Patience

Just read this line on a blog:
'Tennessee Williams wrote that one of the things he lived for in this life was the "broken gate" -- the rare times human beings could break down the social barriers that isolate souls from one another.' Male Librarian Centrefold.
That's lovely. Generous. Interested.
I, however, spent the day mostly wishing any |genericcolleagues| who spoke to me were just two seconds away from dead. Horribly, suddenly, nastily dead. Oops.

Now Playing: Chopin. Again.

I am frozen as fucking permafrost.
Chilled as a glacial crust.
Algid, arctic,
below freezing,
below zero, benumbed, biting,
bitter, blasting, bleak, boreal, brisk, brumal,
chill, chilled, cool,
crisp, cutting, freezing,
frigid, frore, frosty, frozen,
gelid, glacial, hiemal,
hyperborean, icebox,
iced, icy, inclement,
intense, keen, nipping, nippy,
numbed, numbing, one-dog night,
penetrating, piercing, polar, raw,
rimy, severe, sharp, shivery,
sleety, snappy, snowy,
stinging,
wintry
cold.

Okay, so maybe "I am inclement" doesn't work.
(Actually, that line might be truer than the rest....)

I've been sleeping under two duvets, in woolly socks, PJ's, a hoodie, and two hot cats.
I blame the water system - two mornings in a row there's been no hot water. I only found this out by running the showera while then sticking limbs under the raw biting jet ... agony. I've been cold, smelly and greasy for days.
It's working now, though; I tried to heat myself up by whacking the temperature up to a climax, running it for ages then jumping straight in (believe me, the mornings have taught me what a risk this is). It was squealing level hot. I sat on the shower floor in the heat, trying to accord every different bit of my body it's proportionate time under the best bits, and counting bars in the mist of how many people I'd ever been really in love with. Yeah, it was *that* good.
After, I was too happy and chilled out to dry my hair, which eventually froze into tiny ice crystals of pain, rendering me cold and grumpy and stiff all over again.
Jatb sent me some gut-rotting firewater from Iceland. (brennivin?) So if this post rambles insanely, you can blame her, cos I drank the lot. [Thank you, jatb, it's disgusting, but it makes your insides burn. When they sack me for smelling like a roasted tramp tomorrow, I'll be blaming you...]
Anyway, I tried cooking three different meals, in the grill and the oven, to maximise the heat sources. I actually hovered my cold bum over the grill. Twice.
This must be what it feels like to be really really old. I'm sure the Werthers grandad warms his bum over the grill, too. Probably in mixed company, looking at his creepily beatific smile. Nobody could get *that* much pleasure from a toffee?
The oven didn't warm the room up much, but eating three times the amount of normal food helped a bit. I've been getting too underweight, through the time honoured method of not really eating, so it's cool to stuff myself silly. Petite is buying me a slap-up lunch tomorrow, that might be warming. I gave her #2 towards it. Heh.
I also climbed over ten feet of old crap in the hallway, to totter precariously onto half-rotted old unfixed shelves and pull the attic hatch shut. Given how scary attics are in the movies, plus the perilous twenty foot drop below, this is a miracle. It was really heavy and dirty, too. Feeling proud of myself for that gave me two minutes more warmth. Enough warmth to foolishly relinquish the BPNSEA sweater, and feel only minorly frosted over in the hoodie and PJ's.
The heating is turned up to maximum, and I'm crouching to blog by the radiator. I think I might be crouched in this position for life, now. It's blistering hot (well, at the bottom of the radiator it is), and if I move even a foot away, the contrast makes it feel as if I'm trapped deep in the glacier, two feet from a mammoth.
Worlds away from this summer's heatwave.

Sixty Things

Mood:  spacey
I wanted to go meet some people for a spot of pubbing it in West London tonight, but feel really knackered and unwell, so tonight's an early duvet call.
First though, today's post is inspired by Diamondgeezer's sometimes beautifully written blog.

