tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70477770763431693902024-03-14T06:36:38.677+00:00Lilac and Cherry BlossomA little bit of English, a little bit of Japanese, and a whole lot of nostalgia...Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.comBlogger365125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-45114769651551916572018-11-27T21:43:00.000+00:002018-11-27T21:43:05.564+00:00Facebook Book Cover Challenge - Day 1 - Spirit Walk by Richie Tankersley Cusick<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<i>For the Facebook Book Cover Challenge, the rules were given as follows: post one book cover a day, of a book that impacted your life greatly, with no accompanying explanation. Tag one friend each day to begin their own challenge.</i></div>
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<i>Nuts to that, I said. I love to talk about myself. Posting an image without an explanation would be pointless for me. So here, on my long-forgotten Blogger blog, I’m posting explanations for each book choice, which I’ll link to my Facebook posts for anyone interested.</i></div>
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<b>Note: <i>Spirit Walk </i>is the publishing title for a 2-in-1 edition of two books: <i>Walk of the Spirits</i> and <i>Shadow Mirror</i>.</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">I fell in love to this book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;"><i>Jeez</i>, <i>that’s</i> <i>a</i> <i>weird</i> <i>thing</i> <i>to</i> <i>say</i>, <i>Sati</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">I know, right? It’s a (slightly) weird story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">I first read this in summer 2015, the same week I encountered a guy online who happened to share a first name with one of the characters in this book. I barely knew the guy online - he was just an interesting fellow on Quora who wrote cool answers about food - but I had a bit of a crush on him, even while finding him intimidating. When I picked up this book a few days later, and saw that one of the side characters shared his name, it gave me a little thrill. I’m strange about names.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">And then the character died, and I was absolutely gutted. Not because I loved the character - he wasn’t in the book much, and I felt more or less neutral towards him - but because of the shared name. For a short time, I felt grief, like the real person had died.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">What? I did tell you I’m strange about names.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">The two books in Spirit Walk are two of my favourites for a number of reasons, but the book also had a big impact on me because it forced me to realise how crazy I was about this guy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">Six months later, we started dating. And a year after that, it ended terribly. Two years post-breakup, I’m not quite over it. Still, I can’t regret the relationship. He was the first person in my whole life to really make me feel loved. He was the first person who taught me to enjoy food, and the main reason I got over a 27-year eating disorder. He was the first person I ever loved enough to go all-in with, and truly consider changing my life for. I learned so much from him: about the world, and about myself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">JML: I thank you for all that. Even while I sometimes want to throw frying pans at you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">And Ms Cusick: I thank you for your glorious stories.</span></div>
Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-61977205937961731452016-05-23T07:06:00.000+01:002016-05-23T07:06:32.578+01:00Phosphorus Burn<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Years ago, I wrote you a poem. This is unusual for me. I'm not given to writing poetry. But I had too many feelings for you, and I was afraid to let them out, knowing that they would come as a tsunami that scared the bejeezus out of you and left a soggy, wrecked landscape in its wake. I am an intense creature, and I scare people. So instead, I doled them out in little bites.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>nine words</u></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">can break a heart</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">or make one whole.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">they can creep down inside</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and claw at you</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">or they can fill you</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with such</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Radiance</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">that your heart</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">wants to explode.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">can fill my veins with crimson snow</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">or act</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">like a</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">phosphorus burn.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">once spoken</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">they cannot be unspoken</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">but will consume me</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">until all their fuel is gone.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">months later</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">i stare at</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">still</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">i do not understand them.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">they could be greek</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">except</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of course</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">i understand greek</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">better than i understand</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">can confound</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">or make things simple.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">make problems irrelevant</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">as all the issues</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">that came before</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">that came between</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">no longer matter.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">because</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">say more to me</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">than all the others</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">you ever spoke.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">can show me <i>you</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and can show me <i>me.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">because of those nine words</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the path is clear</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">there is no other</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">possible way</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">for this to play out</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and stay true.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to me.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to you.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and so</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">i pick up my suitcase</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and i pick up my passport</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and i pick up the phone.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite friends and family thinking of me as creative, I can't create. I can only imitate. On this day, I think I was channeling e e cummings, with limited success. Still, I liked the poem. The fracturedness of it captured the way I felt.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With your nine words, you asked me a question that haunted me for years after. It grabbed at my heart the day you asked - the one and only day I was unreachable, and the one and only day you ever let your guard down and showed me that you needed me. I both loved and loathed that day, for the next however many years. It was the day you called me for help, and the day I wasn't there to hear you, and the last day you ever asked. And I spent the next half-decade hanging around in case you ever asked again, both out of love and out of guilt. Offering friendship, offering help, offering an ear to listen without judgement, offering money, offering sex. Offering absolution, the few times you seemed to need it. Offering love, unconditionally, in any shape or form that you wanted it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I did love you. I considered you a dear friend, as well as someone that I happened to be attracted to. For your part, you always appeared to consider me one too, though perhaps that was my imagination.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There aren't too many people that I would spend three months' salary to go visit, but you were right at the top of that list.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I told myself I was visiting with no expectations. I lied to myself. I had no expectations about love or romance or sex, that much is true, but I certainly expected to find a friend. I didn't expect to find a stranger who, after literally years of invites, after begging and cajoling me to visit, after making plans to spend Christmas with me in my country, treated me like my presence was an ordeal to be endured.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The late Red, who we all miss, used to say, "Nothing is real until you meet." If there's one sentence that always reminds me of her, it's that one. I argued that idea with her a lot, in blogs and comments. Both of us interested in each other's positions, both of us defending our own. Having met you, I can say Red was right and I was wrong. Everything that I thought I knew about our friendship evaporated the moment you picked me up in the airport and said your first two sentences: "My girlfriend really wants to meet you," followed by, "I'm afraid I won't be able to come for Christmas." I hated you for that, hated you for withholding need-to-know information that, had you told me even a week ago, before I booked my ticket, would have saved me thousands of dollars and a painful, exhausting journey for a girl who had been in surgery two days before she flew across the ocean. And I hated you even more three days later, when we finally managed to get together to hang out, and I asked you what you wanted to do, and you said that you didn't want to be here at all, you'd rather be with your girlfriend and you resented having to show me around.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And yet, I was also right and Red was also wrong. Our friendship evaporated, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist, any more than water droplets don't exist because they dry up. What we had before we met - it was real. I felt it. Feelings exist. They are real things, regardless of their intangibility or their impermanence. That's a lesson that took me my whole adult life - so far - to learn, and I thank you for it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few days before I left, my ex - one of the ones I'm on friendly terms with - sent me a bag of onions. Cam is a man with a brilliant, odd mind that sometimes requires a bit of lateral thinking to understand, but when I got the message, I laughed. He was telling me I should sleep with you if I had the chance. Onions are not shallots - something that Cameron, amateur cook and eternal perfectionist, was always nagging me about - and I am no Lady of Shalott, doomed to live my days out in a tower and experience life through the reflections in a mirror lest something dreadful happen when I step into the real world. With the onions, Cam was telling me to step away from the mirror and take a chance on something I wanted; to throw myself into life. Cam gave me the kick, but you provided the opportunity. Had I not come to visit you, I would probably still be living in my tower; instead I have a new job and a new cat and a new life and I thank you for that as well.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Life moves on. Sometimes it laps itself. I sit here now, mere hours away from taking another trip to meet another man who I have very possibly fallen for in a remarkably short space of time - and I am half-convinced that this trip will be as much of a disaster as the last. That worry, that wariness, is without a doubt a result of our emotionally crushing meeting. Yet I am not indecisive or frozen with fear the way I used to be, and that, too, is down to you. Meeting you taught me that whatever happens, I can not only survive, but thrive. Even sick and utterly alone in a foreign country, I thrive. Lost love will always hurt, but I will always pick myself up again, and I will be just fine. And it's you who showed me that I have that resilience.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Phosphorus is a strange material. White phosphorus, in particular, is exceedingly dangerous. A burn from it cannot be stopped - it will burn literally down to the bone. You were my phosphorus burn. I fell for you so suddenly, so much to my surprise and shock, that I imbued my feelings for you with a sort of supernatural strength. I always felt like I loved you against my will. Like I had no control over the way I felt about you; like it couldn't be stopped until I was utterly consumed.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Visiting you put that fire out. The fuel is gone now, and for that, too, I am thankful.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Chances are, I won't see you again. I occasionally miss the person you were online, but I don't miss the person you were face to face, despite the fact that parts of our afternoon together were pleasant. Still, now that I no longer burn with love or anger, I can wish good things for you; wish that you live a happy life doing the things (and people) that give you joy. And for that reason, I will always be glad I came.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-61250991180693570072015-12-28T16:40:00.000+00:002015-12-28T16:40:25.604+00:00Hana Yori Dango<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People are ignorant. Half the time we seem to have no idea how our words hurt each other.</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The guy I loved most in the whole world, the guy who was my best friend for fourteen years, told me last year that he couldn't be with me because I wrecked his relationship with God. Not other women, just me. I felt like that was an indictment against my character by the one person who should have known me better than that. I'm still not over it. Maybe I never will be "over" it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But you know, part of that is on me. If there's blame to be had, it's not all of the side of the people who say this sort of shit. Because they don't know. People - men and women - have been socialised for centuries into believing that women who enjoy sex or enjoy nudity are unholy, unworthy, dirty and wrong. Sometimes humans don't even realise how much we've bought into these beliefs until something unexpected comes out of our mouths - or until someone gets hurt when we didn't mean to hurt them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Change happens when we communicate. And that means part of the responsibility is on those of us who get hurt by such comments to say so. To say to our friends, partners, loved ones: that hurts me. I don't feel that's a fair comment. That remark makes me feel dirty / unloved / ashamed / judged unfairly / etc.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lest anyone read this post as victim-blaming, I apologise. That's not how I intend it to read. I am not saying that victims have a ethical responsibility to stand up to abusers, or that they deserve what they get if they don't speak up. I don't think that, not at all. But I DO think that in the cases of friends and family members, and particularly lovers, it can be more productive - not a question of morally right or wrong, but *productive* - to tell our loved ones that their words hurt us, rather than letting them fester.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You know me. I'm far more interested in what's productive, what's practical, what's <i>possible</i>, than what's beautiful and ideal.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My relationship might have survived if I'd had the confidence to tell him: that's not an okay thing to say to me. And I wanted it to survive, because despite that one crummy thing, he was a good man. This is something I've learned in the last few years. Good people say and do shitty things. Quite often, in fact. They have bad moods where they snap. They have days where they're just not with it and say something thoughtless. And sometimes, they just don't *realise* something is hurtful...because nobody has ever pointed it out to them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I wish I'd called out my friend for his God comment. I wish I'd called out my ex for the time he told me I'm not marriage material. I wish I'd called out the guy in D.C. for the time he told me he resented having to spend the day with me instead of his girlfriend (after flying 8 hours to see him). I wish I'd called out my brother every time he called me diabetes waiting to happen (because he judged my everyday eating habits by what I eat on Christmas and Thanksgiving!), and the teacher who made me wear a T-shirt in gym class because my body developed earlier than the rest of the leotard-clad 12-year-olds, and the coworkers who make Mrs Robinson jokes year after year, and the sister of my foster kid who insinuated that my hugging him (and him hugging me) was inappropriate.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My biggest problem has always been taking whatever people throw at me. Insults appear to roll off me like water off the back of a duck. Very few people have ever been able to dent my composure, because I've always felt like I have a responsibility to maintain the smooth, unruffled façade, so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I am starting to wonder if this doesn't do more harm than good. Is a relationship really healthy if you can't call the other person out on their bullshit at times? If you go on absorbing what's said and done to you, and never let your loved ones see the scars they've wrought?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't think it is.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>This post originally appeared as a comment on a Facebook link.</i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Peckham Rye, London SE15 4JR, UK51.4605113 -0.06083749999993415351.4407248 -0.10117799999993415 51.4802978 -0.020496999999934151tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-25109936640517371572015-12-16T23:29:00.000+00:002015-12-16T23:29:00.118+00:00The Last Message Received<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't often talk about memes and viral internet stuff here, because - well, I'm usually woefully behind the times. Plus, it tends not to interest me much. I'd much rather talk about love, or Pokemon, or medicine, or cooking, or any one of a hundred things that interest me more than social media.</span><div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, there's one site that's gone viral recently that's really captured me. It's called <a href="http://thelastmessagereceived.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">The Last Message Received</a>, and it's a Tumblr page created by a 15-year-old named Emily Trunko, with a simple but captivating premise: people send in the last conversations, or last messages, with lost loved ones. Some have been lost to death, others to anger, or simply to the sands of time. Some of the messages are sweet, some are funny, some are angry - and some shatter your heart into little pieces.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've had a lot of last messages in the last year. Four friends and a family member gone in the space of fourteen months. Perhaps that's why I find the page so spellbinding. Humans are incredibly complex creatures who exhibit almost unlimited variation...and yet in grief, as in love, we sing the same tune.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>Sati's Message:</u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A couple weeks after this, I heard from his sister that they were trying to raise $80,000 to send him to the U.S. for treatment for an aggressive brain tumour. He got to the States, but they stopped treatment less than a week after they started - it was growing too quickly. All in all, it was around six weeks from diagnosis - or from hearing about his diagnosis - to death. And I knew, even before anyone told me, that something was wrong and I was going to lose him soon. It wasn't rational to think that. Eighteen years I'd known him and I'd never even known him to have a cold. He was a professional dancer, a nutritionist, and the healthiest person I'd ever met. I had no reason to think he could ever get sick. But I knew.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Love you, J. Every day for the last nineteen years, and every day for the next sixty-one.</span></div>
