loneliness breeds patience.

Sometimes I think odd things like “what if I went to a finishing school?” I mostly think that when I’m putting on red lipstick and it smudges. I doubt a finishing school could teach me these things but I wonder if people would like me more if I was finished off. There are lots of things in my life that aren’t finished, sort of open ended situations that hang; friends I haven’t said good bye to but have moved away, tragic loves I need to bury, people I no longer love the way I used to.

And it is ok. I don’t mind these things being frazzled at the ends and in my own way I feel it is better that way - easier to climb into the gap if you haven’t started shoveling dirt into it yet. Sometimes the dirt just shovels itself in and that is ok too.

I was reading something about content being the new happy. Maybe too many things are just ‘ok’ in my life but awhile back nothing was ‘ok’ and I feel better with things like they are now than what they were. I would do almost anything to not go back to before. Before was just really horrid and empty and after that even content can be seen as happiness. You need to make happiness. I’ve only recently really discovered this.

Sometimes I get really quiet and people wonder if I’m ok. I guess this happens when you always pretended that you being loud and you being ok are the same thing. If you lie to people through your body language and they can’t figure you out that isn’t their fault.

Then again, lots of things are nobody’s fault. I don’t believe in blame anymore.

ch-ch-ch-ch-CHANGES,

So, I haven't blogged in ages. But this is about to change and I am starting my own personal count down to the brand spanking revived blog! So, friends and foes, in exactly 25 days I plan on having this baby up and running again like a mad woman.

Say good luck to me and enjoy your spring/autumn until I return!

25!

adventures in photography v1.2

On 28 February I started a bit of a grand adventure. Only, it wasn’t all that grand and mostly I was depressed and wanted to find a medium to get myself out of my artistic slump. Part of me is still in that slump but lots of me wants to show you the photos which have been developed (nearly and month later). There are quite a few I like. There are also quite a few that, according to the negatives, have been developed completely wrong.

Obviously I will have those redone by somebody who is not Qphoto. The Q in Qphoto stands for “quick”. When developing photos you don’t need quick. Luckily my hands are too stiff to go on a long tangent. Aren’t you lucky tonight?

So, here they are: my brave mistakes and observations through the lens of a crappy disposable camera. Also, see how many film faults you can find.

Do note my love for low horizon lines. And fish.

bleach bath!

today i changed my hair.

i took out books on analogue photography and i only have five exposures left on my disposable at which point i will go find myself some black and white film and go a bit nuts.

i have a world call card so i can phone my wife for her birthday.

i have learned about anger and patience and that violence hurts like hell the next morning.

i have learned that cell phones are expensive and that i will have to use a keypad until monday.

i have learned that strength is not in whether or not you break down - everybody breaks down - but about how you pick yourself up. strength is in recovery.

and never, ever take your friends for granted - never. they are the greatest people ever. love them.

and you are going to have to wait a while to see what i did to my hair, lovers.

just became another statistic.

My phone was just stolen. I kid you not. About two hours ago my phone was casually lifted off a table I was dining at and now it is stolen. My beautiful smart phone was just taken. My phone. It was MINE. And it really was – that phone was built for me. From it’s awesome camera filters to its amazing touch screen, HD video and lovely grid to its screwed up operating system. It was mine and now it is gone.

I’ve lost photos and contacts and emails and notes and random crap. Music I have randomly collected. For those of you who keep telling me it is just a phone: imagine losing your camera, your iPod, your phone and that random note book you write random crap in all in a matter of seconds. Sucks, doesn’t it? Of course it fucking sucks.

I am angry. I don’t want to be told to calm down or that it is just a phone. Shut the fuck up! I do not care what you have to say. I am angry as fucking hell. I could beat the crap out of somebody right now. Dude, I even offered you a fucking reward which is more that you will have now as my lovely network can apparently fry my phone. So my phone is fried. This kills me so much. 16 gigs of memory just gone in the wink of an eye. I want to beat the crap out of something.

I really just want to beat the crap out of something and drink a shit load of vodka and run away.

Also, you could never pay me enough money to go to square against my free will ever a fucking again. Fuck. I need out. I feel dumb – like I lost my phone. Like this is all my fault. And it sort of is. I want to throw things and break glass and plates and people. I’m in a mean mood. And by mean I mean so pissed off I could rip off heads.

