.

But yeah, she seems a lot better. We talked - a lot - about her depression, and Curt - who dated her when we were in college, although she didn't go to the same college as us - and my health and basically everything. It's good that she can be open and candid about things, because she couldn't when she was a teenager - everything was either secret or overt and dramatic. Mind you, I suppose that's something that most teenagers could say about themselves, me included. So many of my friends are surprising me with their new maturity lately. Cam was right, my friends HAVE grown up. I don't know why this is such a surprise to me - perhaps because I haven't. When you stop growing and maturing, you forget that everyone else keeps doing it.

I showed great restraint and did not buy the £160 cream silk jacket from Reiss or the £19 single Shiseido eyeshadows or the beautiful white lace bra from Rigby & Peller with the green and lilac flowers on that cost £90. I didn't even LOOK in Gucci or Prada, although I was very tempted by the Gucci handbags - Zia has one that she had with her yesterday, and I practically had multiple orgasms just from touching the buttery suede interior. Of course, I am a youth worker, and an average Gucci handbag costs about four months' income for me - and THAT'S including the carer's allowance I get for looking after Mom. Shit, I hate being poor. I especially hate being poor with expensive tastes. It's so funny, I laughed so loud for so many years at girls who spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds on one item of clothing, openly mocking the idea that being expensive makes something better - and now I'm one of them. Or I am in my head, anyway. I'm far too practical to ACTUALLY spend money on a thing just because I want it, when I know that having it means that I won't be able to meet my responsibilities...but I do covet. Not everything, and never *just* because something costs a lot of money - but some things, things that are beautifully designed and put together, and made from fabrics that are a delight to the senses...yeah, I do want those things. I love beauty, whether it's flowers or the sky or crystal prisms that make rainbows or a designer bag or a pair of Manolos. And if I can find genuine goods on sale, in TK Maxx or in a seconds sale because they're slightly damaged! Oh hellz yeah. If they're damaged, I can fix 'em. I have a red silk dress from Hobbs that I got for £40 last winter because it was missing two buttons and had a couple of threads that had pulled loose. I have - or had - lilac and silver Louboutin pumps that were 90% off in TK Maxx, that I've had to pass on to Selena because they're too high for me. Somewhere, I don't know where, I have a flowered pink silk Dolce & Gabbana dress - also from TK Maxx - that I got down from £899 to £80. I'll never get my boobs into it now, of course. I wish I'd bought the white strapless CK sundress I found a couple weeks ago; I didn't want to spend the money at the time, but I should have.

What can I say, I like a bargain.

Of course, you'd never see me drooling over something I didn't actually LIKE, just because it was expensive. And there are a whole heck of a lot of expensive things that I don't like at all.

We had a mild scare when Zia left the aforementioned handbag in a shop, and when she realised it wasn't on her shoulder she went back to the corner where she was trying shirts on, and found it wasn't there. Luckily the security guard had turned it in - I was NOT looking forward to consoling her over that one. Silly girl doesn't even have it insured. *sigh* Then she went to thank the security guard - who didn't speak much English - and he thought that she was telling him off for moving it, which made us giggle a bit.

Westfield is pretty big, and I was tired by the time we got there - I always forget how London takes it out of me. Plus, it was one of those really disgusting humid days, and although I was pretty and fresh-looking when I left the house in my white cotton sundress and mint-green cardigan, by the time I even met up with Zia at Oxford Circus I was crazy sweaty. What I should have done is bought a cheap sundress on Oxford Street, backtracked to St Pancras and used the showers there, and changed into fresh clothes. But I didn't want to waste time, so the shopping was a little uncomfortable for me, feeling grimy as I did. (Naturally, TODAY was a gorgeous day with virtually no humidity - go figure.) So the grime and the exhaustion meant that I didn't shop nearly as much as I wanted to, and I need to go back soon, and look in Zara, and some more of the lingerie shops, and a whole bunch of other places. It's a really nice mall, though, and I would like to spend time there on a regular basis, exploring all the different outdoor restaurants, if it weren't so darn expensive to get to London.

We had dinner in Nandos, and Zia ate a chicken wing platter that was meant for 2-3 people.