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Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com1St Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-6412947300013046762015-10-09T03:31:00.001+01:002015-12-16T23:35:00.195+00:00Nothing Comes Easy But A Broken Will<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am still here, I'm just a bit tired and preoccupied.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Work is going well, though it's more exhausting than I expected. It's been quite a few years since I had a job that requires me to report in every day at a certain hour. I was unemployed from January 2015 until September 2015 (and had been mostly on sick leave since September 2014), and before that I had a year or two where I taught a few classes a week and marked homework and spent several hours preparing debate topics and essay questions and classwork, but that still probably only took 20-25 hours a week, and hours were flexible. And before THAT, I ran the helpline four nights a week. Which, fair enough, was longish hours - 48 hours a week, split into four 12-hour shifts - but didn't seem like so much time, because I did it from my bed and could lie down and read.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think the last time I had a 9-5 job was some time around 2008.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The funny thing is that it's not the work that wears me out, it's the idleness. At home, looking after mom and the house, there's always something to keep me occupied. When I'm working on a project (clearing the hoards from one room, or stripping the paint in the bathroom, or clearing out the garage, etc) I might work 8, 10, 12, even 14 hours at a time - and that's manual labour. And I can handle that. Yet going in to work and spending so much time sitting in a chair listening, thinking and talking, absolutely wears me out.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On a typical day, I get up at 6.45 (5.45 if I'm running, but I haven't been lately because of all the slugs on the paths), bathe and dress, leave the house at 8, get to work around 8.30, busily set up the classroom while eating breakfast, and we're ready for students at 9.30. Then I have very little to do from 9.30 until 2.30 - mostly I hand out papers, write stuff on the whiteboard during class discussions, and occasionally help with spelling and stuff. (I did more the first week, but got reprimanded - gently, but still reprimanded - for overstepping my bounds.) At 2.30, I clear up the classroom and do paperwork, which takes me until 3.30 or 4. Then I go home, take a bath and go to bed around 6pm, only getting up to use the bathroom, and sleep until 6.45 the next morning. I had strep throat two months ago, and while it wasn't a bad strep (not like the one that nearly killed me in 2010 or 2011), it's changed me from being someone who sleeps 3-4 hours a night comfortably to being someone who can sleep 12 hours every night and still wake up groggy and tired. If I don't obey the call of sleep when it comes on, I literally fall asleep in the middle of what I'm doing. My body keeps moving for a few minutes after my brain turns off, so if I'm walking my feet will keep moving until I face-plant into the floor, or if I'm typing my fingers will keep going, even if they're typing crap. I've found a few status updates of mine that start out totally fine and then descend into gibberish because I fell asleep halfway through writing them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(I'm actually falling asleep while trying to edit this post. I just have fallen asleep five or six times in the last quarter hour. Please excuse any typos that have occurred from my hand dropping into the keyboard.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's sort of a strange job. It's a frantic rush at the beginning of the day - an hour isn't really enough time to set up, but the security guards won't let us in earlier - and fairly busy at the end, with a lot of idleness inbetween. Idleness tires me. It always has. It's why I could never handle going on a show like Big Brother.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've started taking my Japanese textbook to work with me, and working on lessons whenever I'm not needed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I don't mean to sound like I'm not enjoying it, or that I'm not grateful for it. I am grateful, <i>so</i> much so. Whether or not it leads to permanent employment, the company took a chance on me when nobody else would, and I can't even begin to say how much that means. Yet I do feel like I'm not being fully utilised; like I could be doing so much more, giving so much more back to them. I find myself volunteering for things like coffee-making duties, things that aren't really in my job description, just because I need something to do and because I want to take some of the work off my mentor. He has so much on his shoulders, so much that I can't help him with because I'm not qualified. All I can do is make coffee and set things out and make sure the paperwork is up to date. I feel - not useless, exactly, but a bit superfluous at times. I suppose this is something I'll get used to. Over my lifetime, I've gone from being the only competent adult at home (even when I was a child) to being one of two (at any given time) who took responsibility for a centre and 25+ teenagers, simply because there was nobody else around to do it. I've never sought out responsibility; rather I've had it thrust upon me over and over, and I've always shouldered it because if I don't, nobody will. I'm a bit of a control-freak. I've had to be. So it's hard to adjust to being not only part of a team of responsible, qualified, experienced adults who don't need me to look after them, but also the FNG, the one who has to learn from everyone else. It's disorienting. I'll adjust, in time, but for now it makes my head whirl and I have to keep catching myself whenever I try to take over.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hard work is sort of a compulsion for me. I spent so many years feeling like a parasite because I was lying around, sick and disabled while my friends were going to school, and then sixth form, university, working. I understand intellectually that disabled people are not parasites, and I'd certainly never judge anyone else for being unable to work or support their family, so I don't really know why I judge myself so harshly. It might be something to do with the years of being told (by teachers, parents, doctors) that I'm not really sick; that fibro is not a legitimate condition. Nowadays we know enough to understand that it's an autoimmune disease and a neurological disease - though we still have a dearth of knowledge on it in general - but England is still far behind America in acceptance of the condition, and in the early 1990s it was almost unheard of to find a doctor, let alone a layman, who would accept that it is a legitimate illness. For years I was told that I was attention-seeking, and then that I had school phobia, and then that I had Munchausens. I often feel like I internalised all the things that people (even my mom!) said about me during my teen years, and even though my head understands that I'm not lazy or unmotivated or selfish, my gut doesn't really grok it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Since I've learned to manage the fibromyalgia in the last ten years or so - it's still a painful and exhausting illness, but I've learned the tricks for handling it and pushing through it - I've been forcing myself to work almost nonstop. Since the brain damage I've been almost compelled to work myself to the point of exhaustion. For ten years I've basically worked, slept and read. My social life and love life have suffered for the last decade, and in the last few years they've been almost nonexistent. I've neglected my bio father's side of the family. All because I have this <i>need</i>, this urge to...I don't know. Prove some point, I guess. Maybe to prove that I can be a functional member of society, rather than a parasite. Whether I'm trying to prove that to others or to myself is unclear.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I will not break, dammit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I could take time off if I wanted. I don't have to go in that early, or go every day, if I don't want to. My mentor keeps telling me to take it easy, but I can't. My brain won't let me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My mentor - who I shall hereafter refer to as EG, since he reminds me of an El Greco painting - is one of the nicest people I've ever met. I really struck gold with that one. He was my teacher before he was my mentor - I took courses with him last summer and this summer just past - and I adored him from day one, but my respect and admiration for him grows by the week. My only concern is that he's <i>so</i> nice, he finds it hard to criticise anyone, and frankly, I need criticism. I'm going to screw up in this job, probably a lot, and I'm worried that he isn't going to pull me up on things and give me a kick up the ass when / if necessary. He's so gentle with his criticism (and effusive with his praise) that I have to read between the lines to see what he's actually saying, quite s lot of the time. And I don't always do well with subtleties.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm learning. Hopefully he's learning. I'm damn sure the students are learning. With luck, we'll adjust.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have no idea how EG feels about me. With someone that nice, they could well hate you and just never show it. I like to think that he likes me, and that I make his job easier, but...time will tell.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0St Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-49968127749746240542015-10-08T13:40:00.000+01:002015-10-09T03:37:54.731+01:00Question: What do you think of men who cook?<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I like men who can cook. I'd even say I have a definite preference for men who can cook. Cooking itself doesn't matter to me so much, since I'm not really into eating* (yes, yes, I <i>know</i> I'm weird), but I like what it says about the man:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- It says he's not caught up in old-fashioned gender roles</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- It says he takes pride in creating something and in being self-sufficient</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- It says he has the patience to learn a skill and refine it over time</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- It says he's interested in the details</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These are all good things, IMO. It doesn't have to be cooking - I also like men who sew, or knit, or garden, or fix cars, or refurbish their house, or a bunch of other things.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Attraction is a complex event that occurs when a lot of factors line up, but if I had to pick one single characteristic that I find most attractive in potential partners, it would be a can-do attitude. Not the cockiness of youth that screams "I'm awesome at everything, but don't you dare make me prove it!" but a quiet confidence, because you know you're a competent adult who can do a lot of things and can learn anything that you can't already do. I like people who say <b>yes</b> to things. <i>Can you go buy me some tampons? </i>Sure I can.<i> Can you raise a child? </i>If the situation comes up.<i> Can you make a soufflé? </i>Never done it before, but I'll give it a shot. <i>Can you learn to speak Vietnamese?</i> I don't see why not.<i> Can we hike Mongolia on our next vacation? </i>Sure, that sounds like fun.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I love men who can. And a man who can't cook (or clean, or sew on a button, or change a tire, or diaper a baby) is most likely not a man-who-can. Nothing wrong with that, you are what you are, but I probably won't be interested.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* I'm not saying I'd turn it down if someone offered to cook for me, mind you. I eat. I even enjoy it. I just don't adore food, the way most people I know do. I'd be happy eating the same thing every day as long as it tasted good.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>This post originally appeared on <a href="http://www.quora.com/" target="_blank">www.quora.com</a> .</i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Peckham, London SE15, UK51.474191 -0.06913699999995515131.1491305 -41.377730999999955 71.7992515 41.239457000000044tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-34717439996244278152015-09-08T01:03:00.001+01:002015-10-09T03:03:57.964+01:00Once More, Unto the Breach<span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">I am starting a new job tomorrow.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This makes me nervous. I've had precisely one new job in the last thirteen years, which was organising and cataloging a private library. After doing that for a few months, drawing a fortnightly paycheck and wondering why my employers didn't provide me with the necessary equipment and told me to take the day off more often than not, I found out that the whole thing had been set up by an ex-boyfriend who was worried about my finances and living situation, but who knew I wouldn't take money from him. Several times over the course of our relationship, he proposed that we get married, more for the sake of mutual convenience than anything, and several times I turned him down because we weren't in love, so he found a new way to try to take care of me.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He meant well, and I can understand what he was doing - he's the type of guy who looks after his friends, and supports his girlfriends. But it crushed any belief I had in my own abilities. It was only the second job offer I'd had in my adult life. The first came from a man I did a great favour for a long time ago. On my thirtieth birthday, this man called and offered me the job of most writers' dreams - researching and writing articles for a magazine in Milan, with a generous salary and an excellent relocation package. Plus, y'know, <i>Milan</i>. But I knew it was to return the favour I did him rather than because he thought I could do the job, and I couldn't handle the thought of being the deadweight, the one unqualified employee who was hired out of nepotism and who everyone else had to work extra hard to compensate for. So after a few months of vacillating (because <i>Milan</i>!) I turned it down.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Plus, my brother's family had just moved away, and my father was dying, and I couldn't leave Mom.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So here I am, with only the third job offer in my adult life - because I'd been working at the youth centre since I was 17 - and all those feelings of inadequacy are flooding back.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was recommended for this job by a former teacher of mine. I took an I.T. course this summer - offered for free through the Job Centre, to people who are out of work (including carers like me) - and I did so well on it that a few weeks ago, my teacher asked me to come back and be a TA for him when his coworker went on maternity leave. That wasn't supposed to be until November, but on Friday I got a call asking me to come for an interview with his boss today, and today they hired me, starting tomorrow.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Intellectually I understand that I got the job because I did well on the course. Not only did I manage to do three two-week modules during the two weeks I was there (so six weeks' worth of learning), I got 100% on both my exams. Yet there is always this little voice inside that says <i>you can't do it, you're not qualified, you're biting off more than you can chew healthwise, you were only hired because he liked you and felt sorry for you. You're a fragile princess who can barely look after herself, and has no hope of ever being a functioning member of society.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People outside of my blog(s) rarely see my feelings of inadequacy. In person, I appear to be supremely confident, to the point that several bloggers here have been surprised - and a few have been quite put off - when they meet me. The cool, competent façade is almost always how I present in person. I wouldn't even call it a façade, truly, because it's something that I've worn for long enough that it's become a part of me. And the funny thing is, it's not a lie - when I'm in motion, I have every confidence in my abilities. I've always functioned best during a crisis, but any time that I'm actually <i>acting</i>, moving, I don't falter. I know that I'll get to work tomorrow, on time, well-organised, dressed appropriately, and do the job with no hesitations. I'll do it well, the way I do everything, from paid employment, to navigating a foreign country, to planning a funeral, to coping with the aftermath of an attack.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's just when I stop that I get overwhelmed with the sense that I can't do it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's strange that I have these two sides to me, and that they're both so dominant. You'd think that the confidence and the inadequacy would neutralise each other, and I'd simply have an average amount of confidence with occasional bursts of anxiety. But no, I swing between the two extremes. As in just about every area of my life.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes I wonder if I am two people trapped in one body.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My tits and ass are certainly large enough for two. :)</span></div>
Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-7793132600450865192015-09-01T04:10:00.000+01:002015-10-09T04:12:46.906+01:00Question - What do you think of Cara Delevingne's decision to quit modelling?<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I definitely applaud her for realising that she wasn't happy, and taking steps to change that. So many of us stay stuck in things that make us miserable because we're scared of change.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I quite enjoyed modelling itself. I was at the plus-size end of the spectrum (though not in the way that Tess Holliday or Crystal Renn were - I wore a UK 14) so I didn't get quite the same amount of crud from people about staying skinny, which I think helped me to enjoy myself for longer. Plus, I liked the pretty clothes, and it paid my way through college, and it was a job where I could work and concentrate on working out chemistry equations in my head at the same time, which is why I got into it in the first place. *laughs*</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I didn't like the industry. I didn't like working for a machine that perpetuated what I felt was one of the biggest legal cons of all time. I started out working in art modelling, and when I moved into doing photography for one particular photographer, I insisted on one particular clause in my contract: no photoshop, no airbrushing. Naive, looking back, but at the time it seemed reasonable. This was late 90s / early 00s, and people weren't quite so obsessed with obtaining the unobtainable. The first photographer was fine with that. The second and third were fine with that. And then somewhere along the line, people weren't fine with it. They'd be fine when we signed a contract, and then they'd try to bully me into it, or "fix" pictures behind my back. And I found myself thinking - <i>I've been in hair and makeup for four hours, I've dieted and exercised my way to a fairly decent (if curvy) body, my skin is radiant, my hair is glossy, and I have an excellent photographer. Why isn't this enough?</i> If you want someone with a longer neck and thicker lips and less muscular calves and a smaller nose, why didn't you hire that girl instead of me?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A while after my personal dissatisfaction started, I started realising how much fakery there is in the fashion and beauty industries. It sounds so obvious now, but at the time I convinced myself that it was okay to lie to people, because we were presenting a fantasy. Turns out, it's a fine line between fantasy and fraud. Faking it digitally has become such a thing that we now have anti-wrinkle creams advertised by women who have all their wrinkles airbrushed out. We have whitening toothpaste where the white is digitally added to the adverts. And I'm just not okay with that. Nor am I okay with working to advertise clothes that are only wearable by a tiny percentage of the population. If any other industry produced a product that was marketed to everyone but was only usable by 1%, or 2%, or even 5%, you'd call that a flawed product. Yet the fashion industry has managed to create things that the majority of us a) can't afford and b) can't get into - and somehow convinced us all that it's US who are faulty rather than the products, and that we need to starve ourselves and spend insane amounts of money to prove that we're worthy of being part of it. That's what I mean when I call it the biggest con I've ever known. Machiavelli would have been proud.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Don't get me wrong, I still love clothes. I love pretty things in general. I don't mind spending a fair bit for beautiful things that are made to last. And things ARE getting better, in some respects. But I couldn't ever be part of the fashion industry again, not even behind the camera. It sucked the life out of me by the time I was 21.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People get so caught up in the "fashion" part that they forget the "industry" part. It's a money-making machine, at the heart of it. And that isn't going to change. It doesn't matter how many Sati Marie Frosts burn out and leave - or even how many Cara Delevingnes do. Because models are disposable, even the successful, famous ones. They get tired, they get pregnant, they get fat, and most of all they get OLD, and when that happens, the industry is all too happy to trade you in for the newer model. (Pun acknowledged.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>This post originally appeared as a comment on <a href="http://www.manrepeller.com/" target="_blank">www.manrepeller.com</a> .</i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-75126905168190854062015-08-25T06:11:00.000+01:002015-10-09T03:59:11.438+01:00For Apollo, Who Shone Brighter Than the Sun<span style="color: #8e7cc3;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have a body wash in my bathroom that isn't made anymore. Imperial Leather Foamburst with sea kelp and birch bark. I came SO close to throwing it out today when I cleaned the bathroom shelf, because it's really not usable anymore - it's totally lost its pressure, and I can barely eke out the tiniest bit. Certainly I can't get enough to wash with it anymore. I couldn't throw it, though, because every now and then I squirt a teensy bit onto my finger, and inhale, and you're there with me. That's one of the things that I remember the best about you. The way you always smelled like the ocean.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">I have a redcurrant lipsalve, that I bought back in 2001, and I can't throw that away either. I certainly wouldn't use it - can you imagine the bacteria it must have picked up after fourteen years? - but sometimes I open it and smell it and immediately think, "Ah, Jay." If you were watching, you would be able to see the tension melt out of my body with the first inhalation. You didn't wear redcurrant lipsalve - that I'm aware of, anyway *laughs* - but I wore it, back in the days of Batchwood and birthday parties and the bluest eyes in the world staring at me from across a darkened room.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">God, I miss you.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">I sometimes called you The SBD. People wondered what that stood for; assumed it was something dirty. I let them, because it was easier than explaining how a therapist of mine had once tried to teach me to meditate on the image of a blue diamond, spinning in my mind, any time I felt out of control - and how the diamond image had always failed, because every time I tried to think of a blue diamond I could only think of your gaze.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">The technique worked, even if I could never get the right image. YOU were my spinning blue diamond. You kept me calm. You kept me sane. You kept me alive, during the worst times. You saved my life more times than I can count, and I would have given up everything I had if I could have done the same for you.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">I talk to the dead. Sometimes the dead talk back. That's one of my bigger secrets, one that I don't hide, exactly, but I don't discuss openly with many people either. And I find it both comforting and heartbreaking that you have never once been here to talk to. I'm so glad that you moved on quickly - so many don't, you know - and I have faith that wherever you are is exactly where you need to be, doing exactly what you need to do. Yet...I miss you. That's all. I wish you were here.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">Though maybe not tonight. I probably wouldn't want to face your reaction to the box of mozzarella sticks, half-bag of curly fries, or four shots of Aftershock over ice that I had for dinner. That kind of shit is best kept to myself, not shared with beautiful boys who I want to have good opinions of me. :)</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">Hey, I never claimed that lack of vanity was one of my virtues.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">In another two months, it'll have been a year, and some days I still can't wrap my head around it. My emotions are complex and often irrational. I don't understand how someone like me, who's been dying for half my life, who's been caught and thrown back by Death SEVEN TIMES so far, is still occupying territory on this side of the veil, and someone like you, who I never even knew to have a cold, could just up and die like that. Six weeks. I checked my Facebook messages for the one I sent you the day after I started dreaming and worrying about you, and it was six weeks - almost to the day - between me knowing something was wrong, and you dying. How can a healthy, active person, a person who's dedicated his entire existence to nourishing physical and mental health in himself and others, a person who's barely been sick a day in his life, go from healthy to dead in six weeks? It doesn't make sense to me. It's not logical. I should be old enough and experienced enough to know by now that the universe doesn't always run on logic - and most of the time, I do. But all my practicality goes out the window where you're concerned.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">The alcohol is wearing off - about bloody time, it's nearly 6am - and I can't remember if there was a point to this letter. Maybe it was just to tell you I love you. Always have, always will. I've loved you every day of my life since I was twelve years old, and I'll love you every day of the rest of it. </span></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.752725 -0.33943599999997787 51.752725 -0.33943599999997787tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-3048142798229746722015-08-22T04:06:00.000+01:002015-10-09T04:07:49.162+01:00Rules of Engagement #1 - Brutal Honesty or Polite Bullshit<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We all have rules in our relationships. Some are widely used by many people, and some are very personal. Some are across-the-board rules, some differ from relationship to relationship. Some are set in stone, and some are subject to exceptions.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two of my main rules, veritable social laws that I try (read: occasionally fail) to follow with other adult humans, involve honesty:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- Don't ask questions that you don't really want an honest answer to;</span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">- Don't tell people things that you know they don't want to hear, unless absolutely necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rule #1 is easy enough to follow (most of the time), but Rule #2 is considerably harder for me. My desire to not burden people with information that is unpleasant, hurtful, and not need-to-know, wars with my desire to not infringe upon their free will. I could deal with this by simply choosing to not share personal information, but that doesn't come naturally to me; personal privacy is not something I place a lot of value upon. In fact, I find myself getting itchy and emotionally claustrophobic when I try to keep secrets about myself and my life. I'm not quite an open book - while you usually get the truth from me, you rarely get the whole truth, because the whole truth is usually complicated - but I'm not a locked one either. More like a library of books, where all information is available to you if you know where to look.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One habit that I've developed over the years is asking people if they're sure they really want to know something. I find that people's questions are often idle, and answering them candidly can mean dumping a lot of information upon them that they didn't expect and don't want. I'm willing to share almost anything about myself with anyone who asks - but I do need to know that you genuinely want to know, even if the answer is unpleasant, and your question wasn't just you making small talk.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hence my return question, when asked difficult questions: Brutal honesty or polite bullshit? Which do you want to hear?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Polite bullshit isn't always bullshit, of course. Sometimes it's a face-saving lie, but sometimes it's just truth with a bit of sugar coating. Sometimes it's an alternative truth, because some questions have more than one true answer. Consider:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Sati, why do you always wear white dresses, and rarely any other colours?"</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Polite Bullshit answer could be, "White cotton keeps me cooler." It could be, "It cuts down on the loads of washing I have to do." It could be, "I'm lazy, and a white sundress means I don't have to mess around trying to match my clothes up." It could be, "I think I look best in white." These are all true, and all reasons why I prefer wearing white dresses to any other clothes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Brutal Honesty answer would be, "White's not a gang colour." Also true, and at times - depending on where I'm working - more relevant. It's an answer that a lot of people find jarring, though, so it's one that I use with caution.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Likewise, brutal honesty may not be truly brutal. Sometimes it involves things that you don't want to hear about yourself. Sometimes it involves things you may not want to hear about me. Sometimes it involves things that I think you don't want to hear, but you actually are happy about. For example:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Sati, are you okay? You're shivering, and your breathing changed."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Polite Bullshit answer might be, "I'm fine, just chilly." Or, "Nothing's wrong, just need to catch my breath." Whereas the Brutal Honesty answer could be, "For some reason I just imagined you kissing me, and it was a surprisingly arousing image."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">See, I might think that you don't want to hear that, while you're actually quite happy to hear it. It's hard to tell these things sometimes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm a cautious person, and a thinker. I take risks, but they're considered risks. Spontaneity is not in my nature - though I've learned to weigh up the pros and cons of something in a split-second when necessary, so I sometimes appear to be acting spontaneously - and I'll never be comfortable with rash decisions. In addition to thinking (some would say overthinking!), I'm naturally protective of others, and the inclination to protect people from unpleasantness seems to be my default. Of course, that's not always possible, nor is it always beneficial - for you or for me. Asking people to choose between the honest answer and the polite answer allows me to respect your agency and free will, while still (mostly) satisfying Rule #2, and protecting the sensibilities of those friends and family members who are not quite as deliberate with their questions as I am.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So don't be surprised if you get the question during our conversations from time to time. You could take it as a potential trigger warning, if you wanted. A warning that the subject might be uncomfortable listening. Alternatively, if you're so inclined, you could consider it to be my version of a red pill / blue pill offer. Choose the one, and stay in the comfortable, friendly acquaintance levels of small talk. Choose the other, and learn things about me that might possibly make you either run for the hills, or love me passionately.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Your choice. As always.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0St Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-45833314578247056012015-05-07T01:39:00.000+01:002015-09-01T15:45:39.943+01:00Pounding Holes<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So yesterday I had a guy over. A lover. No names will be mentioned, for obvious reasons.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We're upstairs in my room, "playing chess". "Playing chess" is what I tell my mother I'm doing when I retire to my bedroom with a date or guy friend (unless it's Adam, then we're watching anime - and we actually ARE). Of course she knows we're not playing chess. It's just a way for my dates to save face. I don't give a shit what my mom knows about my sex life, but guys tend to have this weird embarrassment about facing someone whose daughter they've been fucking. *shrugs* Whatevs. Not that I play much these days. Until yesterday, I'd only had one opponent in the last three years or more. But I digress.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We're in bed. Or on the bed. We're moving around a lot, and so is the bed. What can I say, our chess games have always been energetic ones. He's not a big guy, so the bed should take us fine (my last chess opponent was half a foot taller and maybe seventy pounds heavier, and we never had any issues) - but he's strong. Very strong. And we're really giving that bed a workout. So I'm startled, but not entirely surprised, when I hear something crack and the bed drops down half an inch.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Oh shit, we broke the bed!" I half scream half laugh.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He slows down.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Don't stop!" I screech.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I forget about the bed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After he's gone home, I collapse and fall asleep, but I keep waking throughout the night to a squeaking sound. I tell myself I'll tighten the bed screws and check out the break when I wake up, but I forget. It's only when I go to bed tonight that the bed sinks under me at an angle, and I lean over the side to check out the slats, when I notice the hole. And it's not in the bed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We didn't break the bed, <i>we broke the fucking floorboard. </i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com1Saint Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.752725 -0.33943599999997787 51.752725 -0.33943599999997787tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-38090391359067030542015-03-31T22:34:00.003+01:002015-09-01T15:46:32.328+01:00The Itchy and Scratchy Show<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For all of you out there who think you're having a bad week...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...all I can say is, at least you don't have shingles on your lady parts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Apologies to anyone who's dealt with death or violence or heartbreak this week, and is genuinely having a worse week than I am.)</span></div>
Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK51.763366 -0.2230899999999564951.763366 -0.22308999999995649 51.763366 -0.22308999999995649tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-20347405803679263442015-03-19T17:33:00.001+00:002015-12-16T23:37:16.805+00:00Question: What does it feel like to get shot?<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was shot in the leg when I was 11, by one of the sons of my mother's then boyfriend. No particular reason, they just felt like it. *shrugs* I don't know exactly what kind of gun or bullet it was - I'm English, we don't "do" guns - but I know it was a rifle. Not an air rifle. The bullet lodged in my leg rather than passing through, made an entrance wound that was quite small but larger under the skin, and left several fragments. Maybe someone who knows firearms can extrapolate something from that (if you care that much about the details), but that's the limit of my knowledge when it comes to the type of gun and ammo.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />(Apologies if I'm getting any of the terms wrong.)<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I'm going to try and explain the way it felt, but it may not make sense to readers, as I find it impossible to separate the physical feelings from the emotional feelings that I had at the time.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I remember that I was bent over at the time - I was hanging out washing - and when the bullet hit me, I pitched forward and hit the ground head first. I don't know if whacking my head had any effect on my thoughts and feelings at the time. It's hard to explain how the bullet wound felt - it hurt and it didn't hurt at the same time. I was aware that there was pain, but the pain felt sort of irrelevant, because what I was most concerned with was a feeling of <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">shattering</i>. At the time, I was convinced that I'd been caught in an explosion - perhaps that I'd stepped on a landmine. I lay there on the grass, feeling myself disintegrate into dust and vapour, and for a while - seconds, minutes, hours, who knows? - it didn't occur to me to get up, because I felt like there was no 'me' left to move. I fully believed I was dead at that point, and all I could think was, <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So I guess that's that, then.</i><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The sound of the boys laughing was what brought me back initially. Neither of them came to check on me, but I could hear them up by the house. I glanced around and caught sight of my hand, which confused me - <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">How can I still have a hand if I'm nothing but dust and red mist? Who is 'I' anyway?</i>Then I became aware of the pain once again, but in an abstract way. I recognised that I was in pain, but it didn't really affect me.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />(I should mention that this sort of depersonalisation is something that I'm prone to, and always have been, so it wasn't necessarily caused by the shock of being shot, though that may have added to it. I switch into "robot mode" when confronted with any sort of emergency, which makes me able to cope with most kinds of pain, as well as excellent in a crisis. The downside is an aloofness and lack of empathy during crisis periods. If you need to be rescued and taken to safety, or you need a situation resolved rapidly, I'm your girl. If you need comfort, hopefully there's someone else around to give it, because that's not my forte, though I'm quite capable of giving comfort and sympathy during normal times.)<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I made my way to my bedroom in a sort of daze, and got the first aid kit from the bathroom. It never occurred to me to call my mother, or her boyfriend, or an ambulance, nor to ask the boys for help. I've always been used to taking care of myself. With the help of a mirror (and a lot of thankfulness for the fact that I used to take ballet and have always been limber), I started picking bullet fragments out of my leg. I remember thinking that the world had shrunk, because the hole looked so tiny, and I couldn't figure out how it was possible for something that felt so big to look so small. The pain got progressively worse as I worked on it, but it didn't really affect me. I had a job to do, and pain was irrelevant. I got out what I thought was everything, disinfected the wound, slapped a dressing on and took a nap.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Over the next few days, the pain got worse, and once the crisis was over I actually started to <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">feel</i> the pain rather than just being aware of it. It was hideous - I don't have a good comparison for it, but it felt sort of like a contact burn that went on and on; like putting your hand on a hot grill and not removing it. When I came down to breakfast with a fever and a sweaty face, about four days after being shot, I confessed to my mom. I don't remember exactly what happened then, but I know I ended up getting the rest of the fragments, and the infected tissue, removed by a professional under local anaesthetic, and getting a nasty course of oral antibiotics that put me off my food for a month or so. If I'd been in America, it probably would have been a hospital stay, but England is a patch-them-up-and-send-th<wbr style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></wbr>em-home country, and I was back in my own bed by nighttime.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />It hurt for a long time. Once the infection was gone, the ache continued - the closest thing I've felt to it was having a tooth pulled. Sometimes it <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">still</i> burns, if I get extremely hot or extremely cold. If I let my skin get too dry, I occasionally get a tugging sensation in the scar tissue that's not terribly pleasant. Moisturising cream only does so much, so when it gets dry I find the best thing I can do is eat an avocado every day for a week or so, which seems to fix the dehydrated skin. Sounds weird, but it works for me.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I can still feel the puckered skin with my fingers, although there are times when it's obvious and times when it feels almost normal to the touch. Regardless of how it feels to my fingers, I can always find it without a problem - the sensitivity has never gone away. I don't know how visible it is - it's on the back of my right thigh, right below my buttock, and I've never been curious enough to try and see it with a hand mirror. The last person who asked to see it said it was really visible and clearly a bullet wound, but that was in 2003. According to her, it's about the size of an average thumbnail (perhaps 1.25 - 1.5 cm diameter), paler than the surrounding skin, and sort of shiny.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />If I ever tell people the story - which I don't often - I make a joke out of it, and tell them I was shot in the butt. "Shot in the leg" draws gasps of horror; "shot in the ass" makes people giggle.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I don't think about it much these days, except when it's hurting. Life happens, you know? It's not the worst thing that ever happened to me. Probably not even in the top 5.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />That said, twenty years on I still have dreams. Sometimes when I'm asleep, I hear and feel a huge explosion. Sometimes it's a bomb, but usually the image I get in my mind is a huge crystal - larger than a person, clear and brilliant with shimmering lights on a million facets - being shattered by some force inside it. Shards fly off in every direction, and even though I can see the crystal, at the same time I understand that it's actually me who's shattering into splinters and diamond dust. I jerk awake in shock and horror, unsure whether I'm alive or dead. And the lone thought running through my head is always the same as it was that day. <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So I guess that's that, then.</i><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />My doctor calls this Exploding Head Syndrome, which is a (very odd) parasomnia with unknown cause. I'm never sure whether the doc is right, or if I'm just reliving the memory, or if it's some combination of the two. Either way, it leaves me haunted and uneasy for several hours after.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); color: #8e7cc3; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>This post originally appeared on <a href="http://www.quora.com/" target="_blank">www.quora.com</a>.</i></span></div>
Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0London Borough of Camden, Greater London, UK51.551705899999988 -0.1588255000000344851.551705899999988 -0.15882550000003448 51.551705899999988 -0.15882550000003448tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-78691965902458418362014-09-01T03:42:00.000+01:002014-09-01T03:42:08.352+01:00Soundproofed<span style="background-color: white; color: #a64d79; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">WARNING: Contains graphic references to sex. Lots of them. Thou hast been warned.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm a screamer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People don't expect this. When clothed, I'm reasonably quiet. I think a lot. I like to watch people. I'm friendly enough and laugh a lot in the right groups, but I wouldn't say I'm loud.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In bed, I'm the opposite of quiet. I scream, I moan, I cry, I wail. I giggle and purr and talk, a lot. Sex with me isn't ever a quiet event, and some guys probably want to shove a ball gag in my mouth just to get me to shut the fuck up...but dammit, you'll never have to ask me, "did you come?"</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think this is one reason why I love hotels. Motels, Holiday Inns...it doesn't matter to me as long as they're clean, peaceful and reasonably soundproof. There are other reasons I love staying in hotels, of course - room service (or at least a nearby restaurant), an afternoon to read without guilt, and a night where I don't have to sleep with my eyes and ears open for disaster - but sex is way up there on the list. I don't take vacations - I haven't had a week away in fifteen years - but I occasionally spring for a night in a Travelodge or Premier Inn. If I'm there on my own, I always have a little devil on my shoulder that tells me to pick up a guy in the bar. So far, I haven't done this.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Travelling with, or meeting, a lover, is always the best thing though, because you can fuck me in a hotel room in ways that you can't in my mother's house, liberal though she may be.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can press me up against the door the instant we cross the threshold, and tear off everything I'm wearing. Nudity is fine in hotels. You have everything you need right there. There's no need to keep a robe at hand to go to the bathroom. Nobody gives a damn if you don't get dressed the whole time you're there.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can throw me on the bed as soon as I'm naked, manoeuvring me into position before I even get a chance to shower. Face down, ass up. I'm getting the sheets dirty - so what? At home, a set of sheets needs to last a week; here the maid will change them daily if you request it. And you can slam into me as hard as you want, really force your dick deep inside me, bang me up against the headboard - I don't care if it hurts. Actually, I lie. It's better if it hurts, just a bit. Throw me around, bang my head against the wall, fall on top of me like a ton of bricks. It's fine. This isn't my elegant white cast-iron bed with the bronze finials, made for gentle lovemaking and sweet snuggling - this bed is tough. This bed was made for us to fuck hard.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can look out the window while I suck your cock, if you want. Five floors up, nobody's going to see my head bobbing up and down just above the windowledge, and if they do - who cares? Who gives a damn if passers-by look up and see how your face contorts when I take you deep in my throat, or even if they hear you groaning my name through the open window as I lick up every drop of pre-cum just before you spurt all over my face and tits? Even if they see and hear, even if the windowsill is low enough for them to see me on my knees with a face covered in cum - what are the chances that in a busy hotel, in a busy city, we'd ever have to see those people again?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Want to take a shower together? Shower's right there, and nobody else is going to be waiting in line for it. It's non-slip, and has that nice little seat for disabled people, so if you want me to sit there and wrap my legs around you, I'm quite happy to do that. We can't do that at home - I don't even have a shower, and you just have a tub with a curtain where I constantly feel like I'm going to fall over. But here, we can sit, or stand, or lie on the floor while the water pours over us. Want to introduce me to the joys of anal? Go right ahead. It's easy enough to get clean, and it's not like the water's going to run cold.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back in bed, we can go all night, or at least till we exhaust ourselves. And you can talk to me. You know how I like it, with that hard dick forcing its way into me roughly, and a voice in my ear ordering me to cum. Nobody's going to bang on the walls to shut us up. Pull my hair, or reach around and put your hands on my belly and thighs, and force me back even further onto your cock, or press our bodies together as tight as they'll go. I don't care. Just hold me tight and take me rough and hard. Make me moan and scream and cry and beg for more. Nobody can hear. Nobody's going to call the police because they heard me sobbing and begging you. I know you like it when I beg, and I have no qualms about getting on my knees and pleading if it gets us both what we want.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not saying I don't have sex at home. I'm saying I don't get fucked at home. There's a difference. My bedroom at home is for love and lightness and laughter, for cuddly afternoon sex while the rain pours outside the open window, for half-asleep morning sex in the pale light of dawn. Home is for shuddering breaths and staring into each other's eyes when we orgasm, for quiet passion and deep emotional bonds. Hotels are for nights when we fuck till we're raw. For spanking and clawing and biting and pulling my hair and making me hurt so good that I can't help but scream your name until I'm hoarse. For leaning over me while you're deep inside and biting my neck and throat and chin and cheeks until you leave red bruises all over me that I'll have to try and cover with makeup tomorrow, and probably fail. They're for coming inside me so many times that when and if we finally decide to get dressed and go pick up something to eat instead of getting it delivered, I'll be standing in line for takeout with my legs pressed together because I can feel your juices running down my thighs, and I have to wonder if everyone in the place can smell you on me, if they all know that you've marked me as yours, at least for tonight.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm always going to be an intense lover. That's just me, I can't be anything else. But whereas my own bed is a place where I weave a spell of love and affection and emotional attachment, hotel rooms are places where an entirely different type of intensity comes to light. Like rollercoasters or birthday cake, it's not something that I could deal with having every day - but any time I'm lucky enough to have a night in a hotel with a lover, the world simultaneously recedes into a dream-state and yet seems more bright and real than ever, and I find myself wondering how I can possibly go back to my sweet, soft, pastel existence when our rendezvous is over.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0St Albans, St Albans, Hertfordshire AL3 6BU, UK51.7679409 -0.3369070999999621651.766712399999996 -0.33942859999996217 51.7691694 -0.33438559999996215tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-76088940142634942282014-05-05T13:29:00.001+01:002014-05-07T00:20:03.869+01:00Babel Fish<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<i><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” <br />
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― Nelson Mandela</span></i><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have an ear for languages. I rarely progress past a certain level of fluency - around the point when the grammar starts to get really hard, and I have to put a whole lot more work into it, I usually fall down. I don't always find the time or energy (or money!) to take classes, and I've never been someone who studies well on my own - I much prefer the structure of school to distance-learning, even if I only go to class once a week.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Common wisdom has always been that if you want kids to find languages easy, then raise them speaking more than one, because they're much easier to pick up as a child. I don't know how true this is for everyone, but it's certainly been that way for me. The surprising thing, though, is that some of the languages that come most naturally are ones I had little or no exposure to as a child.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I grew up in Menorca, which means I had to know Castilian (regular) Spanish and Catalan - schools teach in both, switching back and forth between, and businesses use both or either. (Government changed from Castilian Spanish to Catalan in the last eighties and early nineties, much to the horror of many of the island's inhabitants - even in 2014 it's still common to find road signs defaced and the Castilian spelling of things written in. Frankly, I don't blame them. I don't like Catalan either.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In addition to Catalan and Castilian Spanish, many inhabitants of Menorca speak a dialect called Menorquín or Menorquí, which is spoken nowhere but the island. Kids don't want to be left out, and the town kids spoke it while playing, so I learned it too, though never as well as I'd have liked.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After moving back to England, I attended a private school for a while, where they taught Latin. Classics are avoided in state schools in England (though some let you take them as extras, after school), but my little private girls' school taught Latin as part of the general curriculum. I only took it there for a year - the school closed the year after I started learning it - but it's something I'd like to go back to at some point. I enjoy the structure of Latin. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1992, I had an au pair from Northern Spain, who gave me daily lessons in Basque. The uninitiated might think this is just another Spanish dialect, easily learned - wrong. Basque is what's known as a language isolate - it's not related to any other language on the planet - and I found it brutally hard, and never continued.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All English school kids learn some amount of French, or at least they did in my day. My school made you take French from Year 7 until the end of Year 9, and then a second language (Spanish or German; I took Spanish because I was lazy) for Year 8 and Year 9. In Year 10 you can carry on either or both, but you have to do at least one (I dropped French - there just weren't enough hours in the week. I needed Hermione's Time-Turner). So I took three years of French, plus four extra years of Spanish, and got to a reasonable level of fluency in both, though I wish I'd carried on with French instead of the useless art and drama classes I ended up taking. I also wish I'd tackled German instead of lazily choosing a language I already spoke - though I had a German boyfriend all through high school, it is one language that I've never learned and always wanted to. Though I did pick up ancient Nordic runes from my German boyfriend - not a language per se, but I've always liked symbols and codes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I picked up basic Greek in my last two years of high school, purely for fun. I needed to know the alphabet anyway, for math and physics (and occasionally biology) so it didn't seem like a hardship to learn a bit more. It was handy when we went on holiday to Corfu for two weeks at the end of Year 10, too - all the road signs were in Greek, so I ended up the designated navigator every day.