This is my laptop all over again – I know the person who has it won’t be looking at my personal information but they have access to my facebook, tumblr, twitter and this blog. They could spy on my personal life. They have all my friend’s numbers and all the personal messages I have sent people. Fuck. At least this time I haven’t lost a whole novel. Seriously, that would fucking suck again. #sarcasmfont

Right now? I just want a shit load of vodka and the person who has my phone to be raped in prison.

Told you I was in a bad mood. But fuck, wouldn’t you be too?

farm trippin' + pocho = random jokes about swimming pools

I am exhausted out of my mind – zombified. Got back from a #FARMTRIP today and it was truly epic. It is on weekend like these that I am reminded why I adore my friends and their ability to shrug off things without needing to understand every last detail. They might not accept everything but they are some of the best friends a person could have.

Essentially we spent most of the weekend in a mellow frame of mind. I am actually surprised at just how mellow I have become in my old age and my lack of need to be doing something constantly. We spent so much time chilling around in weird places and not such weird places. We managed to laugh off some of the bad things and the way things tended to constantly fall into the pool. We need to have a function to sew our pockets closed so that things can’t jump out of them and into the pool.

Things falling in the pool became quite an epic metaphor for losing things. Lotsa stuff fell into the pool and some things we threw into the pool at a great force. It takes all sorts of make a world and we fill up that CRAYCRAY/perfectly sane percentage of the world.

On the first night we tried to find “the bridge” so we could have sundowners but the bridge had managed to get itself thrown in the pool by recent storms but I got some cute pictures which will be uploaded to facebook soon. I also used the disposable camera and managed to only have twelve shots left. His project is finally taking off and soon I shall be able to start a photo wall. There are some strange and bizarre shots from roadtrippin’ to people admiring to pond of toxic waste.

Because I am too lazy tell the whole story of the weekend here is a rough list in no particular order of what we (mostly me) got up to:

I fell asleep outside while I was stargazing (I was not alone when I fell asleep. Thank you, friend, for leaving me as an offering for geese
the animals of the night) and falling asleep outside is great until you wake up at 5.44 and you are cold.

Lena and I won 30 seconds and managed to get all five right on one card. I would like to personally thank Alanis Morrisette for being Canadian. This, for some odd reason, made this five in a row victory possible. Thank you, Alanis, your nationality has been great to us.

I never used the bedding I brought but the poncho I packed was one of my best decisions ever. I only saw my pillow on three occasions and two of them were when I was packing it into and out of the car. I also never slept in the same bed more than once and weirdly enough I was in a very cuddly mood except when sleeping me kept pushing the blanket off the people I was sleeping with. I wasn’t even stealing it from her – just pushing it off of her. My subconscious is a douche canoe.

You can spend fifteen minutes listening to really bad music on a roadtrip because everybody thinks that somebody must be enjoying it and nobody wants to be rude. Never just accept the music you are being forced to listen to. Be rude and change it. Please.

We had many discussions but for some weird reason all the discussions I have been privy to lately have ended up being the epic battle of MAC VS. PC. Everybody has different things to say but after having the same conversation a million times over all I have is the word “encrypted” stuck in my head.

We named a duck. He is the most epic duck ever. A true hermit.

We yelled at many farm animals (when we weren’t naming them) Goats are what you yell at in the morning after you have managed to kill the electricity with a bath and had too much red wine. Also, sleeping next to somebody syncs your brain with theirs and you manage to yell, “shut up, you stupid, *much swearing here* goats!” at the exact same second. People become awesome when they spend more time with me.

Oh, yes, we killed all the power in the house with a bath. We haz skillz.

I experienced my first indoor downpour and lost my towel in the process. I believe I would have enjoyed the situation more if I had been in my poncho and I had not been trying to light candles so that we could see shit in the now very dark house. I am very good at making instant candle holders as well. Skillz, y’all, skillz.

We chased a gecko around a deck (and possibly scared the poor thing to death) in order to photograph his weird tail. The one photo I managed to take where you can see what the hell is really going on the tail is cropped out. I’m smart like that.

“WE LIKE TO MOVE IT, MOVE IT” is not something you want to wake up to.

