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.

popcorn frenzy

Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Channel Five is playing 'World's Wildest Police Videos'**

** = "The Russian police drag the ruthless renegade from the cloudy chaos to spend his next summers in Siberia.", etc.

I thought maybe Blade 2 was the worst movie in the world, but then tonight I watched Bulletproof Monk. It must be forty years since Yul Brynner made this sort of cack popular, surely SFX should have moved on? I shall stick to enjoying the re-runs of Monkey in future.
Ate two whole super-large bags of popcorn, then tried to start in on a tub of ice-cream but felt too sick to continue. I feel like a pincushion waiting to be popped.
I'd like to congratulate my bra on catching humonguous amounts of popcorn. I can't imagine how it must feel to be a man, and unable to catch the stray popcorn bits in your cleavage. You'd just be really hungry in the cinema a lot, I guess. Unless you were a really really fat bloke. And even then, you'd probably not choose to accentuate it with low cut tops.
I used to think men ate the foul cinema hotdogs as part of some transparent inferiority complex; now I realise the poor sods are merely searching for nutrients.
I had wanted to try out some sort of sad singleton lifestyle, where I deliberately ate too many girly things, while crying into my white wine. No joy. Too muntered from yesterday to even face the white wine, and all the ice cream companies were ready for me, and filled their tubs with disgusting stuff that oughtn't to be allowed in ice cream. (cookie dough - fucking foul stuff. Whose idea was that? Someone invent a cheese and chicken wings flavour ice cream, then we can start talking.)
Reminder to self: don't wear cropped tops when your navel is laced with cat scratches. At best you end up looking like a Russian immigrant in the video store.
Cheers to Duch, for ringing me to say ex-DH cried herself to sleep.
Mind you, cheers to me. Cheers to me.

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The Overnight Bag

God, it took eight cups of strong black coffee to stop shaking enough to type.
Yidaho's sleeping off the drink binge in the room with the clean washing in, so I couldn't get dressed or go out, despite a huuuuuuuuuge need for restorative fried foodstuffs at a greasy caff somewhere.
At least I thought I couldn't get dressed, till I found the bag I had ready packed with a change of clothes and a sleeping bag in the box room. The one I'd gotten ready last week in case anything at home got too much and I needed to get out of the house in a hurry. In case sleeping in the car, or driving 75 miles to my parents' house turned out to be preferable than staying in the house another minute.
How weird a life, is that, to have an overnight bag ready?
I've spent all my sober hours wondering if I've done the right thing, why I'm splitting up with someone whom I miss so much and whom I really really don't want to hurt.
But I look at that bag (or rather the contents, which I'm wearing now) and it must be the right thing. Who could spend their days in the box room next to a 'mental emergency' overnight bag and not go insane?

nice chips, shame about the place

Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: telemarketers won't let go of my doorbell

Went out for a beer or two, ended up really really drunk, stuffing my face with big chips in the same old same old gay bar, drinking champagne cocktails, shrieking obscenities and (same old same old) annoying the general public. And apparently, according to my phone this morning, sending extremely annoying drunken texts to all and sundry. Fortunately, people are tolerant.
Summarised and distorted:

"I notice you texted me this at 4am. No, there is no south London all-night lesbian bar that I can direct you to at this hour."
"I'm not getting a #40 taxi just to come to the pub"
"It is too your fault you split up. Everybody everywhere knows that."
"I was pleased to meet you that one time... I'm glad you're enjoying your evening so much. Yes, it is rather late."
"Yes you could get her back, but you would have to speak to her about it, not me."

London is too too full of bright eyed bushy tailed students with gleaming skin and toothy smiles. Even when you go to a shitty bar to escape them, you just hit the waves of third years who think they're so way cooler than the ones forced to spend their weekends in the non-shitty bars. It's a long time since I've seen so many men with full heads of hair in the same place.

Must remember not to cry in public. Not even in a snivelley quiet, corner-slumped way. Certainly not when shrieking drunkenly about phallus -shaped chips, and not when flicking moules tom yum (jeeeeeee-sus) at other diners.

Karma

I forgot: the sequel to this. The girl didn't kill herself, and I don't think she's going to now. I asked her what stopped her, and apparently I had telephoned her mother to explain why she was not home on time, so her mum wouldn't worry. I'd said all this on an answerphone message. Poor kid tells me next day she'd played the message over and over again, and as a consequence, hadn't done anything stupid.
It's incredible how much of what we do for each other is down to chance.

the whingeing retrouve

Sorry.
My head really really hurts today. Drinking didn't help much.
Thanks to the sage advice of many friends who undertook to calm my fury, I managed to rant, rave, scream and shout, but not to be violent. Which is good.
Ex-DH isn't a demon, in fact I get the impression it's all partly a delaying tactic, to be honest. But I've waited around for ten weeks, now, painful as it might be, I need a result. She finally agreed that her continuing to live here isn't the best idea in the world.
Sounds like either I get a lodger to stay living here, or I move out. I'll try the former, but it might not be possible. A solicitor is required. I'll get onto that.
So, I stayed in bed till four. Then ex-DH went to stay with Duch, today, to spare my feelings. She looked awful, she'd been crying all day, I think. I lent her the car to get her stuff there, but refused to come with her.
After that, I mostly cried a lot. At last.
It's like being a bit player in some awful melodrama. Well, two awful melodramas: the one where I desperately try to hang on to a place to live, as if that's the most important thing. The other where someone I love desperately goes away and I miss her.
Oh dear. Everything makes me cry now. Perhaps that's a good thing. My sister pointed out who'd want to be *good* at breaking up with someone?
I have to apologise to hundreds of people today for being embarrassing - getting them out of bed to scream at them down the phone, etc. How humiliating. I don't know why I'm blogging this, or blogging at all. I guess your mind returns to bad things on impulse, tries to make things safe for you, so you can think about painful stuff without the same gut wrenching feeling.
I had intended to go clubbing in SW London with yidaho tonight, but I think crying in a club is possibly even sadder than crying all the time at home. The house seems empty and scary now. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

If I could have anything in the world, right now, it'd be her. Maybe I needed her not to be here to have space to think about that.