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After school, I fell into Italian, sort of against my will. I briefly dated a guy in Spain (when I moved back there in my teens) who was from Naples. He spoke no English; I spoke no Italian at the time. I figured we could meet in the middle and speak Spanish - we were in Spain, after all - but no. He couldn't handle Spanish. So I learned basic Italian. Though the relationship was brief, I used the Italian again when we had an Italian lodger who avoided house rules by refusing to learn English (I can say "please flush the toilet" with the best of them!) and a third time when my doctor ordered me to take up opera to help improve my lungs after repeated bouts of pneumonia. Now I'm supposed to be learning properly, in preparation to live in Milan, but my plans keep falling by the wayside - once again there are not enough hours in the day to do all that needs doing. The handy thing about being brought up speaking Spanish is that Catalan, Italian and Portuguese (which I don't speak, but can sometimes translate) - and even French at times - come much more easily, as the Romance languages have similar structures.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I got the head injury in 2005 and lost my memory, I lost many of my language skills. D'oh. I can still read and translate - poorly - in Spanish and Catalan and sometimes Italian and French, but can't have a conversation. I can read the Greek letters but have no idea what any of the words mean. The funny thing about my memory since the brain damage is that I still have some of the information in my brain, but it's no longer organised the way it used to be and I often don't know that I have information about a subject until I need to access it. Even nine years later, it's common for a subject to come up (language or anything else), upon which I find I have a wealth of knowledge to impart. Afterwards friends will look at me like, "I didn't know you knew anything about..." (Australian snakes / the Dogon people of Mali / how to build ships / cross-pollination of pepper plants / 18th century French court clothing / etc ad infinitum...) Yeah, I didn't know I knew anything either, till I needed it. Due to this oddity, I hold on to the possibility that my language skills will make a miraculous return if I ever find myself in the middle of a bunch of Greeks / Italians / Menorquí people.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After the brain damage and the resulting fallout, I needed a change, so one day, out of the blue, I bought myself a DS game called My Japanese Coach. I was hooked from the first lesson. That autumn I booked myself on a part-time Japanese course at our local uni, and here I am four years later. Everyone thought I was crazy and tried to discourage me. "Why do you want to learn Japanese? You've never learned anything like it before. You can't use it in a career..." Both reasons were exactly why I wanted to learn it. Japanese was the first thing I'd ever done, in my entire life, that was mine. It wasn't for school, it wasn't future career planning, it wasn't because it would help me do my job better or because I was dating a guy who spoke it or because I intended to take a vacation there. It was for no reason other than it was fun and I wanted to. While I'd always enjoyed learning other languages - and everything else I learned - I'd never done anything in my life purely because I wanted to. Every choice I'd ever made, everything I'd learned, every book I'd read and CD I'd listened to, every hobby I'd done, had been about either pleasing my parents, taking recommendations from friends and boyfriends, or acquiring skills that might help me somewhere down the line. Japanese wasn't any of those things. I didn't think I'd ever use it. Japanese was <i>mine</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm off school this semester, due to lack of money and the pressures of moving house, but in the autumn I plan to go back to Japanese and pick up Mandarin, if I'm near a school that teaches it. (My current university does, but I don't know where I'll be living come autumn.) I'd also like to start Cantonese, but I haven't found a part-time course yet. Those two are half-fun and half-future planning. With China being the economic power it is these days, it seems smart to speak the languages, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enthralled by the challenge. It's been a while since I took up something right from scratch, with no prior knowledge - I think Japanese was the last thing, back in 2009. I always like to have something to get my teeth into.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Not all languages come well to me. I seem to have a mental block against Russian and Hebrew - I've tried to learn them several times, and it's never gone well. It's not the writing systems either - in addition to the western alphabet I read Greek upper and lowercase, Nordic runes, hiragana, katakana and some kanji; there's no logical reason why I shouldn't be able to learn Russian and Hebrew. It's just a mental thing. I've never tried Arabic, and that is one that I really should have learned a long while ago, given my job. There are a dozen languages that would help me in my job as a social worker in South and East London - Yoruba, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi are at the top of the list. And I want to learn Vietnamese and Korean some day, just because they're beautiful.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If I lived another hundred years I would only make a dent in all the things I want to learn.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can never decide whether that fact makes me sad or happy.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com1St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-9046269296862778592014-04-29T10:42:00.001+01:002014-09-01T03:44:49.073+01:00Holding Back The Darkness<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">WARNING: dark and triggery.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've never raised a child. I was foster mommy for two years to a teenager, and I've played the roles of surrogate mom, big sister, counsellor and teacher to three dozen other teens over the years, but I've never been responsible for raising a child fully; for instilling values in someone.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've read a lot about parenting. All the books in the world can't make up for lack of hands-on experience. That said, time and books and interactions with other humans have taught me some of the key things that kids need. Not all, but some. They need love, support, room to explore and learn for themselves and still know someone will catch them when they fall. They need discipline that's firm but not cruel, and that knows when to bend. They need space to grow up gradually and take on more responsibilities and privileges as they grow, rather than being wrapped in cotton wool for eighteen years and then overnight handed freedom that they won't have learned to use wisely. They need to know that mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them, that they don't have to know everything and get everything right, that one of the main things that makes any relationship strong is the ability to forgive and be forgiven.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They also need to get gentle reality checks. Kids are dreamers. They're excitable. They need to know that dreams are good but better if they have solid foundations; that hope is always a good thing if you also have resilience when things go wrong. That life is a mix of good and bad. That sometimes they won't get that job offer no matter how hard they try; that sometimes they'll get their heart broken; that not everything is fair. That they're wonderful and loved and special to their parents, but they're not the centre of the universe.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I never got the memo for that last bit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was born for one purpose and have lived for thirty years with that single goal in mind: keeping my mother alive and sane. From the first time that my stepfather and brother patted me on the head and told me to be a big girl and look after mom - I think I was two at the time - my mother's wellbeing has been my main, if not sole, concern.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I clearly remember the first time my mother tried to kill herself. At least, the first time since I was born. Oddly, I don't know how old I was. I can use a few markers to estimate - we're at Daddy Mike's house on Beaumont Avenue, and I'm old enough to read, and Tony still has the light blue car with the tail fins, so I'm somewhere between 2 and 5 - but I can't pinpoint it further than that. Mama's been acting strangely for a few days, and this morning she dropped me at Daddy Mike's house and then disappeared. She's somewhere in the house, I know, because she guards me militantly and wouldn't leave without saying goodbye - she doesn't even let me stay with babysitters, and never goes out alone. Daddy's wringing his hands and looking worried, and I know he doesn't know how to deal with me - he's not used to looking after me, so I'm trying to be unobtrusive and not make trouble for anyone. He's given me orange-and-pineapple squash and some of those hard biscuits with the scalloped edges and the raisins (the type that come in a tea time selection pack and are always left after I eat the jam ones and the chocolate ones) - two things I hate, but I don't complain. I want mama. But daddy says she wants to be alone and that I should let her be, and I have to stay in the front room with my squash and biscuits and book.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's a book of children's poetry, half as tall as I am, and it's a struggle to keep it on my lap, but I sit on the pale blue couch with the white diamond pattern, with my doll and brown bear by my side and the book on my lap, and I get caught up in nursery rhymes about the sun and moon, and mice, and the jabberwocky, and a spinning dreidel - what's a dreidel? Maybe daddy knows, but daddy's gone off somewhere too - and flowers and cats and ribbons:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run a little this way,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run a little that,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Fine new flowers</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>For a fine straw hat.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>A fine straw hat</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>For a lady fair -</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run around and turn about</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>And jump in the air!</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run a little this way,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run a little that,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>White silk ribbon</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>For a black silk cat.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>A black silk cat</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>For the Lord Mayor's wife,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Run around and dance about</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>And jump for your life!</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mama said I could have my own cat, but I think she's forgotten. I want a black silk cat with a white silk ribbon, and a straw hat with flowers on. Maybe if I find mama she'll take me to buy a cat? I put the book down and search for mama. I don't find her in the house, or daddy, but I can hear someone outside so I walk into the back garden and follow the noise.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mama's not in the garden. She's in the shed halfway down the garden. The door's shut, but I can hear sounds coming from it, like somebody's hurt, so I open the door. Mama's hiding, sitting on the floor behind an old mattress with her knees pulled up to her chest. She's crying - that's nothing new, because she's always crying - but this is different, she's crying and choking and it sounds like she's trying to scream but her throat won't make the screaming sounds. She's chewing on her hand and wrist, shoving them into her mouth and down her throat, and she's been sick several times, all down the front and the arm of the black rollneck sweater that I like so much, but it's not enough, she keeps making herself sicker and sicker, clawing at her face and mouth and throat, and she's babbling about how maybe if she takes things to make her sick like Micky did then she'll die like Micky did - Micky was my brother, he got sick in his sleep and died a few years ago - and how she wants to die. I'm there, right in front of her, begging her to stop, but she doesn't even see me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I scream. It seems like I'm screaming forever, but eventually Daddy comes. He shoves me aside and screams at mama to tell him what she's done. What did you take, Carol? Drugs? Rat poison?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't know what happens then. Everything goes blank for a while. Mama goes away, I don't know for how long, and then when she comes back she's still sad but she pretends to be happy. Until anything goes wrong. She gets sad easily when things go wrong. If I scrape my knee or hit my head, she falls apart and cries and wails about what a bad mother she is. If I'm ever rude or ungrateful, she gets angry and then gets sick and cries.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So I guess I just have to make sure nothing ever goes wrong, right?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And this is what I did for years. Tried to be perfect, to make sure everything in life was as close to perfect as was possible. I went to school and laughed and made sure everyone knew everything was fine. I got good grades and scored the highest marks on tests. I was friendly and sweet and well-liked, but not *too* friendly, which was a difficult balancing act - I needed to be popular enough that my mom would be proud and happy, but not so popular that it would make demands on my time that would cut into my time with her. If I kept life running along smoothly, if I made sure I was never sad and never angry and never rude or insensitive or cruel, then mama would stay happy, or happy enough, and if she stayed happy then she would stay alive.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some kids go off the rails when they have this kind of upbringing. Some, like me, gain an overactive sense of responsibility and a tremendous capacity for guilt. Because sometimes I wasn't happy. Sometimes I was sad or angry or rude or insensitive, and I made my mother cry, or scream, or get sick. And every time this happened, I mentally and emotionally - and at times, physically - flagellated myself. I still do, any time I step out of line even a little. Not just with my mother - with anyone. The smallest offence that I commit feels like a mortal sin to me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My mother, ironically enough, took courses in psychology and grief therapies over the years, and eventually became a counsellor. I say ironically because, while she became excellent at helping others to cope with their tragedies, she is almost entirely lost when it comes to understanding her daughter. Some post-traumatic amnesia came into play with her, and she has little to no memory of the years of meltdowns and suicide threats. Sometimes she will talk about what an idyllic childhood I had - and to be fair, when it wasn't hideous it was wonderful, there was nothing inbetween - and as she cannot remember, she cannot understand where my crushing burden of guilt and responsibility comes from. Nobody in the family talks about that dark time, nobody even acknowledges that anything happened. To acknowledge it would be to admit that leaving a grief-stricken, suicidal woman who'd previously struggled with bipolar disorder and probable borderline personality disorder in the care of a child under five was not an okay thing to do. And nobody wants to admit that.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ironic it is, that a family who are so good at talking the talk about the need for openness and good communication, are so very good at sweeping things under the carpet, both amongst ourselves and when dealing with the world in general. We give the impression of being a close family. We give the impression of being strong, happy, mentally healthy, sociable.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After she recovered from that first breakdown, my mom had others occasionally, when anything went badly - but never in public. Behind closed doors she was often sick or depressed or occasionally raging (although not all, or even the majority of the time - I don't mean to give the impression that the meltdowns were a daily, or even a weekly, thing; indeed much of the time everything was happy-happy, the way manic-depressives often are), but in public she was the charming ingenue that everybody loved. This has continued to this day - although she is something of a recluse now, and it's a struggle to get her out of bed some days, when she DOES go out she shines golden light upon everyone she meets. Everybody loves my mother. Literally, everybody. I can't think of a single person who doesn't get on well with her. There have been a few people in the past who weren't captivated by her, but all, bar none, have come round in time. Even the ex-wives of her past boyfriends, even the widow of the neighbour she had a fling with - they chat to her in a friendly manner and tell me constantly what a nice person she is. My friends today all love her. My friends from school all used to wish she was their mom.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is odd that a woman so universally liked doesn't have any real friends. But over the last decade, and probably a few more years besides, she hasn't been willing to put in the effort to make and keep people close to her. For years I reminded, nagged, cajoled and occasionally bribed her to return phone calls or make coffee dates or write letters to any of the people who were constantly trying to keep in touch with her. Now I've stopped trying, and they've stopped calling and writing, although if we run into them at any time, they still want to chat with her. I don't know if she's lonely. Sometimes she'll say something about how she doesn't have any friends, but any time I make suggestions about how she can meet people, she finds a reason to reject them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nothing ever mattered much to mom other than her husband and children. Her husband was gone long ago - my mom and my Daddy Mike (who is not my biological father) were separated long before I was born, although they are only in the process of divorcing now - and when we lost my brother, a part of her died too. Tony, my surviving brother, was already in university at the time Micky died, and he has never moved back home with my mom. He was established in the life of a normal young man, and has progressed through life in a similar way to most of his peers. Oh, he has had his ups and downs, but his life has been reasonably normal. He had already had eighteen years of normality before our family broke. He knew how to carry on the pattern once the dust settled.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By contrast, I have been the touchstone that links my mother to the world. I have been the caretaker, the security blanket to which she clings so tightly.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I didn't go out much with the neighbourhood kids when I was younger. I was always the one who wasn't allowed to leave the garden. I barely dated in high school. The few casual boyfriends that I had, I hid from everyone lest word get back to my mother that I was doing something risky like dating. I am now thirty years old and I have never had a proper boyfriend, never lived with a man except the one who rented a room from my mother, never taken a vacation with a man or alone. Never had someone that I was committed to above all else. How could I, when I was already committed?