Sixty things that are simply unpleasant: cheese; peanut butter; buses; people who smell of cigarettes and rain at the same time; liars and the bad mannered; rejection - or rather, the feeling in your stomach like something in there is crawling; being too scared to watch a horror film alone; throwing up; a tissue in the washing machine; waking in the middle of the night and not knowing why; when friends live too far away; toast that keeps burning; fast food outlets' pathetic french fries - undeserving of the glorious word 'chip'; waking up to the close-up technicolour starfish of a cat's arsehole; being unable to say no; realising unsavoury things about yourself; candles - where does the wax go? feeling jealous; overstewed tea or instant cappucino; crying in shop changing rooms (back when I was once very fat, it took me weeks to buy a swimming costume. I had to try on one per day, with an 8 second mirror flash, followed by slumping on the floor, crying, and drawing the costume. Awful, to come out of changing rooms with red eyes); queueing for nightclubs or a taxi; long hairs in the bath; melitzanasalata (cos when I was living in a Greek nudist colony, rats in the melitzanasalata made me puke everywhere on the beach. What could I do? I covered it up with sand. Years of guilt); pretending not to notice that your friends in a couple are arguing; used matches; sports/leisure wear; playing draughts; wishing I really really hadn't slept with someone; limescale in the kettle; the cold! feeling tired or paranoid in public; fire alarms, car alarms, shop alarms, alarm clocks; administrative tasks and bureacracy; forgetting your keys; if people are too nervous to speak to you; crisps; boring bad sex that lasts way too long; being asked to be critical when you don't want to be; nightmares; your tea goes cold; stubbing your toe or hitting your funny bone; Marmite; lumpy hard painful poohs; racism; dentist's injections; aniseed; getting groped in public in every predominantly muslim country I've ever been to; when hayfever makes your eyes water; swimming in deep water when you can't see the bottom; drizzle; feeling impotent or powerless to change things; bad handwriting; the smell of bins with old meat in them; having no money; seeing little girls who've been over-sexualised - in make-up, thongs, and thigh-split skirts; confusing instructions; politicians; when someone I trust invites confidence, but I'm just too weary to take them up on it; war-mongering, hypocritical, smug politicians; trying to sleep when your feet are cold.

Sixty simple pleasures (read this one first): fried eggs; the sudden zip of energy inside when you eat an orange while feeling run down; torrid cloudscapes, whether it's raining or not; kittens and cuddlicious lap-cats; railway stations; travelling a long way home and finding a big hearty stew ready for you; the sound and impact when you dive from a height into cool water; sleeping on a fluffy rug on the floor; fresh coffee; driving; watching little kids drawing when they're too young to worry if they're any good at it yet; my |genericjob| on a good day; chatting to friends over food; variety; St Paul's cathedral - the single best building in London, bar none (despite it's terrible cafe); taking a few hours to draw someone from life, particularly if they get their kit off ... cough ... splutter ... I mean, if they don't initially seem attractive - spend a few hours drawing a face and it always begins to look beautiful; writing with a pencil or a fountain pen; farting in a bookshop; the buzzy loud atmosphere of fairgrounds - even if you don't go on a ride; finding where the Elephant House is at the zoo; the National Portrait Gallery basement; sharing an umbrella with someone you rather fancy; Bonfire Night, with Guy Fawkes, treacle toffee, baked potatoes in foil and fireworks; when you smile at people in the mornings, and despite yourself, their smile infects you with cheeriness; the smell of brand new books; going downhill on a bike (with the brakes half on! I'm a chicken!); leaving it as late into October as you possibly can before you start wearing winter woolly gear; finding it in yourself to accept a compliment graciously; The Embankment at half past ten in the evening; Autumn; skimming a great flat pebble in front of your dad; sitting watching the action on the golf course from the quiet inactivity of the club house; doing someone a simple favour; pulling the car over into the Lane of Death - even temporarily - on a motorway; walking for hours around central London on Christmas day (it's always like a scene from Day of the Triffids - you'll see only yourself and three other poofs, all day); gorgeous European countries - Copenhagen, Cologne, Prague, Hungarian fishing villages, the contrast between Swiss lakes, green Swiss valleys, Swiss glaciers and Swiss vineyards, the Portuguese coastline, Edinburgh winters; spotting Orion's Belt or Venus, even through a smog ceiling; jatb's extraordinary/traditional Christmas lunch (beans on toast! rah!); Turkish food - the finest on earth; writing a blog; cups of tea (I seriously have a tea-drinking song); live gigs - what a rush; the mild temperatures in central London, even in winter (childhood winters in Lancashire make you really value the warmth); old forts, ruined castles, and ancient burial grounds (particularly if al fresco bonking is involved); lying upside down on the sofa to answer the phone; the feeling in your neck and hands just before take-off or landing; a morning lie-in, in a peaceful room with a fresh duvet; getting off the train after a really long journey; snow; modern classical music; watching a movie so good that you instantly want to watch it all again; going out to a heath or a forest or a reservoir to look at the moon; enthusiasm; finding a novelist who's so talented that you can only read a bit at a time, for fear you'll run through all their works too early before you die (Orwell, Coetzee, Amis, Schlink, Nabokov, Highsmith for me); dressing up; dressing down; icy cold water; no noise in your house in the evening; reading an Alan Moore or Jaime Hernandez comic for the first time; a hug.