Somebody ashed into my Snapple bottle lid and after I expressed my disgust at this a second person did it. Then it fell in the pool. This is sort of a metaphorical chain of events that describe the whole weekend. As soon as more things come to mind I will update this but until then I leave you with a photo of me dancing on a table.

just tell 'em

Like many humans I love being told that I am beautiful – I like being told it almost as much as I like being told that somebody loves me. It might be vain but there is nothing nicer to hear than somebody saying “You are beautiful.” And if it is sincere it has the most uplifting effect on me – like an honest hug on a bad day or a compliment out of the blue. Maybe I just like being complimented in general but whenever somebody is that sincere it always lifts up my day. Today, for the first time in a while I felt truly beautiful.

It was just an ordinary day, a bit overcast in the morning which was lovely, but on this ordinary day I was ill and had managed to catch the virus that was making its rounds around our household. I made myself breakfast and got back into bed and drifted off to sleep. I stayed in a catatonic state for most of the day until I got up, showered and did some household things, went on a lovely walk with my neighbor and came home to get ready to go to a school play, presented by my old house from high school during their annual play festival, which was showing that evening.

The play was fantastic and I adored it. It was original and had loads of awesome creativity flowing in it but the high light of my evening was seeing my cast from last year – two of them now the directors or in my mind HBICs – put a play that was captivating and hilarious. Partly I would like to think that I had helped to mentor them to this stage but that would be unfair on them. They did an amazing job and I loved being able to go up to people who I had worked with last year and congratulate them for doing so amazingly. I know that the HBICs most likely took to the water of directing like graceful swans and not like the awkward duck that I had been. I love giving compliments just as much as I love getting them – it is so lovely to see the smile on somebody’s face when you tell them you adore what they have done.

On my way home I popped in at my mom, who was working an evening shift in the hostel, and said hello to her. After I left, as she told me later that evening, the girl who had been in the staff study at that time had sighed and told my mother that I was “so beautiful”. I don’t think she knows how much I needed that but she is a lovely, beautiful person herself. I hope she knows that and that people tell her that.

When I got home, after popping in at my mom’s evening shift in the hostel, I made myself some tea that smells like jasmine and headed out to watch the moon rise. Sitting there, on the grass with my cats, while clutching my tea I can honestly say that I felt beautiful – and not physically beautiful but wholly beautiful. I felt this warm glow inside of me that I can’t really explain but it comforts me and lets me know that the Universe loves me as I am sitting on the grass, watching the moon rise. It was an inner peace I hadn’t felt in a long time and it was something I needed quite badly.

“A candle losses nothing by lighting another candle.” Somebody once told me that and it is true. So, go out and tell people they are beautiful and make them feel loved. Spread compliments like wild fire and make somebody’s day special because no matter who they are: they need it and need to know that the Universe loves them the way they are. Embrace what that teller told me once and just freaken tell people you love them.

not exactly the person i thought i'd be [with apologies]

I have been unhappy with my life as of late. No, not unhappy about my life, I am unhappy about myself. I feel disconnected from everybody and everything. I don’t feel like I am doing myself justice – I don’t deserve to be this person I see in the mirror. I want to be that person I see smiling in photographs; I want to be the self assured, overconfident person I was a few months back. I want that balanced, rounded person back.

When I look in the mirror I am dissatisfied and I can see what a friend told me once : my eyes are broken. They don’t show how I am really feeling or how I want to be feeling. How did it come to this? How did I become this disappointment to myself? Am I really that pathetic person who gets up every morning without a vision? Without enthusiasm?

How did it come to this?

I feel like I have lost so much, I feel distant from the world, I can’t fit the pieces of the puzzle back together. It is all so confusing and alienating and I don’t want to get out of bed. I want to curl up under the covers and forget myself, forget the world, forget the people I have hurt. I hurt the people I care about and by doing this I hurt myself. I don’t want to be cruel and I know that deep down every judgment I pass is a reflection of inner conflict. I highlight and exaggerate the bad habits and irritating qualities of people I know. Do I really think she is a bitch? No, I think she has shit she has to sort out but she isn’t a bitch. And I apologize for passing that judgment.