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have had a succession of part-time, low-paying jobs, most of them temporary, because for years I have listened to her worries of how my health is too poor to handle a normal job, how I am too fragile to work full-time at something that would be demanding and pay well. I currently work from home, 24 hours a week, for which I bring home about £2500 a year. Yes, I am disabled and physically fragile. But I do not believe that this should have prevented me from trying to do a normal job. Plenty of people who are sick and disabled work outside the home. Plenty of sick and disabled people go to university and try for a degree, even if it takes them twice as long to complete as the average student, but although I was accepted to five medical schools - including Brunel, which runs a program that gets more than a thousand undergrad applications every year and accepts eighty of them - I let myself be convinced that I couldn't handle going to school full-time.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have never ridden a motorbike. Never parachuted. Never scuba dived in the ocean (though I trained in a pool) or gone white-water rafting. My mother begs me to "PLEASE be careful, and don't overdo" when I go to the gym to spend half an hour on the treadmill and crosstrainer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will be running and walking a 5K in June, the first physical challenge I have ever set myself. It's important to me. Nobody will be there to watch me. Mom thinks it would be too nerve-wracking for her to be there. She doesn't say whether she's worried about my nerves or her own.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I lived away from my mother once, for a year, to attend a sixth form college when I was 17. She seemed reasonably healthy then. She was living in Spain, enjoying better physical health than normal (in addition to her emotional issues, she has bad osteoarthritis, and has had a hip replacement and many surgeries on her spine), and had friends, including a steady man friend. We coped with the separation quite well, until my health started to deteriorate and she came home to take care of me. Since I moved back into her home at the end of that year, I have spent less than forty nights away from her, most of them spent house-sitting for my father and stepmother, or visiting them. In the last fourteen years the sum total of my vacations have been a day and two nights in Germany in 2004 (with my mother), four days visiting a boyfriend in Liverpool in 2008 (the one and only time I ever put my foot down and said that I was going to visit this man whether she liked it or not), and one night alone in the Hatfield Travelodge - five miles away - for my birthday last year.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The funny thing about all this is that people look in from the outside and think that I'm getting a pretty cushy deal. Living at home with your mother looking after you, cooking your dinner and doing your laundry! Rent-free! What an ungrateful daughter you must be, to think that you could ever complain! You should be thanking her every day, and paying your share of the rent and bills! What people don't see is that I spend hours every day helping her bathe and dress, reminding her to eat or to put on more clothes if she's cold, moving furniture and boxes because she can't decide where she wants them, sorting out her medication, emptying her bedpans, washing her hair, buying groceries, trying to rid the house of some of the hoards that she's managed to acquire, seeing to accounts, making sure mail is read and answered, trying to make sure she gets out of bed and dressed every day, trying to keep things clean and tidy - almost all of it against her will. The hours that I'm not actively working, I'm on call. I'm on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, aside from the few hours a week that I spend in class or grocery shopping or at the gym. I rarely go out for anything other than those three things. I sleep lightly and hypervigilantly, on constant alert for sickness or asthma attacks. I try not to lose my patience. If I did, it wouldn't be the end of the world - while her physical health has declined greatly in the last few years, and she's become more reclusive, she's also been blessed with much more stable moods, and if I ever say something insensitive or impatient or snappy, at worst it causes an argument and some hurt feelings, and often it just gets laughed off. I still beat myself up over those moments. It's become a habit by now.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I do my own laundry, btw, as well as hers most of the time, and cook for myself if I'm ever hungry, which I'm not often.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I am very vulnerable to criticism when it comes to my relationship with my mother, and my treatment of her. In my head I know that I am not rotten or neglectful or cruel. But my heart and gut never manage to get the message. You would think that with as much criticism as I've taken over it, as many people who've accused me over the years of being a terrible daughter, that I'd be used to it. I'm not. Every time someone accuses me of mistreating her, of not honouring her the way kids should honour their parents, of being cold or mean, it sinks into me, a stone in the depths of my belly that I can't ever reach to remove. Any time someone accuses me of being a bad daughter it just echoes everything that I've ever told myself, everything about myself that I hate, that I've hated ever since I gained the ability to think. Everything that I've felt deep down since I was born and my brother died, since my birth became the catalyst for a chain of events that broke us. That voice inside tells me that I broke my family, and anything that I have to do to patch it up - even though those patches are never anything but temporary bandaids - any sacrifices that I have to make, are nothing less than I deserve. No matter how much the things people say hurt, they're only echoes of what I've always believed about myself. No judgements that you can make about me will be harsher than my own.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I love my mother, and I know she loves me more than anything. She carried me for nine months, gave birth to me, nursed me as a child and then again as a sick adult, lived a life of poverty because of her beloved parasite daughter. I owe her. So I did what had to be done, and if I had to, I'd do it again. As a teenager - and sometimes an adult - I did it grudgingly, and I regret that more than I can say, and will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-35128122094858784482014-02-09T01:46:00.001+00:002014-02-09T01:46:07.694+00:00Taylor Swift Is Kinda Awesome, Really<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not heavily into celebrities. There are a few that I've met and fallen madly in like with because they were so damn nice (Bon Jovi, Alexander McQueen, Rich Cronin from LFO, Eminem, Xzibit, Johan Djourou) and a handful that I'd be genuinely starstruck meeting (Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Prof Brian Cox, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of the Obamas, Anderson Cooper, George Takei, Example) as well as a few dozen that I quite like, based on interviews they've given.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are also hundreds that barely enter my radar. I don't read tabloids. I rarely watch reality TV. The only magazine I buy regularly is New Scientist, and occasionally Scientific American.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I do like to read about Taylor Swift.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not a superfan - actually I'm sort of ambivalent on her music in general. I liked a handful of her songs and didn't care for others. I never bought any of her albums, though I got a few of the songs from iTunes. But I google her every few months because I'm always intrigued by her love affairs.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most of the world seems to agree: when it comes to love, Taylor Swift is a car crash. Everything from her relationship with the four-years-younger Conor Kennedy (which brought a lot of the haters out, with cries of "cradle-snatcher" and even "pedophile") when she was 22, to her insta-love with Harry Styles, to the infamous lyrical blowouts with Joe Jonas and John Mayer, Taylor attracts a lot of attention for her rollercoaster of a love life, much of it negative.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But the thing that really gets me about her is that she keeps trying. I don't know the girl, so I don't know if she's a Pollyanna or just a severely codependent chick who needs a man to feel validated. But I find her persistence weirdly inspiring.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No matter how bad the breakup - and there have been some bad ones - the kid keeps falling in love, keeps opening her heart. And it gets trampled on. And instead of getting bitter and jaded, she opens it up again for the next guy, just in case this time is different. She never stops hoping.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You could view this in a negative light, and say that she never learns from her mistakes; never gains any insight or maturity. You'd probably be right. But despite that, I can't help but admire someone who holds their heart out in front for everyone to see, and doesn't apologise for it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't want to be Taylor Swift. I like my life to float along peacefully and evenly. If she were a friend of mine she'd probably drive me crazy. But as far as being open-hearted goes, I think I could learn a lot from her.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-2789165908613783752013-12-29T13:54:00.001+00:002014-01-06T06:02:10.097+00:00Christmas Wishes - Or Whinges<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am quite bereft today, since the universe has a sadistic sense of timing. My popularity - which waxes and wanes worse than the moon does - always seems to be at a high when I can't take advantage of it. Yesterday I had to turn down four invitations for company and socialising. FOUR. My brother and SIL wanted me to come down to Worthing along with mom, to see them, my SIL's mother and my utterly beloved nephews, one of whom made a surprise Christmas return from Australia, where he's been for the last year, following a year in Asia. All in all I haven't seen Jay for two and a half years and I'm gutted to be missing him right now. And Craig, who I am every bit as fond of as Jay, is probably missing my cakes - family occasions are the only times he breaks from a strict diet (he's studying sports sciences and is a bit of a health nut) and I'd promised applesauce cake and Swedish chokladbollar and maybe Moravian Sugar Cake.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ugh.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My friend Sasha, who I haven't seen in a year and a half because she's been in Russia amongst other places, wanted to get together and talk about men - which, y'all will know, is something I'm always willing to do. Adam wanted to do movie night - we've been trying to set a date to watch the first and second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies for months now, and our schedules never seem to match, and on the few occasions they do we've ended up doing something else entirely. And Siji, my ex from Manchester, is in London visiting his family for Christmas and wanted to hang out. I haven't seen him for over a year either.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I am stuck in bed with flu. I came down with it Christmas morning, and thought it was a cold, but now I've progressed to the aches and fever. I feel vile. Mom is down at my brother's - praise the Lord, two days where I don't have to look after anyone's needs but my own! - and I'm too sick to make the most of it. I had so many plans to beat the post-Christmas gloom. Nazia and I were going to go shopping at Stratford Westfield - I need to go to Victoria's Secret, and I wanted her opinion on the Phase Eight dress, since I finally have enough money to buy it but still feel awful spending £79 (the sale price!) on a dress so I need coaxing and telling that it looks perfect. And I had tickets for ice skating at Canary Wharf that I got from wowcher or groupon or one of those places - normally I can't afford the Christmas skating rinks - and was hoping to drag Siji along.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To put into perspective how awful it felt for me to turn down four invitations, the last social thing I did (ie not class - although we did bring food and drinks on the last lesson - or shopping) was Thanksgiving dinner with mom and Curt, my BFF. I think that was the 30th of November. The time before that was the first week of Nov, when Adam and I went to the fireworks display. The time before THAT was Chrissie's birthday party in July or August, before the surgeries.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not the social butterfly type, particularly when I'm sick or recovering from illness, as I was all autumn. I occasionally joke that I'm more like a social moth - while you're all out there being gregarious and sipping nectar and looking pretty and making the world bright, I'll be off in a back room banging my head against the light and eating your clothes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I do occasionally feel the need to see people - even I get tired of work and school and reading - and it bums me out no end if on the few occasions people want to see me, I have to turn it down.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No point to this post, I'm just whinging.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That all said, being stuck in bed does make a girl appreciate the slinky-but-comfy nightdress from mom and the awesome books from various people and the totally banging slipper-boots from Chrissie (pics to follow) all the more. :)</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-24699485600487999352013-12-27T03:33:00.001+00:002014-01-06T06:02:35.478+00:00Shards of Thought<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes the things I have to research for this job depress the hell out of me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And other times...other times, the logical scientist part of me, the part that's cut off from any emotional feelings I have about the stories I hear at work, the part that makes Dr Chris use terms like "depersonalization" and "derealization"...that part is nearly as intrigued by the effects of tragedy on human psyches as it is heartbroken that such things happen at all.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I feel like there's something deeply wrong with me, that I'm almost as fascinated as I am appalled.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...yeah.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0St Albans St Albans51.767731 -0.337805tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-88735918342292061392013-11-29T01:08:00.001+00:002013-11-29T01:08:55.761+00:00Yup, Another Thing To Sign Up For<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5057403/?claim=8mtgx66v84g">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-35952457186748148522013-11-14T16:44:00.001+00:002014-01-06T06:09:10.434+00:00Doing What Needs To Be Done<span style="background-color: white; color: #a64d79;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">WARNING:</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Contains graphic medical details which may disturb.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm publishing this from the Blogger iPhone app, since I'm just too damn tired to turn on the computer - which is why it's not formatted with the normal fonts and colours, unless I figure out a way to do that from here. Probably I'll have to do it next time I turn the computer on. Which will hopefully be soon - I have some Goodreads books that I've read recently that need to have the data input, and I'm still trying to keep that up to date with books I've recently read, even though the boxes full of books that I was working on inputting pre-reading are on hiatus temporarily.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You may not know what I'm referring to. It's ok, *I* know what I mean.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm tired. With fibromyalgia I'm usually tired, but it's unusually strong and pervasive tiredness right now. I had surgery in September - nothing serious, or at least it shouldn't have been. Just women's problems. But I didn't recover well. After the surgery I bled and cramped up every time I got out of bed for nearly two months. Not little cramps and spotting, either - worse pain than during my worst periods (and I have endometriosis and PCOS; my worst periods can be very bad indeed) that made me scream and weep, even with my reasonably high pain threshold. Rivers of blood - during the worst bit, I lost half a pint of blood every day for ten days, maybe two weeks. (No, that's not a guesstimate, either. Make of that what you will.) The doctors were talking about blood transfusions and D&Cs, which I mercifully managed to avoid.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blood tends to restore most of itself within a few days, and a person my size can probably lose two pints comfortably and twice that without any major danger. (Now, that IS an estimate, I don't know exactly how much blood my body holds.) Half a pint a day certainly wouldn't kill me, but it made me feel like I'd been hit by a truck.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Iron, though - that takes time to build up again. In the UK, women are only allowed to donate blood once every sixteen weeks (other countries vary) because the iron levels take so long to come back to normal - and at a blood drive they only take a pint, usually. So I've been horribly anemic for the last few months. I've been eating spinach and broccoli near enough every day - dear God, am I sick of broccoli! - and red meat when I can, which probably isn't often enough, but my stomach won't tolerate beef more than occasionally, and I can't eat lamb or offal meats at all. And I have iron supplements. But I still feel like shit. Since the surgery I've gone from being someone who gets by most nights on five hours of sleep (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less) to being someone who needs at least ten hours, preferably twelve or thirteen, just to function for the basics.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm having a hard time just getting to school one night a week. The time change particularly hit me this year - it feels like the clocks went back three or four hours, not one. I look at the clock on any given evening, thinking it's tennish, and it's usually 6pm, and I find myself falling asleep an hour into class. Paul coerced me into teaching this year, much to my disgust, but now I'm grateful for it since there's no way I can go back to the helpline and pull 4 12-hour shifts in a week. I had to do one shift last week when Cindy was sick, and just staying awake and manning the phone for twelve hours felt like running a marathon.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So I'm teaching a 90-minute or 2-hour class Mondays and Fridays, and setting (and marking) essays, as well as various paperwork. I barely work twenty hours a week, which isn't good for my bank account, but is better than nothing. I'm not teaching English as much as critical thinking, although we read quite a few stories and parts of books. This last week I've been lazy, though, and set essays from films instead.