hiatus

Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Chopin: prelude in E minor

I find it a little bizarre how much better I felt today, given how badly it started, with the robbery in my car. I spose I won't know the price of that till next week. And besides, thanks to the would-be car thieves, I only worked one hour today - no wonder I was feeling chipper.
I've got three days of uninterrupted |genericworkthings| to do now, though, so the cheery face may waver - ignore it! No more moaning and whingeing. Just don't read this blog till next Saturday is my recommendation.
It was all pre-menstrual tension anyway. (as a friend once put it: "just how many fucking days of the month are you not premenstrual, exactly?")
Anyway, I'm proud of my crappy sad self today, cos I opened an entire year's worth of post this morning, and dealt with every bill but one. I sorted loads of stuff out with banks and cards (couldn't really do anything but, as I'd run out of bogroll ... groogh), which left me with enough money to go buy some PJ's. Alongside the bed boiling, all part of the exorcism (that sounds mean, I don't mean getting rid of ex-DH, I mean making it possible to live here without nightmares or hearing weird voices in the middle of the night - it's hard enough breaking up, without having to wonder if you're dreaming or if you're bonkers yet.)
Today's serendipity factor is that if I hadn't gone to the bank to sort this out, this afternoon, I wouldn't have run into Chris Eubank at Canary Wharf. Celebtastic! I left him pining for more of me while I purchased my goods, but when I returned, there was a strangely coincidental bombscare. Lots of smoke and dust, and no ex world heavyweight boxing champion in sight. Either someone wants his eccentricity belt (and bowler hat) off him, or he was trying to get away without me following him back to Essex.

Cassandra predicts

Ah well, that'll teach me to whinge so much. My car just got broken into - third time in three years.
Henceforth, this blog must become a place of sweetness and light, as it's obviously turning out to be prophetic.

On Friday, Jatb and I were talking about when people quote their old diaries in their blogs. I s'pose people diarise things more at times of stress or strong emotion.
Certainly when you're single you journal it a lot more. What's the point of writing a diary about being in a couple?
"Dear Diary, today she left hairs in the bath AGAIN. I swear I will strangle her in her sleep. Ate cottage pie for tea. Watched teev."
I didn't think blogging old diaries would really work for me, as although I kept diaries for about five years, they're all in code, and most of the codewords are for sex.
I did sometimes diarise in prose, but after the sick situation when I read my onetime flatmate, Gremlin's diary, I stopped that.
I'd snuck into Gremlin's room and read her diary, in which I found a detailed critique, lasting around a thousand words or so, of entries in my diary. It was relatively eloquent - I was characterised as the planet Pluto, I remember, because if you weren't cool enough, I'd expel you from my orbit or something. (No, I have no idea if that ties in with any astronomy.) It was all probably more to do with the fact I used to use Gremlin's special chopping board to cut up onions, so she ended up having to wake up every morning and sniff all her kitchen chopping boards to check. Nutter.
Boy, was it hard to work out that aggression, though. I couldn't admit to reading her diary, so I couldn't confront her about it. I had to work every conversation around to it indirectly. "Have you read any Atwood? Well you know the second female character in that one - would you characterise her as cold, controlling and self-obsessed? No? Because I think she's rather more innocent than you realise. No, listen, this is really important. I really want to know what you think of these characters ..." etc....