=))

It shocked me a bit, but I was also thoroughly impressed. She blushed a lot, and said that one of the new meds she's been taking makes her hungry all the time, and that she's put on a lot of weight. It's true, she has, but she looks fabulous now - she was painfully thin as a teenager. And although with anyone else, I'd have teased them mercilessly about eating nine chicken wings and a bowl of mashed potato, I couldn't tease her because it was just so good to see her eating. The kid I knew absolutely loathed food, and had such body issues that she thought she was obese even when she wore a size 6 (US 2), and even getting her to eat enough to prevent her from ending up in hospital from diabetic complications was like pulling teeth, and usually involved a mixture of bribery, threats and soothing words. I like this way a whole lot better.

We had cocktails in a terrace bar - Mango Bellini and Mojito for her, Strawberry Daiquiri and something called an African Dream for me. The African Dream was nice, kind of like a Screaming Orgasm, but with Grand Marnier instead of amaretto. And the daiquiri was wonderful. It's funny that I've never drank or made a daiquiri, since I spent several years as a barmaid, but it's just not a thing that ever really caught on in England. I always imagined them being like a milkshake, but Babs told me that they were more like smoothies, and she was right. I'm never particularly daring when it comes to alcohol (okay, okay, or anything else), although I did drink a lot of cocktails at Hot Coles happy hour on Thursdays when I was in college. But it's like with restaurant food - I don't eat out all that often, so when I do I stick with things that I know and like. If I've mixed it, chances are I've drank it, so I picked a few basic things out of my repertoire and stuck with them. I loved Cosmopolitans a couple years before the rest of the country caught on, and anything with Midori or Blue Curacao has my vote. But the rest...meh. I'm not much for exploring. When I lost my memory, every day was an influx of new things, but the terror of not knowing who you are made that less of an adventure and more of a series of tests that I had no way of studying for and no hope of passing. I started keeping extensive lists about myself, stupid little pieces of information that a person with a healthy brain never bothers to think about, everything from the books I read that first year to the fact that I liked cheese and anything orange-flavored and didn't like brown bread or anything too sweet. I never quite broke myself of the listing habit, although these days at least I throw them away when I'm finished with them.

Getting home was a nightmare. I was stupid enough to ride with Zia to Mile End, thinking that I could take the District to Blackfriars and pick up the overground there - totally forgetting that Blackfriars is closed till the end of this year. I used to always go that way to work, but since it closed ages back, I've been changing to the Hammersmith & City at Farringdon, and then transferring to the District at any station along the way. Somehow the fatigue and the alcohol made me forget that, until I was already on the District Line. So I had to get off at Mansion House, and wait for a Circle train, and take that to Farringdon. But THEN, Farringdon overground lines were closed so they could repaint the lines, so I had to get on another Circle train to King's Cross St. Pancras - which is where I'd have been an hour and a half before if I'd been smart, and got off the Central Line at Oxford Circus and let Zia carry on to Mile End alone.

I feel like I zigzagged across half of London. St Albans to St Pancras, walk through to King's Cross, King's Cross to Oxford Circus, where I met Zia. Oxford Circus to Shepherd's Bush. Then on the way home, Shepherd's Bush to Mile End, to Mansion House, to Farringdon, to King's Cross, walk to St Pancras, and home to St Albans. I've done more than that, back in the days when Sanjeeta and I didn't have anywhere to go and it was raining outside so we bought a cheap travelcard and station-hopped, just exploring the Underground. (Sanjeeta loved the artwork at Tottenham Court Road; I loved the extra-wide marble platforms at Angel; we both loved Stratford's weird architecture and the whole of the DLR. We were such geeks.) But I've never done it at 1am, after a long day.