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">School is okay, aside from the falling asleep, but it doesn't quite have the spark that it's had for the last few years. In an effort to make more money, the uni threw two classes together, so we started out with far too many people (although several have dropped out) and yet another new teacher. She's a fine teacher, but I do miss Takana, who I thought of as a friend as well as a sensei. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed about the blended class if they hadn't already put the tuition fees up - or more accurately, split the year into three semesters instead of two. The courses for the last four years have run for 14-15 weeks; now they run 10 weeks each - but they charge the same fees as they did for the 15-week course. Meaning that for a 30-week school year, we're paying an extra 50% on tuition. That's a MASSIVE leap in fees, and I feel that the uni should have been satisfied with that rather than sticking 30 of us, at all different learning levels, together in 1 class. 30 is far too many for a practical language class, even with the dropouts. We previously had 15-16 at our highest (and that was a few too many, when you all have to take turns to have conversations) and 8-10 at our lowest (which was a good number).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In addition, I haven't managed to really bond with anyone in the class, although I know Andrew and Nuala from last year, and a guy named Chris from my first class with Magdalena, and there's a nice girl (I think named Suzanne?) who I ride the bus with and chat to. I don't know if it's me being withdrawn because I don't feel well, or the fact that most of the class knew each other before, or if it's just the people in it, but I don't feel close to anyone. I've never had that - in my previous classes, we either had a really friendly group (as with the groups Takana ran) or I formed a deep, abiding friendship (as with K, who was in Magdalena's class. I don't remember the rest of the people from Magdalena's class very well, because K and I seemed to stick together most of the time, and that was just fine).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's a little disorienting, because I can only remember one time in my life before that I found it difficult to make friends. That was in Sue's biology class, in 2002 - I was retaking the class after I had to drop out of Jon's bio class the previous year when I got sick and didn't finish my coursework, and on the first lesson she made it quite clear that she had tremendous contempt for me for having to retake. She told me flat-out that she didn't want me in the class, that I didn't deserve to be there - yes, a teacher actually said that to a disabled 18-year-old girl - and every time I made a mistake (which I didn't do often, I was a straight-A student in biology) she'd mock me to the class. ("Look, Miss Frost isn't perfect after all! Careful, or you might end up failing and having to repeat a year like she did!") They followed her lead, and I didn't make any friends there, although I still had friends in my other classes, including Curt and Sanjit in second-year chem, so I didn't feel the loss that much. Although I didn't stay in the class more than a few months, and made a formal complaint about her to the college when I left. Frankly I wish I'd given some sort of walking-out speech to her in front of the rest of the students rather than just not showing up one day; maybe they'd have learned something about being sheeple. Although I can't really blame them - a teacher should be someone you CAN follow the lead on.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That situation is far removed from this one - my new teacher is nice, and the students aren't hostile - they're just quiet. The lack of friendship so far may well be my doing, anyway - I haven't been at my most charming, since I'm barely awake by the time I get there. But it IS disorienting, nonetheless, to not walk into a room of strangers and make friends within a half hour. I've always made friends so easily. I have trouble *keeping* them, mind you, but I make them easily.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Throw on top of all that the fact that I no longer have my carer's free bus pass - Mom still hasn't gotten onto the council, and I can't be the one to do it, it has to be her who applies - and I'm now spending a tenner a day on getting to school and back, and you can see why the whole thing is feeling more like a chore than the pleasure it's been for the last four years.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm okay in myself, it's just things getting on top of me a little. I'm not depressed (although my moods have been up and down with the female problems - hormones are crazy things) but I'm just so tired. The tiredness increases the muscle pains - although that could also be related to the iron levels - and makes it hard to remember to eat and breathe, putting me at risk for chest infections. I realise the ridiculousness of that sentence - you're probably thinking, "FFS, who forgets to breathe?" but I do, when I'm this tired. I'm also on a 1200-calorie diet, created by Teeny Crazy Lady Dietician, which probably doesn't help with the tiredness, but that's another post altogether.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mom had spinal surgery yesterday. She seems to have cone through it well - she's in good spirits, and feeling less pain, so touch wood that the relief she's getting continues. I'm glad she's doing okay, but it means that there's a whole lot more work to do and I have to do it all alone, because Tony's family are in the process of moving down to their new house in Brighton. I make a competent nursemaid, and I'll do whatever needs to be done, because she's my mother and she would do - and has done - it for me. But despite being competent, nursing is not something I enjoy, and I feel bad that whatever needs to be done for her I do with a generous but not quite cheerful heart.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Probably some of this guilt is due to my ex's girlfriend being a nurse, but that too is best left for another post. Or not. I don't especially want to rehash all those feelings.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But hey ho, it could always be worse. I could be doing all these things while (almost) dying of Scarlet Fever, the way I was during her last spinal operation a few autumns ago. It's easy to forget to be grateful for how much easier things are this time around.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And really, things aren't so bad. I have books. I have a Pokémon game (sadly not X or Y, since I don't yet have a 3DS). I have Christmas coming up, and am trying to decide whether to get into the shopping spirit, or chuck it in and spend what I would have spent on presents on a trip to Barbados. I have friends who do nice things like take me to fireworks displays and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with me and offer me sheets when the washing machine eats mine. :) People are nice.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And it's been about 10 weeks since the surgery, so as long as I remember to take my supplements (gah) and eat lots of broccoli and spinach (double gah!), in the next six weeks I should start feeling a lot better.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although if I don't develop super Popeye-strength, I want my money back.</span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-30629355471748200432013-10-07T23:42:00.000+01:002013-10-08T00:15:42.166+01:00A Month of Blogs - What Keeps You Up At Night?<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>What Keeps You Up At Night?</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Submitted by Anonymous.</span><br />
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<i style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.79166603088379px;">As a writer who seems to have hit a low point in creativity and / or just getting off my ass and writing, I signed myself up to write 31 blog posts during October - one a day - on any subjects that are suggested to me. The only rules for suggestions are that they can't be anything that involve me having to take on a particular viewpoint (so no "Why I Hate Twilight" or "Why Rock Music is the Best Music") - this isn't debating class, and right now I'm not interested in trying to argue something that I may or may not agree with. Anything else goes - it can be a specific subject or a broad one, one that I've written about in the past or something new that will need research. If you're interested in playing along, you can leave a comment here, or email me at <a href="mailto:thenordicalien@gmail.com" target="_blank">thenordicalien@gmail.com</a>. (I'll try and remember to check there, honest!)</i><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I could have written this post in a number of ways. I might do a part 2. And 3. But for now, I decided to play it straight.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Truth is, I don't know everything that keeps me up. Probably it's partially my diet - I've noticed that when I only eat fresh foods with no preservatives, I sleep better. It's partially pain - if I exercise I sleep better. It's partially guilt at my parasitic lifestyle - if I put in a good day's manual labour, I sleep better.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mostly it's stupid shit. Like worrying.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I saved a kid today. At least I think I did. I was walking through town on my way to the bank, and this kid on a tricycle sped out in front of me. I guess he was 2 or 3. Maybe 4. Hell, he could have been 5 - I'm not good at guessing kids' ages. It was a little plastic trike, not a proper one, so probably not as old as 5. He sure could pedal though. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, but was hurrying to get to the bank, so I wasn't really concentrating on him until I heard someone screech, "Jaden!" which caught my attention - Jaden is my nephew's name, and most people are particularly attuned to the names of their friends and family. Speedy Gonzales - apparently Jaden - rode right in front of me and onto the road, into the path of an oncoming car. The main road in town is busy most of the time, and this was after-school traffic.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was there. The shout had caught my attention well enough. He was fine. I was fine.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have been worrying all afternoon about how he wouldn't have been fine if things had turned out differently.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr chris and I have been over this odd habit of mine many times, and never quite managed to solve it. I don't remember if it has a particular name - he refers to it as a form of transference, similar to the way that when crises happen in my life I handle them gracefully...and then later fall apart or throw a tantrum because a date gets cancelled or someone gives me the wrong soda at the movies. (For the record, I'm fairly easy-going most of the time, and not at all the type of person to throw tantrums, let alone about such anodyne things.) The lay explanation Doc gave me for this is that the energy and stress from crisis after crisis builds up, but because I've spent a lifetime handling some pretty awful situations and acting like the grown-up who holds everything together, I sort of transfer the emotion from the things I can't control (death, illness, bankruptcy, prison) into things that aren't really that important and are therefore safe to fall apart about. TL;DR - I underreact to important shit and then overreact to unimportant shit as a way of compensating.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Supposedly this odd worrying habit of mine is related to this in some way, but we've never been able to rid me of it, only to control it most of the time.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't worry about the future. Not much, anyway. The future will happen whether I'm ready for it or not. Instead, I worry about the past. I worry about the things that didn't happen. I worry about Q and E - my SEALs - getting shot and killed while on one of those missions that they can't tell me about. I worry about B, my ex-Marine friend, getting blown up by a landmine during his tour in the Middle East. I worry about my Kurdish friend S being victimized as a child because she's a woman, or my Chinese friend L being aborted or left on the street because her parents wanted a boy. I worry about D, my high-school love, overdosing on drugs when he felt so alienated from the rest of the world, or K committing suicide because of his many traumas. I worry about the stroke that didn't kill my Dad and the ovarian cyst that my Mom had that didn't turn out to be cancer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">None of this happened. Q and E and B are all alive, not currently serving in the military, and in possession of all body parts. I have no idea if S was ever victimized as a kid, but she's grown into an amazingly strong, confident, intelligent woman who takes crap from nobody and still maintains a compassionate heart, and I'm honoured and humbled to call her a friend. L's parents love her more than life itself and would not give her up for anything in the world. D channeled his teenage pain into an extraordinary musical skill, and has now made a name for himself in the trance world, and seems content with life. K did go through a rough period, and still does, but he's alive and kicking and surrounded by those who love him. My Dad is recovering and my Mom is cancer-free and always has been.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I worry about them nonetheless.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And today I worry about what would have happened if I took an earlier bus, or if I had finally signed up for the internet banking that my ex has been telling me to do, or if I'd been wearing high heels and been unable to move quickly, or if the kid hadn't shared a name with my nephew and I'd ignored his mother yelling for him.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Those things didn't happen. You can tell me, <i>but you <b>were</b> there</i>. It doesn't help. I don't know why. Dr Chris doesn't know why either.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And that's what keeps me up, at least for tonight.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>See anything you liked? Share it! Just link back to this page.</i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-88500817128870910992013-10-06T23:50:00.000+01:002013-10-08T00:16:53.665+01:00A Month of Blogs - How Not To Fall In Downward Dog<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>How Not to Fall in Downward Dog</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Suggested by Dee Dee M.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.79166603088379px;">As a writer who seems to have hit a low point in creativity and / or just getting off my ass and writing, I signed myself up to write 31 blog posts during October - one a day - on any subjects that are suggested to me. The only rules for suggestions are that they can't be anything that involve me having to take on a particular viewpoint (so no "Why I Hate Twilight" or "Why Rock Music is the Best Music") - this isn't debating class, and right now I'm not interested in trying to argue something that I may or may not agree with. Anything else goes - it can be a specific subject or a broad one, one that I've written about in the past or something new that will need research. If you're interested in playing along, you can leave a comment here, or email me at <a href="mailto:thenordicalien@gmail.com" target="_blank">thenordicalien@gmail.com</a>. (I'll try and remember to check there, honest!)</i><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was both intrigued and worried when I got this post request, which is why I'm writing it out of the order that it came in. The worrying part was whether I'd actually be able to write it, since a) I haven't taken a yoga class since 2005; and b) when I did, I was too busy giggling with my friend over the term "downward dog" to have committed much to memory. The intriguing part is also the above, since it's a post that I knew would take research, and the possibility of learning something new is always an intriguing one.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My first port of call was YouTube videos. The comments on these indicated that I was going to be cringing by the end, but when I started to play the clips, things didn't look so bad. <i>Oh, THAT one!</i> I exclaimed. <i>I remember that position! I wonder if I can still do it?</i> I got off my bed onto the floor, adopted a very undignified position on my hands and knees, stomach and breasts swinging unrestrainedly, curled my toes under, and pushed up into an approximation of downward dog. Ten seconds later I had a puffy red eye from taking a boob to the face, but I also had a feeling of accomplishment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Note to self: wear a sports bra while attempting yoga.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So admittedly, I didn't see too many problems with this position. I think this may have something to do with an unconventional childhood full of unconventional pastimes, one of which was pony-vaulting. For the uninitiated, pony-vaulting is basically a form of horse-based gymnastics. Yoga poses, ballet poses, eventual handstands and headstands and somersaults...all of it on (or off of) the back of a cantering horse. It was the one and only dangerous thing my mother ever let me do, and I'm grateful for it, although I never got up to the handstand stage. I spent my early years in Menorca, and in the eighties it was a little dead in the winter, and we were only doing half days in school at this point, so Robbie (my childhood friend) and I found ourselves enrolled in this thoroughly bizarre circus gym class twice a week in the afternoons. Robbie was much better at it than I was, as a result of having twice my energy levels, a daredevil streak wider than the Mississippi, and a mother who didn't freak out over every little thing he did. We learned to ride bareback; to ride backwards; to spin around on our butts ("la molina" - the windmill); to balance on one hand and one knee while we raised an arm and the opposite leg high in the air ("la bandera" - the flag); to lie on our stomach and bend a leg behind us at both the hip and knee so the sole of our foot touched the top of our head (I think that one had a name, but I don't remember what it was).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Long story short: if you can pull off a yoga pose while balancing on a large sorrel gelding named Chianti, you can probably do it anywhere.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, that doesn't mean that you can do it <i>well</i>. Or that you can communicate how to do it to anyone else. So with that in mind, I decided to ask a professional.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Haley Blackman is the owner and yoga teacher at The Beauty of Yoga, based in London and Herts. She teaches Hatha, Hatha Flow and Yin Yoga, and she was nice enough to write me some easy-to-follow (I hope!) instructions to quote for this post.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Keep fingers spread and push the top of the mat away from the body, really pressing down with the triangle between the forefingers and thumb,</b> says Haley. <b>Keep eyes of the elbows facing one another, triceps rolled outwards, shoulders away from ears. Cinch in the waist, extend up through the torso like a telescope and extend the chest towards the thighs. Sitting bones are lifted towards the sky. Lift the knees to engage the quads, lift through the shins. Heels are gently reaching towards the floor. Keep breathing slowly and deeply. Once these body parts are activated the pose can be held.</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So there you have it. I may have to take another class to be able to picture these instructions fully - and if I do, I'll write a Part 2 to this post - but hopefully anyone who knows the basics of yoga will be able to understand.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Me, I have plenty more bicep curls and oblique-strengthening exercises to do until I can hold my downward dog comfortably for more than five seconds. :)</span><br />