I just had a quick look at my diary for 1993, which was the year I graduated from university, and the year I came out of the closet. I had huge torrid affairs with three or four different people that year. Two of whom I fell in love with. One of whom I was using to get the attention of the other two.
Being unemployed I also got as close to prostitution as I ever managed - I taught English grammar to a married Korean friend who regarded this as a brilliant excuse to feel me up during the more difficult grammar questions. I needed the money (my diary lists my state benefits as #40 a fortnight at the time), so I had to keep going back. Therefore, I reasoned with myself, if I was going to keep doing the job even with the harrassment, I may as well get a ritzy dinner out of it every night, on top of the feel. See what I mean?
Most of the entries, however, are about racing around the country getting pissed. (No change there then.)
No detail or even any full sentences. So, I can tell you that October 16th 1993 was the night I fell in love with Cheesy, my first proper girlfriend (as opposed to proper shag - you see how the need for categories comes about...). And that I stayed over at her flat, unbeknownst to my boyf of the time, and we did C7.
Told you it was a bad idea to raid old diaries.

Numb Eric

Now Playing: Tabula Rasa. Again. In the dark.
I'm sorry, it's another grumpybastardwhingeingpost. You might want to skip ahead now.

It's all about numbers today.
4 hours sleep, sleeping off 4 glasses of wine yesterday.
2 chequebooks went with me into work, hoping to find 5 minutes to pay off the #500 I owe the courts after last week's CCJ, but didn't take the book for the account that had money in.
I meant to ring the solicitor, but forgot the number. 1.30 is the time for my appointment with the mortgage advisor. I need 3 wage slips and a passport, even though I already have 2 mortgages with them. I'm sure I can probably find some wage slips in amongst the pile of post and letters that I haven't opened for 2 years. (hence the CCJ (court judgement) last week.)
I didn't mention the CCJ, despite the letters I'm now getting from loan shark firms offering 'cheap rate' mortgages to untrustworthy people like me, whom nobody would apparently lend money to. I'll have to trust that the huge equity in the flat sways them.
Funny how I was careful to correct the personal pronouns at the bank. "Her. Not him. I have split up with Her." They thought I'd just transfer the mortgage into 1 name. Pshaw. If only.
I consoled myself with lunch in the mall by the bank - #8. Bleedin rip-off, I thought. This was before they refused all 4 credit cards at the supermarket, and I was left scrabbling around for spare change to pay the #5 parking fee. I won't be able to afford a new watch. I realised I can't afford to drive to that bank any more.

I hate numbers.

At home, I changed out of the #160 suit that obviously now belongs to another age, and put the BPNSEA (Big Pink No Sex Ever Again) sweater on to lie on the floor in the dark, watching the patterns on the ceiling.
Most of the windows of my flat are screened by large trees. These are lit up by old fashioned carriage-lamps, in a very old-fashioned Edwardian terrace.
When I moved into this place, 4 years ago, the ex-DH was working in Brazil, and I bought my 1st piece of furniture - a blue rug to sit, eat, sleep and play on. The rest of the place was empty, and I used to watch the shadows of the tree branches moving outside as I dozed off on the empty living room floor.
In the dark, the #15000 we spent renovating the flat becomes indistinct, the fancy new furniture gets blurred. And in a small, cringey fashion, it's like going back to where I started, back in 1999.
A music box, a rug, and a tree.

I can do this. They're only numbers.

Questionable

Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Capital Radio, but the minute Justin Trousersnake came on....
..... my cats began fighting, hitting the volume dial and whacking it up to maximum. My cats love Justin - eurrghh.

Quislings

Strikes me that when I stay in most of the day, I pee a lot. I know full well that a day's work at |genericjob| involves one pee per eight hours. How many pees per day is normal? The |genericjob| volume of pee, or the loafing at home jugfull?
Is it a standard |genericjob| response, this sphincter-tightening retention of fluid?
How come, if I have a mere three hours of homework to do this weekend, I'm still procrastinating every bit as much as when I had a uni assignment to do (which were much worse)?
If there's a deadline to meet, why must I not only fail to meet it, but fail to do anything else remotely purposeful as well?
And how often should you clean your teeth, anyway?

Today I grabbed the Latest Psychotic Idiosyncracy by the horns, and used a third of a pint of bleach to boil-wash the sheets from the double bed*.
I can't fit myself, two cats and twisty schizo nightmares onto a box-room single guest bed any longer, so I have to get over my fear of the big bedroom smells. Not that it smells (the cat puke got cleaned up a month ago, I pretended it remained there for comedic effect), more that I don't want to lie on pillows that have even a trace scent of being together, when we're not.

* = I know. I do know how crazy this sounds. It's exactly seven days since my ex gf left.
Here, here, here, let me show you crazy.