I am out of control. I act purely impulsively and it feels like logical-me has packed up her bags and given up on our relationship. She has left and I am left with all this raw emotion I can’t cope with – I want to label it, put it in a box so it can’t hurt me, but I can’t get it to stand still long enough to even see what it is. And the pain is unbearable at times – both physical and emotional – and it is so raw. This out of control feeling makes me jump – make rash, stupid decisions that I did not want to make. I do not have regrets except for the way I acted towards a person I think is an incredible human being. I have no idea what possessed me in that split second and I don’t think I ever really will understand it – I wanted to say good-bye, wish you a safe journey but everything fell apart and some feral part of me took over. And I am sorry that happened. Truly, truly sorry.

I don’t know who I am around other people – sometimes I recognize myself in intelligent conversation but other times I have no idea why I am putting on this front. Yes, I am a dead honest person or at least I try to be. I over share unwanted information and I ask too many questions but I am still trying to figure it all out. Lately, I haven’t been honest. People ask me what I am doing with my year and I lie and tell them my GAP year is going great, everything according to plan. It isn’t. I am lost and confused and I have never felt this alone before. It feels worse in crowds – I don’t stick. In the middle of polite conversation I feel isolated and alone.

When I meditate my mind goes to dark places – every door I open shows me something terrifying and so many things that I don’t want to see. I feel disconnected from my spirituality and question my fate, my destiny. I feel like I am choosing it right now and that it is all going to be a big mistake. I fear for the future more than ever. Is the universe hearing my prayers or have I fallen off the map?

I am not the person I want to be – I barely recognize myself? Where did my balance go? Where is that feisty person I really know? Where is my passion? My compassion?

I need change. I need to find this inner demon and dispose of it. I don’t know how yet but I want to move past this and abandon all the things I dislike about my current self. I want to see the world through fresh eyes and not this.

Change.

the untold wisdom of tellers

Tellers at super markets have untold wisdom. The other day I had a Paulo Coelho moment when I was paying for my ice cream at a local garage. When i reached the front of the que the teller smiled a charming smile at me and I greeted him in kindness despite my awful mood. The he asked me something that threw me completely out of the water.

Him: "What must a man do when he loves you?"

Me (completely perplexed by this simple question: "I guess they should just be kind to me."

The man smiled and looked at me while shaking his head while he said:

"No, they should just tell you."

adventures in photography

We all know that I am a questing addict, and if you didn’t you do now, and today I went on a bit of a different type of questing mission and attacked the Tzaneen library where the is a very friendly librarian who tried to convince me into going into digital videos. When I got to the library I headed for my favourite section (I’ll give you one guess and a clue: they don’t have a scifi section) and started devouring a book on graphic printing in South Africa and when I was done with that I went back to place my book in its slot, saddened that the last person who had actually checked it out had returned the book in 2008.

The Tzaneen library is a sad place but it seems to cope and there were quite a few people in it and I guess Tzaneen is not Pretoria and the fact that they only have six shelves of art books that have hardly been touched is to be expected of the area. Sad but true. All things considered it could be worse.

So, after I had successfully devoured all the printing books they had I sighed as I looked at all the painting books (barely any drawing books and no sculpture books I could find) and LEARN HOW TO BE THE MOST AMAZING ARTIST THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN IN A WEEKEND self-help books my eyes found an amazing book - protruding from the shelf and begging to be touched. The font resembled handwriting and in black the title “DISPOSABLES” was scrawled down the spine. Curiosity almost killed the cat and I lifted it from the shelf and seated myself at a table.

The book is a collection of photos by Brett Morris who decided to start a project in which he paid people who were the “disposables” of South Africa to take photos on a couple of disposable cameras. These photographs of the underbelly of South Africa got my heart racing. These photos by the unemployed, car guards and homeless were some of the most beautiful I had ever seen. If there had ever been photographs of people these were them. The street scenes and their familiar settings bound together with their stories was pure magic. I felt full after that viewing.

I’ve never been a huge enthusiast of photography but recently I have had some more exposure and it is really fascinating stuff but that is all another story for another day. Anyway, I have never actually seriously tried photography – the last I did fine art wise photography was nearly two and a half years ago and it was simple pinhole photography which was quite amazing and a lot of fun but not enough to make it stick with me – but this book had me scribbling in my diary to find out about disposable cameras and later that day when I walked past Fujifilm I went in and made a bit of an irrational purchase.