I ran into an uber-hot guy at St Pancras, who I used to go to school with - he was just getting off the train that I had to get on to get home. And he seemed like he wanted to chat, but I was so exhausted, and if I'd missed that train, after all that trouble, I'd have had to beg him for a place to stay, or find a cheap hotel room. Actually, if I had to have a night crashed out in London, that night wouldn't have been too bad, because I had my medication in my handbag, and purely by chance I'd bought some Ruby & Millie makeup (on 70% off sale, yay) and two pairs of panties, a cheap shortie T-shirt, and a basic cotton sundress. If someone had been able to supply me with a bed, a shower, a towel and some toothpaste and deodorant and shampoo, I'd have had clothes to sleep in and a change for the morning, and been perfectly fine, and that's not something that I can always say when I'm in London. I try to travel light these days - the days of carrying spare shoes and a jacket and an umbrella and all the other things that Mom tried to force onto me are over, thankfully - but the downside of that means that if I am caught out and have to stay somewhere for the night, I don't have a change of clothes. And I absolutely loathe putting dirty, sweaty clothes back on when I'm clean - although not as much as I hate staying in them. I do not have a high tolerance for dirt.

I really miss having PaPa and Stepmama's London house as a base. And Curt, who is one of the few people I know who I'd feel comfortable phoning at 1am and begging a bed from, is still spending his weekdays in Norwich and has a wife occupying his London flat. If I run into old friends, I can usually ask them for a place to stay and they'll give it to me, because people tend to be nice to me, probably because I never ask them for much. But I don't really feel comfortable doing it. Not only the asking, but the sleeping next to someone. I don't sleep well when I share a bed with anyone other than Curt - and not even with him, all the time.

Although I think I'd sleep well next to Kurisu-san. I don't know why, I just have a feeling.

So I had a nice time. I'm still exhausted, and my bank account is glaring at me sullenly. But I did have a lovely day, and now that Zia's seen me once, it'll be easier for her to keep in touch on a more regular basis.

My Panties Smell Like Cake

WARNING: This post contains sexual references.

Yeah, really.

Three courses of antibiotics means that not only are the nasty beasties gone from my system, but also all the friendly beasties too. Therefore, no more salt-and-lemon smell, at least not for now. For the last couple of days, I've just smelled and tasted a teensy bit sweet, but not really like much at all. But combined with the vanilla bath foam I used a couple of hours ago, and the lavender-scented feminine wash I have, the whole thing has combined to make me smell like a sponge cake. I've been lying on my bed for the last hour and a half, going crazy trying to figure out where the cake smell is coming from, and who could possibly be baking at nearly two in the morning, and now I realize - it's me.

I guess the status posts I've been making on the faceplace for the last couple months, about how my sheets smell like cake, and my bedroom smells like vanilla, can all be traced back to this. That's a little embarrassing. :D

This all seems a bit unfair to me, because now I'm hungry. I suppose I could get up and actually MAKE a cake, but then I'd chance waking Ma, and I'm supposed to be dieting. Or I could get up and make a cocktail, but I'm not sure that I have the ingredients for a Screaming Orgasm, and nothing else will satisfy my sweet tooth. And frankly, cocktails at nearly 3am, alone, when I'm half asleep, seems a little overly hedonistic. If I were awake and dressed, or if I had a date or a girlfriend here with me, then no problem, but I'm not really someone who's comfortable drinking alone. Probably because I'm such a lightweight.

I had written a whole bunch here about my shopping trip yesterday, but I realize now that it does not belong on a post about my doodah. So I'll post that tomorrow.

For now, I guess I'll get some sleep - my eyes don't want to stay open anyway. And most likely the smell will give me gorgeously Sapphic dreams that make me blush when I wake up in the morning and remember them.

Depression, Abuse, And All Those Miserable Things - And Shopping, Which Is Not

[This post contained personal information about a friend of mine. I need to speak to her before I put it up, and she may say no.]

Half-Nekkid Wednesdays - Week 2 - White Dress

WARNING: This post contains pictures that may be seen by some to be suggestive.

[Yes, I know the glasses are in a weird place.]

Well, it's Wednesday in England.

And carrying on the demure theme again this week, I shall offer you one of my new sundress. My boobs are a bit squashed against my chest in this one, but I like it because it looks like I'm promising something.

You can decide whether I'm trying to pull the strap up or down. ;)

If I decide to go a little racier one of these weeks, I'll let you know!

Oh, and someone needs to let me know if the image shows - after a couple days of having pictures back, they've gone away again. *sigh*