Unwise activities

Now Playing: Get Shorty

Still trying to work out if I have a serious hangover, or a mild throat infection.
Tried to undo the damage inflicted by eating only good good things, today - fruit, bran flakes, fresh juices, herbal teas, etc. My body is a temple stuff.
Sod that. My body is a trashcan driven by an animal lust for bacon. And coffee. And chocolate.

For your edification, the following list warns of what you should never ever attempt to do after a huge drunken sushi binge:

1. Mix your drinks horribly.
2. Dance like a loon. Imagine the sushi. Imagine the drinks. Now put them in an imaginary washing machine. You see?
3. Breakfast on bacon products. All of them.
4. Overindulge by snarfing an entire mountain of raw fish the next day.

The list does continue, but its quease-factor means I shan't.

Bad Habits

If I have to stay in on a Saturday avoiding doing my homework and nursing a sore throat, I'm damn well going to blog a lot.

I read this and was horrified to see that blogging isn't considered nerdy enough to ruin your sex life. Yet.

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Disclaimer

Now Playing: Cats purring too loudly. Awwww.

Blog feedback since I got dumped by the ex-DH is falling into two distinct camps, both characterised by how people think I'm doing. Secondhand rumours abound about the flavour of my days, as expressed through this blog.

On the first team are those readers who assume this is all lies, and contact me to point out life sounds like one long party, and I'm rubbing it in. This team believes everything I say on here, but hopes I'm lying. Smart cookies. They think I should whinge a little less and I rather like them for that.

On the opposing team are those readers who read between the lines -- these are the ones who noticed that I ended a nine year relationship and have spent the last ten weeks trying fruitlessly to drink myself better. Blogging all the parties in the world wouldn't mask these key, inescapable facts. Smart cookies. Key quote: "how can anyone read it [the blog] and not know that you're falling apart in side?" This team send me heartwarming late night emails saying 'thinking of you' and have me on a Bloggers at Risk register.

The truth is vague, incomplete and embellished, and subject to all of my usual distortions.
So are the lies.
The conclusion: all my cookies are smart.

This post brought to you by Slightly Too Much Sore Throat Medication.
Read the fucking disclaimer!

Drinks Menu

Now Playing: Blu Cantrell, ffs. Kill me now.

Inspired by the consistently astounding SarahSpace, who doesn't sound at all the sort of girl to bite you viciously on a fun night out...

If you want me to:	Feed me:
roll around and giggle a lot	white wine
snog you	red wine (blackened furry teeth warning)
stay up till 7 am talking crap at you	chasers / shorts / aftershocks
follow you home or flash my knickers at inopportune intervals	guinness
start a fight	whiskey
shag you	champagne
jiggle my leg manically and end the night pogoing to glam?rock, badly	coke (both kinds)
crack bad jokes and pat you a lot	beer
lose the power of sight, then forget my tongue is sticking out	gin
speak coherently, or stop farting	coffee

Groooooogh

Mood:  sad
Now Playing: Blackeyed peas. Ulp.

Woke up this morning and thought for a minute that I was in my own bed, that it was years ago, and everything was all right. Opened my eyes to find cats arses, no gf, and no voice. Bah.

I had a great time at Ministry of Sound last night (jatb danced like a mad thing all night, and I kind of bumbled about after her), via the Star bar, some kaiten sushi at Kulu Kulu, followed by a sex shop tour in Brewer Street (me: trying on the 'oh yeah, I know what that is, shyah, yeah, I'm so jaded' attitude - brutally intercepted when I squeaked "what?! it's internal?!?!?!") and some pub or other on the way, but my voice had been fading fast by Friday afternoon, and by the time I got to the club, even the lavatory lady was taking pity on me and giving me Chupa Chups.
Today it's totally gone, reduced to a hideous grating throaty rasp. And I was supposed to spend tomorrow playing board games with opera singers. Pffft.
I tried finding some dequadin or aspirin in the house to wind it back up to normal amplification levels, but the only thing I could find was a solitary packet of Resolve. I spose that's not inappropriate, given what I was drinking last night.

Best quote of the night:
"Have you been here before? Oh. Still, if it gets too much for you after a while, here's a VIP pass, so you can have a bit of time out, love"

Sleepwatch: 10 hours. Schizo nightmares abounded.

Dear Diary....

Now Playing: Tabula Rasa

Today I found a centipede in the bathroom sink.