I am excited and nervous and all those other weird feeling that come with a new project. Sometimes I think that I will never learn from some of my irrational behavior but maybe it is better that way.

the surprising thing is that i didn't die

Yesterday a bus fell over right before the turn off to get to our farm and the back up and traffic problems that it had caused were quite severe so instead of waiting in the boring que for heaven alone knows how many hours my father and i went for a drive around the local dam. due to a lot of recent rain it was full and funneling down its funnely with quite some force. I love water and I am particularly enamored by its strength and power. That passive looking dam could kill you without you in a matter of seconds - it is that Sylvia Plath Mushroom's idea: the calm, silent rebellion that is just waiting to burst.

On the other side of the dam wall is a set of stairs that lead down to the base and where the river starts.The moment I saw those stairs I had to climb them - my mind would not sit still until I have quested to the bottom and explored. This is both my muse and my vice - I must explore all nooks and crannies to see what there is to see. Despite the fact that there are about 200 stairs in between. I need a TARDIS.

Going down was really no trouble at all and soon I started to notice people had scraped graffiti into the stone stairs. I am a sucker for all graffiti even the "JO & MARY FOR EVA" ones. They always make me wonder if Jo & Mary even speak to each other any more or if I will find Jo's body tucked behind the chemical shed. The other graffiti I noticed was a handful of number on various steps: 60, 120, 200.

200 was one quite close to the end and by the end of the long line of stairs I looked up, admired my feat and went questing. Found some awesome things and hopefully there will be some drawings to post to tumblr soon. Soon I had quested to my heart's content and faced the next challenge: going back up.

*insert dramatic music here*

There I was at the base of some 200 stairs in my doc martins and jeans and I did not really want to leave the strange little spot I had found. I liked it down there and could easily have set up camp there but back up I had to go. About half way up I thought my lungs were going to fail me and my knees were telling me that this was possibly the second most idiotic thing I had ever done. Go me.

So, halfway up I stopped to rest and consider my fate if there were zombies behind me (the outlook was bleak) and snap a few pictures. I am still amazed at how the St. Josephs grow randomly in the wild and especially in between the rocks on this slope. Nature really kicks ass sometimes. Eventually I made it to the top and,, surprisingly, I did not die or need to be hospitalised.

Here is a little something I found while questing. Drawings will follow soon

i have beef with rihanna

this post might seem shallow but rihanna is stalking me and stealing my odd sounds and phrases. ask Miss M - she told me.

for those of you who know me you know i have been saying "yaaaaaaaaaaahhhzzz" since before i invented dinosaur face. for real, y'all, and now that girl who happens to have cooler hair than me at the moment has said it is cool. i should never have switched from dinosaur face.

to prove my point this is my editor and best friend's point of view after i told her that i was in fact the inventor of the phrase :

"totally. rihanna has followed you since you got twitter, saw you use it, then wrote it in a little notebook, waited for you to get over the phrase and decide it was lame and for her fame to reach its peak, then used it on twitter and BAM! she stole your thunder. totally."

and by the way, rihanna, if you steal any of Miss M's lines i will hunt you down with a cross bow. stop stealing lines. gosh

taking a hike

there are lilies growing beside road here. awesome, not?

 

You know what the best thing is about being a not-so-glorified bum? The mini vacations you take when you can’t face reality anymore. This might be why I will never be a responsible adult – when it all becomes too real I take a hike and wait for the steam to settle while I try to pretend to be oblivious to everything! Go, me. Take one for the team and all that jazz except that there aren’t really any other team members.

So I am visiting my dad. So far it has included good food (been trying my best to stick to my diet and getting it mostly right except that I have had cream cheese and pasta and maybe some Stollen) and a lot of relaxing and TV watching and internet surfing and talking to people in odd countries all over the world. It has been good and relaxing and I’ve only been here a few days. It feels good to get away from the big city and to just over indulge in Will & Grace reruns and amazing views and good books and rain and cold. Oh, how I love the wet weather up here.

Here is the view from my room to tease you with:

i wake up to this, suckers

 Also, there will be some food related blogs coming up. Say like AH if you like wild mushroom rissotto.

my best doctor

No sugar, no cheese, no dairy, no wheat, no drinking, no fizzy drinks, no more than two ear piercings, no going to bed after eleven and take my funny concoction twice a day.