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<i><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Check out The Beauty of Yoga's Facebook page here - <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheBeautyofYogaUK" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/TheBeautyofYogaUK </a>.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Or follow on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/thebeautyofyoga" target="_blank">@thebeautyofyoga</a>.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">See anything you liked? Share it! Just link back to this page.</span></i>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-17418464240712821662013-10-05T21:39:00.000+01:002013-10-05T21:39:01.848+01:00A Month of Blogs - The Thigh Gap<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>The Thigh Gap</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Suggested by Anonymous.</span><br />
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<i style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20.79166603088379px;">As a writer who seems to have hit a low point in creativity and / or just getting off my ass and writing, I signed myself up to write 31 blog posts during October - one a day - on any subjects that are suggested to me. The only rules for suggestions are that they can't be anything that involve me having to take on a particular viewpoint (so no "Why I Hate Twilight" or "Why Rock Music is the Best Music") - this isn't debating class, and right now I'm not interested in trying to argue something that I may or may not agree with. Anything else goes - it can be a specific subject or a broad one, one that I've written about in the past or something new that will need research. If you're interested in playing along, you can leave a comment here, or email me at <a href="mailto:thenordicalien@gmail.com" target="_blank">thenordicalien@gmail.com</a>. (I'll try and remember to check there, honest!)</i><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Someone - I don't know who - suggested that I write about the space between a girl's thighs. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that they're not asking me to talk about vaginas.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Truth is, I'm sick to death of this topic. That isn't a dig at you, Anonymous - it's probably an interesting topic for those who don't hear about it from every young girl they talk to. (That's a lot, btw.) I'm sick of the topic because everywhere I turn I see girls - and women - cursing their perfectly nice bodies and feeling inadequate because they don't have the new (well, several years' old) fashion accessory that's taken the world by storm.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I first heard of "The Gap" when a male friend of mine liked a Facebook page, and it came up on my wall. I thought they were talking about the clothing store until I checked out the page, to find that it was a collection of photos paying homage to women whose thighs didn't touch. All sorts of women - tall, short, skinny, muscular, Black, White, Asian...the only thing they had in common was a space at the top of their legs.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I shrugged, thought to myself, <i>I've seen weirder things,</i> and closed the page. What I didn't expect was to see people talking about this EVERYWHERE.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Being someone who likes her research, I decided to find out how a girl goes about acquiring this gold-standard accessory. And do you know what I found? <b>You can't.</b> Not healthily, anyway. Of course anyone who gets super-thin will lose thigh fat and eventually muscle, but that doesn't happen for a long time, not until you're severely underweight. (And frankly, losing muscle mass isn't something you want to do. Trust me on that one - I've lost muscle through serious illness, and it makes you horribly weak, and takes forever to build back up. Not to mention the fact that generally less muscle = lower metabolic rate.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So except in the case of unhealthy weight loss, you can't get a thigh gap. You either have one or you don't. It all depends on the angle of your pelvis and how your femurs - that's your thigh bones - sit in their sockets.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, if you're overweight, when you lose weight you might find that you have one. I have no idea if I have or not; my legs have been heavy most of my life, even during those few slimmish college years.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So essentially, all these girls are making themselves feel inadequate, are killing themselves in the gym, to get something that <i>cannot physically happen </i>unless you already have the physiology. Imagine having a bunch of girls trying to diet and exercise their way into getting longer arms, or smaller feet. Sound silly to you? Yeah, me too. You can't change your skeleton.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Actually, I remember back in 2000 or 2001, one of the - thankfully short-lived - fads amongst high-society women was to have surgery on their feet. Know what they did? They had their last tarsal and metatarsal removed so their feet looked more slimline and fit into designer shoes. Yes, they <i>had their baby toes cut off.</i> There were actually surgeons out there willing to cut off body parts so women could pander to fashion trends. Turns out you actually CAN change your skeleton sometimes...if you have enough money...and lack enough sense.)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I happen to like the look of thigh gaps, if they're on a woman who has one naturally. If you have one along with good health and good muscle tone, I think they look nice. I wouldn't mind having one. I might get one when I get closer to my goal weight, since I have quite wide hips. We'll see. But if I don't I certainly am not going to feel inferior to women who do. That's just ridiculous, and sad. The body you're meant to have is the one you've been given. Eat well, exercise well, look after it, and accept it the way it is.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>See anything you like? Share it! Just link back to this page.</i></span>Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com2Saint Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047777076343169390.post-43049610014520266242013-10-04T20:15:00.000+01:002013-10-05T20:16:42.467+01:00A Month of Blogs - Are Dogs Really Man's Best Friend?<div>
<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Are Dogs Really Man's Best Friend?</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Suggested by Joanna J.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.79166603088379px;"><i>As a writer who seems to have hit a low point in creativity and / or just getting off my ass and writing, I signed myself up to write 31 blog posts during October - one a day - on any subjects that are suggested to me. The only rules for suggestions are that they can't be anything that involve me having to take on a particular viewpoint (so no "Why I Hate Twilight" or "Why Rock Music is the Best Music") - this isn't debating class, and right now I'm not interested in trying to argue something that I may or may not agree with. Anything else goes - it can be a specific subject or a broad one, one that I've written about in the past or something new that will need research. If you're interested in playing along, you can leave a comment here, or email me at <a href="mailto:thenordicalien@gmail.com" target="_blank">thenordicalien@gmail.com</a>. (I'll try and remember to check there, honest!)</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>I was talking to my ex on whatsapp while I was writing this post, and when he asked me what I was writing, I told him.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"They're not," he said.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"Personally, I think books are man's best friend," I said.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>I was expecting him to say something about cats. He's very much a cat person.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"Boobs are man's best friend," said he.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>That story has nothing to do with this post, but it made me smile.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Are dogs man's best friend? Many people would say yes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am not really a dog person, so my answer is a more restrained, <i>sometimes</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had a dog once. Actually I had two dogs, sort of, except that the first one - a black Lab puppy called Knight, when I was 9 - was bought by my mother's lodger as a joint present for "the kids" (me and her son, who was a couple years younger than me), and was never really my dog at all. I think Sarah only said he was for the two of us as a way of getting him into the house, since I was never allowed to walk him, rarely allowed to play with him, and he met a sad end after a confrontation with a car when he was only a few months old. (Sarah was a not a big believer in rules, thinking that they stifled kids' and animals' natural growth, and her disdain for such things extended to the idea of keeping a very young puppy on a leash when out in public. Eyeroll.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I digress.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had a dog. Bonni was a Jack Russell - her papers said purebred, although mom and I agreed that this was a load of bollocks. Mama said I could have a puppy for my tenth birthday, providing I was responsible for her, and being folks who didn't really know about the need to get dogs from shelters or friends' litters, or at least from registered breeders, we trundled off to a pet shop in Bushey a few days after I turned ten. This was 1994, before shops stopped selling kittens and puppies. The man in the shop had a bunch of Yorkshire Terrier puppies who looked like hairy rats, and one white ball of fluff with brown patches on. He told us that we wouldn't be able to take any of them home today, as they weren't quite ready to be sold, and I remember <i>almost</i> having a meltdown in the store. While my episodes of behaving badly as a kid can be counted probably on one hand (and certainly on two), I had <i>really</i> wanted a puppy to take home. At that age, patience wasn't my strong suit.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Come to think of it, it still isn't. I get crabby waiting for books to come in the mail. I nearly threw a wobbly on Friday because my couriered package of candy corn and mellowcreme pumpkins didn't arrive.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mom managed to calm me down, and we decided that even if we had to wait, we'd get one of these puppies. Not one of the Yorkshires - neither mom nor I have ever been fond of that breed - but the white and brown fluffball. We went and told the man, and he seemed shocked that I wanted her. <i>That one?</i> He said. <i>Oh, you can take</i> that <i>one home with you now. I didn't realise you wanted that one.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By this time I had built up quite an amount of loathing for the man, but I was so thrilled to be getting my very own dog that we paid and took her home. This was the beginning of a very strange, tempestuous, often frustrating relationship.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bonni was neurotic. There really isn't any other way to say it. You know those girls you see on TV and if you're unlucky, in real life - the ones who are quivering masses of tension, who cry every time they get picked last for gym, who cling to their boyfriends as though they have no way of breathing or moving on their own, who treat every disappointment, from relationship breakups to bad grades to broken fingernails as though it were a life-altering crisis? Those girls? Bonni was the canine equivalent. I've never worked out if this was due to abuse that she suffered before we got her, or something that I did wrong, or if she just picked up on my mother's anxiety disorders and tendency to cling. Probably all of the above. My mom can be a limpet at times - although she's better now than she was when I was a kid - and animals definitely pick up on human behaviour. I certainly knew nothing about training a puppy, and I failed her grossly in that regard. And she was almost certainly abused and / or neglected by the pet shop owner, or the breeder before him. When we first took her to the vet, the vet was so furious at her state that she had to leave the room for several minutes before she could talk to us. She had more fleas and worms than the vet had ever seen, there were patches of red, inflamed skin infection on her forelegs, she had mastitis, her tail had been docked, and she was at least four weeks younger than her papers said - meaning that we got her when she was less than a month old.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(I am happy to say that the vet managed to get the pet shop closed down shortly after that, and the shop owner prosecuted.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'd like to inject a serious piece of advice / warning here - don't ever buy a dog for a child, or even for yourself, without doing your research first. Find out how to raise a dog right, if you've never raised one before. Research different breed characteristics to find out what sort of breed / mix would suit you, rather than just buying the first one you find that looks cute. Read as many books as you can and be prepared to shell out the money for a comprehensive obedience / house-training course if you're buying a puppy. Don't even consider getting a dog if you have a hair-trigger temper, or an aversion to rules, or control issues.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We did it wrong. We loved our puppy, but we should never have had her. We didn't have the money to get her professionally trained, and she was untrainable at home. We didn't have the time and energy to walk her for the several hours a day that a dog with so much energy required. Mom has always had issues with control, and having had children who were almost unfailingly obedient and respectful, she took Bonni's disobedience and challenges to authority as a personal insult. We screwed up in every possible way. This is what I mean when I say that I am not a dog person. I don't have the patience or personal skills to raise a dog to be happy and well-adjusted. I can just barely handle cats.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But oh, how I loved her, even when she drove me round the bend. During the first year, we t</span><span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ook her to school quite often to show her off to the other kids. As a young dog, she enjoyed the company of people she didn't know, although she got crabby around strangers when she got older. We used to walk in the woods after school most days, for an hour or so. Other days we'd go to the park and throw sticks. She had an incredible grip - something Jack Russells are known for - and she loved to play tug-of-war with sticks or her leash. Imagine the horror that mom and I experienced when we were playing one day and a couple of her teeth flew out. We rushed her straight to the vet, who laughed and explained that puppies lose their milk teeth, same as human kids. Neither of us had had any idea.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When she got a little older, we got her one of the microchip passports, and took her to Spain with us, where we used to run along the beach and bark and the waves. Yes, we. I've done my share of running and barking.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As she got older, she got more and more clingy. She'd cry if you left her outside for more than five minutes, even in the summer. She'd cry when you locked her in the kitchen. She was a compulsive licker and jumper. My allergies worsened as I got older, to the point that I had red weals over my body most of the time from her dander, and if she licked me my skin would start to peel off, so I didn't spend as much cuddling time as she wanted. (Although I think anything less than 100% of the time would have been less than she wanted.) I wish there'd been a dog whisperer around to help me train her and make her feel better, but at that time I'd never heard of such a thing.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She reminds me of my mother in so many ways.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bonni survived until she was 16, when she started getting sick. We're not sure what was wrong with her, because she didn't make it to the vet's appointment. She had a big lump on her head one day. The next day it was bigger and she was having trouble walking and standing up. Next day she was gone.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sometimes I think I would like to get a dog again. I like dogs much in the way that I like children - that is, I like to borrow a friend's and then be able to give them back at the end of the day. I like to read about dogs. Dean Koontz writes his canine companions particularly well - some are super-smart, genetically engineered dogs (he's a thriller / sci-fi writer) and others are ordinary, friendly, loyal, wonderful pups that anyone would be thrilled to call part of the family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I read Koontz, and I think I want this. Then I realise, I don't really know how to cope with family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dogs probably are man's best friend. That said, not all people do well having best friends. Some of us find too much closeness to be stifling. Some of us don't like having anyone around who relies on us too much. And that's OK.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After all, there's always cats.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Or Pokemon.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Some of Dean Koontz's books with awesome dogs:</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><b>Watchers</b> - featuring a genetically enhanced golden retriever with a wicked sense of humor - <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32423.Watchers" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32423.Watchers</a> .</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><b>One Door Away From Heaven</b> - featuring a boy who can form human-dog friendship bonds - <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15746.One_Door_Away_from_Heaven" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15746.One_Door_Away_from_Heaven</a> .</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><b>The Darkest Evening of the Year</b> - featuring a dog who came back as an angel - <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/379316.The_Darkest_Evening_of_the_Year" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/379316.The_Darkest_Evening_of_<span style="color: #8e7cc3;">the_Year</span></a> .</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #8e7cc3; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>See anything you like? Share it! Just link back to this page.</i></span></div>
Satihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13605062779563119141noreply@blogger.com0Saint Albans, Hertfordshire, UK51.752725 -0.3394359999999778751.674077 -0.5007974999999778 51.831373 -0.17807449999997788