It was orange.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

End sarcasm.

Actually, what happened today was thaaaaaaaaaaat..........

I got sued for #500+,
peachykeenyboy decided to accept the promotion I'd passed up, and was uber-worried I'd be pissed,
I got stitched up on something at |genericjob|, so flexed my superior upstitching skills back on the management,
I realised I clean my teeth too often these days (huh??),
I was allergic to some gammon (huh????) (that'll learn me to stuff myself with too much pig per day),
I decided Mark Owen must have had a nose job,
Frosty, my boss, asked me why I hadn't been on holiday this year. Duh!
I must look shit, she's been congratulating me on every bloody thing ever since. You opened a door! By yourself! I thought that was really a good thing, Vanessa.
As I was blogging about bunking off work, I thought it best to blog it all while at work. True to form, three managers decided that was a good time to chat.
Angelfire decided only the truly determined could survive the fifteen error message screens to comment on my blog,
I really did find an orange centipede in the bathroom sink.

Sod the money, I'm off out with jatb tonight.

Sleepwatch: 4 hours. Uh-ohhh. That'll help me handle my drink, wunnit?

Waiting Time

God, I love bunking off.
Normally, I'm in my own, grumpy little authoritarian world by 8.25. Sort that out. Don't stand there. Do this for me. Now. What d'you think you're doing?
Just ten minutes of bunking off (that's all I winged it for, though I know I could have got away with two and a half hours -- I'm a good girl), and it's like opening your eyes after an operation.

In the four minutes it took to eat my bacon sanga (butter, white bread *this* thick), I noticed:

7 black people, including two kids, 1 arab woman and 3 chinese guys walked past the White Power Phonebox.
The sunrise slooowly spread across the terrace opposite.
How newsagents' windows look like a mosaic, of all the tatty notices.
Women round here are better dressed than most of South East London. My frizzed-up shower-hair must stand out.
Men load up their paunches on their belly first, but thighs and arse second. Yet they wait another five years to buy the XXL pants.
I don't wear a watch anymore. Fuck! What time is it?
The guy at the next table might be in his forties and pikey, but he has lovely eyes. P'raps there are worse things than growing old.
The 'Learner' plates on the moped outside were made by Soreen. Yes, the proud makers of the malt loaf.
Nobody ever has the right change in the White Power Phone Box.
Only grandads walk with their kids, instead of twelve paces in front of them.
I'll never manage that Cockerney Geezer accent. "Captoo tays, ployz. Na samich." They're overcompensating, anyway.

Pensioner influx. Time to go.

Jealousy

A lorry jacknifed across the road I used to take to my previous |genericjob| today. It landed diagonally across the only route north from East London. I know if I'd still been working there, this would have meant a four hour delay -- legitimate delay -- while I nipped into Chingford and got me a long lazy bacon sandwich. So many people used to bunk that job -- I once bunked an hour and wandered into a local cafe, to be served by someone who bunked off so regularly that they'd taken up the morning shift at their local greasy spoon.
Anyway, sheer jealousy got to me. As soon as I found a telephone box (not such an easy thing to find these days, but handily, there's one outside the cafe -- how neat is that?), I rang in late, regardless.
Rah!

Serendipity: if I hadn't bunked off, I wouldn't have been in a position to rip down all the white nationalist information leaflets from the phone box. Whatever happened to prozzers' calling cards? Part of a more innocent age?

Sleepwatch: 5 hours.
CNPS: I've seen 620, 720, 820, 920, 208 and 209, but still no 20.

Things that are different.....

Mood:  chatty
Now Playing:

.... Now that I live alone, I mean.