I do not listen to men. I don’t know why but when men try to enforce some form of discipline on me I do not respond so it is a hard pill to swallow when I realize that I am drinking in every word that this Chinese doctor is telling me. He could tell me to cut my toe off and I would obey – after all this is the man I let jab twelve needles into me without question or protest. I just lay on his bed with his meditation music playing in the background while he flicked two needles into my stomach and three into the front of each knee and after about half an hour I let him flick two more into the back to my knees.

It didn’t hurt at all except for one of the back-of-the-knee ones that stung quite a bit. I’m no wimp when it comes to pain. I mean, after all, I walk around on my knees daily and I don’t break down every time they are sore. How would that help me get on with my life?

Now, an hour later I am feeling great – my knees are a bit stiff but the pain is mostly gone. Results: these are things I’ve never really had before and it feels good to know the pain isn’t gone because I took two mypaids and called you in the morning. What I am worried about is sticking to the new diet he has given me – no sugar, no wheat, no dairy. As a rule I don’t normally eat dairy or wheat as much as some people do but the whole “NO” is quite scary. In one foul swoop my Saturday Tribeca breakfast and tall cappuccino has been blasted away. I’ll have to find another treat that isn’t a bagel with cream cheese. In my mind the challenge feels impossible but I know I can do it.

I can walk the walk and talk the talk but can I do the do? I suspect this weekend might be quite hard to get through. Also, what will I have for supper tonight? A sandwich on rye bread? That’s what I had for lunch. I better rip out the Healthy Living Recipe Book and find something.

Oh, and I have slow, deep pulse? What does that mean? Dr Chiu doesn’t really make anything sound like it is a problem. After all, he did say “blood tests” and “autoimmune disease” as if he were offering me a juice box. Curses. But he is amazingly awesome and my best doctor. Thanks, Dr Chiu!

you can't see the writing but it says "my best doctor"

i do things that are uncalled for

Last night I wrote an angry blog that was totally uncalled for. It was uncalled for in the sense that I directed my anger at the completely wrong person when in actual fact I really, and this is the honest truth, am not mad at that person at all. I’m mad at the situation. I’m mad at the way people view me but still not complaining – it was fun while it lasted.

This is the problem though – when the fun and games are over I am the one sitting nursing my ego and all of my friends and a bunch of new people who know me by name saw me hooking up with a near stranger in a club. In that second I went for it I was declared loose. A loose, vagabond of a woman – and this mostly in the eyes of the women there – this is what people see when they see a girl kissing a boy in a club and I always find myself on the short end of the stick.

One of my friends has described, presumably this behavior, me being full of crap. Why? Can’t I kiss who I please and move on with my life? Why must it always be assumed that I want something solid when I text a guy inviting him out? Can’t it rather be assumed that it would be really great if we had a rerun of last Saturday night? No. And you know why?

Because I am a girl.

To quote Molly Crabapple, “Girls are taught to stay at home and protect their vaginae.” Sad truth. So when I am out there showing the world my map of Tasmania can I rather not be judged? Can I just be seen as a pioneer of a woman who does what she likes and doesn’t let her surpassed reputation stand in her way?

Because that is what it really is – women used to be held back by men and now they are held back by their reputations which is somehow linked to how many guys they’ve bedded. Screw that I’m a talented, smart person; I kissed a stranger at a club and now I am bad person. Thanks for nothing, world, I’ll obviously just a girl in the wrong.

Please, take a box and shove me inside it now.

Oh, and I apologize for the post and this one which just kinda morphed into a rant. I apologize and I don’t hate you.

feel

So, i've been trying this feeling thing. Miss M suggested it which is also in line of my new year's resolution that I dumped in January to "LOVE, unconditionally and with your whole heart." Feelings screw me over.

I've had enough of them. In the last two days I've gone from euphoric and full of positive energy that I was going to convert into artistic work and have now wasted on fixing my bedroom to whatever this shit is. And now I'm angry and on the verge of snapping. I want to break things, throw things and very possibly burn things. I wish I hadn't given my matches away.

And tomorrow morning I know I will get up and I'll be clawing to get out of the pit again. Thanks for nothing at all, feelings. You may now go die in a pit of useless emotional stress.