I go to the loo with the door open. Unless it's a stinker.
I cook too much food for one, and not enough for two. That's if I cook. Don't always remember the eating part.
No hairs in the bath. None!
I haven't been able to go into the main bedroom yet. Except to get some knickers in the morning. It's been 4 days. It's too upsetting, still. Is that weird?
Ice cream lasts for ages.
I can see my friends without two days of heavy rowing for the privilege.
The ugly woolly cursed big pink sweater ... (the one with the curse that means no-one will ever sleep with you again if they see it?) I wear it round the house now. No-one will see.
The washing up gets done. Well, give a day or so.
I can play music in the house. Though now that I finally can, I don't. Which is disturbing.
My cats are too attentive - they sneak under the duvet after dark and nestle painfully in the groin area. I'm covered in severe bored / langorous scratches in places that are too lean to bear that sort of treatment without me waking up screaming.
No more spit rings under the toothbrushes.
If you see something beautiful, you see it. You don't point it out to someone.
I dropped the remote control down the back of the sofa. It's been there a while, but it's no problem only seeing channel 4, as I only watch about an hour a week of teev, anyway. Makes the evenings quiet.
Really quiet.
I shower in the dark now. Okay, I always did that. Dammit, I like doing that.
I don't go to bed on time. In fact, I've stopped wearing a watch. I don't care if it makes me late, there are more important things.
The ripple of alarm from friends in couples has just started. Even they can tell they're rustling agitatedly at the thought.
I make lists of things that are different.

Divorce Me 4

Tonight, ex-DH came over to collect some more of her stuff. I politely ignored her, avoided eye contact, and offered to drive her the eight miles to where she's staying. After about half an hour, she asked me how I'd been. Not knowing what to say - what she wanted me to say, I replied "miserable."
Once we finally got there, she asked me in, but asked that I didn't stay more than a minute or so. I resisted. Better if we keep it cool. Stay in the car. Easier to talk shop that way.
We talked awhile in the car, before she went in. Resolved nothing. Offered nothing.
Being a pessimist, the comments I took away were these: that she's very angry at me. And that she thought our relationship was 'lousy'.
That's when I asked her to stop.

I don't do empathy after 7pm

Now Playing: David Brent reruns of The Office

One of my colleagues, Petite (I've named her that because she's one of those super neat immaculate types, the sort whom I can't visualise ever sneezing green gunk all over her shirt, like I do) asked me today if I ever find it difficult to talk to my partner on a weekday evening. I wondered for a minute about why she'd used the present tense, before deciding I can't be arsed dealing with that one yet.
I admitted that I never answer the phone after 6.30pm these days, which I always think make me more than a little spasticated.
I know what she means about failing to hold up my end of a conversation in the evenings, though. If you work dealing with the public all day, at the end of the day you develop a real weariness of being asked questions. Well, actually, pretty much a total interaction fatigue. Obviously, this could one day work out as a slightly destructive element in your life.
[I've been in my career for nearly nine years, so it's becoming interesting to work out what that sort of horror/stability in a job can do to change you.]
So you stop answering the phone, (and hope that your friends will understand the rather pathetic sounding explanation) but you can't not answer a partner. Petite finds the discussions difficult - sorting out a bill, or making some social arrangement. Not me. Pressed to discuss anything like some sort of normal human being at the end of a difficult day, I merely end up masculinising my answers. I provide a solution.
When, inevitably, this doesn't wash, and the problem is repeated (after all, I didn't discuss anything), I become snappy. I furnish an alternative solution. Snappishly. Didn't I just give you the answer?
On the third repetition of the very same problem, I will claim grounds to sulk. Even though I know what they want from me. They're not talking to a bloke, after all, and they don't want a brusque solution. They just want me to listen. It's what girls do.
Not me.
I don't do empathy after 7pm.

Sleepwatch: 11 hours.

dopey

Now Playing: Stupid neighbour's teev is way too loud

First time in ages that I had loads of things ready to blog (sad fucker, eh? ;D), and the lack of sleep caught up with me - zonked out at about half four today. Just woke up now, and will be back in the land of bye bye within an hour.
I love sleeping.

Sleepwatch: 3.5 hours

baking

Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Krafty Kuts

Tonight I went to visit K in Gypsy Hill, who's generally quite an inspiring person. She's recently taken a drop in salary so she can have Mondays off to study to become a yogi. She's spending her New Year at a women's retreat in the far countryside. That sort of proper, sorted out inside inspiring.
She made me a huuuuuuge vegetarian lasagne, and also some herby spiced thing containing cracked wheat, followed by a tomato salad... all that stuff.
Made it. Properly. In front of me.
At one point, I questioned the state of the pasta sheets - she instantly chucked them out and used fresher ones.
Nothing came out of a packet. Nothing from a jar. Vegetarian, healthy, filling, tasty.

I drove home, slumped in front of the teev, and ate four loads of old, rancid steak chops, fried in butter, garlic, mushrooms, onions and cranberry sauce.

Now what the hell was that about?

Sleepwatch: 3 hours.