And now, let the forgetting commence. Also, bring on the tequila and Skins marathons.

i suspect this might all be a big mistake

i try not to have regrets. really, I try very hard to live with the copious amount of mistakes i make and pretend that they were all part of the original and mighty plan. however, sometimes i wonder if my spur of the moment thinking doesn't lead to greater chaos in my mind.

today i went for my 'trial run' at the place i went for an interview at and then, after four hours i quit the scene claiming that it wasn't for me which is not strictly true. I suspect that although I am quite awkward around children I was actually enjoying being around them. They said they thought I was nice, complimented me and generally made me feel good about myself. I felt free to be friendly to them and instead of being met by the wall of rejection my crazy is generally met with they were lovely and open and accepting.

Their, and my, supervisor was not as friendly, however.

I know how to work with difficult people,I have a thick skin and I can take other people's crazy ; what I can't take is people being nasty about or to people who have been nothing but lovely, nice and kind to me. People like this send my blood pressure through the roof. This supervisor was one of them.

Children are not quite the spawn of Satan that she points them out to be and even the boy who I had to tear down from the rafters gave me a high five later that day. These children just want you to be nice to them. If you yelled at me all day I'd also give you hell rather than be nice to you. Children have backbones - they are not rude(I admit, some of them are)or backstabbing or horrible brats.

These kids were nicer to me than some of the adults I know and they'd only met me once. But, hell, that woman drove me bananas in just four hours. Get a grip, woman. You're in charge of a bunch of minors - start acting like an adult.

Needless to say, I quit. Well, told them I wouldn't be working for them any more. Not because I can't handle the pace or the kids but because I might stab that woman with a pencil if I have to work for her.

this might be a problem

I have a job interview tomorrow.The time has come to be a responsible adult. Everything about it is ideal: good pay, only have to work in the afternoon, it is at the end of my friend’s street and I have a lift there and back again. There is only one set back: it is taking care of a group of children. And not like an au pair but like an after school care giver. My mother thinks it is easy – I have to help kids with their home work and make sure they do not die or lose limbs.

I am not the ideal candidate for this job, however, the pay means that I will be able to do things I like when I am on holiday like fly down to the coast to visit Miss M or (after a bit more saving) hop on a plane to go see the Wife and travel. One month’s pay is a (very, out of season) cheap one way ticket to Europe. And I bet I could use this as an advantage for my TEFL hours. And in my coffee breaks I can pop down to my friend’s place for ‘coffee’. However, I doubt I’ll have coffee breaks at all. So maybe we can scratch all of that.

Now, instead of updating my CV I am blogging. Great. Shit. To be perfectly honest I am terrified. When I spoke to Miss M on the phone earlier she laughed when I told her. She laughed for a very long time. This is why I haven’t had “time” to tell anybody else.

How is an irresponsible person becoming a caregiver for young children who might be taller than her? There is serious doubt in my mind that they would employ me: I have no experience and a quick temper. Children could be in danger. These people must be desperate.

Also, I need to find a top that I can wear to this thing. A t-shirt feels too unprofessional. Shit, bugger, fuck. I need to look presentable… How do you do that again?

for the love of food

Food.

God, I love the stuff. I love the flavour and the senses and the burst and the passion and the taste. I love food; melting and burning and pots and pans and smells. Oh, the smells that come out of the kitchen at the end of the day could melt my stoniest days and turn my heart to butter.

Especially the smell of curry coming from the kitchen – it’s Thai curry – and the fresh smell is intoxicating. My mouth waters as the prominent flavours turn from spicy, curry paste to freshly squeezed lime juice being added to the pot in a sizzle and rice being tested and the warmth that fills a kitchen and the fish and prawns and oh my! You could win me over with food like this: you could make me yours in a tick with a plate of good food and paralyze me with pure happiness.

Coriander – that’s my favourite. The moment the coriander hits the pot or my taste buds all heaven breaks loose. It’s beautiful and I could gush about it for hours and hours. It is even great growing in a pot or a window sill when the morning carries it in. Give me food – give me thai curry with coriander and I’ll be putty in your hands.

With food like this you could make me your slave.

right to the start

draw. write. music. eat. love.

 Those are the fundamental rules of life. Live by them and you will prosper or just grow really old. Eventually you will die but we’ll make the most of it – I swear.